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Spirit of Paranoia

A Critical Analysis of Peter Joseph’s Zeitgeist

By Nathan Dickey

When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: ‘What are the facts

and what is the truth that the facts bear out?’ Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to

believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed, but look only – and

solely – at what are the facts.

~ Bertrand Russell1

Zeitgeist is an Internet film sensation that has rocked the freethought world since its release on

Google Video in the spring of 2007. Taking the Ger man word for “spirit of the age” as its title,

the film has become something a cult phenomenon. Scores of people have credited Zeitgeist with

opening their mind and profoundly altering their way of lookin g at and thinking about the world.

But while Zeitgeist serves as a useful primer on several fringe ideas circulating in the areas of

religion and politics, I want to argue in this paper that people should be wary of accepting its

claims as gospel. The majority of claims made in the film are highly questionable at best andfactually incorrect, even dishonestly so, at worst. The same standards of critical thinking and

skepticism the filmmaker purports to promote and utilize in analyzing religious claims and

political states of affairs are not applied to many of the historical claims employed to support his

analyses.

Zeitgeist is the film that first introduced me to the world of conspiracy theories when I

watched it upon its release. I have been fascinated ever since by conspiracy theories, not as a

believer but as a skeptic interested in understanding how the anxieties and concerns of a society

are channeled into the myths we create for ourselves. As a result of my interest, I have followed

the work of figures such as Alex Jones, whose documentary films and radio broadcasts have

made him a household name in the conspiracy-theory community. But it is often disappointing to

1 Bertrand Russell interview on BBC’s Face to Face, 1959. Video available at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8h-xEuLfm8 (accessed May 31, 2015).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8h-xEuLfm8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8h-xEuLfm8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8h-xEuLfm8


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note the paucity of information and commentary from the opposing side of the discussion, that is,

from informed researchers who are skeptical of the claims made by conspiracy theorists. There

are a few notable resources that come highly recommended by me. One is the online Skeptic

Project, formerly known as Conspiracy Science.2 Created by Edward L. Winston, the Skeptic

Project began as a response to the relative scarcity of commentary being made to counter the

proliferation of paranoid conspiracy theories. The website is devoted to critiquing and debunking

conspiracy theories of all kinds. Winston has also expanded the site’s content; in addition to

shedding light on what are typically categorized as conspiracy theories, the Skeptic Project also

contains sections debunking common misconceptions and myths.

The skeptic’s first and most important task in discerning truth from falsehood in relation to

conspiracy theories is to seek out the source of a conspiracy theory. This process involves

finding out what individual or group conceived of the theory, what agenda they may have, and

the original evidence (if any) on which they drew. When this is done, the skeptic then stands in

an informed position to figure out exactly what is wrong with the conspiracy theory or popular

myth and why different groups feel motivated to add different elements to the same story. This

methodology does not yield results for every single claim out there, but it does work for the vast

majority of them. As an example, consider the “North American Union” conspiracy theory, an

idea discussed in Part III of Zeitgeist . Where did the idea of a North American Union originate?

This strictly hypothetical and speculative concept originated in a book written by Robert A.

Pastor in 2001, entitled Toward a North American Community.3 Prior to the release of this book,

there was never any mention by anyone of a North American Union, nor of the Amero currency

that Pastor proposes in the book. A few years later, Alex Jones received word of Pastor’s idea

and immediately declared the emergence of a North American Union to be literal truth, wholly

disregarding the fact that the NAU was never anything more than a speculative suggestion, and

one which Pastor himself did not even support.

Conspiracy theorists typically approach every piece of information they stumble across in this

unreflective and schizophrenic manner. They will read a blog post or an op-ed piece from a news

source that fires up their imagination, and then proceed to declare what they have come across to

2 Skeptic Project: “Your #1 COINTELPRO cognitive infiltration source.” http://skepticproject.com/ (accessed May 2,

2015).3 Robert A. Pastor, Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World to the New (Washington,D.C.: Peterson Institute, 2001).

http://skepticproject.com/http://skepticproject.com/http://skepticproject.com/http://skepticproject.com/


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be fact, a sure indication that something significant and world-changing will definitely transpire.

The internal contradiction that plagues the “conspiracy-around-every-corner ” mindset can be

seen in this tendency. Conspiracy theorists constantly tell us that we cannot trust mainstream

news sources, but then attempt to back up their claims with clips from mainstream news media

sources. They trust the mainstream news when it appears to validate their fears and distrust the

mainstream news when it shows information contradicting their claims. When one looks at the

source of conspiratorial claims, he or she may also discover exactly why the conspiracy theorists

making the claims harbor their various agendas. It is usually the case that uninformed people

who spread unfounded conspiracy theories on social networking sites have good intentions in

mind; they want to notify people of what they have been led to believe is really transpiring. But

those who initially start spreading conspiracy theories and claims usually have in mind monetary

interests, political gain, or simply a desire for fame as they use their imaginations to invent

myths.

Before delving with a critical eye into the content of Zeitgeist , background information on the

Zeitgeist Movement is in order. The Zeitgeist Movement is a group founded by Peter Joseph, the

creator of the film. Joseph envisioned and created the group as a venue through which the ideas

advocated in the second and third Zeitgeist films can be actively expressed.4 TZM is Peter

Joseph’s way of not only promoting his movies, but also of endorsing the concepts behind an

unrelated venture called the Venus Project, a movement founded by social engineer and futurist

Jacque Fresco which seeks to bring to fruition a Technocratic resource-based economic utopia.5

One of the stated purposes of the Zeitgeist Movement is to construct a plan to aid the Venus

Project in establishing their agenda. However, like TZM, the Venus Project has not to date

outlined any goals of a specific nature and has not accomplished anything concrete.6

Zeitgeist is composed of three parts. Part I, entitled “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” discusses

the origins of Christianity, asserting that the major tenets of Christian beliefs were taken whole-

cloth from pre-existing myths. Par t II, entitled “All the World’s a Stage,” discusses the “truth”

behind 9/11, arguing that the attacks on September 11, 2001 were an inside U.S. Government.

Part III, entitled “Don't Mind the Men behind the Curtain,” argues that the federal government

4 http://TheZeitgeistMovement.com/ (accessed May 2, 2015).

5 http://www.TheVenusProject.com/ (accessed May 2, 2015).

6 For more in-depth information concerning the Zeitgeist Movement, see Edward L. Winston’s helpful analysis at

http://www.conspiracyscience.com/articles/the-zeitgeist-movement/ (accessed May 2, 2015).

http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/http://www.thevenusproject.com/http://www.thevenusproject.com/http://www.thevenusproject.com/http://www.conspiracyscience.com/articles/the-zeitgeist-movement/http://www.conspiracyscience.com/articles/the-zeitgeist-movement/http://www.conspiracyscience.com/articles/the-zeitgeist-movement/http://www.thevenusproject.com/http://thezeitgeistmovement.com/


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and the banking systems are conspiring for power and wealth consolidation. The main body of

my critique is thus written in three parts, covering each section of the film in its turn.


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Part I: The Greatest Story Ever Told

The discussions on the origins of Christianity in Zeitgeist may sound very compelling to one who

is desperately searching for that elusive single argument that destroys Christianity as a credible

belief system in one fell swoop. The main thesis presented in Part I of Zeitgeist is essentially that

Christianity stole various beliefs and rituals wholesale from other earlier religions, particularly

Egyptian mythology, incorporating these borrowed beliefs and rituals into its own theological

structure. This is only partly true; the formation of Christianity was certainly influenced by other

religions and mythologies. But to the extent that this is true, it is trivial. Only to the claimed

extent to which this assessment is profound is it somewhat misleading, and herein lies the

problem. Instead of pointing out the actual religions by which Christianity was influenced, such

as the Babylonian religions and Zoroastrianism (which were the two primary formative

influences for Christianity) Zeitgeist opts to dive into completely unrelated belief systems and

form spurious connections between them.

With the rise of Zoroastrianism and the Babylonian religions came the emergence of

monotheism and the dualistic concept of “good versus evil” in its first stages of development.

