Continuing on past the intro...
The major theme of the 1st part of the movie is that, since there exist all these similarities between Christianity and these other pagan religions, obviously Christianity is wrong.
-I would expect to see similarities exist in other religions, actually, b/c God is the true God and people are corrupt and want to twist the truth. God has put this info into history and people's hearts. God has put His existence and some of His characteristics, as well as a longing for the spiritual and eternal in people's hearts. That other religions stick close to the truth though add their own ingredients into the mix is a staple of demonic religion throughout time, all the way down to its modern counterparts in the LDS church and Jehovah's Witnesses, to name only 2.
Minute 17:35 Horus was crucified. Horus was executed in a way that the Roman Empire (which wouldn't come into existence for hundreds of years) would invent? Wow! Whoda thunk it?
Minute 18-19 all of these 'near-misses' - in my experience these similarities are very overstated.
Plus, these claims of "resurrections" are really far off the truth.
Here's just one example.
19:00 - "why these attributes" of these Saviors? Again, maybe b/c they were spinoffs of the truth? What is the argument for taking one view over the other? We are not given one.
19:15 - they call Jesus another one of these "sun" gods. Evidence? All we get are a few references to Jesus as the light of the world, etc. That's supposed to be impressive? Why not call Jesus one of the "food gods"? He talked about being bread, the Eucharist, all that stuff.
In between somewhere, the Magi go west to find the birthplace of 'the Sun'. Um, OK. Evidence? There isn't any in the biblical text. Maybe the Zeitguys found the until-now lost writings of the Magi who visited Jesus. But they didn't publish them. Or maybe they're just making stuff up.
21:10 - Wow - Virgo and Bethlehem are coincidental. THEREFORE, Bethlehem is Virgo. Please.
22:00 - These guys really believe that Christ was actually born on Dec 25? The best hypothesis I've heard is in the middle of September.
22:25 - At most this would mean early coincidences or even collusion with pagan symbolism by 4th century Christians when they set the Xmas date to 25 Dec, but Jesus probably wasn't born then. Besides, why should I assume that God wouldn't put out clues in the natural world that show forth His glory and coolness?
Like Louie Giglio's Laminin. This makes no case for either position, but it's a cool thing if you're a Christian. We give glory to God b/c it shows His creativity and reminds us of the Savior's grand sacrifice.
22:50 - Spring equinox, easter. The actual Resurrection, however, is not according to equinox. Christ's Passion and Death were according to OT Passover, and His resurrection according to the Feast of the Firstfruits. The Zeitguys are guilty of imposing their thesis upon the existing historical record and statements of Jesus and the NT.
23:10 - Naked assertion that the apostles are the 12 signs of the zodiac. This is one of the things that made me laugh out loud.
Then he goes on to score points against his own position - "the number 12 is found throughout the Bible". Exactly - God digs the #12. Why should I grant that it's the zodiac rather than the longstanding OT tradition that these 12 are continually appearing?
23:50 - Pagan adaptation of the cross of the zodiac.
Might be, but so what? Does this guy think Jesus didn't exist and didn't actually die on a CROSS? Against all scholarship, even the freaky-liberal Jesus Seminar?
24 and throughout - He keeps punning "Son" and "Sun" of God. As if the same homophone exists in any other language.
24:40 - crown of thorns, or sun rays. He never argues for this, just throws it in there as if it should mean sthg to anyone. More disingenuousness. It's impossible to take this kind of garbage seriously.
26:55 - Moses is mad at the bull worship b/c it's the age of Taurus. OK, I'm with you so far, fine.
Moses represents the Age of the Ram. This is why Jews blow the ram's horn, the shofar. Um, riiiiiigggghhhhht. Note that there's JUST NO WAY this could be an actual historical narrative. It's clearly allegory, and the Zeitguys have the correct interpretation! Somehow...
27:20 - Age of Pisces. "Fish symbolism is important in the NT". I knew it was coming.
Geez.
27:57 - Start of the age of Pisces - 1 AD
Zeitgeist (correctly) places Jesus' birth at 4 BC.
Wouldn't it be a little more above-board to say, "Well, they actually are off by 5 years, but it's dang close, right people?" The disingenousness continues.
