One is forced to wonder: why is Pat Robertson saying such things knowing fully well that he is hurting people through his statements and hate? There has to be a logical explanation for it, and I think I have found one. My explanation is based on three important assumptions: (a) Pat Robertson believes that Jesus died for everyone’s sins, (b) he believes that the end times is near ^[1], and (c) he is a capitalist^[2].

Now, given that Pat Robertson is a capitalist, he must believe that the capitalist economic principles can be applied everything in life, including sin. So according to him, there must be some smallest unit of sin (arguably the smallest unit corresponds to the quality of sin in the ‘original sin‘), and also that Jesus’s death is worth only so many (finite) units of sin. Given that the end times are around the corner — being a shrewd capitalist one needs to get the best ‘bang for the buck’, so to speak — Pat Robertson probably wants to make Jesus’s death more worthwhile by sinning as much as he can so that the quota of sins for which Jesus died may be used up.

After all, every ‘true’ Christian’s goal is to make Jesus’s death worthwhile (in that Jesus’s death should not be in vain). So, it turns out that Pat Robertson is actually out sinning to make Jesus’s death count for something! Now he also knows that you sin then you will probably go to hell, and yet he pursues this path of validate Jesus’s crucifixion. Could there possibly be a greater sacrifice?

^[1]In fact, in the 70s Pat Robertson has predicted that the world would end in 1982!

^[2]This is more of an inference, than an assumption, based on the fact that Pat Robertson is a businessman, owns a broadcasting station, and sells books for money.

The story of King Mahabali

Mahabali was the king of asuras (who are a class of deites, and not demons; demons are called rakshasas in Hindu mythology). The asuras ruled in Paatala loka (which is one of the 14 worlds, and is not hell; hell is called Narka in Hindu mythology). Mahabali expanded his empire to all the 7 ‘lower’ worlds and then invaded Bhuloka (or the earthly world): the lowest of the 7 ‘higher’ worlds. Then he set his eyes on the remaining ‘higher’ worlds which were ruled by devas (another class of deities). The king of devas, Indra, was worried by this expansion and realized that he was no match for Mahabali, so he approached lord Vishnu to save his kingdom. Vishnu then took the form of vamana, or a brahmin boy, and approached Mahabali for Daana or donation/alms. Vamana asked for three steps of land for him to live in. Mahabali agreed. Then Vamana grew so large that in one step he covered all of the higher worlds, and in another step he covered the Bhuloka, and asked Mahabali where he should place his third step. Realizing that he has been bested, Mahabali asked the third step to be put on his head and Vishnu placed his third step on Mahabali’s head sending him to Paatala.

The story of Ramayana (hopelessly abridged)

Prince Rama is sent on an exile with his wife and brother. They wander to south of Vindhya mountains and down south, king Ravana of Lanka abducts Rama’s wife. While searching for his wife he comes across a kingdom of monkeys (vanaras) and with their help he defeats Ravana and rescues his wife.

Obvious connections

So how do these stories point to Aryans and Dravidians? The most obvious references here are (a)the notion of Mahabali being from the ‘lower’ world (possibly refering to south India) and the devas and Vishnu being from the ‘higher’ workd (possibly refering to north India, and (b) Rama being an Arya putra from Ayodhya (in north India) and Ravana being from Lanka (in the south) and the Dravidian people being referred to as ‘monkeys’.

But we need more than such annotated instrumentation to make our case.

Mahabali and Onam

First, lets look at the case of Mahabali. King Mahabali is said to been a very just king and all of his subjects were said to have lived properously during his reign. Yet he is cast down back to Paatala. Also, Paatala could well refer to the state of Kerala (again, in the south) because the Hindu  festival of Onam celerbrated only in Kerala is a celebration of King Mahabali, their King Mahabali. It is worth noting that Hindus in Kerala celebrate the reign of an asura king who was cast down by Vishnu and interestingly, such a celebration is endemic to Kerala. It is not celebrated anywhere else!

Vijayadashami in north and south India

In north India the Hindu festival of Vijayadashami marks the defeat of Ravana by Rama. However, in south India, the same festival marks the defeat of Mahishaura by Durga. Why such different reasons to mark the same festival? The only bridge between the two is the tale that Rama performed a sacrifice to Durga in the eve of the battle with Ravana. This suggests that these were really two different festivals in two different cultures and religions. They were later joined together by expansion of Hinduism into all of India.