Concepts such as a worldwide flood, angels and demons, Manichean dualism and other elements

of this sort were heavily influenced by Babylonian tales. Taken together in context, it becomes

fairly obvious where Judaism acquired these elements. The historian can go on to trace the

various changes, additions and deletions that eventually formed what we today recognize as

orthodox Christianity. Determining the source of Christianity’s major tenets and rituals is a task

that requires a great deal of careful research, but it can and has been done. Those who have

conducted such reputable research find a lack of evidence for the claim that any sort of

conspiracy was in play during Christianity's formative years. Much of the information relevant to

this research is contained in the pages of the canonical Bible itself. The Old Testament is

essentially a buffet from which the various off-shooting sects of Judaism that eventually became

collectively grouped under the umbrella of Christianity chose which elements and themes they

wanted, incorporated these into the documents that eventually formed the New Testament, and

added in information about Jesus the Christ. There was no organized conspiracy in this picking-

and-choosing exercise.

Rather than pointing out historical facts along these lines and exploring what is actually


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flawed about Christianity as a belief system, the filmmaker makes claims about Horus being the

Sun God of Egypt (which is erroneous; Horus was the god of the sky) and drags in lists of motifs

and elements that are characteristic of most religions, such as resurrection from the dead. It’s as

if Peter Joseph is under the illogical impression that rising from the dead is a feat that would not

be a ubiquitous desire across religions. Resurrection is a universal concept, one that people in

almost all world cultures throughout history have been deeply fascinated by. This is especially

the case with societies in ancient times that had little or no concept of medicine and who had

very little or no understanding of what life really is. It therefore comes as no surprise that it was

very common and popular to believe, for example, that the sun created all life or that the sun is a

powerful deity because it provides daylight and sustains life. Christianity had no need to steal

these concepts. To claim otherwise, as Joseph does in his film, is to be ignorant of both history

and mythology. Christianity had its own set of particular formative influences, one of these being

Judaism, which in turn borrowed from earlier belief systems. Similarity does not in and of itself

denote wholesale borrowing from the earlier idea.

So Peter Joseph protests far too much in Zeitgeist . As we previously mentioned, there is a rich

buffet of theological concepts and ideas within both Judaism and the Persian religions with

which Judaism’s adherents came into contact for the Jewish sect of Christianity to have selected

from. Why would the proto-Christian believers have any need to turn to Egyptian mythology for

inspiration? One need not study the history of Christianity very long before discovering the

similarities with many other cultures in the surrounding regions. Contrary to the implications

given in Joseph’s film, the stories being told over and over again did not all come out of Egypt.

Those who are familiar with Kersey Grave’s seminal 1875 work The World’s Sixteen

Crucified Saviors will recognize the strong allusions to its central themes in Zeitgeist .7 In his

book, Graves made a large number of comparisons and alleged many precursory connections to

the Christ story among other gods, Horus being only one. Much of what is discussed in Part I of

Zeitgeist come from Grave’s work. The fact that this book is not sourced in the film may be

owing to the general consensus among historians that the book is decidedly unscholarly and

highly unreliable. The primary sources listed for Part I of Zeitgeist are the works of mythicist and

conspiracy theorist Dorothy M. Murdock (more popularly known by her pen name Acharya S)

7 Kersey Graves, The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors: Christianity Before Christ (1875; reprint, Kempton, IL:Adventures Unlimited Press, 2001).


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and the nineteenth-century self-styled Egyptologist Gerald Massey, upon whom Murdock

heavily depends in her own writings. Much of what is contained in Part I of Zeitgeist is lifted

directly from Acharya’s 1999 book The Christ Conspiracy, and nearly all sources for Part I

ultimately lead back to Gerald Massey and other like-minded authors heavily cited by Acharya

S, authors who are dismissed by most scholars as unreliable in their research methods. Because

the claims contained in this part of the film are so strongly connected to the ideas that have made

Acharya S famous, some background on who she is and what her methodologies are is in order.

Any impartial follower of Murdock’s work will notice that she seems to harbor an irrational

personal vendetta against Christianity. While it is popular among certain groups and

demographics, especially teenage atheists, to actively hate Christianity, fostering an agenda-

based dislike of a worldview with which one personally disagrees is a phase people tend to grow

out of, maturing from a focus on angry discrediting campaigns to a more scholarly approach in

critical assessment. But Murdock has seemingly not outgrown her sophomoric crusade against

Christianity, one that is unscholarly at best and dishonest at worst. A salient example is a claim

she makes on her website about her education. On her “Who is Acharya S?” and “Credentials”

pages, she claims to be fluent in Greek and Hebrew, and on the latter page she goes so far as to

say she has “sat down with the Bible – in English, as well as in the original Hebrew and Greek –

long enough to understand it more than most clergy.”8

Acharya’s alleged fluency in Greek and Hebrew is highly dubious, given her attempts to draw

upon those languages to demonstrate a connection between the Jesus figure and astrological

understandings of the sun by suggesting that “The Son of God is the Sun of God.”9 Within the

Greek and Hebrew languages she claims to be an expert on, this is etymologically impossible.

“Sun” and “Son” sound similar only in English and Germanic languages, and in a few Slavic

languages. But outside of Indo-European languages, the phonetics of these two words is

completely different and there exists little or no linguistic similarity whatsoever. The Hebrew

word for “sun” is שמש ( shemesh)10 and the Hebrew word for “son” is ן (ben).11 Even the

Akkadian word for the Babylonian/Assyrian sun god was Shamash. The only reason the two

8 Acharya S, “What Are Acharya’s Credentials?” Truth Be Known, n.d.,

http://www.truthbeknown.com/credentials.html (accessed March 30, 2011).9 Acharya S, The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1999),

pp. 149-65.10

שמש“ ,” http://tinyurl.com/ypqxbg (Hebrew language; accessed May 2, 2015).11

“ן

,” http://tinyurl.com/29jd22 (Hebrew language; accessed May 2, 2015).

http://www.truthbeknown.com/credentials.htmlhttp://www.truthbeknown.com/credentials.htmlhttp://tinyurl.com/ypqxbghttp://tinyurl.com/ypqxbghttp://tinyurl.com/ypqxbghttp://tinyurl.com/29jd22http://tinyurl.com/29jd22http://tinyurl.com/29jd22http://tinyurl.com/29jd22http://tinyurl.com/ypqxbghttp://www.truthbeknown.com/credentials.html


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words ended up sounding similar in English is because the Old English word for son, derived

from the Proto-Germanic languages, was “sunu”12 and the Old English word for sun was

“sunne.”13 But Acharya S continues to promote the “God’s Sun = God’s Son” notion, a sign that

her claimed credentials are highly questionable. One would think that a person who is well

versed in Hebrew and Greek would realize that these connections cannot be made in this way.

This criticism is borne out further when one examines her use of sources. She uses Gerald

Massey and similar writers as secondary sources quite heavily, but almost never uses primary

sources.

I am not necessarily accusing Acharya S of consciously lying. She comes off as genuinely

convinced of her own claims, and she may be merely embellishing her credentials. She has

uncritically received her information and sources directly from Gerald Massey, who has

justifiably been written off as a pseudo-historian by the academic world for over a century.

Regardless of Acharya’s personal motivations, much about her research methods and

conclusions are flawed, and she has become in effect the Alex Jones of religious conspiracy

theorizing. Debunking Christianity is not a difficult task, and fabricating damning evidence

against its historicity is completely unnecessary. There is no need to make claims to the effect

that Christianity was invented out of wholecloth from Egyptian religion. And building a sloppy

case that Christianity was derived from Buddhism, as Acharya has also done in her writings,14 is

a waste of time that could have been spent doing legitimate research that critiques Christianity on

a mor e solid grounding. Nobody’s academic reputation is served well by going overboard with

drawing nonexistent parallels and connecting imaginary dots between religions, to say for

instance that other god-men from earlier religions were crucified when in fact they never were,

and then to twist the knife in the wound by suggesting that such parallels necessarily indicate

that the later religion must have stolen from the earlier one.

It is not to be denied that Christianity borrowed and co-opted several theological concepts

from various Roman religions. But Peter Joseph and Acharya S have greatly exaggerated the

12 “Son (n.),” Online Etymology Dictionary ,

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=son&searchmode=none (accessed May 2, 2015).13

“Sun (n.),” Online Etymology Dictionary ,

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=sun&searchmode=none (accessed May 2, 2013).14

Acharya S/D.M. Murdock, “Is Buddhism Atheistic?” Truth Be Known, n.d.,

http://truthbeknown.com/lifeofbuddha.htm (accessed May 3, 2015); Acharya S/D.M. Murdock, “Beddru is Beddou

is Buddha,” Truth Be Known, n.d., http://truthbeknown.com/beddru.html (accessed May 3, 2015).