28:10 - Discourse on Lk 22:10
Note again the operating assumption that this is not a historical narrative. Where is the contextual evidence that this is allegorical? He never argues for this, just makes naked assertions.
29:05 - "the cartoonish depictions in Revelation aside..."
-Apparently he's unaware of and has no respect for the general genre of apocalyptic literature, and we should of course all share his lame, unnecessarily nasty and dismissive, willfully ignorant attitude about such things.
-It's as if he has no idea that metaphor and imagery are supposed in many cases to be hyperbolic and outlandish, in order to make points and speak in 'code' that is easily broken by insiders - the churches who would read the book
-And he never makes a case for WHY we should set aside Revelation.
29:06 - Says the main source of end times talk is Matt 28:20
Um no - Daniel, Ezekiel, Malachi, Matt 24-25 Olivet Discourse, 1 Thess, 2 Peter, all have more (sometimes much more) substantial end times talk than this.
And of course, why even bother exegeting Revelation? That's for loonies! Let's stick with an easy target, one sentence that we can more easily twist w/o any contextual clues to give away the fact that we're engaging in sophistry.
29:48 - "Tell that to the 100 million people in USA who believe the end of the world is coming."
Oh, that's unique to Christians? Nobody among Acharya S's friends thinks we're going to destroy the planet and thus end the "world"?
31:00 - "Story of the Great Flood is ubiquitous throughout the world"
-Yes, b/c it happened.
-And again, why wouldn't it bolster my position that it's being copied in other versions? My position is that my religion is based in real historical events.
Anyway, it should be clear that this movie is an empty shell. I have no specialised academic training, and the holes are already glaring.
Here are the other links I mentioned:
-Ben Witherington
-JP Holding
-JP Holding on the copycat theory
-JB_Fidei_Defensor
-Some guy with a great deal of relevant articles
Showing posts with label zeitgeist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zeitgeist. Show all posts
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The Su/on of God, part 1
A commenter mentioned a movie known as "Zeitgeist" to me, and says it is causing him some troubles.
First off, I commend J for exposing himself to challenges from alternative worldviews. Many is the time I've found myself facing off against a position that is different from my own and had to think deeply through it, to get to the other side. Sometimes it has taken months, and in a couple of cases almost a year. In one of those cases, the challenger won the battle for my heart and mind, and so I switched (and haven't regretted it). In the other, the challenger was shown to be an empty suit, so I didn't switch (and haven't regretted it). But this is the way to learn - expose yourself to hard stuff, occasionally or frequently the best the other side has to offer, and then figure out and/or find its worth by testing it.
On the other hand, "Zeitgeist" is hardly the best the other side has to offer, but it IS something alot of people don't have experience dealing with. Plus, it has the fact that it contains fairly well-produced visual and audio effects (with cool background music) going for it, and that can serve to cause an unconscious bolstering of the case in the mind of the viewer. Such is the power of media.
Anyway, I first watched 31 minutes of the film and noted some of my thoughts. I was going to do more, but I assembled so much material to comment on in the 1st 31, I figured watching the rest would be a total waste of my time. Later I did some selective websearching to find what others have said. Their links will follow my review, in part 2, due out Thursday.
I have to admit it - I found myself laughing out loud more than 5 times in the first 31 minutes, so poor were the arguments and so obvious the naked assertions. My favorite was their habit of drawing parallels between "the sun of God" and "the son of God" in an attempt to make their pitiful case that Jesus was a sun god. Are they aware that "sun" and "son" are homophones in English only? Are the words for "sun" and "son" in NT Greek, OT Hebrew, OT LXX Greek, New Testament-era Aramaic, or heck, even Latin and old French (since these guys are all about the Dan Brown-type stuff), homophones? This is either wholly disingenuous or pitifully underthought.
And of course, never stated but pervasive is the naturalistic worldview, which is grossly logically untenable and has undergone numerous merciless beatings on this blog alone. So that's a huge initial problem, and it leads to heavy bias against the supernatural. Of how much respect is such bias worthy?
In case J is unfamiliar with what I consider to be the most powerful argument in favor of the Christian worldview, I pause here to recommend these to J's reading.
