Defending the Truth

Please watch the entirety of this excerpt from the film Zeitgeist and tell me what you think:

http://www.google.com/videoplay\?doc...arch&plindex=2

I think if you want to get a discussion going, it would better if you could summarise this first. I don't know if other posters are likely to sit through a half hour video without knowing what it's going to be about and before commenting on it, but I'm probably not.

I did watch the first few minutes of it, which I found was going over ground that most theologians are aware of. It was a bit simplistic and I couldn't really be bothered to watch the entire half hour to say what I thought of it, based on the first ten minutes. Maybe it started making different points later on, I don't know.

What do you think it was trying to tell you, Katczinsky, and what did *you* think of it?

If the point of it is to say that Christianity doesn't have a monopoly on a mythos that involves resurrection, the Sun and the winter solstice, then that's not really news. If there's more to it than that, then I may watch the whole thing, but I'd prefer to know what point you're trying to raise before I do that.

Oh, that was the intention behind the title of the thread, and I figured the video did a better job explaining itself than myself. But meh, if people need it than so be it. I'll address it below.

Ah, but not the average person of faith.

Well I don't know when you stopped watching, so I can't say what further it had to say.

Some of the stuff I was already aware of (literary parallels between characters in the Bible and other characters), but I wasn't aware that it was as prevalent among pagan myth, and I found the information about the ages to be quite informative.

Personally I thought the production wasn't all that special, but the information presented is important and I feel most Christians are obviously not aware of such roots of their own religion.

I think the point was that Christianity has a lot more to do with pagan and astrological ancestry than any kind of historical 'document' (the latter of which most people like to believe). In fact it establishes that Christianity was merely another man-made religion that is based off of such astrology. Christianity (as well as Islam, Judaism, etc.) isn't much older than the other ancient religions, and it was for the most part made by the same people who were attempting to gather answers from the universe by astrology. Such pagan themes of the Bible have been mainly hidden from the current general consciousness (or Zeitgeist; also the film's namesake).

I watched the entire video and had no idea of the astrological parallels of Christianity. It was also very interesting to know that so many prophets before Jesus had the same story: virgin birth, born on December 25, became a minister at age 30 and teacher at age 12, 12 diciples, and so on. It certainly got me looking at religion in a new light.

I see the point, but if you'd written a post that took half an hour to read, I think I would have given it a "tl;dr" rating - or maybe us Brits have a shorter attention span

I agree - it's not surprising that the motif of the sun rising and setting each day will translate into the idea of the death and rebirth of a god, and the 25 December date makes perfect sense - the "solstice" literally means the "sun standing still". If you face the setting sun every evening during the winter (in the northern hemisphere), you'll see it setting further and further to the left each day until about 20 December. Then it really does "stand still" in the sense of setting at the same point each day (mathematically it does set in a very slightly different position, but visually this isn't noticeable at the solstices). It's only by 25 December that it's noticeably started setting to the right of that point again - the sun has made his final descent into darkness, and is now gaining strength.

As for the astrology, I find it utterly ironic that the condemnation of astrology from Christian churches has come around not primarily from theological arguments, but from the atheistic "age of reason" which discredits astrology for being unscientific. Prior to this, astrology was tolerated within Christianity. Sure, there were arguments about which parts of it were allowable (any astrology that implied absolute determinism was out because that disallowed someone the ability to choose to accept Christ), but it was taken for granted that an astrological education was important. In medieval times, the "seven liberal arts" taught at every major university included astrology, and most popes were well versed in it. Pope Sylvester was himself a very learned astrologer - which puts the Catholic condemnation of astrology as akin to a "black art" in an interesting light - do they condemn previous popes for dabbling in it, I wonder?

By the 17th century, some Protestants were against astrology for being a "papist art", but in England William Lilly - a devout Protestant - wrote "Christian Astrology", and made a living from his art. It was impossible to qualify as a doctor without a background in astrology.

Of course, the New Testament starts with an astrological event, of the three magi following a star!

You say "Christianity isn't much older than the other ancient religions" - it's actually 500 years newer than Buddhism, and clearly newer than Judaism. In fact, it seems to be a product of the earlier "axial age" of Socrates, Buddha and Jeremiah, and has very clear links to both Mithraism and Zoroastrianism. Check out Karen Armstrong's brilliant book "The Great Transformation".

I agree...but...

Yes, this is what I meant. I guess I meant to say it isn't much newer than the other ancient religions.

Absolutely... Almost nothing in Christianity is original, most of it is stolen from older religions, and much of it is Pagan in nature. Lots of religions share these same myths, which is why I think it's so funny when Christians dismiss the teachings of other religions without realizing that Christianity directly stole a lot of it's own mythology from these older religions...

All things old are new again...

Great movie!

Folks like Sarge and Jaaman need to watch and comment on this movie.

It is dangerous to have myths dictate morality.

I just watched the video. Not only does it make perfect sense, it is perfectly in line with known and accepted history. What I think is sad is despite the overwhelming evidence, shown time and time again throughout the ages... People will continue to maintain an unhealthy relationship with an imaginary friend...

Ohhhh, I was watching it too Tad...Sorry I didn't share my popcorn with you.

Kat, very interesting video. I'm looking forward now to viewing the other 2 remaining pieces to the triology video. Which is interesting in itself that they used the symbology of 3 in presenting their intake on the subject they're showing?