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=son&searchmode=nonehttp://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=son&searchmode=nonehttp://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=sun&searchmode=nonehttp://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=sun&searchmode=nonehttp://truthbeknown.com/lifeofbuddha.htmhttp://truthbeknown.com/lifeofbuddha.htmhttp://truthbeknown.com/beddru.htmlhttp://truthbeknown.com/beddru.htmlhttp://truthbeknown.com/beddru.htmlhttp://truthbeknown.com/beddru.htmlhttp://truthbeknown.com/lifeofbuddha.htmhttp://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=sun&searchmode=nonehttp://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=son&searchmode=none


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extent to which Christianity incorporated elements from earlier faiths. And even if Christianity

did steal as many concepts that Zeitgeist would have us believe, it is a logical fallacy to conclude

that a religion whose tenets feature concepts such as recurring life and death must have been

taken from an earlier religion simply because the earlier one also featured tenets of recurring life

and death. As stated previously, the concept of resurrection from the dead is universal enough

that different cultures can independently construct belief systems around it.

Included among the parallels to Jesus drawn by Joseph are the gods Horus, Attis, Krishna,

Dionysus and Mithra. Joseph believes that these pagan gods form the inspirational and

ideological basis of the Christ myth. Most of these earlier pagan deities, he says, were born of a

virgin on December 25, were followed by 12 inner-circle disciples, and were crucified and

resurrected, in some cases three days after their death. To quote directly from the film:

The fact of the matter is there are numerous saviors, from different periods, from all over the

world, which subscribe to these general characteristics. The question remains: why these

attributes, why the virgin birth on December 25 th, why dead for three days and the inevitable

resurrection, why 12 disciples or followers?

Joseph then comes to the conclusion that these common attributes exist because Jesus, like these

other god-men, was conceived of as a solar deity. Using the same arguments used by Acharya S

before him, Joseph suggests that Jesus is more accurately understood to be the Sun of God rather

than the son. This, he argues, turns out to be the origin of the cross, or crucifix, on which Jesus

died according to medieval religious tradition. This cross was not a literal instrument of

execution, says Joseph, but instead is symbolic of the solar formation known as the Southern

Cross. In short, Joseph makes out the entire Christian story to be one elaborate astrological

analogy:

This is the cross of the Zodiac, one of the oldest conceptual images in human history. It reflects

the sun as it figuratively passes through the 12 major constellations over the course of a year. It

also reflects the 12 months of the year, the four seasons, and the solstices and equinoxes. The

term “Zodiac” relates to the fact that constellations were anthropomorphized, or personified, as

figures, or animals.

In other words, the early civilizations did not just follow the sun and stars, they personified them

with elaborate myths involving their movements and relationships. The sun, with its life-giving


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and -saving qualities was personified as a representative of the unseen creator or god. It was

known as “God’s Sun,” the light of the world, the savior of human kind. Likewise, the 12

constellations represented places of travel for God’s Sun and were identified by names, usually

representing elements of nature that happened during that period of time. For example, Aquarius,

the water bearer, who brings the spring rains.

There are two misleading implication made here. One is that the Zodiac has always been

connected to or associated with the constellations, and the other is that there have always been 12

constellations. However, the oldest known zodiacs did not have 12 signs. The Babylonian

zodiac, for example, originally consisted of 18 signs,15 and the Mayan zodiac had 20 signs.16

And while it is true that the later Egyptian and Greek zodiacs are composed of 12 signs, these

signs were not recognized by all civilizations as representative of cosmic truth. Moreover, there

are actually 13 constellations through which the sun passes. For whatever odd reason, modern

astrologers have ignored the presence of the constellation Ophiuchus, the Serpent Holder.17

Joseph’s attempt to interpret the entire Christian story as one sprawling astrological allegory

is even more of a stretch. For example, if we are generous, the only example from pagan

mythology that could possibly be construed as matching the motif of 12 disciples is found in a

drawing from the Amduat , an ancient Egyptian funerary text, which depicts the Egyptian god

Horus seated before twelve figures in the Seventh Hour of the Night.18 There is no mention in

any ancient mythology of Horus having 12 disciples, nor of being born on December 25. TimCallahan, religion editor for Skeptic magazine, sets the record straight in his critical review of

Zeitgeist :

As to the god who is born on December 25 — this was not Krishna, but Mithra in his solar aspect

as Sol Invictus (Latin for “Unconquered Sun”). The reason Mithra/Sol Invictus was born on

December 25 was that in the Roman calendar of that day, that was the Winter Solstice, the 24-

hour period having the fewest number of daylight hours. From that date the days get longer and

the nights get shorter until the Summer Solstice. Owing to imperfections in the Roman or Julian

calendar, the solstice gradually shifted to December 21, until corrections were made resulting in

15 Derek and Julia Parker, The New Compleat Astrologer (New York: Crescent Books, 1990), p. 194.16

Barbara Tedlock, Time and the Highland Maya (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1992).17

Ian Ridpath and Wil Tirion, Stars and Planets: The Most Complete Guide to the Stars, Planets, Galaxies, and the

Solar System (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 194-96.18 This image, as rendered by A.G. Shedid, is printed in Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife,trans. David Lorton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 48.


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our present Gregorian calendar. Christianity seems to have deliberately co-opted the birthday of

Mithra as a way of occupying a rival’s holiday, rather than this being the result of Jesus being a

solar savior.19

The alleged crucifixion of the pagan gods is equally spurious. Each one of the dying-and-risinggods mentioned by Joseph experienced excruciating deaths in the stories told about them, but

none were said to have been crucified. Jesus appears to be the only one who was given that

distinction. Much has been made of the Orpheos Bakkikos icon, a hematite seal dating from the

early Christian era which depicts Dionysus being crucified. But this seal is not, as Murdock has

claimed, a pre-Christian artifact.20 It is at least post-Christian, if not an outright early-modern

forgery.21 In any case, it is more likely an example of pagan syncretism of Christianity’s themes

rather than the other way around. Syncretism was a two-way street; the Christ myth picked up

and incorporated pagan material, and pagans borrowed Christian material once the latter became

a viable state religion in the fourth century CE. The fallacy committed by Acharya S and Peter

Joseph is to assume that all instances of parallelism or syncretism proceed in one direction only,

and that the pagan traditions always had the original idea.

Joseph’s claim that the crucifix on which Jesus died represents the Southern Cross is shown to

be highly questionable when we consider that the crucifixion stake used by the Romans in the

first century was probably T-shaped. And anyway, the history of the crucifix has very little to do

with the Zodiac. Christians have adopted it as the symbol of their religion because the man they

revere as their savior is traditionally believed to have died on a Roman cross. If Jesus had been

beaten to death with a club, one could imagine that the Christians to this day would have adopted

the iconography of a club to symbolize their faith. Peter Joseph has simply taken the easy path of

making false connections in order to prove something that conforms to and serves his agendas.

Even if Joseph’s claims were true, Christianity would still not be proven wrong by his case.

There are much better ways to go about debunking Christianity. Joseph’s approach seems to be

19 Tim Callahan, “The Greatest Story Ever Garbled: A Critique of ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ – Part I of theInternet Film Zeitgeist ,” Skeptic 15, no. 1 (March 2009): 61-67. Available online at

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-02-25/#feature (accessed May 3, 2015).20

D.M. Murdock, A Pre-Christian ‘God’ on a Cross? The Orpheos Bakkikos Gem Reexamined (Seattle, WA: Stellar

House Publishing, 2013).21

Jeffrey Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2007), p. 178.

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-02-25/#featurehttp://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-02-25/#featurehttp://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-02-25/#feature


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the result of internalizing Christian apologetic tactics; his arguments are just as shoddy as theirs.

Continuing on with the theme of Christian art, Zeitgeist has this to say:

Coming back to the cross of the Zodiac, the figurative life of the Sun, this was not just an artistic

expression or tool to track the Sun’s movements. It was also a Pagan spiritual symbol . . . This[the cross with vertices within a circle] is not a symbol of Christianity. It is a Pagan adaptation of

the cross of the Zodiac. This is why Jesus in early occult art is always shown with his head on the

cross, for Jesus is the Sun, the Sun of God, the Light of the World, the Risen Savior, who will

“come again,” as it does every morning, the Glory of God who defends against the works of

darkness, as he is “born again” every morning, and can be seen “coming in the clouds”, “up in

Heaven”, with his “Crown of Thorns,” or, sun rays.

