Zeitgeist

[Blue]

Brand new movie online. http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

Talks about Religion, Wars, Economic Depression, Terrorism and how they are tied together.



Amazing film imho.

[Bet51987]

What an awesome video. I only watched the first 30 minutes but plan to watch the rest tommorrow. I always knew God was a fictitious character but I have a problem with putting Jesus in that same mindset. Although not God, I still believe he existed. I will still watch the rest.

Thanks for sharing that....

Bee

[Diedel]

You \"knew\"? How about \"believed\"?

[Gooberman]

I'm glad I watched it, but I kept waiting for the part where we needed to invade Zion.

[Blue]

I think the film attempts to motivate you to stand up for change....but once i was finished I realised there is pretty much no hope. *sigh*


Goober: In the film they hint the next target is going to be Iran, which I can foresee happening down the line.

[Bet51987]

You "knew"? How about "believed"?

There are many levels of "belief" based on the degree of certainty. I used the word "knew" (know) because of my high degree of confidence that God does not exist, and I get that confidence by what I see in the world every single day.

Bee

[Lothar]

Blue, can you summarize the movie for those who aren't convinced it's worth the time to watch it?

[Blue]

Sure no problem.


The movie has 3 parts.



Part 1: Religon (0:00 - 37:00)
Points out the common traits found throughout christianity to older religions and talks about how jesus might actually be mythological, but was historized for political strength in the church. Talks about the specifics about jesus, the bible and reasons Jesus is simply \"the sun\" on the astrological calender. It concludes about how the \"myth\" of religion is used to stupify our species and to allow a few men to dominate us all.


Part 2: Media and Terrorism (37:00 - 1:11:08 )
Talks about how our government controls our perception through the media to sway our votes and our thoughts as a group. Talks about 9/11 and how our government lied about every detail and how they continue to decieve us and cover themselves from our justice system.

Part 3: Big Brother (1:11:08 - Fin)
Talks about the Great Depression and how the same people we fought to detach from england and it's monarchy are now CURRENTLY in control of our country. It talks about the central bank and how it will lead us to slavery (we are already indentured servants) and how those in power through the central bank are the men who propelled the US into war many times while making money off both sides of the conflict while hindering these wars from concluding. Leading to the ultimate conclusion of one world government and an implanted ID chip in every new infant born....

[Grendel]

Sorry for reposting the link, somehow this thread eluded me. OTOH there can't be enough pointers to that movie even if it may be inaccurate. Surely gives you something to think about.

I've seen similar analysis in the past, esp. an essay about the devaluation of the dollar in the near future and it's effects (in german tho). Very plausible. Scarry.

Lothar, no comments ? I'm surprised

[Foil]

I don't know about the rest, but if your description is accurate, part one is based on flawed information.

As I mentioned on the DBB.com:

Yes, There are a number of cultural and literary similarities from Egyptian religion that got referenced in the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures. This makes sense, because the Hebrews were in Egypt for a significant period of time in their history. However, with Christ and the New Testament, these cultural similarities break down; they are much more Greco-Roman than Egyptian. Why? Because Israel was part of the Roman empire.

Second, whether or not you believe he was divine, Jesus was not a \"mythical figure\". His existence, and even references to his death, can be found in numerous Roman historical texts.

Sure, there are similarities in the stories of various religions; many religions are closely related, and their stories are based in similar cultures, after all. However, that does not mean that \"they are all variations of the same story\".

[Foil]

Lothar, no comments ? I'm surprised

He's our "resident expert" on the historical aspects of Biblical scripture; I expect he'll post soon.

[Firewheel]

I saw Acharya S under their list of references. Not a good sign at all.

[Grendel]

And that would be why ?

[Jeff250]

Yes, There are a number of cultural and literary similarities from Egyptian religion that got referenced in the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures. This makes sense, because the Hebrews were in Egypt for a significant period of time in their history.

The larger claim isn't just that there are some quaint cultural allusions scattered throughout the Bible. It's that religious claims, like those of religious law, those of stories dealing with God, those about God, and even those ascribed to God, appear to have been borrowed from other religions. This is more threatening to religions like Christianity. To what extent this is true is a matter of history and religious studies, but the threat shouldn't be downplayed.

[snoopy]

Yes, There are a number of cultural and literary similarities from Egyptian religion that got referenced in the Old Testament Hebrew scriptures. This makes sense, because the Hebrews were in Egypt for a significant period of time in their history.

The larger claim isn't just that there are some quaint cultural allusions scattered throughout the Bible. It's that religious claims, like those of religious law, those of stories dealing with God, those about God, and even those ascribed to God, appear to have been borrowed from other religions. This is more threatening to religions like Christianity. To what extent this is true is a matter of history and religious studies, but the threat shouldn't be downplayed.

The question is, which way does the street go? I.E. while it could be said that the Bible borrows from other scriptures... what method is used to determine if that's the way it went, or if it went the other way? Also, both may have as a source a genuine event, and the differences between the two spring from the differences in the philosophical filters that the two religions have.

[TheCope]

HAHAHAHAHA
They have a Bill Hicks clip.
\"I swear I was in that film... I swear it.\"

[Sirius]

It's kind of hard to take claims about religion seriously when they come from people who obviously do not want to entertain for a second the idea that there might be some truth about it. As far as I can tell, the claims about the parallels between Christ and earlier figures are grossly exaggerated... for instance.

And then there's the confusion of religions and the men and women of prominence within those religions.

It's all too easy to demonise things you know little or nothing about.

[Genghis]

It's kind of hard to take claims about religion seriously when they come from people who obviously do not want to entertain for a second the idea that there might be some truth about it. As far as I can tell, the claims about the parallels between Christ and earlier figures are grossly exaggerated... for instance.

And then there's the confusion of religions and the men and women of prominence within those religions.

It's all too easy to demonise things you know little or nothing about.

All true. I'm a case in point; I don't know enough about a religion to be credible discussing it at a deep level.

But your final comment doesn't address folks like biblical scholars, who do know quite a lot about the subject and still come to conclusions counter to the religious establishment. Or folks who convert away from a religion after careful study and thought.

Also, keep in mind that the contrapositive of your first statement is equally valid: it's hard to take claims in favor of a religion seriously when they come from people who obviously do not want to entertain for a second that there might some fallacies to it.

These of course, are the reasons it's so hard to communicate regarding these issues.

[Sirius]

That's the reason faith is always such a touchy topic; because it's normally foundational to a person's beliefs, they adhere to them very, very strongly.

