Is Genesis History?

I gave it a 3 because it's very well made with excellent production values. However, it's such a godawful load of crap that I can't even be bothered giving an example, except to say that it quickly devolves from outlandish claims about the origins of various geological formations to going on and on about the Bible.

Look, if you're not a scientist or a geologist, it ultimately doesn't matter whether you believe that the ancient Book of Genesis is fact or fiction. You'll probably go your entire life unaffected ultimately by your belief on an ancient flood, or a deity creation myth, or anything in the Book of Genesis.

That being said, what struck me the most about this documentary was this wasn't made from facts, it was made from statements of belief.

"I believe...."

"I believe...."

etc. Through the ENTIRE documentary, over and over and over.

These are BELIEFS. That's all.

If you think this doc might answer the question "Is Genesis history?", unfortunately it was not and will not be answered.

Maybe one day we'll get the documentary that many have wanted "What parts of Genesis are based on fact?", but until then, we'll have to settle for pseudo-scientists and others waving their hands at the Grand Canyon and regurgitating quasi-scientific technobabble.

Noah's Flood is a much older story than the one that is included in the Bible. Flood myths stretch back thousands of years before the Bible. We even found one, in The Epic of Gilgamesh, virtually identical, except someone else building a boat, not "Noah".

So the "literal" flood is a retelling of a story that didn't even involve anyone named Noah.

The documentary didn't even notice this little fact, so what else did it leave out while talking endlessly about what they believe the Bible says? So a book that's been translated, not once, but three times into modern English. Ancient Hebrew to Ancient Greek to Latin to Vulgate Latin to English contains accurate history and nothing else?

OK...time to move on to another documentary...

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.

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.

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.