A friend of mine recommended that I watch a movie called Zeitgeist. I wasn't sure what it was, but he told me it was a documentary about 9/11. Now, most of the ground has been covered for 9/11 these days. The things that remain are usually either related to the consequences and aftermath of the attack, or loony conspiracy theories.
Unfortunately this one falls into the latter camp. Out of respect to my friend, I made a mental note that I wouldn't go online and read anything about it before I started watching it. Although the 9/11 conspiracy theories fly blatantly in the face of good science and logic, they are still an opportunity to practice critical thinking skills, and I wanted to use this as an opportunity to do exactly that.
I took notes as I watched the movie, and then wrote out my thoughts on each item. As a result, some parts of this entry will flow a little more than others, but I think it all works out in the end. I could spend more time editing this, as I would do in the past, but doing so means that I just won't end up publishing it, so I think I'm better off just getting this out the door.
Onwards with the movie.
The movie starts out right at the start with a MAJOR premise:
We've been lied to by religions, education, and governments. Ironically the movie asks us not to accept authority as truth, but to accept truth as authority, and then goes about setting itself up as an authority on these matters that we should just trust.
Next up we open into a George Carlin standup routine where he jokes about religion and how religions have managed to do a great job pulling the wool over the public's eyes. In many ways this is probably a fairly accurate statement, but it is definitely a generalization, and, regardless of that, why is George Carlin the first real voice that we hear in this movie? Is he meant to be considered some kind of authority? This doesn't mean the movie isn't going to be on point or anything, but it definitely makes me wonder what the intent is of putting a potentially inflammatory comic routine at the start of a movie that purports to be a documentary.
Now we're moving into the actual meat of the claims of the first part of the movie. These claims revolve around what, to me, appear to be attempts to discredit Christianity by proving that its story isn't original or accurate. Before going any further, I should point out that I am not religious, but my wife is, and we both feel that if you're basing your faith around the fact that your religion of choice comes from a book that was legitimately handed to us by god, you are kind of missing the point.
Due to a similarity in the zodiac shorthand for the chart and the Christian cross, we are supposed to make the leap in logic that Christianity is and always has been based on the stars, constellations, and the zodiac. Is it reasonable to make the assumption that because the Nazi's took the swastika from Hindu and other Eastern religions, we should assume that the entire facist Nazi movement is actually based on those religious beliefs? We can see pretty quickly that this analogy breaks down, and is more of an interesting coincidence than anything else.
Of course, the movie tells us this as though it is fact (in the disembodied voice of the narrator, who we have no knowledge of, nor where this supposed fact is drawn from other than a hunch).
We follow this up with a nice example of cherry picking data - pulling religious quotes out from the bible that support the statement above, but without showing any of the many pieces of scripture that would counter this. Ironically, many non-Christians criticize those that are by saying that they often cherry pick their own lines of scripture to support their own claims (which some do, and yes, this is also invalid).
The movie meanders further and now mentions ancient civilizations that were supposed to be very aware of the zodiac cycle, and the precession of the earth. Who cares. Ancient societies believed many things, but I'm pretty happy with modern medicine, thanks. Trying to argue that they were right just because they were ancient is the fallacy of Argument from Antiquity - suggest that that which is older is more likely to be correct.
More arbitrary and unsupported claims: apparently Jews blow the ram's horn because they were prominent during the era of the Ram, in the zodiac cycle. We're just expected to accept this fact. It doesn't really prove or disprove anything, but even so, I don't see any compelling reason to believe in this over any other reasoning for it.
Likewise, we're told that Christians use a fish to represent Jesus and their belief, but we're supposed to believe that's because Jesus's birthdate was purported to be around the same time that the age of Pisces is started. Not surprisingly, they don't make any mention of the fact that almost all modern historians (generally a much more reliable source of information than a theologian) agree that Jesus was born a few decades earlier than 1 B.C.
The movie now goes into showing the similarities between Christianity and Egyptian beliefs, scrolling a big wall of text up the screen with similarities between the two, claiming they are staggering. I paused so I could read them. Here are some of the gems:
Aren't these pretty mundane similarities? Isn't it reasonable to expect that the main figure of a given religion is going to be endowed with certain properties that inspire awe, such as fulfilment, founding the universe and cosmos, humbling those that are self-righteous, etc.?
I'm not arguing against the fact that many religions have commonalities with each other, and it's actually one of the most interesting parts about religion, but this isn't a reason to jump to the conclusion that Christianity is based off of Egyptian beliefs, nor that both of them are necessarily based off of astrological beliefs.
The movie also takes some liberties in what they call a "literary similarity", such as assuming that The Mysteries in Egyptian texts has the same meaning as as The Miracles in Christian texts. Maybe... but we're not provided any context with which to make that judgment ourselves. Not only that, but these would be translation from Egyptian Hieroglyphics - that's pretty tough translation on top of all that. I can cherry-pick quotes and data out of my older blog entries and not show any context in order to imply the same relationship. Without any context, this information doesn't do us a lot of good.