Joseph makes a bold and explicit statement here: “Jesus in early occult art is always shown with

his head on the cross.” This is simply not the case. Many early occult depictions of Jesus showed

his head on a halo, not a cross. In fact, between the third and sixth centuries CE, halos were

commonly featured in the representations of deities and other holy people. Many such

religiously-venerated figures, who shared similar character details, can be seen in ancient art that

have no connection to the sun whatsoever.22

Joseph has not even demonstrated conclusively that the cross of crucifixion, or any other

cultural symbol pre-dating Christianity, is represented by the Zodiac in any meaningful or

significant way. The evidence from anthropology actually indicates otherwise. The cross is one

of the oldest known symbols, dating from as early as the Neolithic era, and was used by every

known culture since that era for a variety of reasons.23 The particular capacity in which the cross

was used by any given culture in the past depended largely upon what the local population

believed the cross to symbolize or represent. The cross-shaped sign in its earliest known form

was represented as a crossing of two lines at right angles, in many cases forming an X that would

be used to mark burial sites. The ankh, or ansated cross, is another cross that challenges Joseph’s

portrayal of the symbol as one that conformed in an unchanging manner to interpretations of the

Zodiac throughout history. This ancient Egyptian cross form, featuring a loop that circles on the

top, symbolized eternal life and fertility and often appeared as a sign in the hands of the goddess

22 For some good examples, see “Artists by Nationality: Greek Artists,” Artcyclopedia: The Ultimate Guide to Great

Art Online, http://www.artcyclopedia.com/nationalities/Greek.html (accessed May 3, 2015).23

Rudolf Koch, The Book of Signs, trans. Dybyan Holland (1930; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1955), pp.

14-29.

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/nationalities/Greek.htmlhttp://www.artcyclopedia.com/nationalities/Greek.htmlhttp://www.artcyclopedia.com/nationalities/Greek.htmlhttp://www.artcyclopedia.com/nationalities/Greek.html


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to pay tribute to Jesus.

Even in Matthew’s narrative, in which the oriental travelers appear, there is no mention of

“three kings,” or even that the men were three in number. Matthew 2:1-2 states only that “wise

men fr om the east came to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?

For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.’”25

There has been much speculation and debate over the centuries as to the nature of the magi’s

“star.” One explanation that has been proposed is that the “star” was a triple alignment of Jupiter

and Saturn in the Pisces constellation, a conjunction that occurred in 7 BCE. Another theory,

proposed by Johannes Kepler in 1603, interprets Matthew’s star as an alignment of Mars, Jupiter,

and Saturn. But none of the proposed conjunctions of planets has been made to fit the available

astronomical data. Other writers have suggested that the star was a comet or a supernova.26 But

these theories have failed on the grounds that no supernova or other significant astronomical

phenomena was reported by any of the meticulous observers and recorders of the skies who lived

at that time.27

The Star of Bethlehem is rooted in allegory rather than in any natural historical event.

However, as we shall see, it is not the allegory Zeitgeist insists that it is. In ancient times, the

idea of a rising star was often associated with the birth of a king or other noble personage. In

Matthew’s Gospel account, the magi are said to have come from the East. They were probably

Parthians, since the Parthian Empire was the only territory east of Israel other than the Arabian

Desert.

Matthew’s Nativity account is thus a political myth: Wise men from a foreign Empire are

coming to Israel to hail the infant Jesus as a king. At this time, tensions existed between the

Romans and the Parthians. A Roman civil war had erupted in Macedonia in 42 BCE, fought

between the forces of Brutus and Cassius Longinus on one side and the forces of the Second

Triumvirate on the other. The war was initiated by Antony and Octavian, high-ranking members

of the triumvirate, to avenge the Liberatores’ murder of Julius Caesar. In the aftermath of this

conflict, the Parthians took advantage of the political instability in the region. They invaded the

Roman Empire and established Antigonus II Mattathias, the last of the Hasmonean kings, on the

25 Matthew 2:1-2 (English Standard Version), http://biblehub.com/esv/matthew/2.htm (accessed May 9, 2015).

26 Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke

(Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1979), pp. 171-72.27

Tim Callahan, Secret Origins of the Bible (Altadena, CA: Millennium Press, 2002), p. 379.

http://biblehub.com/esv/matthew/2.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/matthew/2.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/matthew/2.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/matthew/2.htm


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Judean throne. But in 37 BCE, the Romans, led by Herod the Great, drove the Parthians out of

Israel and executed Antigonus. The threat of another Parthians incursion into Judea is inherent in

the act of Parthians arriving in Herod’s kingdom to recognize and pay homage to a future king.

Callahan notes that this “may have been a source for Matthew’s magi in the first place.”28 In

short, the story of the magi following the star to Bethlehem is a political allegory, not an

astrological one.

The only reason church tradition and popular imagination has conceived of these Parthian

magi as being three in number is because they presented three gifts to Jesus in Matthew’s

account. As Callahan explains, the gifts themselves also have political significance:

The gifts of the wise men – gold, frankincense and myrrh – recall the homage paid to Solomon by

the queen of Sheba, since Sheba lay at the southern end of the Incense Route and was a source of

both frankincense and myrrh. Naturally gifts worthy of Solomon are given to Jesus as part of the

Matthean attempt to identify him with the Davidic line. The fact that there are three specific gifts

is probably the reason for the popular fiction that there were three wise men. Actually, Matthew

nowhere states their number.29

So there are no “Three Kings,” either in the night sky or in ancient writings. These personages

were not “kings” in the first place, and there were not three of them. In Zeitgeist , Peter Joseph

has ironically accepted all this extrabiblical elaboration of church tradition at face value in order

to build his case that the Gospels draw upon astrology to weave an elaborate fabrication in order

to sell the Christ character to the Church’s followers.

Indeed, Joseph appears not to have even consulted the Bible he criticizes in his film. Instead,

his method throughout Part I is to bring together a number of scattered and unrelated ideas and

then try to connect the dots to form patterns where none exist. Consider, for example, his

allegation that the reason Jesus was said to have 12 disciples is because there are 12 signs of the

Zodiac:

Now, probably the most obvious of all the astrological symbolism around Jesus regards the 12

disciples. They are simply the 12 constellations of the Zodiac, which Jesus, being the Sun, travels

about with.

28 Ibid, p. 382.

29 Ibid, p. 381.


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There is no evidence that the number 12 as applied to the disciples of Jesus had any zodiacal

significance. More likely the number was chosen to parallel the 12 tribes of Israel, not the Zodiac

signs. And it is doubtful that the tribes of Israel themselves had any zodiacal reference attached

to them. The evidence suggests instead that the 12 tribes were based on the 12 months of the

year, since the ancient Israelites established a 12- tribe confederacy in which each tribe

maintained the priestly sanctuary for one month of the year.30 The fact that Simeon may not have

even been a tribe makes the alleged connection between the tribes and the Zodiac even more

tenuous. Simeon was probably a small and insignificant rural region of Judah that was afforded

tribal status in order to provide support for the sanctuary.

Joseph’s superficial Sunday-school understanding of the biblical texts is also apparent in the

way he misquotes and misrepresents portions of the King James Bible, the version on which he

relies and which itself is already full of mistranslations and copying errors.31 Consider, for

instance, what Joseph says about the Passover:

At Luke 22:10, when Jesus is asked by his disciples where the next Passover will be after he is

gone, Jesus replied: “Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you

bearing a pitcher of water . . . follow him into the house where he entereth in.” This scripture is

by far one of the most revealing of all the astrological references. The man bearing a pitcher of

water is Aquarius, the water-bearer, who is always pictured as a man pouring out a pitcher of

water. He represents the age after Pisces, and when the Sun (God’s Sun) leaves the Age of Pisces

(Jesus), it will go into the House of Aquarius, as Aquarius follows Pisces in the precession of the

equinoxes. Also, Jesus is saying that after the Age of Pisces will come the Age of Aquarius.

