Raising unanswered questions, offering alternative scientific interpretations, and the exposing of censored views should always be invited. Science professors and science public schoolteachers have lost their jobs for doing this. (See Ben Stein’s Expelled, no Intelligence Allowed.) The movie Is Genesis History? may have struck a sensitive public nerve. It will be showed again on Thursday, March 2 and Tuesday, March 7, 2017. Go to IsGenesisHistory.com to find a theater near you.
Unfortunately, this documentary’s implied narrative, that the universe is not millions of years old, could cause unnecessary conflict in our origins debate. The end result – the rejection of the main narrative these producers skillfully designed – that God was involved. A careful historical review of the Creation/Evolution conflict shows mistakes made on both sides of this debate with the unfortunate results – polarized alliances that exist to this day.
As an example let’s look at just the first two verses in Genesis. 1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” 2: “And the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” (KJV)
Question – Does this describe all of God’s creative acts of Day One or does this describe the initial conditions for Day One? In other words…How long was the earth without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep after heaven was created and just before the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters?
A biblical literalist could honestly say, no one knows and this implies that a biblical literalist could easily accept the universe and earth be millions of years old.
Big Bang cosmology is another point of confusion and unnecessary rejection by some traditional believers and seemingly again because of the time issue. Hubble’s Law – that the outermost galaxies are accelerating away from us and the farther out one goes the faster the velocity, strongly implies the universe is expanding. Isaiah, 700 years before Christ, seems to have been inspired first to reveal this to us. He writes, “He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.” Isaiah 40:22b (NIV) No one else seems to have had the idea about the heavens stretching and spreading out until it was scientifically discovered early in the 20th century. The agnostic astronomer, Robert Jastrow in his God and the Astronomers, confessed that the atheistic scientists rejected this because it implied that the universe had a beginning and a beginner – God. So why did this documentary prompt us to listen to the atheistic scientists that are rejecting Big Bang cosmology now?
This documentary just begins this discussion and should prompt us to carefully revisit our origins stories. It does all this by offering some very interesting geology and paleontology evidences that strongly implies Genesis is true history.