There's a good deal of time spent showing that a lot of the bible is plagiarized or influenced by earlier epics, poems, and stories. If you, like I, don't regard the bible as a book handed to humans by a god, but as a work of man, this isn't a shocking revelation. We would naturally expect that new works would be influenced by older ones (indeed, we see this happening in all creative aspects of our modern society). Again, many religions share commonalities. What does this prove?
And now more stand-up? Jeez. Come on guys. The movie provides more stand-up as a voice over while it shows pictures on the screen ridiculing what the bible says. Hey, it's pretty easy to do that, I'll try:
People that made the movie Zeitgeist actually believe that all religions are caused by the stars, and that 9/11 is a giant conspiracy cover up, even though anyone that has ever worked in any capacity with a government knows that if there's two things a government can't do, it's:
Blah. If you're going to make some allegations, get on with it. Anyone can sling mud.
The movie claims to analyze the number of historians that have written about Jesus, dismissing three of the four they note outright, because they refer to him as Christ, or "The Annointed", which is a title rather than a specific reference to Jesus Christ himself. The fourth they dismiss on the grounds that he has been discredited. I don't see any sources or citations that support these claims.
However, if I go to Wikipedia and type in "Historical Jesus" in my search bar, I'm presented with a page that has many links, sources and citations, and discusses, in a balanced manner, the accuracy and likelihood of Jesus as a historical figure, and what his live may really have been. If you are actually interested in this subject, this is a really interesting page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
And now even more voice-overs. Who are we listening to? Are we expected to just take everything that is being told to us in voice-over as fact, or as some kind of authority? We haven't yet seen one of these voices attached to a talking head, or with a name or credential supplied. Maybe they're just telling a story, but it'd sure be nice to see something to let us in on that fact.
Now we enter part 2 of the movie, and things start to get kah-razy.
Looks like we're entering a 9/11 conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are interesting, but that's about as far as they usually go.
We start off being treated to a bunch of news clips, most of which appear to be right at the scene of the event, as people are being rescued. These people are making claims about what has just happened and most of the claims we're presented with relate to Zeitgeist's side of the story. Again, with no context as to how many people there were citing the other side of the claims that the legitimate investigations have determined to be true. We have to understand that many of these kind of testimonies are going to be colored with fear, terror, shock, and adrenaline. All of these elements have been proven to affect our memories and the way we remember things.
We end the montage with someone saying "It was like there were explosives in the building" (a claim that was analyzed by Popular Mechanics and shown to be highly unlikely, given that all of the actual recorded evidence (non-testimonial) was consistent with the findings of a structural collapse caused by the weakening of the supporting structure of the building, and not explosions). Lastly we're treated to a black screen with white text, that has the heading "The 911 Myth". I guess we know which avenue this movie is going to take.
Before going further, it's important to note a fallacy committed by the film makers, and that is the fallacy of the strawman attack. They phrase it as follows: (I'm paraphrasing) "The 9/11 damage was caused by planes hijacked by terrorists, under the direction of Osama Bin Laden...". So far we're consistent with what has been determined by independant committees. At the bottom, they include something that has already been rejected - that there were no warnings for these terrorist attacks. The same commission that confirmed the damage as the cause of the hijacked planes also confirmed that there were indeed warnings about the attack, and that the government did not adequately heed these warnings.
This is a strawman fallacy because they are building up a metaphorical strawman for their opponent - one that contains some legitimate claims and some already proven false claims. The claim that there were no warnings (along with the other stuff that was true) is then knocked down easily, and then it appears that the whole set of claims were proven false. This is disingenuous, and not what we want to see from good documentaries.
One of the things that irk me with conspiracy theories is that there is never any room for coincidence. Every thing that may be a valid coincidence (example, Bush family eating breakfast with other high-powered families, such as the Pakistani leader), immediately lends support to the theory in question.
We have to ask ourselves - what would prove this theory wrong? For it to be a valid rational pursuit, we need to have clear ideas as to what proves them not just correct, but also incorrect. This is how we do science. The problem is that conspiracy theories pick and choose their evidence - they choose the positive evidence and coincidences that support the theory, but discard any of the many other coincidences that do not, and even go as far as suggesting that the lack of evidence is proof of the theory, since the government must have covered that up. Once you've gone this far, you can no longer call what you are doing a theory - it's bad investigation and junk science.