I am no different. But I don't appreciate it when people flat-out misrepresent one side or the other with propaganda that just contains grains of truth mixed with lies.

I've seen it from Christian sources as well. And that annoys me too; if you don't treat the material you're trying to argue against with care, all you do is throw your credibility out the window.

And, truth be told, that's the primary reason I abhor people making fun of \"the enemy\" in media; you're basically insulting the part of your audience one would expect that you're trying to reach. Making documentaries to benefit people who already agree with you benefits nobody at all.

[WillyP]

Now I have to wonder about many events in our country's history... I found this the other day, shortly after watching Zeitgeist: Terror on Wall Street. Read this, and compare this to 9/11.

[Mobius]

There are many levels of "belief" based on the degree of certainty. I used the word "knew" (know) because of my high degree of confidence that God does not exist, and I get that confidence by what I see in the world every single day.

Assignment for you Bee: Look up the word "epistemology". 500 Words on my desk by tomorrow morning please.

My personal view of Zeitgeist is that it loses credibility by mashing all three topics into a single "film". This should be three different films in my view. The disjointed nature of the parts does not fit with all three of them being connected.

The screaming atheistic stance taken by the producers in the first part does nothing to legitimize the second or third parts. In particular, strongly religious people are highly unlikely to watch through the end of Part 1, which is a real shame, because parts 2 and 3 are more important in my view.

Bashing people over the head for their silly beliefs about gods and religions doesn't do anything to help their proposition in parts 2 and 3.

All told, a rather lacklustre effort in my view. What could have been three films at 4 stars each, instead earns 2 stars as a whole.

For my own beliefs, I am now beginning to question my initial belief that 9/11 was not an inside job. I now think it is distinctly possible it was a false flag operation. If it's true, it's possibly the largest murder conspiracy ever in the USA, and the tragedy would be the perpetrators escaping scott free.

[dissent]

Now I have to wonder about many events in our country's history... I found this the other day, shortly after watching Zeitgeist: Terror on Wall Street. Read this, and compare this to 9/11.

How does this story have anything to do with the bogus purported conspiracy on 9/11 in the Zeitgeist film?

[WillyP]

Simple, watch the movie then read the story and you have to wonder who really was behind it. The bomb on wall street caused much the same reaction from the public as 9/11. As Mobius put it, a 'false flag operation'. And I have to wonder how many other incidents there are in our history that could possibly be other false flag incidents.

Mobius... I have to disagree, I think putting all three together was pure genius... It's what really made the difference, tying all three subjects together. Don't you see the connection? I do agree about the turning off religious types, mainly the 'church on Sunday only' types, people who seriously study the bible might actually be interested. But those who consider the first part blasphemy or hogwash aren't likely to even consider the second or third parts anyway... don't you agree?

DoNotClickHere

[Lothar]

I was all rah-rah about it at first with the anti-Christian stuff, but then I saw the 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff and it lost credibility to me, including the earlier stuff on religion. Just goes to show the confirmation bias in each of us, and how careful we have to be about maintaining awareness of it.

It also shows how important it is to approach everything with skepticism, even if we already agree with its conclusions, and to do research and fact-checking. Grendel joked about being surprised that I hadn't commented. For my part, I'm disappointed at the number of comments along the lines of "this is good stuff" and "I found this informative", compared to only a single comment expressing skepticism, and thus far ZERO attempts (as far as I know) by anybody else, pro or con, to do any sort of research, in spite of Grendel's calling it "carefully researched". You can't find something "informative" if you don't even attempt to research the information it gives you. The movie makes substantial claims, many in areas I don't have particular expertise in, so I've had to take some time to research in order to be able to really comment on it. So long as we're attempting to view things "from a critical perspective" (as Grendel quotes the movie website as saying), I hope we're able to view the movie itself from a critical perspective and study the background material necessary to be able to comment on it. Consider this a MONSTER POST WARNING! I'll be doing some significant research, and I'll have a lot of ground to cover, so the discussion will take significant space.

Here's a brief summary of the first 37 minutes of the movie; I didn't watch the rest of it and I'm not even remotely interested in doing so. I'll try to address the main parts of this, but if anyone sees anything I didn't include here or anything I included but didn't respond to that you'd like a response to, let me know. A note of caution: if you do watch this movie, beware, they play to your emotions and change subjects quickly before you have time to think about what was just said. In classic propaganda style, you end up accepting bad ideas because you don't have time to think about them before you've moved on to the next thing.

0:00-5:00 -- intro montage and war-related imagery
5:00-10:00 -- quotes about religion as BS, jokes about 10 commandments, etc. (Note: the first 10 minutes of the movie are a complete waste of time.)
10:00-12:15 -- comments about sun gods, and "sun as creator".
12:15-16:15 -- comments about Horus, numerous other gods sharing certain attributes with Jesus
16:15-19:30 -- astrological explanation of Jesus' birth and death: sirius is the brightest star in the east, which "aligns" with Orion's belt (called three kings) and points to the place of the sunrise on Dec 25. Describes Virgo as virgin represented by the glyph "M" (Mary) who holds wheat (Bethlehem="house of bread"), appears in the sky in August and September. Describes sunset beneath Southern Cross as death, and resurrection celebration at easter as the equinox.
19:30-21:00 -- Describes the 12 disciples as 12 signs of the zodiac. References the number 12 appearing in the Bible. Describes art as "always" showing Jesus in front of a cross, relating to a pagan zodiac symbol of the sun in front of a cross. References Biblical passages that refer to Jesus in solar ways.
21:10-26:20 -- Describes "ages" of Taurus the Bull, Ares the Ram, Pisces the fish, and Aquarius the water bearer. Moses is the sign of Ares and is angry about the worship of the bull; that's why Jews blow the ram's horn. Jesus ushers in the age of Pisces the fish with fish-based symbolism. The man carrying water for passover in Luke 22:10 is Aquarius. Biblical eschatology is really "end of age" not "end of earth".
26:20-27:20 -- rehashes Jesus as Horus: Thoth tells virgin Isis she'll have a child; Meth the "holy ghost" impregnates her.
27:20-29:30 -- Great flood of Noah matches other floods like Epic of Gilgamesh. Moses' birth matches myth of Sargon. Moses as lawgiver matches Manou, Minos, Mises. Ten Commandments ripped from the Egyptian book of the dead.
29:30-31:40 -- concludes section from 12:15 to present with the claim that Egyptian religion is the "primary basis" for key Judeo-Christian beliefs. Supports it with a Justin Martyr quote about Christian beliefs not being all that different from certain pagan beliefs about Jupiter, etc. Random quote about fossils and age of earth.
31:40-33:45 -- talks about Joseph (11th of 12 sons of Israel) as a "type" for Jesus, establishing the principle of transferring one person's attributes to another, and suggests Horus as a "type" for Jesus. Talks about contemporary secular historians "not really" referencing Jesus.
33:45-37:00 -- talks about wanting to be factual. Talks about religion as control, the gospels being developed by the gnostics and being used by Constantine and later the Vatican to develop a political stranglehold on Europe, leading to the dark ages. "Blind submission", "reduces human responsibility", and "empowers those who know the truth".

