ZEITGEIST, The Movie

[Nick227]

The bolded text, has in one fell swoop, explained why the truth movement cannot be reasoned with.

TAM

Then give me a scientific explanation as to the nature of reality.

Nick

 

[T.A.M.]

why would I engage in a futile conversation with someone who believe that facts and science are subjective?

It is pointless. Argue with yourself...I am sure you will have more fun.

And please, don't play the expected card of "he refuses to argue with me, therefore he concedes defeat" as (A) it is untrue, and (B) it belittles your "intellect".

Beyond that, your question is beyond the scope of this subforum...take it to an appropriate subforum please.

TAM

 

[ElMondoHummus]

Boy... a lot of those posts feel like Feyerabendianism run amok.

I don't know about you, TAM, but I've always found epistemological anarchy to epitomize the very sort of muddled thinking that can lead to such intellectual atrocities as Lysenkoism. When objectivity itself rather than the limited human perception of such is mocked, then the quality of knowledge that comes of it tends to be not only of limited utility, but of limited quality. Not to mention the fact that it makes an apologia of the act of ignoring even the most blatantly obvious of facts an acceptible activity, something which should be an abomination to truth seekers.

I'd advise him to take things to the philosophy subforum. Maybe some of the Kantians and Popperians can have fun with him.

 

[cisco]

Science has no clue about the nature of reality. It has looked. It has no clue. Science predicts relationships between observed phenomena. It tries to grasp the behaviour of reality. Zeitgeist is a propaganda movie. If I really believed in science and if I believed that objectivity was truth, then I would no doubt be appalled by Zeitgeist, and I would also probably feel sick to the stomach. But I don't. There's no real independent truth beyond subjective experience. It's utter fantasy. Zeitgeist moves energy. What the Bleep moves energy. The Secret moves energy. These movies create change. This is a far more powerful force that anything science can comprehend.

I've shown Zeitgeist to quite a few people. I don't see it as pushing them to believe Peter Joseph's view of the world. What I see is that people come away from it shaken, no longer so convinced in the version of events given to them by the recorded history they were bought up with. I can understand why someone would think that it's just one guy ramming his viewpoint down someone else's throat, but that's not my experience of what happens with it for the people I know.

Nick

This whole post is a non sequitur. Zeitgeist isn`t about the nature of reality.

 

[GreNME]

why would I engage in a futile conversation with someone who believe that facts and science are subjective?

It is pointless. Argue with yourself...I am sure you will have more fun.

And please, don't play the expected card of "he refuses to argue with me, therefore he concedes defeat" as (A) it is untrue, and (B) it belittles your "intellect".

Beyond that, your question is beyond the scope of this subforum...take it to an appropriate subforum please.

TAM

Can you help me out here? I've communicated quite a bit back and forth with Nick, and I can't recall him stating that facts and science are subjective, rather that interpretation and personal observations are subjective. Did he say that in another thread?

 

[proxywar]

http://www.thedevineevidence.com/jesus_similarities.html
Debunk of the jesus poppycock in zeitgeist.

http://www.ldolphin.org/zodiac/
Debunk of the astrological poppycock in zeitgeist.

For anyone interested.

 

[Nick227]

why would I engage in a futile conversation with someone who believe that facts and science are subjective?

It is pointless. Argue with yourself...I am sure you will have more fun.

And please, don't play the expected card of "he refuses to argue with me, therefore he concedes defeat" as (A) it is untrue, and (B) it belittles your "intellect".

Beyond that, your question is beyond the scope of this subforum...take it to an appropriate subforum please.

TAM

Hi TAM,

Well, I was not trying to engage you in some futile debate, the subject also bores me.

I was asking as you did reply to my statement...

Science has no clue about the nature of reality. It has looked. It has no clue

with the comment...

The bolded text, has in one fell swoop, explained why the truth movement cannot be reasoned with.

From your comment I divined that you were in possession of some vast, scientific truth. Perhaps I misinterpreted you.

Nick

 

[Nick227]

This whole post is a non sequitur. Zeitgeist isn`t about the nature of reality.

Hi cisco,

I'm merely giving some context, more to movies like What the Bleep, which you mentioned, and The Secret, which I mentioned. I see Zeitgeist in a similar way, though of course it does not deal so directly with the nature of reality.

Nick

 

[Edx]

thedevineevidence . com
Debunk of the jesus poppycock in zeitgeist..

To be picky thats not an especially credible source, they're apologists, of course they'll deny anything.

 

[Walter Ego]

Zeitgeist: The John Birch Society On Acid

Jay Kinney (of Whole Earth Review fame) sums it up pretty well:

The latest bit of guerrilla media to take the online universe by storm is “Zeitgeist, the Movie.” Clocking in at close to two hours’ length, and with over a million views on Google Video since its June 26th “official” release, Zeitgeist is a grabby, cranky, can’t-stop-watching-it documentary that purports to tell the real truth about Christianity, 9/11, and the International Bankers.