One hilarious claim the movie makes is that evidence of Osama Bin Laden on a tape that was revealed as potential proof that he was behind the terrorist act was planted because the person in the video has darker skin, and fuller cheeks. Of course, in this case, the American government, who have so far been capable of orchestrating the greatest cover up the world has ever seen (anyone here ever worked with or in the government? We know how likely this is...), but they forgot to hire someone to do proper makeup. This is classic conspiracy theory - the people behind the theory are absolutely brilliant at orchestrating the theory, but they always seem to make these bumbling kind of mistakes. Again, let's use Occam's Razor here to slice away the fat. Which is more likely - that Osama's appearance, the lighting in the video, and his health have changed between various footage and images of him, or that the government planted this evidence to frame him, and that they messed up his make-up. Did you guess government cover-up? Really? Stop reading this blog and go eat some sand.
Here's another classic exmaple given: George H.W. Bush was meeting with Osama's older brother, Shafig bin Laden, on the morning of 9/11 at a Carlyle Group function. Wow, really? Another bumbling mistake! How on earth did these guys manage to pull together something this huge, gather together the massive amount of financial resources needed (there is massive overhead to stuff like this - $100,000 from a bunch of countries is not going to cut the costs you would see from planning, overhead, and hush money on this order), and STILL screw up and forget that it's happening on this day. Doh! Why didn't we think about having George senior go and do something totally unrelated to the massive thing we've been planning for years. Boy, is there egg on our face. Is it possible that this is just a coincidence? That certainly seems more likely to me.
Next up are comments about the Pentagon and terrorists flying them, theories of explosives, firemen making claims about the way floors would fall in a building in this situation (which we really have not ever had good evidence to watch - we can't pretend to know exactly how something like this is going to happen), and more classic claims of the many 9/11 theories. This subject has already been covered very well by Popular Mechanics, so I won't bother wasting time getting into it.
Ah, nice, and now I hear the guy's from Loose Change talking over the footage we're given. These guys actually debated the people that investigated their claims from Popular Mechanics, and came off as aggressive and angry, but without a lot of good science to backup their claims. If you want to catch that excellent debate, I recommend watching it here. That is a much better analysis of the 9/11 conspiracy that this film is.
We also hear a lot of voice-overs that say things like "There was absolutely no evidence that a plane had hit the building", but we are never given any idea who that is that is talking. Soundbites are a great way of punctuating footage, but they do not act as valid evidence, and we should always always be skeptical when we're treated to footage and a soundbite without being given the source. You can tape record my voice and make it grainy, and then play that over footage of your choice to make your own point. Be skeptical. Don't accept things like this on faith.
Blah blah blah William Rodriguez talking about an explosion from the basement of the WTC tower. The only credential providing for this guy is that he worked in the building for 20 years. Well, that's reassuring. I'm sure he's a good candidate to judge how a sub-basement explosion would feel differently from that of a plane smashing into the building.
Now we get really nutty, and the truth is revealed. The United States government staged the attack as a false flag attack on its own citizens in order to manipulate the public towards its own ends. Let's look at the claim here. The claim implies that the attacks were staged because the public could not be manipulated, as effectively, without making a false flag attack. For example, staging an attack on our own soldiers in foreign soil. Or just using propaganda effectively. Or anything else. Aren't there other options? If the only goal was to manipulate the populace, wouldn't it make more sense to do something that slightly less chaotic and random? You can't really guess at how the public is going to react to something like this. What if riots broke out and general pandemonium occurred? What if the terrorists caught wind of this, and chose to make their own attacks in addition to the ones that the government was supposed to be making. You could argue that with so much of the US infrastructure going towards supporting their own false flag attack, they would have scarcely had any resources left over to deal with legitimate terrorist attacks.
The movie starts to move into claims based around the central banking system of the US, and implying that there is a necessary cycle of creating debt, followed by producing more money to pay off that debt, followed by creating even more debt, etc. People that have any economic background know that this is a pretty sophomoric understanding of the way banking works, and although my own background only goes towards a few classes I took in my undergrad, and the podcasts and financial websites I read these days, I can tell that the view being presented is over-simplified and naive. This is consistent with most of the questions have been asked, and the way most of the evidence has been presented thus far.
A quote is presented by Woodrow Wilson, but is taken out of context, and also leaves out some significant parts. In Woodrow's quote, he was relating to the statesmen of the US congress how significant a role each of them played in ensuring that banking was not abused - not a condemnation of the country's banking system. Woodrow actually was responsible for enacting some fairly important changes to the way finance was dealt with in the states, but that's neither here nor there.
There are other quotes listed, but I don't care to look them up as well, and this movie's credibility is already questionable enough that I don't find this particular evidence convincing.
There is a lot of time spent looking with hindsight back at the way the Federal Reserve responded to various economic crises. Again, anyone with any economic background knows that the economy is a fickle monster, and we are still trying to determine good theories (actual theories) to understand how it operates, and how we can achieve the desired results that we would like to see (minimize recession, maximize growth). Looking back in hindsight and applying post-hoc reasoning loses sight of the fact that during the great depression, the same amount of knowledge and experience that we now possess was not available.
