Zeitgeist

[Otter]

I found something on youtube that talks about what christianity, federal reserve, and 9/11 have in common.  It's really confusing to understand this at my age, but hopefully some adults here can comprehend this.

What I would like you guys to do is to view this video and tell me if the movie is telling the truth, that our lives are controlled by the government and/or aliens or gods.

heres the link

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/">http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/</a><!-- m -->

[David]

Well the country's aware today that there's a lot of deep corruption in our government and cover-ups all over the place, and that our constitution and rights have been undermined in the name of security. The only debate, I think, is which events are a part of this corruption and which aren't. I've only watched 3/4 of the video so far. It's hard to verify a lot of the stuff, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had 95% or more of their facts straight and were essentially right. In one part I recognized the voice of a dude that spoke in The Secret. I don't know his name, but it was cool.

The point at which I stopped the video was at the income tax part. It made me stop and think. Apparently they're right - most U.S. citizens aren't actually required by any written law to pay income tax, but it sounds like it can be a hell of a nasty process to be acquitted of the charge of failure to pay income tax. You can't win a game unless you know the rules, and who wins a legal battle is often about who knows more or who is more cunning, not about who's right.

David

[Otter]

Look up william cooper on the encylopedias and wikipedia.  He, on youtube(his videos are being deleted from what i heard), said something about UFOs and aliens.  He said they visited us and showed us a hologram of the past, which included something about the burning of Jesus Christ.

Also, look at how william cooper died.  It's really unusual.

[apavel]

I watched the first 1/4 of the video, and it seems like they corner and bash Christianity.  Saying creationism is a lie and it is geared towards distorting reality, creating bloodshed and rupturing the unity of humankind.......  To be honest, I can think of over a million ways to dispute this.  For those who think that Christianity is disproven by science should look into Dr. Kent Hovind, who is also very skilled at persuasion (be careful there are many people online that publish things against him, but too afraid to debate him in person or on the phone). 
The video has been carefully engineered to unfairly convince the unsuspecting public.  There are also very similar videos that claim the holocaust never happened (offering seemingly-irrefutable evidence), there are also ones claiming that Pearl Harbor is a setup, the government conspires to hide aliens from the people, that President Bush is a robot....etc..

"You shouldn't believe everything you watch on TV."..especially on youtube...  The bottom line is that these people are good at persuasion.  They attempt to use objective science to lead us away from reason and into belief, yet they claim to attempt the opposite.  In particular I love how they present a widely-accepted solid fact, and draw a somewhat disjoint and radical conclusion leading the audience to believe that since their fact is true then their claims must be true as well.

You should ask yourself basic questions:
What if the Iraq/afganistan war didn't happen (need political and economic knowledge to answer this)?  What if there were no taxes?  What if the world did not have religion?  What would happen if we could not distinguish between right and wrong?  Why do we have the capability to ask these questions? - they do not increase our fitness and/or reproductive success 
My point is that there are countless phenomena that simply cannot be explained by science.  Regarding the guy who makes fun of God by incorrectly widening the reasoning scope, I can also make fun of evolution by widening the scope: "We all came from a soup, which came from a rock."  -- sounds pretty stupid too eh?


You need to look at both sides of the argument in order to realize how much BS and a waste of time the whole thing is, and how good they are at persuasion.  As I said, there are hundreds of videos like that trying to "prove" different points.

Paul

[Otter]

Some of the stuff was bs, but I believe a tiny bit of it is true.  I saw clips related to it and it showed that meteors hit all continents but greenland and they dont hit the sea.  This is because there are no people in the sea or greenland.  I don't think that was true.

But you should look up milton william cooper on encyclopedias and see how he died.  I saw on wikipedia but im not sure i believe this:

The circumstances surrounding Cooper's death are controversial. On November 5, 2001, officers of the Apache County Sheriff's Office decided to serve Cooper a warrant based on the above-mentioned charges. For reasons not explained, the Sheriff's Office sent deputies to Cooper's home at approximately 11:00PM, and instead of knocking on his door and announcing themselves, the deputies attempted to lure Cooper from his house by posing as civilians playing loud music on or near his property.  Cooper, who was an above the knee amputee, went down to investigate the scene in his truck.  It is disputed as to whether the deputies identified themselves or tried to serve an arrest warrant at that time. Nevertheless, Cooper announced he was returning to his house to contact the Eagar Police Department, either to verify the warrant or to contact the local authorities in order to report what he may have still believed was a real disturbance.  Before he could do so however, the sheriff's deputies tried to apprehend him, at which point shooting began. Cooper was armed and one deputy was wounded. Another deputy returned fire, killing Cooper.