Zeitgeist Totally Refuted! (Do not post Zeitgeist BS ever again)

Originally posted by shagreen heart
my response to both of you then is, pretend the segment was factually correct. the message remains the same.

You make my point quite succinctly there. What is propaganda? It is misleading information presented in a manner intended to persuade. That's a nice way of putting it, but what you're saying is "it doesn't matter that it's lies, because the message is the same", and what I'm saying is "the fact that it is lies and the message remains the same is indicative of it being propaganda."

If you agree that it is intentional deception, then why do you believe that the message itself is not, similarly, an intentional deception? If it's because you believed that the message was valid before the Zeitgeist crowd came along, that's an instance of their validating themselves by showing agreeing on that subject, even though they came to it through deception, and you came to it through whatever means you did.

living in and understanding nature is absolutely vital, praying/sacrificing won't help the crops grow. why is everything i'm saying met with so much flak?

Perhaps because you claim to like Christianity, but you defend lies against it, and you say things like this. A person of intelligence would certainly agree that being in harmony with nature is vital, and a person of faith would say that praying can very well help the crops grow.

Your implication is that a person has to be one or the other -- a person of faith, or a person of thought. We believe that a person can be both.

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by shagreen heart
my response to both of you then is, pretend the segment was factually correct. the message remains the same.

You make my point quite succinctly there. What is propaganda? It is misleading information presented in a manner intended to persuade. That's a nice way of putting it, but what you're saying is "it doesn't matter that it's lies, because the message is the same", and what I'm saying is "the fact that it is lies and the message remains the same is indicative of it being propaganda."

If you agree that it is intentional deception, then why do you believe that the message itself is not, similarly, an intentional deception? If it's because you believed that the message was valid before the Zeitgeist crowd came along, that's an instance of their validating themselves by showing agreeing on that subject, even though they came to it through deception, and you came to it through whatever means you did.

living in and understanding nature is absolutely vital, praying/sacrificing won't help the crops grow. why is everything i'm saying met with so much flak?

Perhaps because you claim to like Christianity, but you defend lies against it, and you say things like this. A person of intelligence would certainly agree that being in harmony with nature is vital, and a person of faith would say that praying can very well help the crops grow.

Your implication is that a person has to be one or the other -- a person of faith, or a person of thought. We believe that a person can be both.

excuse me, but where did i agree that they were lies? that is NOT something i said in my post. lies are intentional. that is not something i said or agreed on with you, so don't act like i'm unwittingly proving a point in your favor, you're pulling things out again. and i ALSO said, what if there was no mention of religion? the message remains the same, nice of you to ignore that in your favor.

again, i do not agree it was intentional, and i did not state that they were lies. lies are intentional. you're putting words in my mouth and equivocating to pull these points out of your ass, not very logical. quite an absurd and assumptive response.

last time, i'm not defending lies, you can stop saying that please. i would rather there be NO mention of specific religions in the segment.
you can be both, but you have to rationalize with reality first and foremost, you can't rationalize reality with religion. and i'm sorry but a person of faith only BELIEVES that praying helps, it's a self-delusion, whereas i know that if i plant and water my crops at certain times of a year, food will grow. why would i need to pray? even if it is a bad year, praying is not an answer or excuse or justification, and the drought or whatever is not gods will, but the chaos of nature and reality that everyone hates to live in because it is hard work.

you can't rationalize reality with religion, that's where all the problems start.

reply to post by shagreen heart


It doesn't matter whether you think that they are lies, mistakes or something else. You asked why people were giving you so much flak for saying that it didn't matter. As I said, the fact that the claims about Christianity are so obviously incorrect, and have shown to be false since the movie came out, but that there are still people defending it demonstrates that some prefer to accept baseless propaganda over the truth. And those who are being slighted by it are naturally going to take offense.

you can be both, but you have to rationalize with reality first and foremost, you can't rationalize reality with religion. and i'm sorry but a person of faith only BELIEVES that praying helps, it's a self-delusion

Once again, you are making statements which are offensive to Christians, so there's a likely reason you are not getting the response you would like. One can certainly rationalize reality with religion -- fundamentalists do it all the time. And you will find little to no support for your claim that praying is only self-delusional -- there are even scientific studies demonstrating that it helps, though no one is sure why.

reply to post by adjensen

Once again, you are making statements which are offensive to Christians, so there's a likely reason you are not getting the response you would like.