In short, this section of the movie makes four separate arguments:
1) Moses is not a historical figure, but a mythological figure copied from others
2) Jesus is not a historical figure, but a mythological sun god copied from others
3) Moses and Jesus signify the changing of the ages from Taurus to Ares to Pisces
4) The New Testament was written in order to allow for control

I'll research and address each of them, beginning with #3 as it's the most straightforward, moving to #1 as it's short and simple, and then dealing with the fairly long and detailed #2 before finishing off with a few words on #4.

[Lothar]

Argument 3: On Astrological Ages

One of the major claims of the movie is about the astrological ages. The age of Taurus the Bull lasts from 4300-2150 BC; the age of Ares the Ram from 2150 BC - 1 AD, the age of Pisces the Fish from 1 AD to 2150 AD, and the age of Aquarius the water-bearer will begin in 2150 AD (well, at least according to some interpretations of the ages; other interpretations shift those dates by about 500 years, but the movie doesn't bother to let you know this.) The movie claims that Moses' smashing the golden calf/bull in Exodus 32 is because Moses represents the start of the age of Ares the Ram (as evidenced by the modern Jews blowing a Ram's horn), and he's upset about the people are returning to the previous age. It further claims that Jesus ushers in the Age of Pisces (often symbolized by TWO fish), which is why he calls two fishermen to be His disciples, and feeds people with bread and fish. It also claims that Jesus is telling people about a \"future passover\" in Luke 22:10, involving a man carrying water, which is a reference to Aquarius.

As mentioned on the Astrological Ages wikipedia page above, the precession of the equinoxes was not discovered until about 127 BC by Hipparchus. Moses was around about 1400 years before that -- so how exactly did he know it was the age of the ram, if the concept hadn't even been invented yet? Also note that Moses is born about 700 years into the age of Ares, not any time near its start. Furthermore, Moses never gave any indication that ram worship was to replace bull worship. In the \"golden calf\" story, the issue is not that the people made a BULL, but that they made an IDOL -- he doesn't get angry and order them to build a ram; he gets angry and destroys the calf and tells them to turn back to a God who is never given any animal representation. Throughout the writings of Moses and the Prophets in the Old Testament, we see continued references to idols as \"worthless\" and comments about how silly it is to worship \"man-made\" things, to carve a likeness of an animal out of wood and worship it while throwing the other half of the wood in the fire to keep warm (see Isaiah 44:6-23.) Both bulls and rams play a significant part in the tabernacle/temple sacrifices instituted by Moses, along with lambs and birds; it's not as though one takes significance over the other. As for the Ram's horn, it's mentioned seven times in the Bible (search the page for \"ram\"), but I don't see any significance to any of them -- it's a form of trumpet, but it doesn't seem to be any more than that. This theory has almost no explanatory power -- it only tangentially explains the \"golden calf\" story, and there are a couple hundred more pages of Mosaic Law and history that don't fit into this framework. A single reference to a modern ram's horn, and a reference to a golden calf being destroyed, is not sufficient to back up the claim that Moses is ushering in the age of the Ram.

Jesus has several disciples, far more than 12 (the twelve in the innermost circle are called \"apostles\".) Many of them are fishermen, including Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John. He also calls tax collectors like Levi and Matthew (who is also an apostle), and several others whose occupations are unknown. The common theme does not seem to be fish, but rather, people who are \"low\" in society. Jesus does perform miraculous feedings involving loaves of bread and fish (once with five loaves and 2 fish; another with seven loaves and \"several\" fish) but He doesn't seem to place any emphasis on the fish; if anything, the emphasis is more on the bread. He doesn't even mention the fish when He reminds the disciples of those miracles. And He performs other miracles involving wine, disease, paralysis, storms, and so on. Jesus spends a lot of time near lakes and rivers, but we don't see Him put a particularly large amount of effort into bringing \"fish\" into His teaching or miracles. His focus is on sin, repentance, healing, and forgiveness, none of which is even remotely related to Pisces. It's claimed that the early church symbolism of the fish (and the modern continuing of this) is also symbolic of Pisces, but this is far better explained by the acronym Ichthys. As before, the explanatory power of this theory is nearly zero -- it's a poor explanation for the couple of symbols it claims to explain, and it leaves the other couple hundred pages about Jesus untouched. As with Moses, the small number of \"fish\" references aren't sufficient to back up the claim.

And what of the statement that Jesus was referring to where the \"next passover will be after he is gone\" in Luke 22:10? Keep reading the rest of Luke 22 -- He's not referring to a far-future passover at the end of the age of Pisces and the beginning of the age of Aquarius (2150 AD); He's referring to a passover that evening, the famous \"last supper\". As Luke 22:13 says, \"they went and found things just as he had told them, and they prepared the passover.\" The movie explicitly lied here by saying the passover was \"after he is gone\".

The Bible is about 2,000 pages long, and out of the whole thing, the \"astrological age\" theory manages to pull only a few stories for support: Moses' anger at the bull, modern Jews using a ram's horn, Jesus' miracles involving fish, the church's use of Ichthys, and a man carrying water. None of these references hold up under scrutiny, and the rest of the Bible doesn't fit into the hypothesis. (My wife refers to this as the \"dredge fallacy\" -- they've dredged up a few points from a huge data set to support their claim, when the data taken as a whole does not.) Overall, this suggests to us that the theory espoused by the movie is wrong, and not even remotely credible. It's sad what's happened here -- some very smart people got suckered into believing astrology, because they wanted it to be true. Grendel, Blue, Bettina, Testicules, and others, I don't mean to insult you, but I do mean to shame and embarrass you -- you all got fooled by astrology, because you wanted to believe it and you didn't do the research that was necessary. (Props to Genghis for recognizing he got fooled.)

I should note at this point, this argument doesn't fit very well with the first two arguments anyway. If Moses and Jesus signified changing astrological ages, why would they be copied from other figures like Sargon, Minos, or Horus, who didn't signify changing astrological ages?