While the reply from Jesus in Luke 22:10 is quoted correctly here,32 the question asked by the

disciples is not. When we look at the actual context in which the disciples asked their question,

we find that Joseph has misused this verse to promote a misleading claim. We find this context in

Luke 22:7-9: “Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be

sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, ‘Go and prepare the Passover for us, that we

30 Ibid, p. 103.

31 Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York:

HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), p. 209; DPR Jones, “A Brief History of the King James Bible” (video), YouTube, March 3,

2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFDwK5ko7sI (accessed May 10, 2015).32

Luke 22:10, with parallel translations, http://biblehub.com/luke/22-10.htm (accessed May 9, 2015).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFDwK5ko7sIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFDwK5ko7sIhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFDwK5ko7sIhttp://biblehub.com/luke/22-10.htmhttp://biblehub.com/luke/22-10.htmhttp://biblehub.com/luke/22-10.htmhttp://biblehub.com/luke/22-10.htmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFDwK5ko7sI


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may eat it.’ They said to him, ‘Where will you have us prepare it?’”33

The disciples in this passage are not asking where the Passover will be held at a future time

following Jesus’ departure, but rather where they should be preparing and partaking of the

Passover that very evening. Even if Joseph represented the context correctly, the symbolism put

forth by the film is inaccurate as well. Joseph describes Aquarius as “always pictured as a man

pouring out a pitcher of water.” In the Luke passage, however, the man the disciples meet is not

pouring out a pitcher of water, but rather carrying a pitcher of water. If this does happen to be a

symbolic ref erence, it is not the one Joseph’s film claims it to be.

The film’s misrepresentation of the Bible continues in its use of other passages on which it

bases its argument. Joseph claims, for example, that Matthew 28 is one of the primary sources

for Christian understandings of end-times doctrines:

Now, we have all heard about the end times and the end of the world. Apart from the cartoonish

depictions in the Book of Revelation, the main source of this idea comes from Matthew 28:20,

where Jesus says “I will be with you even to the end of the world.” However, in King James

Version, “world” is a mistranslation, among many mistranslations. The actual word being used is

“aeon,” which means “age.” “I will be with you even to the end of the age.” Which is true, as

Jesus’ Solar Piscean personification will end when the Sun enters the Age of Aquarius. The entire

concept of end times and the end of the world is a misinterpreted astrological allegory. Let’s tell

that to the approximately 100 million people in America who believe the end of the world is

coming.

Dismissing the Book of Revelation by saying it contains “cartoonish depictions” is ironic,

considering that Revelation contains the majority of the end-times predictions in Christianity’s

theological system. Either Joseph has not fully read the Bible or he is utilizing very selective

tactics in order to draw a parallel between the Zodiac and the Bible, a parallel to which

Revelation does not readily conform, hence Joseph’s dismissal of its significance. Matthew 28 is

hardly the “main source” for Christian eschatology. Passages in Matthew 24,34 the second

chapter of Second Thessalonians,35 the Book of Daniel,36 and of course Revelation37 are far

33 Luke 22:7-9 (English Standard Version), http://biblehub.com/esv/luke/22.htm (accessed May 9, 2015).

34 Matthew 24 (English Standard Version), http://biblehub.com/esv/matthew/24.htm (accessed May 10, 2015).

35 2 Thessalonians 2 (English Standard Version), http://biblehub.com/esv/2_thessalonians/2.htm (accessed May

10, 2015).36 Daniel 1 ff. (English Standard Version), http://biblehub.com/esv/daniel/1.htm (accessed May 10, 2015).

http://biblehub.com/esv/luke/22.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/luke/22.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/luke/22.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/matthew/24.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/matthew/24.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/matthew/24.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/2_thessalonians/2.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/2_thessalonians/2.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/2_thessalonians/2.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/daniel/1.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/daniel/1.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/daniel/1.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/daniel/1.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/2_thessalonians/2.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/matthew/24.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/luke/22.htm


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better and more in-depth sources. But it is clear that the misrepresentation and selective

reasoning present in Zeitgeist is required in order to prop up a case that the Bible is an

astrological document. The King James Bible contains a total of 31,173 verses.38 If the Bible is

an astrological document, one would expect to find much more than a few verses indicating

astrological connections between Jesus, Passover, the Zodiac, the various dispensations, and so

forth.

Ironically, Joseph’s film correctly states that the King James Version of the Bible contains

mistranslations (citing the use of the word “world” in Matthew 28 which Joseph says should

have been translated as “aeon”) yet Joseph relies on the King James Version to support his

claims. In this way he is like the conspiracy theorist we mentioned in the introduction, who

insists that the mainstream media is deceptive or untrustworthy while at the same time collecting

video clips from mainstream news broadcasts to use as “evidence” for his tinfoil-hat theories. As

such, Peter Joseph appears more interested in levying a general attack on the reliability of the

King James translation so that he can then spin the passages he has cherry-picked however he

chooses. While it is true that “world” in this case actually is a mistranslation of what should be

aion, the mistranslated Greek word in question is “αιων,”39 which means “eternity” rather than

“age.” The Greek word for “age” is “παλαιώνω” ( palaiono).40 Thus, despite the mistranslation,

the general idea remains correctly conveyed: “even to the end of the world” versus “even to the

end of eternity.”

The ideas presented in Part I of Zeitgeist concerning the origins of religion, particularly the

connections between Christianity and Egyptian mythology, came into their own in the late

nineteenth century. This was a time when radical scholars and pseudo-historian played fast and

loose with methods that were only just beginning to be used by researchers in the fledgling field

of biblical criticism. At the time Zeitgeist appeared on the Internet, the arguments of the old

radical scholars were beginning to trickle back into popular culture. For example, popular social

critic and political commentator Bill Maher has adopted some of the arguments used by Joseph

37 Revelation 1 ff. (English Standard Version), http://biblehub.com/esv/revelation/1.htm (accessed May 10, 2015).

38 Stephen M. Miller and Robert V. Huber, The Bible: A History – The Making and Impact of the Bible (Intercourse,

PA: Good Books, 2004), p. 239.39

Mat. 28:20 (King James Version), Blue Letter Bible,

http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Mat&c=28&v=20&i=conc#s=957020 (accessed May 10, 2015).40

The reader can confirm this for herself by consulting Kypros-Net ’s Greek-English/English-Greek dictionary at

http://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexicon (accessed May 10, 2015).

http://biblehub.com/esv/revelation/1.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/revelation/1.htmhttp://biblehub.com/esv/revelation/1.htmhttp://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Mat&c=28&v=20&i=conc#s=957020http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Mat&c=28&v=20&i=conc#s=957020http://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexiconhttp://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexiconhttp://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexiconhttp://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Mat&c=28&v=20&i=conc#s=957020http://biblehub.com/esv/revelation/1.htm


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and Acharya S. For example, many of the connections drawn by Joseph between Jesus and

Horus in Zeitgeist were also drawn by Maher in his 2008 documentary film Religulous. But this

is the only aspect of Maher’s film for which he did not investigate claims as closely as he should

have, and this demonstrates the need for even skeptics of the supernatural to be careful of the

sources on which we base our arguments and criticism. Overall, Religulous contains hard-hitting

and accurate criticism, with a small amount of fiction mixed in. The opposite is the case for

Zeitgeist ; some few points are correct, but the overwhelming majority of its claims are either

blatantly inaccurate or highly tenuous.

Part I of Zeitgeist does get a few points right. The film is correct in stating that the New

Testament Gospels are mostly fiction, and there is no question that certain elements and concepts

in Christianity were indeed inspired by earlier influential mythologies. Some pagan material did

make its way into the Christ myth, and this was even acknowledged by early Christian church

fathers in their writings. This is borne out by the following quote from the early Christian

apologist Justin Martyr (100-165 CE):

And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual

union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and

ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those

whom you esteem sons of Jupiter.41

Justin Martyr proceeds to describe a number of pagan heroes who have parallels to Jesus,

including Mercury, Asclepius, Bacchus (or Dionysus), and Hercules. But while it’s true that

mythology permeates the Gospels, the problem is that Peter Joseph has applied the wrong

mythology to his assessment of Christianity. The religion wasn’t constructed wholecloth from a

single source, nor can it be reduced to an amalgamation of hijacked astrological symbolism. Nor

is there any historical evidence to suggest, as Joseph does in his conclusion to Part I, that the

architects of Christianity were actively or consciously stealing concepts from Egyptian religion

and mythology as part of a vast conspiracy to politically control the lives of people.