Exactly who is behind the video is unclear, although someone with the moniker of “Peter J.” has posted an online letter claiming credit and explaining Zeitgeist’s message to those who may have somehow failed to grasp the worldview that the video hammers home.

And what is that worldview, pray tell? Religions in general, and Christianity in particular, are primarily systems of social control. 9/11 was an inside job and the destruction of the WTC twin towers and building 7 were aided by controlled demolition. And finally, International Bankers, through the Federal Reserve and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), control our money and our future, leading to, ta da, the coming One World Government and the microchipping of everyone.

Exactly how all this fits together is left to the viewer’s imagination or, presumably, the film-maker’s hash pipe. Are those who manipulate Christianity for control purposes in cahoots with the Bankers, and were the Bankers in on the 9/11 caper? Zeitgeist sidesteps such logical questions through the use of the all-purpose term, “the elite,” a shadowy group of rich and powerful men who want nothing more than to enslave humanity and reap block-buster profits through the promotion of wars and financial crises.

For conspiracy buffs, this is all pretty standard fare, and, indeed, aficionados of the genre will find little new in “Zeitgeist.” The notions that most religions were originally a kind of solar worship, and that the Jesus Christ story recapitulated the mythos of numerous other “dying gods,” were floating around in the late 1700s. Fittingly, the video features a quote from Thomas Paine reducing Christianity to warmed-over sun worship, which was a daring bit of religion-baiting 200 years ago, albeit not so earth-shattering today.

The nefarious International Bankers meme has been propagating itself since at least the mid-1800s and has long been a mainstay of radical right-wing circles where it has often overlapped with mutterings about Jewish cabals.

The 9/11 truth segment of the video is, of course, of much more recent vintage, but, here too, it mostly repeats accusations that have gotten widespread play in the uber-skeptic milieu.

Breaking new factual ground is not what Zeitgeist is about, however. Rather, the video is a powerful and fast-acting dose of agitprop, hawking its conclusions as givens. Unfortunately, like most propaganda, it doesn’t play fair with its intended audience. At times, while watching it, I felt like I was getting Malcolm McDowell’s treatment in Clockwork Orange: eyes pried wide open while getting bombarded with quick-cut atrocity photos.

At other times, Zeitgeist engages in willful confusion by showing TV screen shots of network or cable news with voice-overs from unidentified people not associated with the news programs. If one weren’t paying close attention, the effect would be to confer the status and authority of TV news upon the words being spoken. Even when quotes or sound bites are attributed to a source, there’s no way to tell if they are quoted correctly or in context.

Late in the video, there’s a supposed quote from David Rockefeller, which, if genuine, would be an astounding confession of complicity in mass manipulation. But, of course, the quote is not sourced or dated, which renders it useless. (The video’s website does feature a Sources page, but a hodge-podge list of books, with no page numbers cited, is of little value for source verification.)

The over-all temper of the video is rather like the John Birch Society on acid, with interludes by Harry Smith. Incongruously, after spending nearly two hours trying to scare the bejeezis out of its viewers, Zeitgeist ends on an oddly upbeat note, telling us that Love — not Fear — is the answer, We are all One, and featuring sound-bites from Ram Dass and Carl Sagan.

It’s a shame, really, that Zeitgeist is, ultimately, such a mess. There are plenty of legitimate questions about what transpired on 9/11, just as there are plenty of shady doings in international finance or puzzling aspects of religious history, for that matter. And what is coming down in the name of National Security is truly unnerving. Yet, bundling them all together in disjointed fashion does justice to none of them. Time and again, Zeitgeist maximizes emotional impact at the expense of a more reasoned weighing of evidence. But, perhaps that’s the intention.

I’ve often pondered about what it might take to snap everyone out of the walking dream we collectively entered on 9/11/01. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall provided the emotional pivot for the end of the Cold War, only a collective experience of an intensity equal to that of 9/11 might jolt us awake as to what is really happening in the corridors of power and certain undisclosed locations.

It’s my hunch that Zeitgeist is one attempt to provide such a jolt, and it does indeed pack a certain punch. Too bad it also runs off in three directions at once, and is so indiscriminate in its sources and overly certain of its conclusions. Zeitgeist may be powerful, but its power is tainted with some simplistic and pernicious memes that have already received more propagation than they deserve. The video’s producer does inform us that “It is my hope that people will not take what is said in the film as the truth . . .”

Indeed.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/06/jay-kinney-reviews-z.html

 

[Stout]

I like scientists. I like objectivity. But these things have nothing whatsoever to do with truth, and nothing whatsoever to do with the nature of reality.

