User Reviews

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.

This documentary was actually just half of one, and then not even the documentary that was promised, thus my judgment of 4/10. It didn't even really question Darwin. It interwove an abbreviated biography of Charles Darwin and how he changed from someone who in his youth who took the Bible literally into the author of Origin of the Species with random vignettes of Christians that frankly, seem to make them look stupid.

The documentary is careful to say that what changed in Darwin was not a belief IN God, but a belief in what that God was. He was no longer convinced he was a benevolent God. The head scratcher to me here was that he had to take a trip to other lands on a sailing vessel to come to that conclusion.

As for the Christian stories, there is a trip to the creation museum where it is insisted that the world is only 6000 years old, there is a preacher in a pulpit saying that if Darwin's theories are true then everybody in that church is "an ignoramus", and one Christian lady who is working with the poor and homeless as far as feeding them and trying to house them. Now this lady takes the cake. First she says that evil is a result of the devil, and then she says that without hardship we really don't learn anything. So which is it? Is it the devil that causes the homelessness of the people she serves or God trying to teach a lesson? And if it is the latter why doesn't she give away everything she has - starting with those nice ear rings - so God can teach her something in her poverty and hunger? The one thing the documentary never does is go into any depth on why there is so much antipathy towards Darwin in the modern Christian community and what are the alternative Christian theories and their basis in something other than the literal interpretation of the Bible.

I'd say if you already know about Darwin and his life and work, this won't add to your knowledge. I'd skip it.

Everyone in this documentary assumes that the bible is the word of God. They have no real understanding of evolution, they simply don't like it because it contradicts with their religion. This is more like a video about people preaching about Jesus rather than an actual attempt Questioning Evolutionary Theory with a good basis of reasoning. The reason why there's no good reason to go against evolution, is because evolution is true. I'm sorry if you hold on to a religion book dear to your heart, but that book is written by man. Please try to approach the world with the approach to learn and try to have the best understanding of the world rather than just believe in a dogma under the assumption that it is the word of God.

The movie tells the story of Darwin's journey from a man of faith to a man whose faith is challenged by his own scientific discoveries and personal tragedy. Alongside this story are interviews with Creationist ministers and their congregation who explain why the do not accept Darwin's theories. The movie is clearly sympathetic to the Creationist position but it is not dismissive of Darwin.

The movie does fall short on science. If you are looking for scientific justification of Creationism, you will not find it here. Also, the movie does lose objectivity as it goes along, ultimately wallowing in self-pity as it portrays Creationists as victims of "culture" and "society".

While this is not a highly sophisticated analysis I definitely found it an interesting insight into a mindset and religious tradition that seldom gets more than sound-bites.

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.

I'm an atheist and Darwin/Evolution supporter, but I found this documentary oddly touching. The Creationists in this film were almost all likeable, caring, and passionate about their beliefs. The family who were raising a paralyzed yet surprisingly cheerful young girl, the prostitutes and drug addicts who gave up their sins for Christ, the head of a church who runs a homeless shelter, the mother who was diligently home schooling her children -- almost makes me wish there were one single fiber of my body that could believe in the existence of a God. But here's the bottom line of the documentary: There's no point in demonizing each other. There are great people on both sides. And while I'm not religious myself, I'm not one to kick the foundation out of other people's beliefs -- particularly when it's turned around so many lives. Life is short and complex. Let's stop going to war with each other, and start recognizing each other's point of view. This documentary is a great first step.

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.

Preaching over evidence. Nothing new. Questioning is a bad description, it is more like denying, because the bible says otherwise. There is no counterargument, no other model presented. Just plain old "teach the controversy" where there is none. Bad attempt at making some propaganda for the bible belt, but luckily we live in the age of internet and google will always be helpful to debunk crap.

Though I'm a believer (thru my personal life experience), I was expecting the movie could answer Darwin with rationalism & provocating questions toward evolution theory, instead of using just simply faith to Genesis. For example they can raise some question related to this worlds' complexity, times actually lead to chaos not to orderliness, science principle or steps about observing phenomenon to create a theory then to prove the theory, which evolution is still sitting in theory step, and other things that really make the viewers (who I believe comes from many backgrounds & never heard genesis) really questioning the theory.

It's not as objective as they try to make it out to be. I maybe got a quarter of the way through and got tired of hearing how awesome Christians are and if Darwin had been better educated he might have come to different conclusions. The very fact they try hard to make Ken Ham seem reasonable should be proof enough how bias the film is. There's a lot of waffling about maybe the days were a different length and all this rationalizing. The guy saying if the Bible said 2+2=5 he'd believe it and adjust his thinking about the real world was enough for me.

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.)

Just because this debate has devolved into documenting ignorance and denial by some people doesn't make this excellent documentary trite, silly or bad. Sure, there are some eye-rolling moments during the interviews of evangelist Christians, but so what? Not only does the film educate us on the genesis of creationism and intelligent design, but artfully contrasts those misunderstandings with the facts of Darwin's life and his life's work. God's most wondrous work is human discovery, invention, and knowledge. I show this HBO produced documentary to my high school U.S. history students. It explains so much in a mere 50 minutes.