The fact that the story of Christ is echoed to some extent within ancient religions pre-dating

Christianity by way of similarities or common motifs is not unique to Christianity. To build a

special case for Christianity being a fraud consciously perpetrated upon the masses, based solely

41 Justin Martyr, First Apology , Chapter 21. Translated by Leslie William Barnard in Ancient Christian Writers vol. 56(New York: Paulist Press, 1997).


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on the existence of similarities in past religions, is illogical. But what makes Zeitgeist one of the

most deceptive documentaries ever produced is the manner in which it presents its arguments,

over and above the actual content itself. The film makes direct claims to the effect that

Christianity stole its central tenets and storylines from the ancient Egyptians, not bothering to

reference any other influence upon the Christian religion. Yes, Christianity was influenced to

some degree by Egyptian religion, but there are far more inconsistencies than there are

similarities. And the similarities exist only to the extent that the ideas and concepts incorporated

by Christianity were ubiquitous throughout Mesopotamia and surrounding regions.

Moreover, when religious scholars and anthropologists encounter concepts or philosophies in

one religion that are more or less exactly the same as those found in two or more pre-dating

cultures (for example, the Egyptian and Babylonian faiths), tracing the source of influence is

often a matter of asking which culture or civilization was closer to the centers in which the newer

religion first developed and flourished. In the case of Christianity, it was the Babylonians who

were geographically closer and who therefore had a much more direct influence on Christianity’s

development. If Christianity borrowed elements from any earlier culture or religious system, it

was the Babylonians, from whom the concepts of monotheism, the dualism of good and evil,

angels and demons, a worldwide flood, and others were borrowed. It should come as no surprise

that similar worldviews would be fostered and developed by a culture that shared the same social

and political problems and challenges as its surrounding cultures. If a people are striving to

create a conceptual model of their world that makes sense of their day-to-day experience, they

may find the ideas of other cultures very satisfying and thus incorporate these ideas into their

own belief system. It is not difficult to come up with original ideas and concepts, for instance to

conceive of supernatural reasons for why the sun shines. There is certainly no need to posit the

existence of a vast conspiracy to control gullible masses. Joseph, along with his muse Acharya S,

has conducted his “research” bearing the unwarranted assumption that nothing truly original can

be created within new religions or belief systems. But not all true ideas are necessarily original,

and not all original ideas are inherently more valuable or informative than their derivatives.

I should mention at this point that my criticism of Peter Joseph’s anti-religious claims by no

means constitutes an apology for the Christian faith. Christianity remains a very flawed religion

regardless of whether Joseph’s claims are true or not. My aim here is simply to distinguish truth

from falsehood. I have shown that the essential arguments presented in the first part of Zeitgeist


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are factually wrong and logically implausible. But I have no personal stake in this matter. If the

various disparate claims contained in Zeitgeist are proven to be true by, say, some startling and

revolutionary archaeological discovery, my immediate response would be to update the present

critique. This contrasts sharply with the image of skeptics constructed by conspiracy theory

enthusiasts, who seem to be laboring under the false impression that skeptics who take the time

and effort to debunk conspiracy theories are doing so because they have something to gain

personally from the exercise. Some of the most common accusations levied against those of us

who are skeptical of conspiracy theories, such as those promoted by Joseph and Acharya, include

the charge that we are “closet Christians,” government agents, and/or the beneficiary of some

powerful corporation’s payroll. When cornered in debate, accusations of this ilk are often the

conspiracy theorists’ only recourse.


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conspiratorial interpretation of the events surrounding 9/11 have now been thoroughly debunked,

and their continued use of the same old tactics in debate indicates as much. After the Truthers

have cherry-picked the data they want to use in argument, they typically focus on a single issue

to the exclusion of other aspects of their broader and more general conspiracy theory they know

have been satisfactorily refuted. The point of this tactic is to divert attention away from what is

understood to be devastating to the conspiracy theorists’ claims, using rhetoric as a substitute for

hard evidence to establish what they hope will constitute a default case for other closely-related

conspiracy theories.

The theories surrounding World Trade Center Building Seven (WTC7) stand as particularly

illustrative examples of this tactic. After virtually everything else in the 9/11 Truthers’ arsenal of

argumentation was debunked, their central thesis came to rest on the idea that the collapse of

Building Seven was a controlled demolition. Because conspiracy theories surrounding the

collapse of Building Seven are by far the most persistent aspect of 9/11 harped upon by the

Truther community, I will likewise focus much of my critical attention on this subject and treat

the conspiracy theorists to a refutation of this last line of defense.

But let us first dispense with the arguments made in Zeitgeist Part II that are most easily

refuted, and in fact which had been shown to be false long before Joseph made his movie. Some

of the most egregious mistakes are logical ones. For example, Part II begins by playing several

media clips in which witnesses and first responders to the WTC attacks say they heard a series of

explosions while the attack was underway. The implication made here is that since several

people heard explosions, there must have been explosives involved. Not only is this inaccurate, it

is also an example of extremely bad logic.

The poster boy for the explosion/explosive hypothesis is William Rodriguez, who at the time

of the attacks was employed as a janitor at the WTC’s North Tower. Following the attacks, he

embarked on speaking tours relating his experiences of being the “Last Man Out,” as he dubbed

himself. He became a darling of the 9/11 Truther community and a vocal critic of the US

government, which he believes planted the alleged explosives. Zeitgeist features a clip from one

of Rodriguez’s lectures:

“Our office was on the B1 level. As I was talking to a supervisor . . . all of a sudden we hear

BOOM! An explosion so hard that it pushed us upwards! And it came from the basement between


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the B2 level and the B3 level. And when I went to verbalize, we hear BOOM! The impact of the

plane on the top.”

The problem with Rodriguez’s testimony is that it has changed over time, with later accounts

differing from and being inconsistent with his initial story. He has also displayed anunwillingness to entertain more rational explanations for the basement explosion he believes he

heard. His account has grown to include other “suspicious noises” and other “small explosions”

rationally explained by the fact that other sounds would inevitably have been heard while the

attacks were underway, including the falling of lift shafts, structural vibrations, and explosions

(not explosives) going off on different floors. No one should expect to hear just a single loud

sound and nothing else.

Other facepalm-worthy mistakes in the film have to do with factual inaccuracies that nobody

would make who had first taken the time to conduct the most cursory of research before

committing their fallacies to film. A case in point is Zeitgeist ’s claim that debris from Flight 93,

the plane that was hijacked by terrorists on 9/11 and crashed in a field in Shanksville,

Pennsylvania, was found six miles away from the crash site. Presumably, the implication being

made here is that the plane was shot out of the sky, not deliberately crashed by hijackers on

board. The film uses a video clip from a CNN Breaking News broadcast to promote this idea. In

this clip, CNN correspondent Brian Cabell says,

“The FBI and the state police here have confirmed that they have cordoned off a second area

about six to eight miles away from the crater here. This is apparently another debris site. Why

would debris be located six miles away? Could it have been blown that far away? Seems highly

unlikely.”

There actually was no such confirmation, and the statement was determined to be erroneous in

very short order. Various pieces of debris from the plane, including passengers’ personal effects,

did end up in the lake. However, “Indian Lake is less than 1.5 miles southeast of the impact

crater as the crow flies – not 6 miles, as indicated by online driving directions – easily within

range of debris blasted skyward by the explosion from the crash.”44 The wind was blowing in a

northwesterly direction that day, toward Indian Lake. This wind, combined with the blast

44 David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, eds., Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the

Facts (New York: Hearst Books, 2006), p. 90.


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generated by the heat of the crashing plane, would easily have carried debris from the crash the

short distance to the lake. The satellite photo below shows the close proximity of the lake to the

crash site.

Next we turn to the Truthers’ claims about Building 7 of the World Trade Center. Peter Joseph’s

treatment of this subject in Zeitgeist amounts to little more than an argument from ignorance,

relying on the alleged mysteriousness and inscrutability of the building’s collapse. Zeitgeist

begins its discussion of Building 7 by saying,

Part of the problem is that most people simply don’t know much about Building Seven, due to the

extraordinary secrecy surrounding this collapse.

Never mind the fact that the destruction of Building 7 has been thoroughly and carefully

analyzed in peer-reviewed studies that are freely available to anyone who has an interest in

finding out what took place. Peter Joseph has just presumed to educate us poor, ignorant half-

wits on the esoteric secrets that he has uncovered. And where did Joseph find these

“extraordinary secrets”? Well, he found them on conspiracy websites, conspiracy


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“documentaries,” and C-SPAN videos. Long before Zeitgeist was made, these so-called

“extraordinary secrets” had been making the rounds on Internet discussion forums frequented by

armchair investigators whose “research” consisted mostly of spending hours watching YouTube

videos.