Argument 1: On the History of Moses

The movie gives a series of claims regarding Moses: that the story of his birth is copied directly from the story of Sargon of Akkad, that his being a lawgiver is similar to Manou of India, Minos of Crete, and Mises of Egypt, and that the Ten Commandments are derived directly from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Regarding his birth, there is a story about Sargon of Akkad that sounds somewhat similar to the story of Moses from Exodus 1 and 2: hidden in a basket, carried down a river, raised by someone powerful, became a ruler. The movie is right on this point. What they don't tell you is, the text that describes Sargon's birth is a neo-Assyrian scroll from 700 BC -- eight centuries after the time of Moses, at a time when the story of Moses was fairly well known in that part of the world. They also don't mention the legend of Sargon is significantly less detailed than the story of Moses -- it doesn't explain why he was in a basket in the river, it says he didn't know his father (though other stories do name his father)... it's a stripped down version of Moses' story. The scroll, by the way, happens to be from about the time of Sargon II, who was at war with the northern kingdom of Israel. As snoopy asked, who copied who here? Which way does the river flow? We can't really prove it either way, since both Sargon and Moses lived hundreds of years before the oldest manuscripts we have describing either. One legend they don't bring up is of Horus, the Egyptian god who was hidden by his mother in the Nile Delta. But, since Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt, it should come as no surprise that Egypt should have a myth about a Moses-like figure.

The movie makes a big deal out of Moses' name (which, in the above story, is derived from \"drawn out of water\") being similar to other names like Manou of India (which is really a title), Minos of Crete, and Mises of Egypt (who does not appear on wikipedia; this poem seems to associate the name with Bacchus, aka Dionysus. They may also be referring to Menes of Egypt.) At this point, I was surprised they didn't repeat the statement about the glyph \"M\" and Virgo ;) The movie spoke of these figures all as lawgivers, but that's not how the entries read to me. If anything, Manu is a Noah-esque figure. Minos created a constitution, but he's also a Greek mythological figure, and Greek mythology was mostly developed several hundred years after Moses. Menes could be an alternate name for Horus, or possibly just an allusion; in either case, the Pharaoh named Menes does not appear to be any sort of law-giver. And Dionysus doesn't fit at all. Overall, this is a really weak argument -- Moses' name sounds kinda like some other mythological names, one of which he predates, and the other two of which don't really match up with the story the movie tells about \"lawgivers\". (It's kinda like saying, my mom is named Zora, and there was this swordsman named Zorro and this Greek god named Zeus and this Japanese fighter airplane named Zero. Uh, OK, sure.)

The movie goes on to argue that the Ten Commandments \"are taken outright from Spell 125 in the Egyptian book of the dead\". (As the movie does several times, they scroll a page by so fast that you can't read what it says without pausing.) Essentially, their observation is thus: the Ten Commandments say such things as \"do not steal\", \"do not give false testimony\", \"do not murder\", and \"do not commit adultery\". The Egyptian Book of the Dead, among its many confessions, says things like \"I have not stolen\", \"I have not cheated\", \"I have not fornicated\", etc. We are, of course, supposed to take this as solid evidence that the Ten Commandments are a copy of the book of the dead. The Book of the Dead expresses similar concepts to some of the Ten Commandments, but it misses the first commandment (monotheism), the second (no idols -- the one the \"astrological age\" argument forgot about when it was talking about the golden calf), the fifth (honor your parents), and the tenth (do not covet). It has comments about holy feasts that could be taken to parallel the fourth commandment (the Sabbath), and comments about scorning gods that could be taken to parallel the third commandment (don't blaspheme). So it definitely covers 4 commandments, partly parallels 2, and misses 4. And the four it matches are often considered to be \"obvious\". (The same people who argue \"I don't need the Bible to tell me not to steal or kill\" seem to think Moses needed to copy from Egyptian sources because \"don't steal\" and \"don't kill\" are such revolutionary concepts.) And then we have 3 and a half more books covering the Law of Moses (it doesn't end until the end of Deuteronomy), which cover a lot more ground. Maybe Spell 126 covers those :P

Overall, Moses is significantly different from all of the historical figures he supposedly mirrors, and the Law is significantly different from the historical documents it's supposedly copied from. The story of Sargon was likely copied from Moses; other law-givers with M-names aren't really law-givers at all; the Ten Commandments and the other 3 and a half books of Moses are mirrored by other ancient codes precisely in those areas where it's most commonly stated \"I don't need a religious book to tell me that.\" Again, some very smart people got fooled by the movie's propaganda, because they wanted it to be true.

The movie's comments about Noah and the flood don't really fit anywhere in my post, so I'll make a brief statement here: if there really was a massive, world- or area- wide flood, we'd expect it to be reported in a lot of mythology. It is. I don't see why I'm supposed to be impressed by this.

[Lothar]

Argument 2: On the History of Jesus

On Christmas, Easter, Light, Darkness, and the Cross

The movie makes a big deal out of Christmas and Easter -- the winter solstice, when the sun \"dies\", and the equinox, when the light \"rules\" for longer than the darkness. It repeats several times that various sun-gods were \"born on December 25\" and that their resurrection was \"celebrated in spring\". We already know the Christmas and Easter dates are ripped directly from pagan festivals some time after the formation of Christianity. They're not given anywhere in the Bible, and in fact, Jesus' death and resurrection are said to correspond with Passover, which is in the same season as Easter, but not generally at the same time. It really doesn't make sense to say, on the one hand, that Christians co-opted the pagan festivals, but on the other hand, they were actually celebrating the pagan festivals because Jesus is a sun-god. The movie also makes the claim that the symbol of the cross with the circle behind it is a pagan zodiac symbol, and it shows several crosses with circles behind them. It wouldn't surprise me if there was some stolen symbolism there, but I do have to laugh a bit, since I hardly ever see the circle behind the cross. They also speak about how, in \"early occult\" art, Jesus is \"always\" shown with his head in front of a cross. I seriously doubt they assembled a truly representative sample of early Jesus art; they carefully selected a set of pieces that showed Jesus' head in that position, but it's not the way Jesus is \"always\" portrayed.