And this is one of the reasons I'm here. Back in my 20's I was very woo positive and I embarked on the search for the true nature of reality, or at least I thought I did and my explorations led me to the conclusion that such thinking was more of a social thing than anything else. That and the desire for control over one's life ( and the lives of others ) through esoteric knowledge.

Thing is, I found those people who subscribed to this type of thinking to not have any real advantage over those of us who failed to find the so called truths. and in fact I found them more concerned with their emotional states than anything else.

In short, I found woo rather useless in the "real" world except for the "wow, what if..???" factor and I found so many "alternative" explanations of reality that I ended up walking away confused thinking ...when and if you guys ever figure it out, let me know and SHOW me that there's something to this.

A few people tried, like telekinesis guy ( failed ) and astral travel chick ( failed ) and I grew tired of explanations like the universe doesn't feel you should know these things....yet. It's been 25 years now, and the universe still hasn't coughed up the "answers" but science has IMO been doing a pretty good job of it.

 

[ElMondoHummus]

• The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it with its skeptical protocols is the pathway to a dark age.
• Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
• In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken," and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time someting like that happened in politics or religion.
• You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.
• There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That's perfectly all right; they're the aperture to finding out what's right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.
• We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.

Famous quotes by Carl Sagan. It's remarkable how these not only apply here in this forum, but are directly applicable to posts in this thread.

 

[GreNME]

http://www.thedevineevidence.com/jesus_similarities.html
Debunk of the jesus poppycock in zeitgeist.

Oh, I don't know. Some of the information in that is slightly off. I won't go into a huge list, but as an example the stuff on Horus are not accurate representations of the Horus myths. I'm not disagreeing that the attempts to claim similarities between Jesus and all these many figures is deceitful, but a lot of this seems to be a nicely-worded version of the apologetics that JP Holding (Tektonics Ministries) produces, and his stuff has serious flaws.

http://www.ldolphin.org/zodiac/
Debunk of the astrological poppycock in zeitgeist.

For anyone interested.

That also seems like apologetics, to be fair.

This is actually something I find unnerving about a lot of the stuff out there: there is much bias in both directions-- both pro- and anti-Christian-- within these attempts to disseminate information. The pro-Christian sources seem to argue their points with a great deal of historical Jesus arguments mixed in, and the anti-Christian sources seem to move further and further out into wild associations with any deity they can find that may have one or two qualities that are vaguely similar. It's not necessarily intellectually honest on either side in terms of accurately responding to the base claims that the religious figures are all imprints of one another.

I've actually spoken with exactly one person in the Jesus-mythicist camp who I have found tends to take a very intellectually honest and methodically in-depth look at the bases behind his argument, and interestingly enough his conclusions do not coincide with those sourced in Zeitgeist when it comes to describing the mythical origins of the Jesus story. In fact, he's said outright that he finds Acarya's work to be conspiracy theory nonsense. He's an excellent example of someone who I may not exactly agree completely with all of his conclusions (though I do think many of them are well-based), I can still admire his great attention to detail and his overall intellectual honesty.

 

[T.A.M.]

GrenMe:

The following quote from Nick;

Science has no clue about the nature of reality. It has looked. It has no clue. Science predicts relationships between observed phenomena. It tries to grasp the behaviour of reality. Zeitgeist is a propaganda movie. If I really believed in science and if I believed that objectivity was truth, then I would no doubt be appalled by Zeitgeist, and I would also probably feel sick to the stomach. But I don't. There's no real independent truth beyond subjective experience. It's utter fantasy. Zeitgeist moves energy. What the Bleep moves energy. The Secret moves energy. These movies create change. This is a far more powerful force that anything science can comprehend.

was what led me to say what i said. If you feel his comments do not warrant my interpretation, fine, that is your right.

Nick:

No, I do not have "possession of some vast, scientific truth", but I feel that facts and science are objective means and variable for us to find the truth, and that the pathway to truth is through such...not through pseudoscience and hogwashy "is the universe real or some figment of my imagination" philosophy.

TAM

 

[Nick227]

Nick:

No, I do not have "possession of some vast, scientific truth", but I feel that facts and science are objective means and variable for us to find the truth, and that the pathway to truth is through such...not through pseudoscience and hogwashy "is the universe real or some figment of my imagination" philosophy.

TAM

Science and objectivity are the means to interpret the world through one filter. This is a pursuit of relationships, not truth. It is not even pointing in the same direction as truth. Truth is not even in the gameplan of science, except for the deluded.

The notion that many have developed, that scientific pursuit relates to truth, finally amounts to little more than a collective tensing of the shoulder muscles and a determined refusal to self-examine. Because of the actual nature of truth, this approach will inevitably not succeed.

Movies like Zeitgeist and What the Bleep work and attract millions of viewers not because they possess any more truth than the work of countless historians or scientists, but because, in the circumstances we find ourselves, they are the mechanisms of change. And change is coming. You can either stand in its way and steadfastly maintain that objectivity and truth are related, in which case - good luck! Or you can negotiate with the future.