In one such online discussion thread on the Facebook profile of radio host Reginald Finley,

our mutual friend D. Eric Harmon took the position that 9/11 was an inside job. In his comments,

Harmon used many of the same arguments relating to World Trade Center 7 that are featured in

Zeitgeist , but stated them much more succinctly and directly than does Zeitgeist . This being the

case, my commentary will be directed to his statements. He writes,

You act as if the burden of proof is on my claim. I suggest the opposite, and here is why, and I

will only focus on WTC 7 (I am going to assume you have heard of this 3rd building that also

collapsed in its own footprint on 9/11) . . . my claim is that building seven must have been

brought down by controlled demolition . . . (1) it fit all the classic signs of controlled demolition

(2) we have the owner of the building using demolition jargon in describing the destruction of the

building (not conclusive, I know, but still compelling) (3) we have 100% proof that there was

foreknowledge that the building was going to collapse (Rudy Guliani’s [ sic] testimony, warnings

from firefighters and police that they had been told that the building was coming down, and at

least 2 live broadcasts (Fox News local channel and BBC News) both reported that the building

had already collapsed when in actuality it was still standing (4) NIST (National Institute of

Standards and Testing [ sic]) claims fire alone and minor damage caused a symmetrical collapse

of a steel building, something that has never happened before or since--NIST also claims this was

a new type of collapse and that it should be studied, but if this collapse was new and unexpected,

how could there be fore knowledge that WTC7 would collapse? WTC7, which was not hit by a

plane and less damaged than other buildings closer to the WTC Towers that did not collapse, is a

complete mystery (except if explained by controlled demolition) (5) There was molten steel

beneath the building weeks after the collapse . . . fire alone can not do this, but thermate and

thermite can . . . now these are the reasons I believe 9/11 was an inside job, and everything I site

[ sic] is fact, not opinion. Please show me where I am in error, and also prove your claim that the

buildings were brought down by the pancake theory and jet fuel . . .

The first fact that must be taken into account in responding to these arguments collectively is that

nobody was inside WTC 7 when it fell, and no casualties resulted from that particular collapse.

Therefore, why does it matter whether the building was purposefully demolished or not? If it was


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in fact a controlled demolition that was planned and executed as a terrorist act by the US

government, wouldn’t it make more sense to demolish the building while it was occupied by

people? What would be the point of blowing up an empty building? But let us set this point aside

for the moment, and address Harmon’s specific points one-by-one.

1) “ It fit all the classic signs of controlled demolition.”

Fire was primarily responsible for the collapse of WTC 7, as it was for the collapse of the Twin

Towers. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the buildings’

trusses were sagged due to the heat from the fires, which bowed the columns inward and caused

the building to collapse.45 While it may have appeared to the untrained eye like a controlled

demolition, the fact is it was not. Massive buildings do not simply fall over as small buildings

might; when a building’s upper floors begin to collapse upon the floors below them with

tremendous weight, the only way to go is straight down.46 The resulting downward motion may

exhibit the illusion of symmetry characteristic of controlled demolitions. However, WTC 7 and

the Twin Towers fell in the same general manner as do buildings of the sizes we are here dealing

with, regardless of whether the cause of collapse is controlled demolition or intense heat from jet

fuel.

Consider also that the towers were built at or near the extreme end of modern engineering

capabilities. The loss of strength in even a single steel column of WTC 7 did not even need to be

substantial (although it was) in order for the weight of the upper floors to lose their support.47

The domino effect resulting from the collapse of just one floor makes for a collapse that appears

to be strikingly symmetric, but it was certainly not controlled.

Moreover (as we discuss in more detail below), fire was not the only factor that contributed to

the buildings collapsing in a manner reminiscent of controlled demolition, and fuel was not the

only thing burning in WTC 7 or in the Twin Towers on September 11. The buildings were

equipped with several large diesel storage tanks that served as back-up generators. Along with

45 NIST and NCSTAR 1, “Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers,” National Institute of

Standards and Technology , September 2005. Available online at

http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=909017 (accessed May 23, 2015).46

Ramon Gilsanz and Willa Ng, “Single Point of Failure: How the Loss of One Column May Have Led to the Collapse

of WTC 7,” Structure Magazine, November 2007: 42-45. Available online at http://www.structuremag.org/wp-

content/uploads/2014/08/SF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov071.pdf (accessed May 23, 2015).47

Ibid.

http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=909017http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=909017http://www.structuremag.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov071.pdfhttp://www.structuremag.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov071.pdfhttp://www.structuremag.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov071.pdfhttp://www.structuremag.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov071.pdfhttp://www.structuremag.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov071.pdfhttp://www.structuremag.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/SF-WTC7-Gilsanz-Nov071.pdfhttp://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=909017


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everything else in the building that was flammable (rugs, curtains, furniture, paper, etc.), these

diesel tanks fueled the fires that contributed to the building’s collapse.

2) “We have the owner of the building using demolition jargon in describing the destruction of the

building.”

This claim refers to owner Larry Silverstein’s decision to “pull” the WTC 7 building, allegedly

meaning that he was responsible for deciding at what point the building was to be demolished.

This allegation is problematic for a number of reasons. First, “pull” is not a term used in the

demolishing industry.48 Second, if Silverstein had a sanction to demolish in mind, why would he

give this sanction to the Fire Chief? The Fire Department is not in the business of demolishing

buildings, and there is zero evidence that the Fire Department was in on any scheme to bring the

building down. Even if they were, why would they bother to detonate a building that was already

enveloped in a fire that could not be contained? Would it not make more sense to simply allow

the building to burn?

Most importantly, the context in which Silverstein used the questionable term clearly

indicates that by “pull it,” he meant “pull people out of the building” or “pull the operation.” As

reported by the editors of Debunking 9/11 Myths, “Firefighters contacted by Popular Mechanics

confirm that pull is a common firefighting term for removing personnel from a dangerous

structure.” The editors also quote a statement released by Silverstein on September 5, 2005: “Mr.

Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those

firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.”49

This crucial context, conveniently omitted by 9/11 Truther websites and documentaries, was

already provided in the 2002 PBS documentary America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero, in

which Silverstein tells the interviewer,

“I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me that they were not

sure they were gonna be able to contain the fir e, and I said, ‘You know, we’ve had such terrible

48 Brent Blanchard, “A Critical Analysis of the Collapse of WTC Towers 1, 2 & 7 from an Explosives and

Conventional Demolition Industry Viewpoint,” ImplosionWorld.com, August 8, 2006,

http://www.implosionworld.com/Article-WTC%20STUDY%208-06%20w%20clarif%20as%20of%209-8-06%20.pdf

(accessed July 18, 2015); Dunbar and Reagan, eds., Debunking 9/11 Myths, p. 57.49 Dunbar and Reagan, eds., Debunking 9/11 Myths, p. 58.

http://www.implosionworld.com/Article-WTC%20STUDY%208-06%20w%20clarif%20as%20of%209-8-06%20.pdfhttp://www.implosionworld.com/Article-WTC%20STUDY%208-06%20w%20clarif%20as%20of%209-8-06%20.pdfhttp://www.implosionworld.com/Article-WTC%20STUDY%208-06%20w%20clarif%20as%20of%209-8-06%20.pdf


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loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull, and

then we watched the building collapse.”50

The emphasis placed by conspiracy theorists on Silverstein’s “pull it” comment is closely related

to the theory that Silverstein made good profit on the collapse, drawing in billions of dollars ininsurance money from the building’s demise. This theory is absurdly wrong. The fact of the

matter is that there was a negative payout. Silverstein only stood to make $4.6 billion from

insurance, and this money was allocated to the rebuilding of the site, not to line Silverstein’s own

pockets. At the time, the cost of rebuilding amounted to $6.3 billion, with construction costs

escalating at the rate of 1 percent a month.51 On top of this, the insurance holders said in June of

2006 that since Silverstein would not own all the buildings of the site at the time of payout, he

may not stand to receive all the money they were prepared to fork over.52 In addition, Silverstein

continues to be responsible for paying a yearly lease of $120 million to New York’s Port

Authority, a yearly payment that must be met in order to maintain his company’s right to

rebuild.53 Where is the windfall profit?

