Questioning Darwin

I learned a lot watching this. I liked the inside tour of the creation museum and I liked the story of darwin and the images it presented. I don't subscribe to a particular religion and I wasn't turned of by people and their beliefs. It was fascinating to watch and I appreciated the doc.

This movie has several problems, but the biggest one is that this documentary does not present any information or point of view that might give the viewer a reason to ponder either evolution or creation. Rather, this movie consists almost entirely of short segments describing the life of Charles Darwin after he began his research into evolution followed by declarations of belief by the strict creationists that this movie is about.

First of all, this movie is not a Christian propaganda film. The director is an admitted agnostic that agrees with the handful of scientists in this documentary, not with the creationists. It is great that he was able to keep his views from clouding the documentary, but the fact that the majority of people reviewing this movie on this site and others think that it is a Christian propaganda film means that he went too far in the other direction, never questioning or exploring the beliefs of these people in any critical or academic way.

No Christian in this documentary ever gives any rationale for their belief that the Bible is 100% true and the word of God other than that the Bible says so and this is good enough for them. Their entire view of the world starts from the idea that their religion is true and their God and the Bible are infallible, and then everything else is either derived from that basis or twisted to coexist with that truth. To them, there can be no evidence that contradicts that view without that evidence being obviously (for them) wrong, and if there seems to be contradictory evidence they will set their "scientists" at the Creation Museum among other places to the task of trying to make this evidence fit with what they already know to be the ultimate truth in the Bible. This is all a very fascinating idea, and the mental hoops that these people have to jump through in order to continually justify their rigid belief system are amazing, but none of that is explored in this documentary. The results are on display, but all of the fascinating stuff under the surface is just left sitting there.

There is absolutely nothing deep or revealing in the documentary, which, in my opinion, is really what a documentary is supposed to be. Rather, this is just a superficial parade of quotes by strict creationists surrounded by a very, very shallow and weak description of Darwins' life and the history of the fight over scientific education. Truly, the sections dealing with Darwin and science education take up maybe 25% of this already short documentary, revealing nothing that anyone with even the most cursory familiarity with either subject would not already know.

The people in this Documentary are fascinating and strangely likable even when I disagree with their views, mostly due to their convictions and the purity of their belief, and hopefully someday someone will make a decent documentary that actually explores these fascinating people and their beliefs.

The information we learn about Darwin's voyage, work, and faith will reward a viewing. That information takes up about half the film. The other half, consisting mostly of comments by fundamentalist Christians, is much less interesting.

Here we are. Living in the 21st century. We have grown adults telling themselves and others that a god is real and that humanity is to blame for all the evil and strife in the world all due to sin. The pastor telling himself that if the bible told him 2+2=5 he would have to work it out and believe it to be true to matter what tells me everything I need to know about christians. Then the kids saying that Science is over heavy in our society and that Science shouldn't be based on facts or proof only shows how the church in this nation want to keep our kids stupid and in a cult like status. Mostly this happens in the southern states for some odd reason. I give it 6 because it shows Darwin in a good way but it doesn't say anything how we should remedy our nations Science inadequacy. The rest of the nations are laughing at the USA except for nations who choose to keep their population in the 7th century. The taliban being one of those groups.

I rarely write reviews, but I am moved to chime in after reading the surprisingly low (albeit few) ratings of others. I happened upon this documentary (that's all it is) on HBO. At the outset,it presents an interesting statistic that impressed me: Forty-six percent of us believe the biblical version of creation. That's OK. However, this film presents a fascinating overview of the history of Darwin's work along with belief of creationists. It was informative, not didactic-- an excellent use of the documentary form. I suspect the lowish ratings and negative reviews are the opinion of those who misunderstood the film as an attack on religion, which it is not.

Judge the film on its intent to inform about the work of Darwin and the belief of creationists. Nobody is wrong except, perhaps, those who don't want to learn. (That's why I like documentaries.)