Zeitgeist

One of my closest friends, who could be credited with bringing The God Delusion to my attention, has now drawn my eye to this film, Zeitgeist. It's a very interesting piece of work, which forces you to question what you think you know. The first part, 'The Greatest Story Ever Told', introduces the central theme to the piece: dispelling commonly held myths. Indeed, we are given a highly persuasive analysis of Christianity's origins and the life of Jesus Christ with direct reference to classical mythology and ancient history. The conclusion we inevitably come to is that Jesus did not exist at all. The title, Zeitgeist, is a clever illustration of the times we live in - one cannot deny a changing of the tides, where education has enabled the West to see through the transparent falsities of our culture. Unfortunately, the film quickly descends into mere conspiracy in the same vein as Loose Change. In fact, the next section tries its level best to portray the 9/11 attacks as an inside job orchestrated by the US government, something which was categorically rubbished by the British media last year. What would have cemented the film's success is a continuous discourse, interlocking the various sections to a central topic. What the second part does demonstrate, however, is that Humans still prefer a conspiracy theory to no theory at all, indicative of our bumpy evolutionary past, something which the religious, incidentally, fail to accept.