So what? Religion is not free from criticism, especially in reasonable discourse. I think many of the religious values are despicable and morally reprehensible. Why should i hold back my opinion for the sake of not causing offense. You're offended,? other Christians are offended? So what. This isn't a social gathering. It's a debate.

The Westboro baptist church offends many people directly; homosexuals, soldiers, non-believers, and for what? The sake of them not believing in "holy" scripture and living by it's dogma. I oppose this prejudice caused by Christianity and other religions, and this offends you? So what?

Originally posted by awake_and_aware
reply to post by adjensen

 

Once again, you are making statements which are offensive to Christians, so there's a likely reason you are not getting the response you would like.

So what? Religion is not free from criticism, especially in reasonable discourse. I think many of the religious values are despicable and morally reprehensible. Why should i hold back my opinion for the sake of not causing offense. You're offended,? other Christians are offended? So what. This isn't a social gathering. It's a debate.

The Westboro baptist church offends many people directly; homosexuals, soldiers, non-believers, and for what? The sake of them not believing in "holy" scripture and living by it's dogma. I oppose this prejudice caused by Christianity and other religions, and this offends you? So what?

edit on 25/2/11 by awake_and_aware because: (no reason given)

we are all suffering from historical amnesia.
for example, forgetting that many events from the past that offend our sensibilities today, were practiced across the known world, by every type of belief system you can name, and even by those who claimed to have no belief system.

in another thread, someone was commenting on the nuns as a religous order. before there were nuns, there were vestal virgins in rome, and the practices related to vestal virgins were often quite a bit less tame and humanitarian as those associated with nuns. i'm not saying i agree with cloistering, just putting it out there for your consideration. with every immoral act you can name, there are billions of other examples, not even related to religion.

Originally posted by awake_and_aware
reply to post by adjensen

 

Once again, you are making statements which are offensive to Christians, so there's a likely reason you are not getting the response you would like.

So what? Religion is not free from criticism, especially in reasonable discourse. I think many of the religious values are despicable and morally reprehensible. Why should i hold back my opinion for the sake of not causing offense. You're offended,? other Christians are offended? So what. This isn't a social gathering. It's a debate.

The Westboro baptist church offends many people directly; homosexuals, soldiers, non-believers, and for what? The sake of them not believing in "holy" scripture and living by it's dogma. I oppose this prejudice caused by Christianity and other religions, and this offends you? So what?

edit on 25/2/11 by awake_and_aware because: (no reason given)

So, she and Zeitgeist offends us and we argue. People have the right to offend and be offended. We aren't asking for political correctness or special treatment, we are exposing Zeitgeist BS. Personally, i'm fine with people disagreeing with my religion; most of my friends are atheists. However, there is a difference between rational discourse and making crap up to prove a (stupid) point. This is my issue with Zeitgeist. i could care less about it's "solution" and "conspiracy" sections. It's just half baked ideas and half-assed research put together in shiny movie. However, it builds its soap box on lies about my religion.

Let me turn things around so you can see where I'm coming from. One can make a movie arguing that Atheism has it's roots in nihilistic thought and point to it's implications and the people who support it to make their case. You may not like this movie, but it isn't a complete fabrication and has some arguable points. Compare this to a movie that says that Atheists are actually Satanists putting on a mask of unbelief to coerce the faithful into abandoning God. It then goes off and makes claims that Epicurus was the devil and can be seen in Babylonian religious artwork and uses this as "proof" that Epicurus is Satan reincarnating throughout history, having previously been Nietzche and currently incarnated as Richard Dawkins. The second movie gets super popular and people start abandoning Atheism to become Jehovah's Witnesses who keep knocking on your door to "expose Atheism for what it truly is". Which of these two movies are you more mad at?

Originally posted by awake_and_aware
reply to post by adjensen

 

Once again, you are making statements which are offensive to Christians, so there's a likely reason you are not getting the response you would like.

So what? Religion is not free from criticism, especially in reasonable discourse. I think many of the religious values are despicable and morally reprehensible. Why should i hold back my opinion for the sake of not causing offense. You're offended,? other Christians are offended? So what. This isn't a social gathering. It's a debate.

Who said that you can't have an opinion that offends other people? As you should be able to discern from the text you quoted, I was replying to the complaint that the poster had, regarding people giving him a bunch of flack. If you offend, you're likely to generate flack from those you offend, what's hard to understand about that?

