Chronosynclastic Infundibulum

My previous post on the movie “Zeitgeist” was made right after I saw the movie. After reflecting on the movie, spending some time looking at the website, the cited sources etc., I have a slightly different opinion of the movie now.

(Having said that, I still recommend people seeing this movie. The attempt and effort is legitimate. So are a lot of fears expressed in it.)

Virgin Birth

My opinion of the movie received its first dent when, in Part I, it says that Krishna (a Hindu god) was born of a virgin. I may not know about Greek, Roman, or Egyptian mythology, but I do know Hindu mythology and I know for a fact that Krishna is not believed to be of virgin birth. This gives me good reason to suspect the claims about the stories of Horus, or Dionysus, or any other mythical character that the movie talks about.

Authority of Sources

Going back to the source of this ‘information’ in the sources page, I found that the Krishan’s Virgin Birth assertion was obtained from books by M.D. Murdock (a.k.a Acharya S.). Acharya is a major proponent of the Jesus myth hypothesis, but her works cite other works that are of suspect authority, and provides extremely once sides citations. In fact, most of the sources and books cited in the movie website are all in the style of conspiracy theories, and have suspect authority at best. By the principle of inheritance of authority, Zeitgeist is of questionable authority as well.

What is plausible may not be true

Zeitgeist shows what could be a plausible explanation for Christianity, 9/11, and the federal reserve system, but they need not be true. To assert the truth of any statement, one needs to (a) show that the statement cannot be falsified, and (b) all other statements that oppose this statement can be falsified. Zeitgeist fails on both counts, and hence cannot assume credibility to the statements it makes.

Obfuscation Through Over-Simplification

Specifically in Part III, the description of money generation by the Federal Reserve Bank is over-simplified to a point where its practically untrue. The pathological sequence of events that could lead to a financial catastrophe is true, but the described mechanism of the Federal Reserve Bank fueling massive debts on America is not. A good place to get an idea of how money is generated is the Money Creation article on wikipedia.

Also, as far as massive debts due to interests on loans that serve to feed more loans and so on, go.. well… that’s pretty much how any economy runs. The money has to come from somewhere, and this ‘generation’ of money has to be controlled (to avoid ‘over heating’ the economy and spiraling the inflation), the best means of doing so is to attach a penalty to generating money, and that’s what the Federal Reserve accomplishes by charging interest on the money thats generated.

So that’s my 2 cents worth second thoughts on Zeitgeist. However, I still encourage people to see this movie. At the very least, to see what alternate explanations can be provided for a same facts presented to you. All too often you have access only to the media’s interpretation events and facts. This is great way to see the counterculture argument and interpretations.