If you want to actually learn about the way banking works, what causes many of the economic problems we are currently going through, and read good critical analysis of the banking and financial claims and statements that we are constantly seeing in newspaper headlines these days, I recommend reading the Long Run Blog. These guys do their research and have worked in and out of financial institutions. Don't get your economy knowledge from a movie like Zeitgeist.
Oh my god. Now we've hit on the claim that "There is no law, whatsoever, that requires you to pay income tax". Well, that's it. This movie is awful. Patently, completely, shitty. This issue has been covered on Boing Boing, Google News, and many other sites, and is just one more ludicrous claim that this movie vomits up into my eyes. There's actually some hilarious documentation and legal briefs that you can read related to morons like Wesley Snipes that have tried to get away with this evasive maneuver to avoid paying tax. You can bet that the US government doesn't agree with this movie. If you want to actually read about the history of US income tax, and how it all comes out in the wash, I recommend doing what most people do, and checking out the Wikipedia article for it, here. Now, I'm sure Zeitgeist would argue that "the people controlling the banks just change that article to suit what they believe" or something along those lines. This is the same problem I mentioned earlier with conspiracy theories - there's never any way to prove them wrong. Any evidence refuting them just becomes evidence supporting them. Garbage.
This whole movie is based on numerous faulty premises. It doesn't matter how well a theory is argued for if the premises upon which it rests are false. If I tell you that 2 is 3, and then spend two hours proving to you that as a result, 1 + 2 = 4, it doesn't matter, because my entire argument is based on the false premise that 2 is 3. Figure out why my argument is faulty, and you can skip watching this movie completely.
It's actually tragic in a way - this movie uses the downward slide of the US's quality of education as further evidence to support its own point. Ironically, if the quality of education was better, many more people would be looking at this movie critically and seeing how flawed it is. They even have the balls to talk about how people need to learn how to think critically. Geez. This movie would not exist without the problems that it takes issue with. This does not prove or disprove any of the specific points made in the movie, it's just an interesting tangent.
They end the film talking about the North American Union, and making grand claims about how you haven't heard about it because it's totally secret, and only one reporter has had the courage to talk about it. Of course, that's strange, when you can just look on Wikipedia, and see everything there is about this (not to mention that it has been acknowledged by all three governments, all of which have indicated that there's no plans to go ahead with this approach). You can read more about that here.
Lastly we get a nice long interview with some guy that was friends with one of the Rockefellers. This really means nothing. We recently have had a lot of press coverage about an astronaut that claims he has definitely seen UFOs, and seen covered up UFO documents. The skeptical community has barely bothered to yawn at this claim. Sure, you're an astronaut, but that doesn't mean that you have good critical thinking skills. Shows us the evidence, and then we'll take notice.
Oh, I'm corrected, they end with a quote from one of the greatest popularizers of science ever, Carl Sagan. Not only that, but Carl Sagan was an excellent critical thinker, and a huge boon to the skeptical community. He would tear this movie apart.
Summary: The people that made this movie have a clear agenda, and that is always something that should cause you to be skeptical. What is the other side of this? You've watched this film, but have you really analyzed the other side of things, in the same depth that this film has provided? At the very least, you owe it to yourself to watch that debate, and, ignoring the obvious such as the age difference, listen to the claims made by each side, and how that is being presented. What does the science tell us.
There can be no doubt that the government currently in power has turned the terrorist attack in their favour, and used it to allow them to roll back civil rights and other things. As well, they've also engaged in fear-mongering to continue doing this in the face of criticism. I don't think there are many people that would debate this. But to go from this and use this as evidence to support a theory that the 9/11 attacks were done on purpose by the ruling republican government is a non-sequitur. We do not get the benefit of looking back in hindsight, seeing how things have turned out, and then trying to cherry-pick our data to support that. The theory of an inside job must stand on its own, and it is completely irrelevant how the government has responded to this after the fact. What does the science tell us?
This movie is fairly well produced. I can see why that may entice some people. In terms of most of the conspiracies that it attempts to shoehorn together into one UBERCONSPIRACY, it doesn't do a particularly good job. Ultimately, nothing new is brought to the table. Illuminati type governments, war-mongering conspiracy theories, the 12 mega bankers that control all of our money, and controlling humans with microchips. This is all fairly well worn territory, and fairly boring stuff when it comes to critical thinking. Not only that but this thing is DAMN long. Two hours isn't that long when you're watching something exciting like The Bourne Supremacy, but for a movie that is conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory... ugh.
The one good thing about this movie is that it presents a lot of material to analyze critically, and practice your skills of skepticism. If you can sit through the whole thing, take it as an opportunity to do that and see if you can spot the many flaws and fallacies in the reasoning present.
And with that note, I'm free! Time to watch something exciting.