By the way, I'm still waiting for you to explain why you spend most of your time demanding evidence of this and evidence for that, but a hundred years of historical evidence that demonstrates that Communism is oppressive, brutal and ineffective means absolutely nothing.

Speaking of "absolutely", I'd also love to hear how your belief in subjective morality can possibly exist within a Zeitgeist reality, which cannot work without absolute control, direction and stability. The very notion of objective, if not absolute morality -- any sustained "I don't agree with this" subjective opinion would make the whole house of cards crumble if it wasn't immediately eliminated.

reply to post by joejones


Good point, I was laboring under the misconception that the Bible was written in Greek and Hebrew and none of those words sound the same in their original language! Good thing you came along and pointed out the phonetic similarities between words in the English language and Anglicanized versions of Hellenized Hebrew names. I would have totally ignored that had I not remembered that God (or SATAN!!11!1) revealed his word to us ONLY in 1611 through the Authorized King James Bible, the same Bible that Jesus, Moses, and Paul used.

reply to post by joejones


Two suggestions. First, I only got through the first part of your post, because you need to break up your paragraphs a bit.

Like this. A massive run on text is less likely to have people slog through it.

Secondly, what I did get through appears to surmise that the Bible was written in English. However, it was written in Koine Greek, so similarities between names or words in English means nothing.

I will never understand theories that are based on there being a secret code, like "Son = Sun", "Luke = Lucifer", or "Jesus = Judas", because there is absolutely no reason for it, if nothing else. It might seem a clever discovery, but what possible reason would the author have to do that? If Judas is Jesus, then call him that. If he's not, then call him "Ralph" or "Mortimer" or something else unrelated so that your secret stays safe.

Originally posted by adjensen
reply to post by joejones

 

Two suggestions. First, I only got through the first part of your post, because you need to break up your paragraphs a bit.

Like this. A massive run on text is less likely to have people slog through it.

Secondly, what I did get through appears to surmise that the Bible was written in English. However, it was written in Koine Greek, so similarities between names or words in English means nothing.

I will never understand theories that are based on there being a secret code, like "Son = Sun", "Luke = Lucifer", or "Jesus = Judas", because there is absolutely no reason for it, if nothing else. It might seem a clever discovery, but what possible reason would the author have to do that? If Judas is Jesus, then call him that. If he's not, then call him "Ralph" or "Mortimer" or something else unrelated so that your secret stays safe.

yeah, like jesus was actually yeshua (joshua in hebrew translated straight to english, and jesus if it does the greek-->latin--->english translation path

Originally posted by adjensen
reply to post by shagreen heart

 

It doesn't matter whether you think that they are lies, mistakes or something else. You asked why people were giving you so much flak for saying that it didn't matter. As I said, the fact that the claims about Christianity are so obviously incorrect, and have shown to be false since the movie came out, but that there are still people defending it demonstrates that some prefer to accept baseless propaganda over the truth. And those who are being slighted by it are naturally going to take offense.

you can be both, but you have to rationalize with reality first and foremost, you can't rationalize reality with religion. and i'm sorry but a person of faith only BELIEVES that praying helps, it's a self-delusion

Once again, you are making statements which are offensive to Christians, so there's a likely reason you are not getting the response you would like. One can certainly rationalize reality with religion -- fundamentalists do it all the time. And you will find little to no support for your claim that praying is only self-delusional -- there are even scientific studies demonstrating that it helps, though no one is sure why.

your reading comprehension is really conveniently poor, isn't it? me NOT thinking they were lies or otherwise had *nothing* to do with why people can't grasp the actual message of zeitgeist instead of argue pointlessly over the religious inaccuracies. understand? how is getting the inaccuracies correct MORE important to you people? because you have a brainwashed agenda, and despite what you may be feeling right now, it's all based in fear.

and no, you can't actually rationalize reality with religion. you can trick yourself into thinking that religion is the reason for reality, but that's ass backwards. you have to know reality properly before you can spin it with religion to make it fit comfortable into your delusion. i'm sorry but that's dead wrong and has no logic.

i'm not actually gonna argue with the praying thing. i was just taking taking an easy example of how religious people build the fantasy that religion or a god governs reality, rather than nature. praying is something you can do without religion, and meditation, talking to/thanking the sun. it's all the same, as long as you thank and bless that force with which you recognize in the universe with real love and without ego, then yeah, i have heard of it working for people. that doesn't implicate religion, or the need to keep these religious myths afloat, it doesn't prove anything directly about them. it's just it's own thing that isn't governed by a single religion.

reply to post by shagreen heart

it's all based in fear.

no, fear is going slowly insane and having no one realize it, not even you.
fear is being told you have cancer.
fear is finding out you're going to have a body part cut off, leaving a foot long scar.
fear is finding out you have to be injected with dangerous poisons to kill your cancer.
fear is waking up from a coma, inside an MRI mahcine and having no idea where you are or what is going on.

your idea of fear is lil kid stuff.