The movie gives a list of statements about Jesus that it interprets as sun-related: light of the world, risen, will come again, glory of God, works of darkness, born again, coming in the clouds, son in heaven, and crown of thorns (as sunrays). I'm going to laugh at and discard the comment about the crown of thorns, because it's utterly silly (and doesn't explain the purple cloak, among other things.) Several of the other references specifically have a light/dark theme: light of the world (Jesus also calls His followers the same yet we don't assume they're glowing; I think the more traditional \"righteousness/sin\" dichotomy fits here), the Glory of God (only the second statement in Rev 21 actually holds the \"light\" connotation; elsewhere, man is called the glory of God, and in general, the phrase refers to praise, not some sort of glow), the works of darkness (see \"light of the world\"), and the son in/from heaven (which has obvious spiritual non-solar connotations). The movie is right to point out that there is light/dark imagery, but it's a real stretch to say it's meant to be solar. The rest of the imagery here, the movie is considering cyclical: risen (also applied to past prophets with the obvious connotation of \"resurrected\" but no solar connotations), come again (note the lack of \"cyclical\" imagery; Jesus' coming again is a one-time thing), coming on the clouds (see Daniel 7:13 -- why would this be a solar reference rather than a reference to past prophecy?), and being born again (note that \"again\" and \"from above\" are the same word; Jesus says that others must be born \"of Spirit\" or \"from above\". Note that He doesn't say He Himself is \"born again\"). Overall, this list is unimpressive. There is some light-and-darkness based imagery in the gospels, but it doesn't particularly read as \"solar\". The imagery of rebirth and return doesn't have any cyclical connotations whatsoever, but it does have strong resurrection connotations. The idea of a solstice-based solar death and rebirth just doesn't fit the text.

On the Three Kings, Sirius, the Southern Cross, Virgo, and the Number 12

The movie claims the story of Jesus' birth, with the \"bright star in the east\" and the \"three kings\", is astrological in nature. Specifically, Jesus is the literal sun (I'll say more on this later), and they claim that the bright star in the east is Sirius (the brightest star in the night sky) and the three kings/magi are Orion's belt, which point to the place where the sun will rise. The movie also claims the cross on which Jesus is crucified is actually the \"southern Cross\". The claim is that during Dec 22, 23, and 24 the sun \"resides in the vicinity of the southern cross\", and they show an image in which the southern cross is directly above the position of the rising sun. The movie further claims Jesus' twelve disciples, as well as several other mentions of the number 12 in the Bible, are zodiac-inspired, and that the \"Virgin Mary\" and the city of Bethlehem (which means \"place of bread\", or, they don't tell you, \"house of food\") are represented by the constellation Virgo, the harvest, with the glyph \"M\" who carries bread.

Now, you can use the Skyview Cafe's Java applet to view the night sky in Jerusalem (35 degrees N, 31 degrees E, GMT +2) in the year 1 AD around the winter solstice. You can also show the sun's path across the sky. You'll find that, yes, Sirius and the \"three kings\" do in fact point to the place of the sunrise... at some point during the night. Starting at around 1800, Sirius rises to the north of where the sun will rise, and then the line made by the four stars sweeps south across where the sun will rise. By morning, Orion is setting in the west, and the line of stars is pointing sort of southward along the horizon. The four stars sweep out at least a 120-degree arc which contains the point at which the sun will rise. And the southern cross is \"in the vicinity\" of the sun, only in the sense that it's in the far south, and the sun is sort of kind of south-ish. The sun being \"on the cross\" for three days is really more like, the sun rising 30 degrees to the east of the easternmost position the Southern Cross takes, and setting 30 degrees to the west of the westernmost position the Southern Cross takes. There's nothing even remotely like the movie's image of the southern cross over where the sun rises. This \"carefully researched\" movie got this one wrong.

Virgo does in fact begin to appear just before sunrise in September. She becomes visible earlier in the night all the way until June, when she's visible in the west just after sunset. The movie doesn't really explain the point of this -- Jesus' birth now has something to do with the harvest? Weren't we just talking about the solstice? How'd we end up jumping to Jesus being born \"in\" Virgo-the-harvest, and how does that explain anything? This strikes me as just an attempt to introduce another astrological sign without particularly explaining it. They argue that Virgo is obviously Mary because of the modified glyph M, noting other virgin mothers whose names start with M, but conveniently leave out Osiris, mother of Horus. (Also, I'm having a hard time confirming the association of Virgo with bread -- I can't find any reference to Virgo being known as \"house of bread\" in either of the wikipedia articles, and the majority of references I find with google are making the same argument about Bethlehem.) The movie asserts that Bethlehem doesn't refer to a place on the map, but to the constellation -- so why does the Bible refer to it as Bethlehem in Judea, the city of David, where David lived? Again, the astrology here is so bad that it will only fool those who want to be fooled.

The movie gives nine Biblical references to the number 12 that it claims are zodiac-inspired: the number of Jesus' disciples, the tribes of Israel, the brothers of Joseph, the judges of Israel, the patriarchs, the OT prophets, the kings of Israel, the princes of Israel, and Jesus' age when He taught at the temple. Four of these are essentially identical and one more is derived from it: Jacob/Israel had 12 sons (Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Asher, Gad, Issachar, Zebulun, Naphtali, Joseph, and Benjamin), who are called the patriarchs, the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel (though in certain tribal dealings Levi is left out and Joseph is split via his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh), with each tribal leader being referred to as a \"prince\" in certain translations. Jesus' twelve apostles (plus two \"replacements\") is symbolic of this (it even has the twelve-and-two-halves aspect.) The movie is explicitly wrong on two other \"twelves\": Israel had three kings (plus one pretender, Ish-Bosheth) before it split in half, and then the part that kept the name \"Israel\" had 19 more kings while the part that took the name \"Judah\" had 19 kings and one queen. There are twelve books of the Bible written by twelve minor prophets, but there are also five+ books from four+ major prophets, and several other prophets who did not write books, like Elijah and Elisha. The movie is right that there were twelve judges, but fails to mention that six of them are hardly named while six others have extensive stories told about them -- hardly the level of equality you'd expect for 12 zodiac signs. It's also right that Jesus was twelve years old when He was at the temple; this happens to be the age at which a Hebrew boy is considered responsible for his own religious rites. So the entries on the list of nine \"twelves\" turns out to be five of the same thing, two fakes, one misleading, and one relating to age of responsibility. There's no connection back to the zodiac that I can see.

[Lothar]

On gods who are \"just like Jesus\"

The movie asserts that Jesus is \"just another sun god\", that others such as Horus, Attis, Krishna, Dionysus, and Mithra held similar attributes, such as being creator-gods who were born of a virgin, on December 25, with a star in the east, adorned by three kings, becoming a teacher at age 12, baptized at age 30, having 12 disciples, performing miracles, healing the sick, walking on water, having names like \"the truth\", \"the light\", and the \"lamb of God\", being betrayed, crucified, buried for three days, and resurrected. That sounds very impressive, but I can't find any actual sources for the claims.

