Zeitgeist

A friend of mine asked me to watch the first sec­tion of Zeit­geist (a movie you can watch for free on the inter­net at http://zeitgeistmovie.com/) and give him some per­spec­tive on it.

Here goes:

I don’t recall ever hav­ing run across so many fac­tu­al inac­cu­ra­cies in such a short span of time. I doubt I even caught them all — they were fly­ing fast and furi­ous.

I’ll start with a few that are easy for an untrained layper­son to see right away. There’s some oth­er stuff he said that I know is false, but demon­strat­ing it is less easy. It becomes “my expert you’ve nev­er heard of” ver­sus “his expert you’ve nev­er heard of” with me say­ing “my expert is bet­ter than his expert — trust me.” So I’ll keep this list focused on stuff any­one can eas­i­ly ver­i­fy on their own.

One eas­i­ly-checked fact that he builds his argu­ment on is that the South­ern Cross is the real inspi­ra­tion for the cross of Jesus (watch from 17:35 through 19:03). Three prob­lems with this:
a) The South­ern Cross is a mod­ern inven­tion — not an ancient con­stel­la­tion. Check http://www.windows.ucar.edu/the_universe/crux.html and http://www.fillingthesky.com/constellationhistory.html
b) The South­ern Cross is not vis­i­ble from where the New Tes­ta­ment was writ­ten. In the North­ern Hemi­sphere you have to be below 30 degrees lat­i­tude to see it. The New Tes­ta­ment was writ­ten from Jerusalem on north.
c) It’s hard to see how a con­stel­la­tion that did­n’t exist and could­n’t be seen inspired the sto­ry of Jesus when Romans actu­al­ly killed peo­ple on cross­es all the time. Is he seri­ous­ly sug­gest­ing that the Romans did­n’t actu­al­ly cru­ci­fy peo­ple?

Miss­ing such a basic fact does­n’t inspire con­fi­dence in the more eso­teric, less eas­i­ly-checked facts he uses to make his entire case. There are oth­er eas­i­ly-checked facts he dis­torts. Two from the Bible struck me.

In the time range 23:38 — 25:20 the movie claims that Jesus is a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the astro­log­i­cal sign of Pisces. Towards the end of this sec­tion, the nar­ra­tor states that Jesus’ dis­ci­ples asked him when he would cel­e­brate the next passover with them him after he is gone and that Jesus’ answer in Luke 22:10 was code lan­guage for Aquar­ius (the next age of the Zodi­ac). This is easy enough to check — and it turns out to be a lie. Luke 22:10 is about the passover they are cel­e­brat­ing that night, not the next meal they will share after his res­ur­rec­tion. That isn’t a minor dif­fer­ence — it under­mines his entire inter­pre­ta­tion.

Anoth­er exam­ple of his will­ing­ness to dis­tort the Bible to make his point occurs around time mark­er 21:10, when he says that the Bible teach­es that Jesus comes from heav­en wear­ing a crown of thorns, which rep­re­sent the rays of the sun. He quotes John 19:5 to sup­port this point. Look it up. There’s not even a hint of Jesus descend­ing from heav­en any­where in this pas­sage. He’s walk­ing from one place to anoth­er — not descend­ing from the clouds as the nar­ra­tor claims.

These two instances aren’t nit­pick­ing — these are very eas­i­ly checked state­ments in the best­selling book of all time which is always avail­able for instant fact-check­ing on the inter­net at places such as Bible Gate­way. If he did­n’t even check these ref­er­ences that key parts of his argu­ment rely on, then how much stock can we place in his ref­er­ences to obscure ancient Egypt­ian texts that only schol­ars have ready access to?

He’s evi­dent­ly received crit­i­cism along this line, because he felt com­pelled to give some doc­u­men­ta­tion for his use of ancient texts at http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/GMappendix.htm

Just look through it. Pay atten­tion to the sto­ries of Jesus in the right col­umn (you are pre­sum­ably more famil­iar with them). I think you’ll be sur­prised at how flaky that list is.

Bot­tom line: Zeit­geist is very imag­i­na­tive, but that’s about it.

UPDATE 2/24/2008: This post is still gen­er­at­ing com­ments. It’s been six months since I wrote this post, and since then a help­ful review by Ben With­er­ing­ton has been post­ed — The Zeit­geist of the ‘Zeit­geist Movie’. Look to it for a more detailed rebut­tal of the movie’s claims.