The legend of Vindhya and Agasthya

The legend is that Vindhya mountains (which separates north and south India) started growing to such heights that it challenged the path of sun in the sky. So sage Agastya, in order to stop this growth asked Vindhyas to stoop down so that he may cross to down south. He also extracted a promise that Vindhyas would not grow any higher until he returned back north. But Agastya permanently settled in the south, and so the Vindhyas did not grow anymore.

The story (which is from the puranas, and is said to have occured before the itihaasas) can be interpreted as the northerners’ (Aryans) conquest over the Vindhyas (much like the conquest of Mt. Everest) which paved way for migration to south India, thus triggering contact with the south Indian Dravidians.

Genetic Markers, Caste System, and the North-South Divide

A recently published study of genetic profiles of Indian peoples concludes a distinct divide among Ancestral North Indian (ANI) tribes and Ancestral South Indian (ASI) tribes with very strong evidence of enogamy. The study  also revealed that individuals descending from the ANI tribes tend to be in the ‘higher castes’ and are genetically closer to europeans where as individuals descending from the ASI tribes tend to be in the ‘lower castes’. This again points to an Aryan-Dravidian divide that has been there for millenia, and the strong enogamy suggests conflict and competition between the groups, and looks like the Aryans won the struggle and encoded it into their mythology which was then shared with the Dravidians when they all became a single Hindu people, yet isolated from each other by caste barriers.

The pope said that evolution is ok by him. So I guess that means that the Catholics can down become evolutionary biologists/anthropologists and such. I wonder what happened in 150 years that changed Vatican’s mind? Given that Catholics assume that Pope has God’s mandate over Christiandom, Pope must have been talking to god on a fairly regular basis. My best guess is that the Pope got a call from God and it went something like this:

“Hey Benedict! Wassaap? Its your old man here. Howz my favorite catholic doin’?…”

“Oh yeah, by the way, Darwin and I had a long chat some time back. He’s a really nice fella. He’s got an awesome beard too. Nothing like mine, but hey, gotta give props where its due right? Anywayz, so Darwin and I were chillin’ out smoking some reefer and stuff… hey, now don’t be judging, I created it remember? So yeah, I realized Darwin’s a cool dude after all. We play checkers all the time now. He’s awesome, he always let me win! So I’ve decided to let him into heaven….”

“What’s that? Oh, the evolution thing? Yeah… well… tell ya what, we are still vetting Einstein to be let into heaven. All the Democratic angels want him in, but the Republican angels are giving him a tough time, with he being a Jew and not believing in my Son and all, but we’ll get there….”

“Why Einstein? Dude! I am sick and tired of there harps all over the place, I need something different, and Einstein’s awesome on the violin. Anywayz, coming back, here’s what you can do, you can tell everyone that evolution is now cool with Me, and that the whole creating the universe in 7 days.. well Einstein here tells me that if I said that I was going at the speed of light when I created the universe, then somehow my watch slows down, and so my 7 days is really billions of years on earth. And that fits nicely with evolution and everything….”

“What?! Me come down and say that myself? The last time I tried doing something like that they nailed my Son to a tree! No way pal! Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!…”

“Look, I know its not going to be easy convincing everyone, but hey, its not the first time! Remember Galileo? Yeah, we managed to get people to be cool with him after 300 years, and this is just half that time. It’ll work out Benedict… tell ya what, you do this for me and I’ll throw in a couple of extra virgins when you get here. How about that?…”

“Sweet! Gotta go pal. The whole global warming crap that people are into is keepin’ me busy.. I got a few more hurricanes to create in the Atlantic, and yeah, I was tardy on the whole ice-sheet melting thing. Apparently it wasn’t as drastic as last year. Gotta make up for that! Jeez, I need a vacation! Anywayz, gotta go, ciao.”

Image source: http://www.markvernon.com/friendshiponline/images/Jesus&Darwin.jpg

They displayed a world map which marked all the countries which were ‘hostile’ to Christianity. The interesting thing about the maps was the color coding they used. All the countries which do not recognize Christianity as a religion were color mellow yellow. These were countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, countries in Africa etc. But countries like India and Turkey, which upload the freedom of religion were marked bright blood red as ‘hostile’ regions!