Horus, for example, was originally a sky-god and sort of morphed into Ra the sun-god. Many pages on the internet list that long list of similarities with Jesus, but I can't find the list of characteristics listed outside of a \"comparison with Jesus\" context, and religious tolerance notes that a group of Egyptologists agreed \"there is no evidence that Horus was born of a virgin, that he had twelve disciples, or that he was considered incarnation of God.\" The rest of my searching leads to the same thing -- as this guy says, they're all saying these various ancient gods are similar to Jesus in these particular ways, but they all seem to be copying the idea from each other. I can't find any connection to actual ancient writings, actual Egyptologists or other historians, actual museums, actual artifacts, actual archeology, or anything of the sort.

Look at the wikipedia entries for Attis, Krishna, Dionysus, and Mithra. There are occasional parallels, but nothing on the order of what's being asserted in the movie. We do see a couple of virgin births, including Ra-Amun / Horus and Mithra. Where are the \"star in the east / 3 kings\" statements? Where are the baptisms at age 30, or 12 disciples? Some versions of Horus see him as a reincarnation of Osiris, Attis was said to be resurrected, and certain variations of Krishna have him called Vasudeva and have him killing his brother, dying as punishment, and being reborn as enlightened. There's a little bit of similarity between the stories -- but there's also similarity to ancient Bible figures who were resurrected, so it's not like the only precedents are sun-gods. At best, we have a few previous religious figures that have a few similarities with Jesus, not the huge list of exactly identical figures the movie proposes. (And I'm sure, given a few hours and nothing better to do, I could present an equally compelling case for George Washington as a copy of some ancient god. Just because someone else is described with similar attributes doesn't mean there's any copying going on either way. Concepts like \"resurrection\" and \"healing\" are reasonably common; as the Justin Martyr quote says, the ideas were common enough.)

We're walking on historically shaky ground -- where are these texts that talk about Krishna, Horus, or Dionysus with their 12 disciples, born on december 25, performing miracles, walking on water, being crucified, buried for 3 days, and resurrected? When were they written, if they even exist? If you want to know about Biblical manuscripts, I can tell you all about those. There are lists of papyri, unicals, miniscules, foreign-language translations, and extra-biblical quotes of Bible manuscripts. So when I say the story of Jesus talks about Him performing miracles, teaching at age 12, and so on and so forth... those manuscripts exist; I can point to actual ancient documents that talk about Jesus. When the movie says Horus, Attis, Krishna, Dionysus, Mithra, and others have this long list of attributes that Jesus also had... where are the documents? There's one carving in Luxor. Where's the rest? There's a lot of sound and fury here, but, to quote a favorite old commercial, \"where's the beef?\"

Conclusion to response to argument #2

It's asserted that Jesus can be explained as a sun god. The timing of Christmas and Easter are given as evidence, but we all know those holidays were stolen long after Christianity began. Biblical images of light and darkness are given, but we see them applied to Jesus' followers, and they simply don't read like \"sun\" references if you make a practice of reading whole stories instead of just parts of sentences. Biblical descriptions of Jesus being raised and returning are cited, but again, these descriptions don't sound \"cyclic\" or solar, they sound like actual resurrection and a single future return. The alignment of Orion's belt and Sirius, and the position of the Southern Cross, are cited, but simple astronomy shows these examples to be bogus -- the aligned stars sweep out a huge arc, rather than \"pointing\" anywhere, and the Southern Cross isn't \"near\" the sun by any realistic measure. The constellation Virgo is cited as the \"real\" Bethlehem, despite references to Bethlehem as a real city. The number 12 is said to be a zodiac reference, but the majority of Biblical references to it are related (Jacob's sons = patriarchs -> tribes = princes -> disciples) and have a \"twelve and two halves\" form to them that's not present in the zodiac; the remaining references are either trivial or bogus. And a list of sun-gods who are \"similar\" to Jesus are presented, with no actual historical backing for the claims made. I spent a fair bit of time in research; I suspect my inability to find it means the documents aren't really there.

Taken all together, the list of theories proves only that whoever made the movie is clueless and gullible. The theories range from \"interesting but historically unsupported\" to \"total garbage\", and mostly reside on the \"total garbage\" end of the spectrum. And the theories only touch a small fraction of the Biblical material. They pick and choose certain parts of the story -- important parts, but only parts -- and completely ignore such things as Jesus' teaching about the nature of heaven, Jesus' teaching about sin and death and repentance, Jesus' references to the Old Testament scriptures, and so on. The one thing the movie gets right is the idea of Joseph as a \"type\" for Jesus, as this concept is entirely in line with the Biblical text. Similarly, Elijah is a \"type\" for John the Baptist and Melchizedek is a \"type\" for Jesus (or, possibly, a prior incarnation of Jesus.) As a whole, they don't provide a sufficient explanation for all of Jesus or the rest of the Bible, and the explanations they do provide are not credible.

Argument 4: On Authorship and Control

Some comments were raised about historical references to Jesus. As others have stated, all secular historical references to Jesus are disputed. Well duh! We're talking about a non-royal, non-noble commoner who traveled around with other commoners stirring up trouble. How many guys like that *do* secular historians of the day talk about? And this mere carpenter is said to have performed great miracles in which some people believed and others did not. So of course any real historical reference to Jesus is going to be disputed by those who did not believe. There's nothing really enlightening here. But there's one thing we can say: this movement known as \"Christianity\" spread far and wide despite substantial persecution, including the killing of most of its early leaders, and those leaders insisted Jesus was a real person who performed a long list of miracles that they witnessed. If there wasn't an actual historical Jesus, we're going to need a much better explanation of why so many people were willing to be tortured and killed for their beliefs, especially given the early church teaching on living at peace with everyone and obeying the government.

The video provides an alternate theory: that the story of Jesus is a Roman story developed politically, by gnostics, for social control. The movie goes on to point out the control exercised by Constantine and the Vatican a couple hundred years afterwards. It's interesting to note, the gnostics never did gain any significant amount of control; the gnostic writings about Jesus were rejected (and it's easy to see why if you actually read them -- they're pretty weak.) So the gnostics invented this story for political control, only they were never able to control anyone with it? And why is it that the Vatican maintained control only by *hiding* the story that was originally designed for control purposes? Why is it that, when Martin Luther started reading the Bible and encouraging others to do the same, the Vatican lost control? If the story was designed to control people, what went wrong? Even if you only have a naive sunday-school understanding of the actual Bible story, this theory falls on its face for historical reasons. The Bible utterly *sucks* as a means of control.