Unfortunately this one falls into the latter camp. Out of respect to my friend, I made a mental note that I wouldn't go online and read anything about it before I started watching it. Although the 9/11 conspiracy theories fly blatantly in the face of good science and logic, they are still an opportunity to practice critical thinking skills, and I wanted to use this as an opportunity to do exactly that.
I took notes as I watched the movie, and then wrote out my thoughts on each item. As a result, some parts of this entry will flow a little more than others, but I think it all works out in the end. I could spend more time editing this, as I would do in the past, but doing so means that I just won't end up publishing it, so I think I'm better off just getting this out the door.
Onwards with the movie.
The movie starts out right at the start with a MAJOR premise:
We've been lied to by religions, education, and governments. Ironically the movie asks us not to accept authority as truth, but to accept truth as authority, and then goes about setting itself up as an authority on these matters that we should just trust.
Next up we open into a George Carlin standup routine where he jokes about religion and how religions have managed to do a great job pulling the wool over the public's eyes. In many ways this is probably a fairly accurate statement, but it is definitely a generalization, and, regardless of that, why is George Carlin the first real voice that we hear in this movie? Is he meant to be considered some kind of authority? This doesn't mean the movie isn't going to be on point or anything, but it definitely makes me wonder what the intent is of putting a potentially inflammatory comic routine at the start of a movie that purports to be a documentary.
Now we're moving into the actual meat of the claims of the first part of the movie. These claims revolve around what, to me, appear to be attempts to discredit Christianity by proving that its story isn't original or accurate. Before going any further, I should point out that I am not religious, but my wife is, and we both feel that if you're basing your faith around the fact that your religion of choice comes from a book that was legitimately handed to us by god, you are kind of missing the point.
Due to a similarity in the zodiac shorthand for the chart and the Christian cross, we are supposed to make the leap in logic that Christianity is and always has been based on the stars, constellations, and the zodiac. Is it reasonable to make the assumption that because the Nazi's took the swastika from Hindu and other Eastern religions, we should assume that the entire facist Nazi movement is actually based on those religious beliefs? We can see pretty quickly that this analogy breaks down, and is more of an interesting coincidence than anything else.
Of course, the movie tells us this as though it is fact (in the disembodied voice of the narrator, who we have no knowledge of, nor where this supposed fact is drawn from other than a hunch).
We follow this up with a nice example of cherry picking data - pulling religious quotes out from the bible that support the statement above, but without showing any of the many pieces of scripture that would counter this. Ironically, many non-Christians criticize those that are by saying that they often cherry pick their own lines of scripture to support their own claims (which some do, and yes, this is also invalid).
The movie meanders further and now mentions ancient civilizations that were supposed to be very aware of the zodiac cycle, and the precession of the earth. Who cares. Ancient societies believed many things, but I'm pretty happy with modern medicine, thanks. Trying to argue that they were right just because they were ancient is the fallacy of Argument from Antiquity - suggest that that which is older is more likely to be correct.
More arbitrary and unsupported claims: apparently Jews blow the ram's horn because they were prominent during the era of the Ram, in the zodiac cycle. We're just expected to accept this fact. It doesn't really prove or disprove anything, but even so, I don't see any compelling reason to believe in this over any other reasoning for it.
Likewise, we're told that Christians use a fish to represent Jesus and their belief, but we're supposed to believe that's because Jesus's birthdate was purported to be around the same time that the age of Pisces is started. Not surprisingly, they don't make any mention of the fact that almost all modern historians (generally a much more reliable source of information than a theologian) agree that Jesus was born a few decades earlier than 1 B.C.
The movie now goes into showing the similarities between Christianity and Egyptian beliefs, scrolling a big wall of text up the screen with similarities between the two, claiming they are staggering. I paused so I could read them. Here are some of the gems:
- Horus the fulfiller <-> Jesus the fulfiller
- Horus the founder <-> Jesus the founder
- Horus the chaser of boastfulness <-> Jesus the humbler of the proud
Aren't these pretty mundane similarities? Isn't it reasonable to expect that the main figure of a given religion is going to be endowed with certain properties that inspire awe, such as fulfilment, founding the universe and cosmos, humbling those that are self-righteous, etc.?
I'm not arguing against the fact that many religions have commonalities with each other, and it's actually one of the most interesting parts about religion, but this isn't a reason to jump to the conclusion that Christianity is based off of Egyptian beliefs, nor that both of them are necessarily based off of astrological beliefs.
The movie also takes some liberties in what they call a "literary similarity", such as assuming that The Mysteries in Egyptian texts has the same meaning as as The Miracles in Christian texts. Maybe... but we're not provided any context with which to make that judgment ourselves. Not only that, but these would be translation from Egyptian Hieroglyphics - that's pretty tough translation on top of all that. I can cherry-pick quotes and data out of my older blog entries and not show any context in order to imply the same relationship. Without any context, this information doesn't do us a lot of good.
