Is Genesis History?

I knew even before I came to this site to review the movie that the reviews would be either a few stars or a maximum stars. This movie is an example of confirmation bias. If you already believe that the Earth is just a few thousand years old and that God created it you will love this movie. If you use the scientific method you will dislike this movie, because there is precious little science. As one previous poster pointed out, interviewer after interviewee stated their belief. Science has little use for belief, science is concerned what the evidence shows.

Curious how this movie was received, I came to check out the reviews and was very disappointed with the posts on here. I feel like an honest review is needed to hopefully provide a moderate's perspective.

First off, do not watch this movie as a way to definitively answer the debates that have lasted for years and years and years and years. The people rating this film low under war cries of no in-depth science need to realize that they are being foolish. The movie highlights the scientific communities unyielding devotion to one theory of the planets creation and it invites people to consider a different perspective. If you want a full-fledged dissertation on the intricacies of geology, philosophy, and historical credibility, maybe you should go sign up at a university; a two-hour film is not going to be able to deliver this. I agree the movie could use more visual aids and helpful cinematic (the constant shots of two men talking got old after a while), but, lets be honest here, even if there were, many of the low-rating critics would still say it didn't cover X, Y, and Z.

Secondly, if you're already ingrained into one ideology with no room for considering the possibility that an alternative explanation could be plausible, then don't watch this movie. Any intellectual conversation that furthers open discussion has to begin with both parties willing to entertain the idea they might be wrong. Know that you will end the movie with more questions than when you started. Or at least you should, if you're truly searching for the answers to big questions like the ones presented in the movie. If your ultimate goal is to jump on IMDb and hurl accusations about the Creationists or Young Earthers or (insert encompassing term here), why even bother watching it?

Overall, the movie was good from a speculative approach. The stories are mentioned in passing and much of the time is spent looking at geological records to validate The Great Flood. This challenges conventional, long-held beliefs about the age of Earth, and it encourages inquiring minds to look further into the alternative arguments.

Once upon a time I used to be a fundamentalist Christian who believed in a literal six- day creation account, which I ardently defended. I no longer meet these qualifications, and have become an evolutionist. I watched the documentary expecting it to be a faith-filled defense of Genesis, despite its logline of "Presenting two view."

Here are numerous issues I discovered within the documentary:

The film only interviews literal six-day creationist scientists, and offers no rebuttal or counter-evidence from opposing beliefs. This gives the film a significant bias, with scientific opinions being founded foundationally upon subjective, religious beliefs. It creates an echo chamber for the film, where the only opinion you're told is the one you're expected to believe in.

The film is highly dichotomous. You either believe in 100% of Darwin's theory, or you believe 100% in Genesis. No room for theistic evolution, old-earth creationism, day- age, or anything. This is a further problem of the echo chamber mentioned above. One of the film's interviewees after the film's released attempted to redact some of his statements for being misconstrued as advocating this false dichotomy.

Perhaps most horrifying is how presuppositional the film is—it's bad science. Everyone interviewed in the film believes the Bible is 100% literal (except the parts that aren't), and, consequently, will not believe in evolution anyways. "Well Genesis is 100% true so anything else can't be right" seems to be the feel throughout.

What is funny about the film though, is that if you're familiar with evolution, the film helps reaffirm your position. A lot of the experts in the film clearly recognize what evolution is, but they won't admit they believe in it. They believe in specieization (that species evolve within phylum), but they won't believe it on the macro-scale. They recognize the difference between a Sea Urchin and Starfish is just a few genetic changes, but they again presume God first, and then deny the potential for evolution.

This film has beautiful cinematography and scenery, but it was not written well. It is not definitive, or even remotely helpful. It is a perpetuation of the echo-chamber of fundamentalism.

The definition of delusion is a persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self that is maintained despite indisputable evidence to the contrary according to Mirriam-Webster. I would like to be respectful of the assertions made in this film but honestly, I have too much respect for "facts" and science to "suspend disbelief" in the same way required to enjoy a fiction. Just another desperate (and deluded) attempt to reconcile a fable with science.

I watched this without any idea of what it was going to be about except that its clearly about the bible. What impresses me so much with this is the number of serious scientists that present views that we may not necessarily expect of scientists.

Its compelling, it really doesn't matter of you are a bible person or not, for that matter it doesn't really matter what if any religion you follow. The fact that it presents a view that challenges commonly held "facts" and makes such a strong argument tells me that we just cannot trust what we are told just because its presented as fact. An no matter what you believe, there will always be another view that has validity.

I will not say that I have come to any real conclusion about genesis and if its true or not, but I have a lot more questions now that I had before and that's a good thing.