It's difficult for me to even take the theory seriously -- Jesus was hijacked from other religious figures, very carefully written into a Jewish narrative at a time that corresponded to the Age of Pisces, and then a number of extremely impressive treatises on morality were written all as a failed power-grab by the gnostics? Some of the greatest treatises on love the world has ever known were a part of a power-ploy? The incredibly deep passages about moral excellence and compassion and love and faith that Drakona and I base our lives upon, resulting in the general sentiment that \"Lothar and Drakona is a good person\", are just the by-products of a Pinky-and-the-Brain type plot to take over the world? That's just plain goofy.

We know the Christian message was abused for many years by the Catholic church, and is still somewhat abused by the modern church today. We know the banner of Christianity has been used to unite people for causes that Jesus wouldn't endorse. We know the Bible has been misused to tell people to blindly follow authority, to not take responsibility for their actions, to do what the church/national leader says (and we know this is a profound misuse of the Bible, because we can read it for ourselves and see that it teaches differently.) I'd imagine the other two parts of the video would be just as good or just as lame if they'd just said that instead of wasting 37 minutes of everybody's time with bogus claims about Christianity. But instead they got all silly and lost their credibility with their poorly researched claims about astrological ages, stars that aren't where they say they are, the number 12, mythological gods who aren't historically as claimed, and a conspiracy theory involving a Roman sect that never made it into power. And some of you got fooled by that crap, because you wanted to believe it was a \"carefully researched\" rebuttal to Christianity. That's what happens when you're careless, when you don't think critically about the things you're told, and when you believe things for emotional reasons -- you end up letting your guard down and getting fooled by lies, propaganda, and astrological nonsense.

[WillyP]

Nice... mind if I copy this to Here?

[Lothar]

This is a reasonably public board. Link to whatever you like, so long as you don't end up sending too much traffic our way and taking down the server.

[WillyP]

I doubt the bandwidth from DescentiaPedia would make a drop in a buckets worth of difference here but I am working on a website to present the many sides of these issues... (I should have stated that.) Your excellent rebuttal deserves a page of its own, actually. I have not yet found any site that presents this kind of material fairly. (I am just using DescentiaPedia temporarily, it's easier to post links there.)

[dissent]

Simple, watch the movie then read the story and you have to wonder who really was behind it. The bomb on wall street caused much the same reaction from the public as 9/11. As Mobius put it, a 'false flag operation'. And I have to wonder how many other incidents there are in our history that could possibly be other false flag incidents.

Have to wonder?? Hardly. The article you linked makes NO assertions about ANY government conspiracy to perpetrate that bombing, not even a suggestion of one. Where is the "false flag" that links these two situations?
In case you missed it -

… Investigators immediately suspected that the bombing was the work of Galleanist anarchists, a group of mostly Italian-born anti-government radicals who had previously used smaller explosives to draw attention to their cause. …

… The New York Police vowed to apprehend the perpetrators of the terrible crime, yet no arrests were ever made in the case. The NYPD and FBI officially gave up on the case in 1940, having never identified any strong suspects. No group or individual ever made a credible claim of responsibility. Some historians have suggested that the incident may have actually been a botched attempt to rob the gold-filled Assay Office nearby, yet no compelling evidence has been found which supports this notion. …

btw - nice post, Lothar. ...
well, except for this part -

We know the Christian message was abused for many years by the Catholic church ...

I'll agree that there were instances of abuse in worldly power (political and economic), but disagree with the characterization that the "Christian message" was "abused", unless you can be more specific as to what message was abused.

[Grendel]

The Bible utterly *sucks* as a means of control.

Maybe. Religion in general works very well tho.

It's difficult for me to even take the theory seriously

Why is that ? Your sources are as weak as the movies in terms of facts about the whole thing. Also I wouldn't dismiss the observation capabillities of people that lived 5000 or more years ago just because the first written record of something is merly 2000 years old. See Stonehenge, Arkaim or the Nebra sky disk eg.

As for your inability to find any connection of the Egyptian writings, a lot of that seems to be available only in paper (eg. Ancient Egypt The Light of the World).

Very nice try tho. Would be better tho if you hadn't written it as if bible cast really had lived

Too bad you refuse to watch the rest of the movie, I thought that was the interesting part (esp. part 3).

[Lothar]

The Bible utterly *sucks* as a means of control.

Maybe. Religion in general works very well tho.

True of pretty much any unifying idea, whether or not it has anything to do with gods or the supernatural. Listen to the almost religious tone people sometimes take when talking about Global Warming. Anything a leader can use to unify people behind them can be dangerous. It's easy to unify people who only have a Sunday-school understanding of the Bible -- just quote obscure parts of the minor prophets they've never studied before; they won't know how badly you're twisting them. But it's hard to unify people who really study the whole Bible to act outside the scope of "care for the poor" or "love your enemies". That's a big reason I don't buy the theory the Bible was written to control people: the main lessons it teaches are very, very difficult to twist into "let's go kill the infidels."

It's difficult for me to even take the theory seriously

Why is that ?

Read the rest of the sentence, and the sentence after it as well.

The specific theory that gnostics wrote the gospels as a power ploy is very difficult to take seriously, because we end up with some of the most incredible moral writings in all of history, especially on topics like love, forgiveness, and righteousness (writings that make me and Drakona the sort of people who many of you respect despite our differences) as the by-products of a scheme hatched by power-hungry people who obviously weren't thinking about love, forgiveness or righteousness. People who don't understand sacrificial love or who don't pursue righteousness just can't write about those topics with the power and clarity those writings have.

Your sources are as weak as the movies in terms of facts about the whole thing.

Specifics? I know wikipedia is a fairly weak source, but it's not so weak as to be useless. Still, if you have better sources, I'd love to have them. And I'm pretty sure the skyview site I linked to was a strong source

I wouldn't dismiss the observation capabillities of people that lived 5000 or more years ago just because the first written record of something is merly 2000 years old. See Stonehenge, Arkaim or the Nebra sky disk eg.

I taught astronomy as part of the stuff I did at the Museum of Flight. The ancients had some pretty impressive stuff when it came to astronomy. I don't think they'd developed the idea of the precession of the equinoxes, but I suppose it's possible they did. But, even if they had, the discovery date was a VERY minor point in an argument that remains strong without it. The entire narrative of Moses in the age of Ares, Jesus in the age of Pisces, and the water carrier signaling the Age of Aquarius is nonsense, even if people in Moses' day did know about the changing ages. It doesn't fit the text; the cherry-picked symbolism of what I called argument #3 simply falls apart under even minor scrutiny.