11 thoughts on “Zeitgeist”

  1. I have seen this movie and found it quite both­er­some giv­en that it cer­tain­ly shook my “faith” tree. As a Pas­tor I was very both­ered by its claims and have been won­der­ing what oth­er Pas­tors, Cler­gy and Chris­tians think about it. Like you I did find some prob­lems with the film but it is still trou­bling to think that there real­ly is mul­ti­ple expres­sions of what was here­to called “astrothe­ol­o­gy”. It seems to me that even if half of the imfor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed is true and there are these par­al­lels with oth­er world reli­gions then isn’t that enough to make us take a more seri­ous look at our faith and our roles as cler­gy?

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  2. We should always be reflect­ing on our faith and our roles as cler­gy. 😉

    But Zeit­geist aside, the fact that there are legit­i­mate par­al­lels to oth­er world reli­gions embed­ded with­in Chris­tian­i­ty should­n’t both­er us. What’s the alter­na­tive — to believe that every oth­er reli­gion on the plan­et is wrong in every con­ceiv­able way?

    We should expect a cer­tain lev­el of par­al­lelism if for no oth­er rea­son than that it’s just as remark­able to call 50 coin toss­es in a row wrong as it is to call them cor­rect­ly.

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  3. There are not alter­na­tives, rather con­tin­u­ous “whole parts”. That to which you refer as par­al­lelism would be the key. Which apple you choose is irrel­e­vant, how you eat it deter­mines the flavour!

    In addi­tion, 50 false­ly called, and 50 cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied coin toss­es are not remark­able. They’re expres­sions of prob­a­bil­i­ty, that same prob­a­bil­i­ty that holds you to the physical/mental place in which you find your­self at this moment. Sim­i­lar­ly, the same prob­a­bil­i­ty that influ­enced your respec­tive “cler­gy’s”.

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  4. I think you mis­un­der­stand my point — let’s change the num­ber from 50 to 500 to make the it clear­er.

    Pre­dict­ing 500 coin toss­es in a row incor­rect­ly is remark­able — and it is just as remark­able as pre­dict­ing 500 coin toss­es in a row cor­rect­ly.

    Both are equal­ly absurd sta­tis­ti­cal out­liers.

    I am using this to illus­trate my main point — that for a reli­gion to be 100% wrong in every respect would be extreme­ly sur­pris­ing.

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  5. first of all I would like to say i respect your posi­tion and sta­tus

    that being said:
    if the cor­re­la­tions between the pagan and chris­t­ian reli­gions are cor­rect­ly stat­ed in this movie
    would it be blas­phe­mous for chris­tians to con­vert to a more pagan based way of life?
    keep­ing in mind that the entire basis for chris­tian­i­ty is from pagan reli­gions

    cole

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  6. Just a quick com­ment on the South­ern Cross. I think you’ll find that in the time of when the myths are writ­ten that the “crux” con­stel­la­tion was indeed vis­i­ble. Know­ing that much should be the clue you need. The oth­er points require a bit more expla­na­tion, but might be enough to get you think­ing in anoth­er direc­tion!

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  7. to Cole: No. If the movie was cor­rect it would be a good argu­ment for not believ­ing in Chris­tian­i­ty, but it would not be a good argu­ment for becom­ing a pagan. Show­ing that a false idea comes from anoth­er source does­n’t make the orig­i­nal source true.

    to Ash: even if you are cor­rect about the con­stel­la­tion shift­ing in the hori­zon over the cen­turies, it does­n’t estab­lish your point. The South­ern Cross remains a mod­ern inven­tion and the fact remains that the Romans cru­cifed peo­ple left and right with­out need­ing any astro­log­i­cal rea­son for their pre­ferred method of exe­cu­tion.

    It’s been six months since I wrote this post, and since then a help­ful review by Ben With­er­ing­ton has been post­ed — The Zeit­geist of the ‘Zeit­geist Movie’. Look to it for a more detailed rebut­tal of the movie’s claims.

    Reply

  8. I hope the March 15th of the world pre­miere of the movie Zeit­geist will cause a lot of news­pa­pers from a lot coun­tries to start hound­ing the U.S. Gov­ern­ment to admit they were behind the 9/11 attack. These peo­ple need to be removed from pow­er.

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  9. Zeit­geist movie is true! From the reli­gious point of view, to the polit­i­cal. We are con­trolled by reli­gion and pol­i­tics and we know it. So we deserve our faith! I don’t believe in things, I believe what I feel.

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  10. The pas­tor who com­ment­ed Thomas I think his name was, this is for you…

    If you tru­ly are a pas­tor, do not let some movie come between you and your faith. You tru­ly love Jesus and that’s what’s impor­tant. I do think it is vital to keep an open mind, and I think you do that. It’s just you can’t let some cult movie shake your faith, what­ev­er that is.

    That’s just what I think…I mean I did­n’t even men­tion my take on the movie or my beliefs so please don’t bash me lol.

    Thanks.

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