An archipelago of things reclaimed from the sea.

Until two weeks ago, I had never heard of Zeitgeist, The Movie, an anonymously created internet film released earlier this year. My wife viewed the movie from its official site and then invited me to watch it with her a few days later. Though it purports to be a film that reveals long-concealed truths about religion, politics, 9/11, central banking, and the new world order, Zeitgeist is in reality such a mixed bag of fact and propaganda that much of its potential impact is blunted and its credibility, even when telling the truth, is severely compromised. This is doubly unfortunate, since we desperately need to take a long, hard look at the issues the film concerns itself with. The official story of the 9/11 tragedy is, indeed, full of holes that beg to be explained. Central banking truly is as corrupt and deleterious as the film makes it out to be. And the power elite surely have abused (and still do abuse) the Christian faith in order to manipulate the masses. But none of this justifies making a messy agitprop mishmash whose first section essentially functions as a hachet piece on the historicity of Jesus Christ and whose only prescription for change after nearly two hours of “unveiling the man behind the curtain” is to mawkishly enjoin its audience to “choose love over fear.” This is rendered all the more frustrating when one considers the film that it could have been.

Of course, I make no secret on this blog of the fact that I am a Christian. However, I am not only bothered by the film’s blatant inaccuracies regarding the historicity of Jesus, but also by the disingenuous methods that Zeitgeist employs throughout all sections of the film, even when examining troubling questions about the 9/11 attacks and the nefarious influence of central banking on every facet of modern life. What follows is a list of problems I have identified with Zeitgeist’s supposed factual evidence, with its methods of conveying that information, and with the reductionistic conclusions which it ultimately tries to peddle to its hapless audience. (more…)