Nick

 

[cisco]

Movies like Zeitgeist . . . work and attract millions of viewers not because they possess any more truth than the work of countless historians or scientists, but because, in the circumstances we find ourselves, they are the mechanisms of change. And change is coming. You can either stand in its way and steadfastly maintain that objectivity and truth are related, in which case - good luck! Or you can negotiate with the future.

Mmmmm . . . no. You still haven't addressed the fact that Zeitgeist has nothing to do with "the nature of reality" and it boldly lies.

I'm not going to address What the Bleep because I haven't seen it, but it was made by what many consider a cult.

 

[Nick227]

Mmmmm . . . no. You still haven't addressed the fact that Zeitgeist has nothing to do with "the nature of reality" and it boldly lies.

I'm not going to address What the Bleep because I haven't seen it, but it was made by what many consider a cult.

The movie doesn't address the nature of reality so much, it's true. Zeitgeist goes against a conventional interpretation of history and may well be untrue here and there. But I don't know that it sets out to lie. I have to admit that this doesn't really bother me so much, personally. It's nice to see change happen and there will always be people from old belief patterns whining away. It's natural.

Are you scared of watching What the Bleep then? I didn't personally feel like I was being led into some cult, to be honest. I'd be interested to hear your opinion. No doubt it's online somewhere these days.

Nick

 

[cisco]

Zeitgeist goes against a conventional interpretation of history and may well be untrue here and there.

That's like saying "Hitler didn't invite Jews to all his dinner parties . . . "

I have to admit that this doesn't really bother me so much, personally. It's nice to see change happen

Of course it doesn't bother you. I mean, it's just accusing innocent people of the murder of 3,000 of their own citizens to the tune of exonerating the guilty, right? Nothing to be bothered about there. It's nice to see change happen!

Are you scared of watching What the Bleep then?

Nope, just not interested. I've studied philosophy and science in school; don't need it from a cheapo documentary with a clear agenda.

 

[regan69]

The third building you are speaking of was WTC 7. The nearer of the two big WTC buildings collapsed into it, severely damaging it and starting a fire that was allowed to burn for many hours (because the sprinkler system was inoperative and the building itself was growing more and more unstable throughout the day) which eventually led to its collapse. The collapse of this building was widely believed to be probable all afternoon.

For a source on almost any 9/11 things you would like to know about, see the sticky post at the top of this sub-forum titled "Gravysites."

As for the rest of your stuff, I either don't know enough about it to comment or am just not interested enough to look into it. Maybe someone else can help you on that stuff.

If you look at the layout of where buildings were located and you watch footage of the collapse you will see that there is no way building one could have collapsed onto building 7 without totally taking out building 5 (which was between the two). Also, has anyone actually seen footage of building one collapsing will know it didn't collapse onto any of the surrounding buildings, especially not one across the street. And why wasn't aything about building 7 mentioned in the 9/11 report? And why did they originally say that building 7's collapse was due to fire when that would be impossible? I've gotta say the whole thing seems dodgy to me. Can anyone clear up any, or all of these questions it would put my mind at ease.

 

[cisco]

If you look at the layout of where buildings were located and you watch footage of the collapse you will see that there is no way building one could have collapsed onto building 7 without totally taking out building 5 (which was between the two). Also, has anyone actually seen footage of building one collapsing will know it didn't collapse onto any of the surrounding buildings, especially not one across the street. And why wasn't aything about building 7 mentioned in the 9/11 report? And why did they originally say that building 7's collapse was due to fire when that would be impossible? I've gotta say the whole thing seems dodgy to me. Can anyone clear up any, or all of these questions it would put my mind at ease.

Sure, I'd be glad to oblige. I hope these are honest questions, though.

If you look at the layout of where buildings were located and you watch footage of the collapse you will see that there is no way building one could have collapsed onto building 7 without totally taking out building 5 (which was between the two).

Not true. 5 World Trade Center was a 9-story low-rise building. 7 World Trade Center was a skyscraper 40 stories taller. Surely you see how debris from a 110-story building could go over a 9 story building and hit a 49 story building, right?

Also, has anyone actually seen footage of building one collapsing will know it didn't collapse onto any of the surrounding buildings, especially not one across the street.

I've seen footage and it clearly shows this. Watch this video. Be sure to pay special attention to the still shot that is shown from approx 0:54 to 0:57.

And why wasn't aything about building 7 mentioned in the 9/11 report?

Someone else may have a better answer, but I believe the simplest explanation is because it was not the target of a terrorist attack. Lots of other buildings fell that day or in the next few days as well.

And why did they originally say that building 7's collapse was due to fire when that would be impossible?

"Originally"? Is anyone saying any different now? It is absolutely not impossible. Where did you get that idea?