Anyway, here goes:
-Minute 9-10:45 - interesting speech by an unidentified someone.
"We've been lied to by every institution" - presumably, I'm just sure he means every institution except the one he represents. Do such overgeneralisations help anyone?
"The same ones who gave you your government...your int'l banking cartels..." Please. The early believers in Jesus who died horrible deaths for their claim that their obscure Jewish rabbi teacher, who had died in disgrace in a remote part of the world had come back to life, thus proving His claim to be God in the flesh, gave us the government and banking cartels? This is the stuff of wild-eyed Dan Brown imaginations.
"All they care about is what they have always cared about...controlling the whole...world" I can't speak for everyone else, but I know *I'm* not under any group of people's control as far as my conscience and beliefs go. So the dumb overgeneralisations commence, and so early on!
Minute 12 - an excerpt from George Carlin(?), yet more thoughtless overgeneralisations. But that's Carlin's stock and trade, one of his main tools - irreverent hyperbole for comedic effect. That's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't do anything to boost my confidence that this is meant to be a serious movie.
"Religion" has convinced people there's an invisible man? Which religion? Does Carlin realise that Mormonism (polytheistic), Hinduism (polytheistic), paganism (polytheistic), and Buddhism (atheistic) are also "religions"? Which "invisible man"? Certainly not Christianity - we believe that God (specifically, Jesus Christ) has made Himself visible numerous times throughout human history - in the Garden, the numerous theophanies in the OT, the appearances of 'the angel of the Lord', etc.
"If you do any of these 10 things, you go to Hell." I don't know about anyone else (wait, yes I do), but I've broken all 10 Commandments. Hundreds, if not tens of thousands of times. Yet I'm not headed for Hell. Why is that? One wonders whether Carlin or the Zeitguys know.
"...but He loves you" - Carlin apparently feels the need to misrepresent the Christian faith in extreme ways. His description of Hell may or may not be accurate, but this kind of blurb/punchline assumes, among numerous other things, the innocence and blamelessness of human beings in the matter of divine justice. Of course God is to blame! How could it be that I'd be responsible for my own actions? It's just stock liberal junk.
"God needs money..." No doubt Carlin is playing on the numerous examples of pastors and religious leaders prying money out of their followers by making power plays from their pulpits and altars. True enough - that exists. But to give no credit to the many other examples of Christian pastors and missionaries, for example, who labor faithfully for little or no pay or even gratitude is just unbalanced and unfair. And no serious Christian (yes, we exclude the Word of Faith-ers like Benny Hinn) is claiming, nor does the Bible claim, that God "needs" money; far from it.
Neither is any mention made of these other pagan religions' and their clergies' thirst for money. Nor how the modern liberal establishment craves money and power as well. Money is a temptation for EVERYone. But it doesn't do Zeitgeist any good to recall those inconvenient facts.
It occurs to me, by the way, that much of this material is answered in the Paul Manata series of reviews of Hitchens' "god is not Great" book, found on the Narrow Mind radio show. I recommend it, if you're in the mood for a good butt-whipping.
More in part 2, coming Thursday.
First off, I commend J for exposing himself to challenges from alternative worldviews. Many is the time I've found myself facing off against a position that is different from my own and had to think deeply through it, to get to the other side. Sometimes it has taken months, and in a couple of cases almost a year. In one of those cases, the challenger won the battle for my heart and mind, and so I switched (and haven't regretted it). In the other, the challenger was shown to be an empty suit, so I didn't switch (and haven't regretted it). But this is the way to learn - expose yourself to hard stuff, occasionally or frequently the best the other side has to offer, and then figure out and/or find its worth by testing it.
On the other hand, "Zeitgeist" is hardly the best the other side has to offer, but it IS something alot of people don't have experience dealing with. Plus, it has the fact that it contains fairly well-produced visual and audio effects (with cool background music) going for it, and that can serve to cause an unconscious bolstering of the case in the mind of the viewer. Such is the power of media.
Anyway, I first watched 31 minutes of the film and noted some of my thoughts. I was going to do more, but I assembled so much material to comment on in the 1st 31, I figured watching the rest would be a total waste of my time. Later I did some selective websearching to find what others have said. Their links will follow my review, in part 2, due out Thursday.