It was a clever game they were playing. It is obvious that there is little you can do to promote Christianity in countries whose political atmosphere restricts them, hence a mellow yellow. However in secular countries like India and Turkey, you have the right to practice and preach Christianity. and of course, there will always be fundamentalist elements in the society who indulge in violence against religions they do not approve personally (e.g., Graham Stains murder in Orissa, India). In such secular countries, you have been sanctioned the right to convert as many as you can to your religion. So, Bryan House of Prayer decided bring people’s attention to such countries with the bright red.

Come to think of it, I dont think there is any religion in India whose fundamentalists will claim that India is a safe house for them. The Hindus cry foul over the political parties appeasing the Muslims, Muslims cite Babri Masjid, Christians cite Graham Stains, and so on. However, we have so many Christian missionaries, churches, schools, convents etc. in India, all of which are working without any persecution. In fact a lot of Hindu parents send their kids to Christian schools!

Coming back, the lady at the Bryan House of Prayer booth goes on to say “Did you know over 300,000 Christians are killed every year for their beliefs? In the US today, they merely mock us, but soon they will come for us. They will persecute us for our beliefs.”

What’s with this maniacal desperation to be persecuted for being a Christian?!? I thought Christianity was a religion of peace, not masochism!!

Halloween is the Christianized bastardization of the wonderful Celtic harvest festival called Samhain. One of the more relatively recent bastardization is called ‘Trick-or-treating’ (it started circa 1930s). Trick-or-treating typically involves children going from house to house asking for candy with the question ‘Trick or treat?’ (Leaving all the pedophiles salivating in the process). The ‘treat’ part being a ritualized begging for candy, and the ‘trick’ part referring to the threat of playing a trick on the owner of house, or on the property itself.

So yeah, we have trick-or-treating during Halloween. There is a name for this whole process of asking for candy or threatening with not-so-pleasant consequences – back where I come from, its called Extortion.

Coming back to my original claim, have you noticed how US likes to talk to other nations? — “Give us your oil, or we’ll invade you country under a false pretext”, “Surrender you nuclear technology to us, only we should have nuclear weapons, not you. Or else, we’ll impose sanctions on you”, “Remove your subsidies agriculture (but we’ll keep ours) so that we can dump our surplus in your market, or else we will ban import of your goods into the US”, and so on.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like trick-or-treat to me! Like I said, Bush, Cheny,and co. must have loved trick-or-treating during Halloween, coz’ they are doing it with the rest of the world today; only this time thousands end up dying for their (Bush and Cheny’s) amusement.

Typically, the female archetypes reflect role and perception of women in the culture and age that the myth belong to (or originated from). Among the various female archetypes from different cultures, myths and ages, nothing is more contrasting than the one in the western mythology and Indian (I make no mention of other eastern mythology ‘cuz I dont know enough about them).

All of the female archetypes in western fairy tales, and Judeo-Christian mythology are a combination of weak, motherly, manipulative, gossipy, insubordinate, ‘evil’, and virginal (in a side-kick sort of way). To illustrate better:

• ‘Damsel in distress’ is a combination of weak and virginal
• ‘Fairy godmother’ is motherly
• ‘Evil step-mother’ or ‘evil step-sister’ is a combination of ‘evil’ and manipulative
• Lot’s wife in the Bible is a combination of weak, gossipy, and insubordinate
• Eve in the Bible is a combination of weak and insubordinate, and so on.

Although there are a few positive archetypes, none of them come close to the male archetype ‘Hero’ that is the most popular one in all myths and folktale.

Contrastingly, however, in Indian/Hindu mythology, there are many positive female characters that translate to some positive male archetypes that approaches the ‘Hero’ archetype. Take for instance, the story of the Hindu goddess ‘Durga’ she was bestowed with the best traits/weapons of all the gods to create the most powerful being the slay the demon that none of the god could kill individually.

Similarly, the character of ‘Kali’ is another example of the female ‘Hero’ archetype in Hindu mythology. In fact, although the character of ‘Radha’, Krishana’s lover may not seem like the classic ‘hero’ archetype, the life of ‘Radha’ follows Joseph Campbell’s classic ‘Hero’s journey’. She is a simple (virtually unknown) human lover and subsequently ascends to be the divine better half of Krishna.

