Here. A timely and very necessary exercise, but don’t try it unless you have a broadband connection (or if you are easily offended by having holes poked in your religion). At almost two hours, the movie is bandwidth intensive.
'Luthon64
Thanks. I will be downloading it ASAP. Have you seen it? What did you think?
Er, perhaps you misunderstand: you can watch the movie by clicking on the viewer-pane of the page linked to in my opening post. It’s definitely worth watching, provided that you have available the required bandwidth.
'Luthon64
All of it?
Was I watching the same movie?
I must agree that the first part is very good. The challenge to religious belief is strong and has a lot of information which can be cross-checked and verified. The conclusion about religious belief follows the premise of http://www.thegodmovie.com/ (and has been credited in the sources section). It isn’t perfect, they do say that the personality of Jesus is not references by any non-biblical sources at the time when Jesus does appear as a prophet in the Koran. However, that is less a proof of his existence and probably more proof of a shared mythology (such as the shared Moses, Noah, Joseph, etcetera). I would really recommend the first part to (everyone, but that’s not realistic, instead …) sceptics.
Then the wheels came off.
Part two of the film belongs in the conspiracy theories section of this forum and is a topic which has been discussed previously. I’m not saying that they are right or that they are wrong, I’m just saying that they commit a lot of the logical fallacies that conspiracy pundits use and the more gullible fall for. One quick example is the Argument from Silence used in a few places, including the fact that the 911 commission couldn’t explain what happened at building 7 and didn’t comment, the suggestion is that they couldn’t come up with a good enough lie. Classic fallacy.
Now I’m not saying that I disagree with the evidence that they provided, I’m just not willing to be lead down the garden path to the “obvious” conclusion. I have heard the questions (mostly the ones about about wreckage at the Pentagon [refer to “The plane that wasn’t there”] and in Pennsylvania) and some of them are unanswered questions to me. Why do we need a conspiracy to fill-in the blanks?
There are some NIST (a government agency, I know) online documents at http://wtc.nist.gov/ on the twin towers investigation which come up with answers. I’m not going to stand here and profess them all to be true facts, but in applying Occam’s Razor I’d lean towards the points put forward by the scientists than the ones put forward by the conspiracy supporters.
I really actually laughed when the whole 911 conspiracy was concluded with the speech from John F. Kennedy about freedom from oppression overlaid with footage of his death. A shameless anchor to tie these conspiracies together, the new generation conspiracy with the older generation conspiracy, continuing the “pattern” of these events.
Part three actually doesn’t have a home here at skeptic.za.org as politics or anti-globalisation is really not something that is within the realm of scepticism. If you don’t agree with capitalism, it is not a matter of scepticism, you are simply a [socialist / anti-globilisation / anti-corporation] proponent (pick your own title). Equally, if you agree with capitalism, you are just picking a side. It’s politics and nothing more.
You receive gentle suggestion that great individuals from our past “side” with the film makers, note that Gandhi, Malcolm X, John Lennon aren’t able to actually agree or disagree with the movie, but their pictures are shown in the closing montage. Thank goodness that Nelson Mandela is still with us, or he too might have been added to the montage. These people were not even quoted at any point in the film, but somehow have been associated with the political views of the film makers.
So when I view the film overall in all its parts, how can it be summarised?
Stop believing in religious bullshit … here I have a new belief system for you to fill the void.
I’d put this on the same shelf as the film “What the bleep…” where there are (very few) tantalising truths but they get drowned-out by the promotion of a new belief system.
Yes: precisely because of the juxtaposition you so ably point out and the educational value this has as an exercise in recognising a common woo-woo tactic of analysing something factually and reasonably, and then using it as a launch pad for nonsense, so that the whole thing has a superficial flavour of reason.
'Luthon64
Has anybody seen this movie?www.zeitgeistmovie.com It is quite powerful. I know a bit about the stars, and the part “The kings following Sirius” does not quite ring true to me, but apart from that it seems to me OK. If there are any other factual problems with it I would like to know about it.
This topic has been raised in the past. See here.
'Luthon64