I have to admit it - I found myself laughing out loud more than 5 times in the first 31 minutes, so poor were the arguments and so obvious the naked assertions. My favorite was their habit of drawing parallels between "the sun of God" and "the son of God" in an attempt to make their pitiful case that Jesus was a sun god. Are they aware that "sun" and "son" are homophones in English only? Are the words for "sun" and "son" in NT Greek, OT Hebrew, OT LXX Greek, New Testament-era Aramaic, or heck, even Latin and old French (since these guys are all about the Dan Brown-type stuff), homophones? This is either wholly disingenuous or pitifully underthought.
And of course, never stated but pervasive is the naturalistic worldview, which is grossly logically untenable and has undergone numerous merciless beatings on this blog alone. So that's a huge initial problem, and it leads to heavy bias against the supernatural. Of how much respect is such bias worthy?
In case J is unfamiliar with what I consider to be the most powerful argument in favor of the Christian worldview, I pause here to recommend these to J's reading.
Anyway, here goes:
-Minute 9-10:45 - interesting speech by an unidentified someone.
"We've been lied to by every institution" - presumably, I'm just sure he means every institution except the one he represents. Do such overgeneralisations help anyone?
"The same ones who gave you your government...your int'l banking cartels..." Please. The early believers in Jesus who died horrible deaths for their claim that their obscure Jewish rabbi teacher, who had died in disgrace in a remote part of the world had come back to life, thus proving His claim to be God in the flesh, gave us the government and banking cartels? This is the stuff of wild-eyed Dan Brown imaginations.
"All they care about is what they have always cared about...controlling the whole...world" I can't speak for everyone else, but I know *I'm* not under any group of people's control as far as my conscience and beliefs go. So the dumb overgeneralisations commence, and so early on!
Minute 12 - an excerpt from George Carlin(?), yet more thoughtless overgeneralisations. But that's Carlin's stock and trade, one of his main tools - irreverent hyperbole for comedic effect. That's fine as far as it goes, but it doesn't do anything to boost my confidence that this is meant to be a serious movie.
"Religion" has convinced people there's an invisible man? Which religion? Does Carlin realise that Mormonism (polytheistic), Hinduism (polytheistic), paganism (polytheistic), and Buddhism (atheistic) are also "religions"? Which "invisible man"? Certainly not Christianity - we believe that God (specifically, Jesus Christ) has made Himself visible numerous times throughout human history - in the Garden, the numerous theophanies in the OT, the appearances of 'the angel of the Lord', etc.
"If you do any of these 10 things, you go to Hell." I don't know about anyone else (wait, yes I do), but I've broken all 10 Commandments. Hundreds, if not tens of thousands of times. Yet I'm not headed for Hell. Why is that? One wonders whether Carlin or the Zeitguys know.
"...but He loves you" - Carlin apparently feels the need to misrepresent the Christian faith in extreme ways. His description of Hell may or may not be accurate, but this kind of blurb/punchline assumes, among numerous other things, the innocence and blamelessness of human beings in the matter of divine justice. Of course God is to blame! How could it be that I'd be responsible for my own actions? It's just stock liberal junk.
"God needs money..." No doubt Carlin is playing on the numerous examples of pastors and religious leaders prying money out of their followers by making power plays from their pulpits and altars. True enough - that exists. But to give no credit to the many other examples of Christian pastors and missionaries, for example, who labor faithfully for little or no pay or even gratitude is just unbalanced and unfair. And no serious Christian (yes, we exclude the Word of Faith-ers like Benny Hinn) is claiming, nor does the Bible claim, that God "needs" money; far from it.
Neither is any mention made of these other pagan religions' and their clergies' thirst for money. Nor how the modern liberal establishment craves money and power as well. Money is a temptation for EVERYone. But it doesn't do Zeitgeist any good to recall those inconvenient facts.
It occurs to me, by the way, that much of this material is answered in the Paul Manata series of reviews of Hitchens' "god is not Great" book, found on the Narrow Mind radio show. I recommend it, if you're in the mood for a good butt-whipping.
More in part 2, coming Thursday.
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