What ever Murph. I’m not sure which doc you watched but I saw a very good case for doing away with the harmful, conceded, and destructive practice called religion. I mean these poeople are telling our children a bunch of pure lies that do nothing but promote segregation and fear. The school requiring the student to disprove christianity? Come on man, should not the burden of proof be on the person making an assertion that something that is absolutedly counter intuitive and proven many times to be incorrect about many things is in fact reality? That makes much more sence to me any way. Besides, if the kid had o fbeen a little sharper he could have definetly proved his point. We have tons of evidence (true imperical evidence) that the world works according to scientific principles. We have absolutedly not one shred of evidence that God exists or that if he does he is the Christian God and not some other diety. More than that it is counter intuitive to a human in his right mind to think that someone was reserected or walked on water or was born of a virgin mother- so if God created us to worship him he needs to go back to egineering class. Why would you give man logic and intuition if he should ignore them, oh yeah thats right you just want us to ignore it when it comes to the devine. Any other time we would be laughed at and called crazy for believing things like this. The first thing you would say to me if I told you something was reality that was clearly not logical, feesible, or even possible is, “What proof do you have?” And you would be right to do so. But when it comes to god we are all to just accept what we have been told and do not question or try and apply logic. Get over yourselves and accept the fact that their is no eternal reward for wasting the dawn. You have one life to live do not waste it on fear and fantasy.

-Unfortunately, the documentary cut out after just under an hour, but what I saw was interesting, if a tad too polemic & less than reflective or sympathetic concerning the motives behind people’s beliefs. For example, too much was made of Mel Gibson`s `The Passion Of Christ. Knowing what I know of Mel, the graphic sequences likely sought to bring a cringing reality to what he saw as Jesus’ sacrifice home to his viewers, and bring home to the viewers what Jesus endured- the “blood sacrifice” angle is debatable (although in light of Mel’s recent misadventures, the anti-semitism is unfortunately likely on the mark).

So far as the parallels between Christianity and other traditions are concerned, it’s certainly true, although much more mention could have been made as to why Christianity shares much in common with the cult of Isis/Osirus or Mithra, for example. The vast majority of Christians (as the director took the opportunity to point out), haven’t a clue concerning these older traditions & may have benefited- more should have been made of these links.

So… Was Jesus a real person? My feeling is that he likely was. Let’s face it, 2000 years ago, 99.999999…. percent of the people born would have left little if any kind of historical record- it certainly doesn’t mean that they didn’t actually exist. Was he the Son Of God? Almost certainly not, but I think he may well have been a very wise and benevolent teacher who inspired such love and devotion amongst a motley band of peasant followers, that they couldn’t forget him, and that this love that he inspired in them may well have given birth to first a legend, and later an entire religion. This, to myself at least, seems a little more feasible than the whole thing being made up out of thin air- most legends do in fact have their genesis in some grain of truth- perhaps even that of Hercules. I found troubling also that there was little mention of of the hypothetical “Q” source of the sayings of Jesus that may actually be contemporaneous with or even predate the letters of Paul- a more balanced view would have been welcome, even if it ran counter to the director’s argument.

Getting back to “The Passion Of Christ”, I saw it in the theaters not long after its release, and found it very compelling. I was troubled, however, by how many reviewers seemed to have missed the point, whether it was intentionally made or not. I recall very well watching the scene where Jesus is being whipped and having an urge to imagine myself jumping into the scene and grabbing a whip & laying into those grinning sadists. That’s when I had an epiphany- Christ preached “Love thine enemy”. Paraphrases aside, it’s THE most central and valuable teaching of Christianity- if we can’t find it in our hearts to forgive his tormentors, then in a very real way, we’re no better than they are, and NOT Christian. It’s very ironic that while I am not a Christian myself, I seem to understand this simple fact better than so many preachers of the faith.

Considering whether or not Jesus actually existed is an interesting, provocative, and indeed worthwhile exercise, but in the final analysis, I think it’s probably a case more often than not of over-zealot debunkers tossing out the baby Jesus along with the bathwater (of course strongly influenced by the cultural mileeu) that later evolved into the Christian religion.

It seemed it was made by a elementary School student.

I am an art-history student and fortunatelly can get access to a lot of scripts dealing with Christian subjects (even bibles dating back to about 400 b.C.) and also other mythical figures like Dionysos, Mithra and others. Working on a REAL scientific basic with that topic, there is indeed no chance to deny that a lot of religions and myths use the same kind of symbolism. For example the story of Noah and his arche can already be found in the Gilgamesh-epos. But nevertheless I think it is a shame that those documentaries (like Zeitgeist) don´t really offer sources or few. You cannot form theories without really searching for evidence or trying to prove it wrong.
Yet an interesting topic, and I guess I will make this topic the subject of my Bacherlor- or Master-thesis. And I would like to encourage everyone – no matter of sceptic or atheist or Christian – to go to libraries or bookstores and search for scriptures that provide scientific information about religions and myths. Because you can´t just say something about a topic you never did good research on.

Give Me money and I shall erase all your sins Give me Money and I shall Molest all your children

I was very disappointed.  Others have done far better than this with the subject.

good documentary! facts and facts in a well presented way, fun 

Oh jesus bejaysus, It all comes down to blind fundamentalism. ALL religions of the world promote  ”basic” human “values” (quote signs are meant to show the ambiguity of it all) like love, compassion, forgiveness etc… Its the human interpretation of the words written in various books written by various humans striving for power, control, knowledge, enlightenment, vengeance, forgiveness and so on. If there is a supreme being that observes us all, and judges us from day one to day august 12th 2011 (probably wrong to use the gregorian calenda in the context) this being should have given up on mankind way before most major modern religions were born. we have always hated and destroyed one another. our progress essentially comes dwn to more creative ways to accomplish that. 
P.S. if any religion in the world would explain how homo sapiens have been unconscious for 60000 years and then made a leap to consciousness without any plausible cause about 40000 years ago. If it was god, he made a hell of a mess

What do i need to download to watch this?!?