It is interesting to note that the all the female archetypes in western folklore and mythology are present in the Hindu mythology as well. But Hindu mythology provides a a wider range of female archetypes that includes the ‘Hero’ archetype. In other words, all archetypes were applied equally to both men and women. It goes to demonstrate that in the Vedic age, women were considered on par with men. Something that India has lost today, and worse, something the west hasn’t had for over two thousand years, and women continue to struggle for equality.

(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.

The statement on the website says:

Zeitgeist was created as a non-profit filmiac expression to inspire people to start looking at the world from a more critical perspective and to understand that very often things are not what the population at large think they are. The information in Zeitgeist was established over a year long period of research and the current Source page on this site lists the basic sources used / referenced. Soon, an Interactive Transcript will be online with detailed footnotes and links so exact sources and further research can be relayed.

…

Here’s the movie for your viewing. Note that the movie is 2 hours long, so make sure you have enough time to watch it. But I guarantee that you will have strong opinions about it one way or the other.
Don’t forget to check out the Clarifications (which dented my confidence in the authenticity of the ‘facts’ in the movie), and the Sources sections.

Without further ado, here’s the movie :)

I use the term ‘organized religion’ in the same tenor as ‘organized crime’. There is simply too much similarity in the way they operate for me to ignore it. Although, there’s where the comparision ends. Organized religion has a well defined purpose like organised crime. Organized crime wants to control was much area/domain as possible, and make as much money as it can, dodging authority and/or greasing its’ palm. Organized religion wants to spread its dominion in the community to the extend possible, and control as much of the people as possible through the vicious circle of ‘sin and repentance’, dodging reasoning, rationality and pursuit of true knowledge.

I have clarify at this point that I make a very clear distinction between god and religion. I guess I’ll write up a post on god sometime in the future, but for now its about religion.

If I were god (as most of the organized religions define god), then I’d make the world as a perfect place simply because its easier to manage and wonderful place to be, for your kids (i.e. humans) to live and die. Unless, of course, I want to raise the bar, I want a challenge. Since I am god, the all-powerful, nothing could be challenging, so I wouldnt really gain anything by creating an imperfect world and then getting a high out of managing it. Which means that I actually created a perfect world, but imprefection crept into it, thanks to the devil (garden of eden and the serpent). If I am god, and I created eveything, then I must have created devil as well… so devil should be perfect as well, and completely controllable by god, but obviously the devil isnt.. so there is some disconnect there. Even if it wasnt the devil, imperfection still crept in, like entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. But god should be able to set all that right.. after all he is god! At this point logic fails. So what’s really going on? I believe that this inherent inconsistency is because of the way religion conceptualizes god. I believe that the god that people know from religion is a far cry from truth, more on that in some future post :)

Lets consider the concept of sin. The 10 commandments. Were we so stupid that it took god to tell us what we need to do for a stable society? Any bloke will tell you that if you are busy murdering others, sleeping with ppl indiscriminately, stealing other people’s property etc. it will take no time for the society to disintegrate into anarchy! So to safeguard the interests of the people, some of the smarter folks came up with certain ‘rules’.

These ‘rules’ were written and passed on from generation to generation, and the keepers of the rules ensured that there was peace and stability in the society. At one point the keepers of the rules kinda realized that if everyone is following the rules, then the keepers arent really needed, and so they wont be as important as they’d like to be, after all they were the ones who historically controlled and stablized the community, they were under the threat of obselence! So they needed something else, something that was more powerful than human, an all-seeing, all-powerful entity. God was the ideal candidate, and so they chose god as the ultimate guardian. The best way to control people was to keep them under constant fear, and threat, almost Orwellian. So they went ahead and made all the most basic and natural human instincts a sin, including birth itself (the original sin)! The only way out for the people is thru the keepers themselves… that way they retain control. And that is the ultimate goal of any organized religion, control the society.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, there are people who have received enlightenment, who have genuinely figured out what it takes to lead a righteous and fulfilling life, and are sharing it with other people. When the man, in flesh and blood, perished, his idea lingered, and was the ideal platform for the keepers to comandeer his teachings and manipulate it to their end.

Every religion starts off with the best intensions and teachings, but will invariably degrade into a tool of mass control. It cannot be helped, its in the very nature of nature. Entropy of the world is always increasing….