There's a good deal of time spent showing that a lot of the bible is plagiarized or influenced by earlier epics, poems, and stories. If you, like I, don't regard the bible as a book handed to humans by a god, but as a work of man, this isn't a shocking revelation. We would naturally expect that new works would be influenced by older ones (indeed, we see this happening in all creative aspects of our modern society). Again, many religions share commonalities. What does this prove?
And now more stand-up? Jeez. Come on guys. The movie provides more stand-up as a voice over while it shows pictures on the screen ridiculing what the bible says. Hey, it's pretty easy to do that, I'll try:
People that made the movie Zeitgeist actually believe that all religions are caused by the stars, and that 9/11 is a giant conspiracy cover up, even though anyone that has ever worked in any capacity with a government knows that if there's two things a government can't do, it's:
- Act efficiently
- Keep secrets
Blah. If you're going to make some allegations, get on with it. Anyone can sling mud.
The movie claims to analyze the number of historians that have written about Jesus, dismissing three of the four they note outright, because they refer to him as Christ, or "The Annointed", which is a title rather than a specific reference to Jesus Christ himself. The fourth they dismiss on the grounds that he has been discredited. I don't see any sources or citations that support these claims.
However, if I go to Wikipedia and type in "Historical Jesus" in my search bar, I'm presented with a page that has many links, sources and citations, and discusses, in a balanced manner, the accuracy and likelihood of Jesus as a historical figure, and what his live may really have been. If you are actually interested in this subject, this is a really interesting page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus
And now even more voice-overs. Who are we listening to? Are we expected to just take everything that is being told to us in voice-over as fact, or as some kind of authority? We haven't yet seen one of these voices attached to a talking head, or with a name or credential supplied. Maybe they're just telling a story, but it'd sure be nice to see something to let us in on that fact.
Now we enter part 2 of the movie, and things start to get kah-razy.
Looks like we're entering a 9/11 conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories are interesting, but that's about as far as they usually go.
We start off being treated to a bunch of news clips, most of which appear to be right at the scene of the event, as people are being rescued. These people are making claims about what has just happened and most of the claims we're presented with relate to Zeitgeist's side of the story. Again, with no context as to how many people there were citing the other side of the claims that the legitimate investigations have determined to be true. We have to understand that many of these kind of testimonies are going to be colored with fear, terror, shock, and adrenaline. All of these elements have been proven to affect our memories and the way we remember things.
We end the montage with someone saying "It was like there were explosives in the building" (a claim that was analyzed by Popular Mechanics and shown to be highly unlikely, given that all of the actual recorded evidence (non-testimonial) was consistent with the findings of a structural collapse caused by the weakening of the supporting structure of the building, and not explosions). Lastly we're treated to a black screen with white text, that has the heading "The 911 Myth". I guess we know which avenue this movie is going to take.
Before going further, it's important to note a fallacy committed by the film makers, and that is the fallacy of the strawman attack. They phrase it as follows: (I'm paraphrasing) "The 9/11 damage was caused by planes hijacked by terrorists, under the direction of Osama Bin Laden...". So far we're consistent with what has been determined by independant committees. At the bottom, they include something that has already been rejected - that there were no warnings for these terrorist attacks. The same commission that confirmed the damage as the cause of the hijacked planes also confirmed that there were indeed warnings about the attack, and that the government did not adequately heed these warnings.
This is a strawman fallacy because they are building up a metaphorical strawman for their opponent - one that contains some legitimate claims and some already proven false claims. The claim that there were no warnings (along with the other stuff that was true) is then knocked down easily, and then it appears that the whole set of claims were proven false. This is disingenuous, and not what we want to see from good documentaries.
One of the things that irk me with conspiracy theories is that there is never any room for coincidence. Every thing that may be a valid coincidence (example, Bush family eating breakfast with other high-powered families, such as the Pakistani leader), immediately lends support to the theory in question.
We have to ask ourselves - what would prove this theory wrong? For it to be a valid rational pursuit, we need to have clear ideas as to what proves them not just correct, but also incorrect. This is how we do science. The problem is that conspiracy theories pick and choose their evidence - they choose the positive evidence and coincidences that support the theory, but discard any of the many other coincidences that do not, and even go as far as suggesting that the lack of evidence is proof of the theory, since the government must have covered that up. Once you've gone this far, you can no longer call what you are doing a theory - it's bad investigation and junk science.