3) “We have 100% proof that there was foreknowledge that the building was going to collapse (Rudy

Guliani’s [sic] testimony, warnings from firefighters and police that they had been told that the building

was coming down, and at least 2 live broadcasts (Fox News local channel and BBC News) both reported

that the building had already collapsed when in actuality it was still standing. ”

Prediction is not the same as foreknowledge, and accurate prediction in no way implies a

conspiracy. There is simply no need for anyone to have been privy to advance knowledge of a

demolition in order to anticipate or suggest that the buildings would collapse. The initial impacts

were at least as unprecedented as the collapses themselves. It is only natural for both the general

public as well as structural engineers and Fire Department personnel to expect that the buildings

were going to collapse following the impacts of the planes. There is also no reason to doubt that

50 Seth Kramer and Daniel A. Miller, America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero (Great Projects Film Company, 2002).51 Charles V. Bagli, “New Rebuilding Plan Leaves Some Wondering What the Big Rush Is,” The New York Times,April 27, 2006, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE7DC133FF934A15757C0A9609C8B63

(accessed May 24, 2015).52

“Mayor Sends Letters to Insurance Companies Urging Them to Pay WTC Claims,” NY1 News, June 16, 2006,

http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/60290/mayor-sends-letters-to-insurance-companies-urging-them-to-

pay-wtc-claims (accessed April 4, 2011).53 For a collection of relevant articles on this point about Larry Silverstein, see the Mindfully.org webpagehttp://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Larry-Silverstein-WTC6dec04.htm (accessed May 24, 2015).

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE7DC133FF934A15757C0A9609C8B63http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE7DC133FF934A15757C0A9609C8B63http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE7DC133FF934A15757C0A9609C8B63http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/60290/mayor-sends-letters-to-insurance-companies-urging-them-to-pay-wtc-claimshttp://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/60290/mayor-sends-letters-to-insurance-companies-urging-them-to-pay-wtc-claimshttp://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/60290/mayor-sends-letters-to-insurance-companies-urging-them-to-pay-wtc-claimshttp://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Larry-Silverstein-WTC6dec04.htmhttp://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Larry-Silverstein-WTC6dec04.htmhttp://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Larry-Silverstein-WTC6dec04.htmhttp://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/60290/mayor-sends-letters-to-insurance-companies-urging-them-to-pay-wtc-claimshttp://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/60290/mayor-sends-letters-to-insurance-companies-urging-them-to-pay-wtc-claimshttp://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE7DC133FF934A15757C0A9609C8B63


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reports of the potential collapse of the Twin Towers and of WTC 7 may have filtered through to

Giuliani moments before it actually happened.

When Zeitgeist invokes live news broadcasts that prematurely reported the buildings’ collapse

while they were still standing, it makes two tacit and naïve assumption. One is that the news

media should always be infallible. The other is that coincidences are impossible. The reality is

that mistakes are made in the news all the time. For example, a comparison can be made between

early reports of WTC 7’s collapse and announcements made in online news media in June 2009

that the actor Jeff Goldblum died in New Zealand. As it turned out, Goldblum was alive and well

when these reports appeared.54 The Goldblum death hoax resurfaced again early in January 2014,

with a fake news site reporting again that he died in New Zealand. “The same report surfaces

every couple of months,” notes one writer reporting on this latest hoax.55 This does not mean that

the news media will be implicated in foreknowledge of a conspiracy to murder Goldblum when

he does pass away sometime in the future. He may even die in New Zealand, and there would

still be no warrant to posit conspiracy, only coincidence. Contrary to what conspiracy theorists

constantly imply, coincidences actually do occur. The fact that live reports were made on more

than one news source before the events in question actually happened does absolutely nothing to

establish foreknowledge, especially considering what had already transpired at the time the

reports were made.

A much more reasonable and plausible explanation of the seeming “foreknowledge” incidents

is as follows: Suggestions began to circulate that the collapse of World Trade Center 7 was

inevitable, based on the fact that two other buildings in close proximity to WTC 7 had just

collapsed. In the ensuing rush, confusion and mass hysteria, at least two news sources (Fox News

and BBC’s Channel 4) then decide to report on WTC 7 before anyone else beats them to the

story. Scenarios similar to this happen in news media all the time. There is no end to the

examples one can find of news personnel jumping the gun while reporting on a rapidly-

developing story. Ironically, the same people who use this line of evidence to support their claim

of foreknowledge also tend to say that the mainstream media routinely lies to the public. At the

54 Danny Sullivan, “Jeff Goldblum is NOT Dead (Despite What Google Says),” Search Engine Land , June 25, 2009,http://searchengineland.com/jeff-goldblum-is-not-dead-despite-what-google-says-21588 (accessed May 26, 2015).55

Katie McFadden, “Jeff Goldblum Dead? Actor Becomes Victim of Internet Death Hoax,” Travelers Today , January

2, 2014, http://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/8082/20140102/jeff-goldblum-dead-actor-becomes-victim-of-

internet-death-hoax.htm (accessed May 26, 2015).

http://searchengineland.com/jeff-goldblum-is-not-dead-despite-what-google-says-21588http://searchengineland.com/jeff-goldblum-is-not-dead-despite-what-google-says-21588http://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/8082/20140102/jeff-goldblum-dead-actor-becomes-victim-of-internet-death-hoax.htmhttp://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/8082/20140102/jeff-goldblum-dead-actor-becomes-victim-of-internet-death-hoax.htmhttp://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/8082/20140102/jeff-goldblum-dead-actor-becomes-victim-of-internet-death-hoax.htmhttp://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/8082/20140102/jeff-goldblum-dead-actor-becomes-victim-of-internet-death-hoax.htmhttp://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/8082/20140102/jeff-goldblum-dead-actor-becomes-victim-of-internet-death-hoax.htmhttp://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/8082/20140102/jeff-goldblum-dead-actor-becomes-victim-of-internet-death-hoax.htmhttp://searchengineland.com/jeff-goldblum-is-not-dead-despite-what-google-says-21588


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same time, they will portray the news media as being absolutely right on every issue on which

they report when it is interpreted as being helpful towards supporting their claims.

This is the kind of inconsistency reminiscent of the methods of many young-earth

creationists, who reject the science that contradicts their position (which means they reject most

science), and accept the science when it seems to aid their position. This approach is both

dishonest and antithetical to critical thinking. The only way to honestly defend any position is to

take all of the available evidence, pro and con, weigh the data objectively, and exclude biases to

the best of our ability and as much as possible.

4) “ NIST . . . claims fire alone and minor damage caused a symmetrical collapse of a steel building,

something that has never happened before or since--NIST also claims this was a new type of collapse and

that it should be studied, but if this collapse was new and unexpected, how could there be fore knowledge

that WTC7 would collapse? WTC7, which was not hit by a plane and less damaged than other buildings

closer to the WTC Towers that did not collapse, is a complete mystery (except if explained by controlled

demolition).”

Let us first address the claim that WTC 7 was “less damaged” than other surviving buildings that

were located closer to the Twin Towers. Clearing up this point will demonstrate that WTC 7 is

far less of a mystery than Harmon and Zeitgeist makes it out to be. The only reason this

particular claim has been allowed to flourish as long as it has is because most cameras capturing

the 9/11 event were trained on the Twin Towers themselves and away from Building 7.

However, eyewitness testimony from several independent sources indicates conclusively that the

claim is simply false.56 From these lines of evidence, the idea that Building Seven did not suffer

substantial damage as a result of the collapse of the other towers is clearly a joke, as can easily

be ascertained by video footage.57 Below is an NIST photograph of the damage sustained by

WTC 7.58 Take special note of the damage at the edge of the southwest face.

56 Mark Roberts, “Eyewitness Accounts of WTC 7 Fires,” in World Trade Center Building 7 and the Lies of the “9/11Truth Movement” , https://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/eyewitnessaccountsofwtc7fires (accessed May 24,

2015).57

Debunking911, “WTC 7 Fires and South Side Hole” (video), YouTube, March 27, 2007,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afb7eUHr64U (accessed May 24, 2015).58 National Institute of Standards and Technology, “NIST Response to the World Trade Center Disaster: FederalBuilding and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster – Part IIC – WTC 7 Collapse,” NIST

PowerPoint, April 5, 2005. Available online at htt

spirit_of_paranoia_a_critical_analysis_o.pdf

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