They walk up to me and ask me if I would be interested in a ‘spritual’ survey. All my doubts were dispelled at that moment, and I said to myself ‘Boys, get ready to sit around for a long time. I have over an hour and half at my disposal I couldnt have asked for better entertainment’. They start with some harmless questions like do you believe in god, are u religious etc. But I knew it was coming, and so I waited. One of them asked me ‘Do you believe in Christ?’ I knew the gun was fired, and the kids were amatures. This was going to be a fun hour.

Kids: ‘Are u a christian?’
Me: ‘No’
Kids: ‘Have you read the bible?’
Me: ‘Yes’
Kids: ‘I really respect you for having read the bible, even though you are not christian.’
Me: ‘I have read hindu, buddist, and some Baha’i scriptures as well. Have you?’
Kids, slightly confused: ‘uhhh… no. We have read the bible’
Kids: ‘Do you think Jesus Christ was sent by god?’
Me: ‘Yes, just like Moses, Abraham, Mohammad Prophet, Buddha, Bahaulla and many others’
This was definitely not going the way they expected it to. They try a different approach.
Kids: ‘Do you think bible is the word of god?’
Me: ‘Yes’
Kids: ‘What do you think it really means when Jesus says ‘I am god’ in the bible?’
Me: ‘It simply means that what he has to say are words of god, and not his as a human in flesh and blood.’
Kids: ‘So you dont think he is god?’
Me: ‘Its metaphorical, a lot of bible is. They are not to be taken literally.’

They were stumped at this point. I dont think it had ever occured to them that a lot of what is written in a scripture could be more than that meets the eye, and that it could carry a meaning other than the obvious. I had the luxury of having read Joseph Campbell. This was an uneven match. I guess the kids were even feeling intimidated by my rebuttal, so they decided to go for the juglar and fight it out… it was bad move.

Kids: ‘Let us tell you what we believe in. We believe that bible is the word of god, and Jesus Christ is god himself. The only way to heaven is through him, and no one else, no other religion’
I raised my eye brows.
Me: ‘Are you telling me that anyone who does follow christianity will go to hell?’
Kids: ‘Yes. We believe that christ in the only true god, and all other religions are misguiding’

That was it. This was not something I was going to tolerate. I have no qualms with people preaching their religion or their ideology, but to call other religions a sham, deceit is where I draw the line. No more defensive arguments. I went on the offensive.

Me: ‘Why so? What does bible say about it?’
Kids: ‘Jesus says that there will be people after him who will claim to be prophets, but we shouldnt be misled by them.’
Me: ‘True enough, but does he say anyone and everyone who claims to bring the word of god is fake? Or did he mean that there may be many heretics that one should be wary of?’

They are stumped again. Obviously they havent really tried to understand the bible, I almost feel sorry for them. Ego is a funny thing, it doesnt let you give in even when you know you have lost. They try to keep the fight, feebly so.

Kids: ‘Other religions like Islam are in direct conflict with Christianity. One cant be both.’

They fell straight into the trap. This was too easy.

Me: ‘Have u read Quoran?’
Kids: ‘No’
Me: ‘Then how can you denounce someting that u havent read, and how can you claim that it is in direct conflict with christianity?’
The kids then went on about how Mohammad’s life was mostly militaristic whereas jesus was all abt peace and preached the path of non violence and so on. This was check and mate.
Me: ‘Going by your arguement, the very people who protect you liberty, the american soldiers who are risking their life in Iraq are not following christianity, and so will have to go to hell. Does your religion abandon its own soldiers to damnation?’

They didnt expect this sort of attack, and were in way armed to defend it.

Kids: ‘It depends on the situation…’
Me: ‘Exactly… why is it so hard to believe that the situation Mohammad lived in, warrented one?’

Kids: ‘But look at osama bin laden…’
Me: ‘Look at the spanish inquisition’

It was game over. They knew it.
Kids: ‘I guess we dissagree on this one. Let us just tell you what we think. It is no way to say that you are wrong’
Me: ‘I think you have already told me what you think. Is there anything more?’
They kids said something more abt christianity and jesus being god and stuff, thanked me for their time and left.

There was also an argument about christianity being the sole truth, and I was arguing abt equality of religions and incompleteness of each of them in isolation and stuff, but I dont remember where they fit in the excerpt above.

I cant help but feel sorry for the kids. Illusion of enlightenment in their ignorance.