As for your inability to find any connection of the Egyptian writings, a lot of that seems to be available only in paper (eg. Ancient Egypt The Light of the World)

Thanks. I was hoping to look into more of Massey's stuff; he seems to be the key figure in what I called arguments #1 and #2, and the only actual Egyptologist I saw cited in any of the articles I read that were friendly to the movie's position. What I'd really like is to be able to read a complete translation of the material he's referring to (preferably with at least approximate dates), rather than reading pages and pages of his commentary. Do you know where I can get my hands on it, or do I have to keep digging?

Very nice try tho. Would be better tho if you hadn't written it as if bible cast really had lived

Do you need mommy to hold your hand and protect you from the big scary Christian who acts like Jesus was real

Too bad you refuse to watch the rest of the movie, I thought that was the interesting part (esp. part 3).

Eh... I just spent 2 days, including half of my birthday, researching the first third of the movie and writing about the many errors and misleading statements therein. At this point, any credibility the movie would've otherwise had with me is gone. The rest of the movie is over topics I care less about. I'm certain each of the remaining 2 sections will require just as much research and will likely contain a similar number of errors, and I'm not presently willing to commit several more days to researching them. Sorry. Maybe some other time.

[Grendel]

Happy Birthday !

Samuel Birch is another reference. Again, a quick check seems to suggest paper only :/

Edit: Some background -- The Mythology of Egyptians from \"Egypt's Place in Universal History: An Historical Investigation in Five Books\".

[Testiculese]

I wasn't fooled, Lothar. My comment on the other board is from years of reading hundreds of sources, and it's fairly common knowledge. I didn't watch this video. Blue's mini-rundown was enough for me to know that part 1 is incredibly uninteresting, and I already know about parts 2 and 3. I don't trust video documentaries on these subjects. Video is for people who can't or won't read. Doctors and scientists don't make videos (unless they are commercials)

[Duper]

The specific theory that gnostics wrote the gospels as a power ploy is very difficult to take seriously, because we end up with some of the most incredible moral writings in all of history, especially on topics like love, forgiveness, and righteousness (writings that make me and Drakona the sort of people who many of you respect despite our differences) as the by-products of a scheme hatched by power-hungry people who obviously weren't thinking about love, forgiveness or righteousness. People who don't understand sacrificial love or who don't pursue righteousness just can't write about those topics with the power and clarity those writings have.

bingo.

well done Lothar. Dang that's a lot of writing. I'm going to have to read it again.

[Bet51987]

There are many levels of "belief" based on the degree of certainty. I used the word "knew" (know) because of my high degree of confidence that God does not exist, and I get that confidence by what I see in the world every single day.

Assignment for you Bee: Look up the word "epistemology". 500 Words on my desk by tomorrow morning please.

My personal view of Zeitgeist is that it loses credibility by mashing all three topics into a single "film". This should be three different films in my view. The disjointed nature of the parts does not fit with all three of them being connected.

The screaming atheistic stance taken by the producers in the first part does nothing to legitimize the second or third parts. In particular, strongly religious people are highly unlikely to watch through the end of Part 1, which is a real shame, because parts 2 and 3 are more important in my view.

Bashing people over the head for their silly beliefs about gods and religions doesn't do anything to help their proposition in parts 2 and 3.

All told, a rather lacklustre effort in my view. What could have been three films at 4 stars each, instead earns 2 stars as a whole.

For my own beliefs, I am now beginning to question my initial belief that 9/11 was not an inside job. I now think it is distinctly possible it was a false flag operation. If it's true, it's possibly the largest murder conspiracy ever in the USA, and the tragedy would be the perpetrators escaping scott free.

I agree with you and although I only watched the first part, I still find it the most awesome video I have ever watched. Yes, it has flaws, and yes, some can "correct" the religious text to fit what is presently believed today, but in the end, religion is built around one character that is backed by proof zero. How can one have credibility because they "proved" their story is the "accepted" one.

The opening few minutes of the video reflects how dangerous religion truly is and how our Pope can add to that danger by making a stupid statement that Christianity is the true religion.

Every major event brings out conspiracy theorists and I hope you haven't fallen into that trap. I find it impossible to believe that 911 was a conspiracy in the sense of the word. Those buildings fell because of the religious mindset of those who think their religion is the only true one.

Bee

[WillyP]

Simple, watch the movie then read the story and you have to wonder who really was behind it. The bomb on wall street caused much the same reaction from the public as 9/11. As Mobius put it, a 'false flag operation'. And I have to wonder how many other incidents there are in our history that could possibly be other false flag incidents.

Have to wonder?? Hardly. The article you linked makes NO assertions about ANY government conspiracy to perpetrate that bombing, not even a suggestion of one. Where is the "false flag" that links these two situations?
In case you missed it -

… Investigators immediately suspected that the bombing was the work of Galleanist anarchists, a group of mostly Italian-born anti-government radicals who had previously used smaller explosives to draw attention to their cause. …

… The New York Police vowed to apprehend the perpetrators of the terrible crime, yet no arrests were ever made in the case. The NYPD and FBI officially gave up on the case in 1940, having never identified any strong suspects. No group or individual ever made a credible claim of responsibility. Some historians have suggested that the incident may have actually been a botched attempt to rob the gold-filled Assay Office nearby, yet no compelling evidence has been found which supports this notion. …

No, you are missing the entire point I was trying to make. I never said that Alan Bellows or the New York Police considered this as a false flag attempt. Only the results were simular. And since the perputraters were never caught, or even identified, who knows who or for what motive it might have been done. So, having just watched Zeitgeist it occurred to me that if 9/11 could be not what it seems, why not this incident also... Oh, well, if you don't believe it's possible for people with great power to be greatly corrupted...


"Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
Hermann Goering, Nazi officer, Germany.

[Duper]

The opening few minutes of the video reflects how dangerous religion truly is and how our Pope can add to that danger by making a stupid statement that Christianity is the true religion.

Well, you can't really expect him to say anything else, can you. He believes in Christ. God said that there are no other gods. There is only one God and that's Him. so thus, Christianity (being a disciple of Christ, not a generic church goer or Catholic) is the one true religion. Anyone calling themselves "Christian" can have no other response.

[WillyP]

\"[In the West] unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban.\"
George Orwell, UK writer.