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by shagreen heart

 

it's all based in fear.

no, fear is going slowly insane and having no one realize it, not even you.
fear is being told you have cancer.
fear is finding out you're going to have a body part cut off, leaving a foot long scar.
fear is finding out you have to be injected with dangerous poisons to kill your cancer.
fear is waking up from a coma, inside an MRI mahcine and having no idea where you are or what is going on.

your idea of fear is lil kid stuff.

fear is whatever you're afraid of, it doesn't matter what's happened to you in your life. someone can be afraid of anything, or someone can calibrate what you're talking about as "lil kid stuff". so i don't appreciate being talked down to. the context of my statement meant that christians fear the unknown (as just about everyone does) and anything that threatens their comfortable way of life/mindset, so they fear anything that challenges that.

reply to post by shagreen heart


contrary to your opinion, i wasnt born with a bible in my hand. it's not a genetic trait.
i'm an individual, which you can tell by reading this thread. mind throwing out that box you have prepared for me? cause i'm not getting in it.

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by shagreen heart

 

contrary to your opinion, i wasnt born with a bible in my hand. it's not a genetic trait.
i'm an individual, which you can tell by reading this thread. mind throwing out that box you have prepared for me? cause i'm not getting in it.

...uhhhh

i'm not talking about you. i'm just responding to the fear thing that you reacted to now, without me even giving any context on it. so ya, i'm not talking about you, or calling you anything, or planning on calling you anything. just cause i have a dissenting opinion in this thread doesn't mean i'm attacking everyone

reply to post by shagreen heart


i'm just saying, fear of the unknown is not even ranking on my list. assuming people believe in an afterlife or god because they are afraid of what happens after they die, is not born out by the facts. the lure to not be saddled with things some guy in a fancy dress in rome did, 500 years ago, would easily replace the fear of what might happen when i die, all by itself. not having to worry that i'm going to be left out of things, excluded, shot, blown up, hung, decapitated, and otherwise inflicted with pain, misery and loneliness, would certainly override my fear of what MIGHT happen later. do you think people just up one day and say "gee, think i'll choose this belief so people can treat me like garbage for the next 60 years?"

not hardly.

Originally posted by shagreen heart
your reading comprehension is really conveniently poor, isn't it? me NOT thinking they were lies or otherwise had *nothing* to do with why people can't grasp the actual message of zeitgeist instead of argue pointlessly over the religious inaccuracies. understand?

Yeah, I hate to keep doing the "tit for tat" routine, but it appears that you are the one who is missing the point. I do not care, one iota, whether you think that they are lies or not. Your opinion is of no consequence -- they are inaccurate portrayals, and because they continue in the face of evidence that they are wrong, that makes them intentional. Period, end of discussion.

and no, you can't actually rationalize reality with religion. you can trick yourself into thinking that religion is the reason for reality, but that's ass backwards. you have to know reality properly before you can spin it with religion to make it fit comfortable into your delusion. i'm sorry but that's dead wrong and has no logic.

As I said, and you seem to conveniently ignore, yes you can, and many people do, they are called fundamentalists. I personally do not agree with them, but I understand their point of view. If you accept a supernatural being who can do anything and can intentionally mould reality to meet a stated expectation, this becomes reasonable.

Can you prove that all of reality wasn't created ten minutes ago, and everything in your brain that makes you think that isn't true wasn't created along with reality ten minutes ago? If you are a rational person, the only answer to that is "no, I can't prove it", because you simply assume that it is not correct, but there is no way to prove it.

I'm not saying it's a good idea to define reality by religion, I'm just saying that it can be, and often is.