One hilarious claim the movie makes is that evidence of Osama Bin Laden on a tape that was revealed as potential proof that he was behind the terrorist act was planted because the person in the video has darker skin, and fuller cheeks. Of course, in this case, the American government, who have so far been capable of orchestrating the greatest cover up the world has ever seen (anyone here ever worked with or in the government? We know how likely this is...), but they forgot to hire someone to do proper makeup. This is classic conspiracy theory - the people behind the theory are absolutely brilliant at orchestrating the theory, but they always seem to make these bumbling kind of mistakes. Again, let's use Occam's Razor here to slice away the fat. Which is more likely - that Osama's appearance, the lighting in the video, and his health have changed between various footage and images of him, or that the government planted this evidence to frame him, and that they messed up his make-up. Did you guess government cover-up? Really? Stop reading this blog and go eat some sand.
Here's another classic exmaple given: George H.W. Bush was meeting with Osama's older brother, Shafig bin Laden, on the morning of 9/11 at a Carlyle Group function. Wow, really? Another bumbling mistake! How on earth did these guys manage to pull together something this huge, gather together the massive amount of financial resources needed (there is massive overhead to stuff like this - $100,000 from a bunch of countries is not going to cut the costs you would see from planning, overhead, and hush money on this order), and STILL screw up and forget that it's happening on this day. Doh! Why didn't we think about having George senior go and do something totally unrelated to the massive thing we've been planning for years. Boy, is there egg on our face. Is it possible that this is just a coincidence? That certainly seems more likely to me.
Next up are comments about the Pentagon and terrorists flying them, theories of explosives, firemen making claims about the way floors would fall in a building in this situation (which we really have not ever had good evidence to watch - we can't pretend to know exactly how something like this is going to happen), and more classic claims of the many 9/11 theories. This subject has already been covered very well by Popular Mechanics, so I won't bother wasting time getting into it.
Ah, nice, and now I hear the guy's from Loose Change talking over the footage we're given. These guys actually debated the people that investigated their claims from Popular Mechanics, and came off as aggressive and angry, but without a lot of good science to backup their claims. If you want to catch that excellent debate, I recommend watching it here. That is a much better analysis of the 9/11 conspiracy that this film is.
We also hear a lot of voice-overs that say things like "There was absolutely no evidence that a plane had hit the building", but we are never given any idea who that is that is talking. Soundbites are a great way of punctuating footage, but they do not act as valid evidence, and we should always always be skeptical when we're treated to footage and a soundbite without being given the source. You can tape record my voice and make it grainy, and then play that over footage of your choice to make your own point. Be skeptical. Don't accept things like this on faith.
Blah blah blah William Rodriguez talking about an explosion from the basement of the WTC tower. The only credential providing for this guy is that he worked in the building for 20 years. Well, that's reassuring. I'm sure he's a good candidate to judge how a sub-basement explosion would feel differently from that of a plane smashing into the building.
Now we get really nutty, and the truth is revealed. The United States government staged the attack as a false flag attack on its own citizens in order to manipulate the public towards its own ends. Let's look at the claim here. The claim implies that the attacks were staged because the public could not be manipulated, as effectively, without making a false flag attack. For example, staging an attack on our own soldiers in foreign soil. Or just using propaganda effectively. Or anything else. Aren't there other options? If the only goal was to manipulate the populace, wouldn't it make more sense to do something that slightly less chaotic and random? You can't really guess at how the public is going to react to something like this. What if riots broke out and general pandemonium occurred? What if the terrorists caught wind of this, and chose to make their own attacks in addition to the ones that the government was supposed to be making. You could argue that with so much of the US infrastructure going towards supporting their own false flag attack, they would have scarcely had any resources left over to deal with legitimate terrorist attacks.
The movie starts to move into claims based around the central banking system of the US, and implying that there is a necessary cycle of creating debt, followed by producing more money to pay off that debt, followed by creating even more debt, etc. People that have any economic background know that this is a pretty sophomoric understanding of the way banking works, and although my own background only goes towards a few classes I took in my undergrad, and the podcasts and financial websites I read these days, I can tell that the view being presented is over-simplified and naive. This is consistent with most of the questions have been asked, and the way most of the evidence has been presented thus far.
A quote is presented by Woodrow Wilson, but is taken out of context, and also leaves out some significant parts. In Woodrow's quote, he was relating to the statesmen of the US congress how significant a role each of them played in ensuring that banking was not abused - not a condemnation of the country's banking system. Woodrow actually was responsible for enacting some fairly important changes to the way finance was dealt with in the states, but that's neither here nor there.
There are other quotes listed, but I don't care to look them up as well, and this movie's credibility is already questionable enough that I don't find this particular evidence convincing.
There is a lot of time spent looking with hindsight back at the way the Federal Reserve responded to various economic crises. Again, anyone with any economic background knows that the economy is a fickle monster, and we are still trying to determine good theories (actual theories) to understand how it operates, and how we can achieve the desired results that we would like to see (minimize recession, maximize growth). Looking back in hindsight and applying post-hoc reasoning loses sight of the fact that during the great depression, the same amount of knowledge and experience that we now possess was not available.
