First let me apologize that this got pretty long. It's sad that 90 minutes of densely packed and compressed bullshit can literally take months to debunk and unravel and while i didn't debunk the whole film here, theres a lot to talk about. Btw MANY people have done thorough and concise debunkings of Zeitgeist they're as easy to find as the "film" itself.

Ok, i'm going to really try to come off as un patronizing and non dickish as possible but I'm in a bit of a bad mood. Why? Because I finally gave into peer pressure, i just fucking sat through the internet movie Zeitgeist, i....of my own free will sat through like 90 minutes or however long it is of the most dishonest, shameful, tinfoil hat retarded film making I have ever seen, it's pretty much exactly what I expected. I opened up a browser window with zeitgeist and a couple other windows with debunkings (one from a christian perspective, one from a skeptic perspective) as well as a google window for fact checking both the film and the debunkings because I had heard how the movie varies between outright lies and fabrications to playing it as fast and loose with the facts and context of sources as could be imagined because they know that that most people will simply be too lazy to fact check it on there own.

I"m writing this because as ironic as it is, this movie has basically spawned it's own religion and people, quite a few furries as well have been badgering for YEARS to see it (OMG you're an atheist? YOU GOTTA SEE ZEITGEIST!! :3 :3 :3). What's depressing is that many of these people are fellow skeptics and rationalists and because the film is critical of christianity they view it as a good skeptic piece of film making all the while not applying the same skeptical eye to it that they apply to religion or 911 truther bullshit they don't believe in. Most of the people that swear by Zeitgeist i've met didn't surprise me. They were exactly the type of people I expected would be swayed by alarming imagery and dramatic music, basically gullible people. I"m not saying everybody that likes it is gullible but like with many things, if it doesn't occur to you to question it, it makes sense and can seem downright convincing.

I knew this movie was going to be a steaming pile of lies and dishonesty when I saw him drawing damning conclusions from jesus's birthday being on december 25th (It's not, everybody knows this we don't know exactly when it is but dec 25th would contradict scripture that is if the guy existed at all which i think he probably did.), to various facts about constellations that even i who had a long standing love affair with astronomy and had a mother very into Egyptology knew immediately were completely bullshit because either the true timelines were contradictory (zodiacs and constellations have changed a lot over time or a lot of the things he said were outright fabrications cited from the same 3 apparently useless authors of apparently very shitty small books. Many cited are more modern constructs that either didn't exist in the first century or were very different). The fact this guy makes SO much mileage with how the words sun and son are pronounced the same just had me cracking up over and over again, it's just ridiculous. Talk about building a sky scraper on a foundation of toothpicks.

As somebody who's hyper critical of religion, I enjoy stuff like this as long as the author has done their research. This guy appears to have read 3 books and just unquestioningly believed them despite the fact that popularity of zeitgeist apparently caught these authors off guard and they have basically confessed when taken to task over how most of what they write is speculation or merely unsubstantiated citations from other books with questionable sources. Following the trail of citations in it was like a game of hot potato, cited authors blaming other authors they cited for data that is just outright WRONG.

I"m not even going to get into the non religious stuff much. THe conspiracy NWO shit was just INSANE. This guy goes from point A to point Q and just skips the rest of the alphabet. It's just.....sigh.

Look, have you ever seen a cheesy hollywood movie, often one of Spielberg's more family friendly affairs? Super 8 and Ai immediately come to mind. Do you know how in very specific scenes the juxtaposition of dramatic music and imagery come off as "moving" or send a chill down your spine? That is very very intentional. There are ways to predictably bring out feelings of profundity in the viewer through music and imagery and the maker of Zeitgeist probably spent all his research time in figuring out how to do that instead of actually checking facts. This is a VERY easy thing to do and it is very easy to get people that don't know any better to have a visceral reaction of fear or outrage based on these film techniques. Everything in zeitgeist seems very urgent, very pressing, very alarming, that was done on purpose. If you can use abstract imagery and sound to get the viewer into a state of unease or outrage, it will suddenly make even the most unsubstantiated nonsense seem palatable.

With all things that are wild claims, don't believe everything you hear, don't believe me, don't believe experts and certainly don't believe fucking Zeitgeist unquestioningly. Look for yourself but keeping in mind that like with science, history is a largely peer reviewed and self correcting process, careers are made by proving the guy making a claim is lying or wrong. If something like Zeitgeist comes along and tells you a bunch of EXTRAORDINARY shit that pisses in the face of every published secular historian on the planet or alleges insane global conspiracies that would require thousands if not MILLIONS of people working in perfect collusion with no obvious reason or funding also keeping in mind that humans are HORRIBLE at keeping secrets (Look at Watergate as an actual "All the way to the top" conspiracy and how impossible they are to maintain.), you have to look at what is more probable. Is every single published historian of relevance wrong or is Internet Conspiracy Theorist #18745 full of shit? Are there a million people working at some insidious global conspiracy or is it bullshit? Which is more likely given the reality you live in and observe? Citations of sources does not mean anything is correct. Citations are there so you can verify for yourself whether citations are accurate and whether the author is somebody reputable. If theres letters like phd, in front of a name, look up where they got those letters from. So many internet apologists and conspiracy wackjobs get their degrees from online diploma mills (I'm looking at you Kent Hovind. Prime example.) and parade them around as if they're some sort of authority. Authority comes through works, and people who do good works go farthest. Is the PHD who's the head of Oxford's evolutionary biology department more reputable than the PHD working at the creation museum in Bumfuck Alabama? Well a quick search will show you one has EXTENSIVELY contributed to the published world dialogue on biology and the other just writes some shit on some website. One is an authority, not because of the letters, but because of their works!

In short, without appealing to an argument from authority fallacy, with substantiatable (is that even a word?) cold reality facts that draw from data that exists in the real world (not religion), consensus actually carries a lot of weight, while it shouldn't be believed unquestionably, it was arrived at for a reason and has probably withstood scrutiny and the tests of time. If somebody tells you the complete opposite, it will only take a a few minutes of research to see whether it has been extensively documented and it's out there for anybody to see or it's bullshit. Zeitgeist is BULLSHIT.