A friend recently suggested i watch yet another conspiracy theory movie, Zeitgeist.
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5547481422995115331
In the first quarter of the movie tries to point parallels between the Egyptian god Horus (and other ancient deitys) and Jesus; at best it stinks of over simplification and at worst bullshit. It would be very exciting if it were true. Find me one peer reviewed academic paper about this, the fact that the movie does not site one speaks volumes to me.
It then goes on the rehash all the same old stuff about how the official explanation of 9/11 just does not entirely make a lot of sense and, like every other conspiracy movie on the subject, proceeds to jump to some very wild conclusions…….. yawn!!
I agree that one hell of a lot of the official report does not add up but I am not very interested in wild theories, guesses and assumptions, I am interested in evidence and what is true.
You don’t need to invent implausible theories to show that 9/11 gave the green light to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the official explanation is plenty. Here is a PBS Special on it.
This is all a pity because Zeitgeist has some useful and interesting things to say, it just muddles them with a load of bullshit and references and sites none of it.
I recently go into an on line discussion about Zeitgeist, I was asked to show what in the movie was untrue, I responded:
“The point is that it is not up to me to prove the “facts” it the movie are wrong, this is not critical thinking, it is the job of the movie maker to prove what he is saying is true.
Is what you are saying is that you will blindly believe any old nonsense you are told? I doubt it. This is what religious people do, they believe with no proof and pretend it is a virtue, they call it faith.
Lets take Part 1 of the movie; Jesus = The Sun God. I too was very intrigued by this idea so I spent a bit of time Googling it and found that it is not a new idea and that there are a lot of “experts” arguing about it, have been for decades. Everything in the movie on the subject is presented as fact when, as far as i could see, all of it was a matter of opinion, still being argued about.
As for Part 2, I actually find a lot of a lot easer to swallow! However it pushes interesting theories way too far into the land of ludicrous for any of it to be taken seriously and this makes a mockery of all of the entire thing.
I am surprised that, in Part 2, they did not go on to talk about David Icke’s lizards. If they had, would have still believed it? And if not, at what point would you have said they went too far?
As for the book you site as proof, I have not seen it but a self published, self promoted book by the film maker (?) is not going to prove anything to me, any old idiot can publish a book with any old shit in it, I need peer reviewed evidence which has been verified by experts on the subject.
Science is about having ideas and setting out to prove them, it is about weighing up the evidence and coming to a conclusion based on it; this movie presents me with only theory, no evidence, so on balance i dismiss it.”