If you want to actually learn about the way banking works, what causes many of the economic problems we are currently going through, and read good critical analysis of the banking and financial claims and statements that we are constantly seeing in newspaper headlines these days, I recommend reading the Long Run Blog. These guys do their research and have worked in and out of financial institutions. Don't get your economy knowledge from a movie like Zeitgeist.
Oh my god. Now we've hit on the claim that "There is no law, whatsoever, that requires you to pay income tax". Well, that's it. This movie is awful. Patently, completely, shitty. This issue has been covered on Boing Boing, Google News, and many other sites, and is just one more ludicrous claim that this movie vomits up into my eyes. There's actually some hilarious documentation and legal briefs that you can read related to morons like Wesley Snipes that have tried to get away with this evasive maneuver to avoid paying tax. You can bet that the US government doesn't agree with this movie. If you want to actually read about the history of US income tax, and how it all comes out in the wash, I recommend doing what most people do, and checking out the Wikipedia article for it, here. Now, I'm sure Zeitgeist would argue that "the people controlling the banks just change that article to suit what they believe" or something along those lines. This is the same problem I mentioned earlier with conspiracy theories - there's never any way to prove them wrong. Any evidence refuting them just becomes evidence supporting them. Garbage.
This whole movie is based on numerous faulty premises. It doesn't matter how well a theory is argued for if the premises upon which it rests are false. If I tell you that 2 is 3, and then spend two hours proving to you that as a result, 1 + 2 = 4, it doesn't matter, because my entire argument is based on the false premise that 2 is 3. Figure out why my argument is faulty, and you can skip watching this movie completely.
It's actually tragic in a way - this movie uses the downward slide of the US's quality of education as further evidence to support its own point. Ironically, if the quality of education was better, many more people would be looking at this movie critically and seeing how flawed it is. They even have the balls to talk about how people need to learn how to think critically. Geez. This movie would not exist without the problems that it takes issue with. This does not prove or disprove any of the specific points made in the movie, it's just an interesting tangent.
They end the film talking about the North American Union, and making grand claims about how you haven't heard about it because it's totally secret, and only one reporter has had the courage to talk about it. Of course, that's strange, when you can just look on Wikipedia, and see everything there is about this (not to mention that it has been acknowledged by all three governments, all of which have indicated that there's no plans to go ahead with this approach). You can read more about that here.
Lastly we get a nice long interview with some guy that was friends with one of the Rockefellers. This really means nothing. We recently have had a lot of press coverage about an astronaut that claims he has definitely seen UFOs, and seen covered up UFO documents. The skeptical community has barely bothered to yawn at this claim. Sure, you're an astronaut, but that doesn't mean that you have good critical thinking skills. Shows us the evidence, and then we'll take notice.
Oh, I'm corrected, they end with a quote from one of the greatest popularizers of science ever, Carl Sagan. Not only that, but Carl Sagan was an excellent critical thinker, and a huge boon to the skeptical community. He would tear this movie apart.
Summary: The people that made this movie have a clear agenda, and that is always something that should cause you to be skeptical. What is the other side of this? You've watched this film, but have you really analyzed the other side of things, in the same depth that this film has provided? At the very least, you owe it to yourself to watch that debate, and, ignoring the obvious such as the age difference, listen to the claims made by each side, and how that is being presented. What does the science tell us.
There can be no doubt that the government currently in power has turned the terrorist attack in their favour, and used it to allow them to roll back civil rights and other things. As well, they've also engaged in fear-mongering to continue doing this in the face of criticism. I don't think there are many people that would debate this. But to go from this and use this as evidence to support a theory that the 9/11 attacks were done on purpose by the ruling republican government is a non-sequitur. We do not get the benefit of looking back in hindsight, seeing how things have turned out, and then trying to cherry-pick our data to support that. The theory of an inside job must stand on its own, and it is completely irrelevant how the government has responded to this after the fact. What does the science tell us?
This movie is fairly well produced. I can see why that may entice some people. In terms of most of the conspiracies that it attempts to shoehorn together into one UBERCONSPIRACY, it doesn't do a particularly good job. Ultimately, nothing new is brought to the table. Illuminati type governments, war-mongering conspiracy theories, the 12 mega bankers that control all of our money, and controlling humans with microchips. This is all fairly well worn territory, and fairly boring stuff when it comes to critical thinking. Not only that but this thing is DAMN long. Two hours isn't that long when you're watching something exciting like The Bourne Supremacy, but for a movie that is conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory... ugh.
The one good thing about this movie is that it presents a lot of material to analyze critically, and practice your skills of skepticism. If you can sit through the whole thing, take it as an opportunity to do that and see if you can spot the many flaws and fallacies in the reasoning present.
And with that note, I'm free! Time to watch something exciting.
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