Is Genesis History?

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...

When Creationist came up with Intelligent Design to, somehow, fool people into thinking there was something scientific about Genesis, I was surprised at how far they would go.... failing that, they have now decided to try history, to somehow justify their religious beliefs... I am not saying everyone does not have a right to their own beliefs, but to undermine proved science of geology, microbiology, DNA, etc, to further this, is a joke... yes, I watched it to see how far and by what method creationist will go to justify an impossible time frame as laid out in Genisis, and to falsely create a historical background to it.... like Intelligent Design, this to will fail to prove the impossible.

I was expecting a serious look at Genesis aND a serious look at science. We got a serious look at Genesis but nothing very scientific.

I found two items of particular trouble, one was a supposed scientist who said "we think" atomic decay rates have changed over time. We can tell by stars billions of light years away that the same weak nuclear force today was in effect as far back as we can see, tens of billions of years ago. The universe would not exist if the weak nuclear force was as unstable to cause over 10 orders of magnitide of difference as is suggested by that alleged scientist.

Also the fossil evidence explanation they have that the flood waters receding and rising caused different ecosystems that brought about different animals cursed with claw and tooth from the original sin. We don't see any of the types of animals Noah saved in those fossil layers along with prehistoric fishes, so a very poor explanation. In fact, we don't see armored fishes with early mammals either, or even in the dinosaur layers.

The evidence is very one sided and very weak. Because they refused to offer any alternative counter argument it made it seem like less a search for the truth, and more like propaganda hiding behind loads of strawman arguments and dishonesty, distraction or pseudoscience.

If you want the truth you'll have to go somewhere else. If you want pseudoscience to help you close your mind off to the truth, this is the perfect film. Just be sure to avoid all genuine scientific analysis and counter arguments to the very weak arguments supplied by this film and your mythology will remain safe from rational and objective thought. It's about faith, not fact, and that is why they don't call faith, truth.

I gave 3 stars because they had nice filming locations, and the people in the film did not insult the vast majority of scientists who agree that the universe is billions of years old for millions of interlocking reasons.

I rated it 3 stars because of the beautiful images. But it is so disappointing ! This film is obviously biased from start to finish. Contradictory points, so many obvious questions just ignored... I thought that finally this film would open a real dialogue, but it is way too inconsistent -only six people are interviewed, all creationists anyway, forgetting extremely important factors. Not scientific, not rigorous. Just creationist propaganda. Too bad.

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.