Originally posted by undo
reply to post by shagreen heart

 

i'm just saying, fear of the unknown is not even ranking on my list. assuming people believe in an afterlife or god because they are afraid of what happens after they die, is not born out by the facts. the lure to not be saddled with things some guy in a fancy dress in rome did, 500 years ago, would easily replace the fear of what might happen when i die, all by itself. not having to worry that i'm going to be left out of things, excluded, shot, blown up, hung, decapitated, and otherwise inflicted with pain, misery and loneliness, would certainly override my fear of what MIGHT happen later. do you think people just up one day and say "gee, think i'll choose this belief so people can treat me like garbage for the next 60 years?"

not hardly.

exactly, it's not born out of facts, so it's irrational, therefore making up a story about it and believing it is leading an irrational life... fear of death is utterly pointless because we all die, and we all have to die. just be happy. if your arm gets cut off, big deal, live life awesomely with one arm. it doesn't matter how you die, because nothing matters at that point. to even flirt with thinking about it is pointless. and fearing anything that MIGHT happen is just as pointless. literally anything could happen, so you just imprison yourself and your happiness and love.

did you know that our brains only calibrate two emotions?

love, and fear. sadness could be abstracted as fear of loss, fear of loneliness, fear of being alone, fear of being lost, fear of change, fear of the unknown, it could be a multitude of fears just within sadness.

but in a world where you understand everything that happens in reality, how everything works, and knowing exactly what to expect, and knowing all the dangers and consequences and tribulations of reality, there is nothing left to fear, you simply arm yourself with knowledge and prepare in anyway you need to. fear is a primal thing, and a good thing, it helped us to learn, but it's also divisive, it keeps tribes as tribes. eventually, we will only need to feel love, and no matter what religion you believe, i truly hope that can happen one day soon.

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by shagreen heart
your reading comprehension is really conveniently poor, isn't it? me NOT thinking they were lies or otherwise had *nothing* to do with why people can't grasp the actual message of zeitgeist instead of argue pointlessly over the religious inaccuracies. understand?

Yeah, I hate to keep doing the "tit for tat" routine, but it appears that you are the one who is missing the point. I do not care, one iota, whether you think that they are lies or not. Your opinion is of no consequence -- they are inaccurate portrayals, and because they continue in the face of evidence that they are wrong, that makes them intentional. Period, end of discussion.

and no, you can't actually rationalize reality with religion. you can trick yourself into thinking that religion is the reason for reality, but that's ass backwards. you have to know reality properly before you can spin it with religion to make it fit comfortable into your delusion. i'm sorry but that's dead wrong and has no logic.

As I said, and you seem to conveniently ignore, yes you can, and many people do, they are called fundamentalists. I personally do not agree with them, but I understand their point of view. If you accept a supernatural being who can do anything and can intentionally mould reality to meet a stated expectation, this becomes reasonable.

Can you prove that all of reality wasn't created ten minutes ago, and everything in your brain that makes you think that isn't true wasn't created along with reality ten minutes ago? If you are a rational person, the only answer to that is "no, I can't prove it", because you simply assume that it is not correct, but there is no way to prove it.

I'm not saying it's a good idea to define reality by religion, I'm just saying that it can be, and often is.

same here, so let me sum it up.
obviously they are not lies because this thread exists. a great example of your poor fundamentalist hypothetical is that, hey, the zeitgeist movie exists. it's a movie, going back and revising it and then replacing it is a pain in the ass. are you going to give someone flak because a text book they wrote a long time ago had bad info, and now that there evidence that says otherwise, that person needs their character assassinated? and i realize how that is different, because the creator could have done better research, but he didn't, and you still miss the broad point, the religious inaccuracies aren't the message, but you focus on them because it's easier to deal with than the reality of the message.

and yeah, something i wrote on a piece of paper 15 minutes ago proves the dumb fundamentalist question, or you know, the big bang or whatever.
i'm talking about reality, the seven liberal arts. you can not make computational, rational sense of reality with your five senses alone, and then just throw religion into the mix.
you have to learn step by step, just as everyone does, how the world makes sense and how you view it. first you identify everything seperately, and slowly build up a vocabulary of the grammar of everything around you. then you learn how they work in relation to one another (logic), then you based off of these two things, you can view and understand their mechanics based off of these step by step, logical processes, rationalize your reality.

so i'm not ignoring what you're saying, what you're saying is simply not true in any logical sense. a fundamentalist who ignores these things is not rational, and not rationalizing reality with religion, he is taking the rational world that works without his beliefs, and irrationalizing it wtih his beliefs, it's ridiculous.