A friend had asked me about the film and so I wrote these notes while watching (which I emailed and used as an outline for a phone discussion):
Nothing new so far—lots of classic PRATTs—but kind of fascinating nonetheless.
As one would expect with CMI, the first few minutes address the
Big Bang Theory and abiogenesis as if they are part of the Theory of Evolution.
Yes, Jason Lisle explains why “observational science” in the present is great but claims there is no such thing as observing the past—so we all know what that means when someone foolishly thinks that fossils allow us to observe evolution!
You know the script: Evolution is outside the bounds of observational science. Nobody was there to observe it. Chemistry and physics are observational science. Evolution is just speculative history. It is constantly changed as scientists change their beliefs about the past! (Face-palm.)
I’m just 12 minutes in, and the production values are good but the arguments are just as weak as they were fifty years ago.
I hadn’t heard of the Evidence Scale Fallacy before—and I don’t recall seeing it in any logic textbook—but Lisle tells us that “everybody has the same evidence” but they reach different conclusions based upon their worldview. Face-palm. Projection on steroids.
Great cinematography takes us to a large boulder on the top of a mountain. How did it get there? Nobody saw it get placed there. Which interpretation is better? It is the one which most fits “observational science.” I couldn’t follow the logic at all (because it wasn’t soundly logical) but one of the narrators concluded that we know that the Biblical interpretation best fits observational science.
Yep, I saw it coming: micro-evolution and macro-evolution are not the same thing! Nevertheless, the claim sounds impressive when the narrator has a very sophisticated sounding British accent.
Dogs breeds are supposed to illustrate evolution but it is all degenerative. No new genes or information are found. It is all about information loss. “You can’t breed Chihuahuas and produce wolves.” It doesn’t work in the other direction.
Oh my! Georgia Purdom from Answers in Genesis makes an appearance to explain that minor gene mutations that change coat color in dogs are never going to produce wings! [Yes, that’s a newsflash. Film at 11.]
Antibiotic resistance in bacteria is not macro-evolution! Purdom also tells us that Horizontal Gene Transfer “is not what evolution needs.” “It doesn’t change the essence of bacteria.” [What is the “essence” of bacteria???]
Now the British narrator is saying that “lower” life-forms cannot evolve into “higher” life-forms. That no doubt explains why I’ll never live in the more upscale suburbs.
Dr. John Sanford admits that some mutations are beneficial—but then he explains that even those involve information loss and things like deformation. He characterizes sickle cell trait as a terrible example of evolution because it is a deadly trade-off between some malaria advantage for many people and death for a few. [Evolution is so cruel!] Sanford claims that evolutionists like to cite sickle cell trait because beneficial mutations are so hard to find! [Yeah, it couldn’t be that sickle cell is something most people have heard of, so it makes a less obscure example.]
Sanford really hammers home that beneficial mutations being rare is a bedrock fact of biology. [I didn’t know it was such a big deal as a foundation of biology.]
Natural selection fails because mutations are largely invisible to selection.
Genetic deterioration is inevitable. So evolution can’t be true.
“Missing links” and museum reconstructions are panned.
Experts disagree about various hominines. Too much is extrapolated from isolated bones and collections of “jumbled bones” scattered across the countryside. They had to screen 20 tons of sediment to find Lucy’s bones. Only 20% of her skeleton were found. [Face-palm. This section of the film should be accompanied by trigger warning.]
Australopithecus afarensis is just a jumble of human and ape bones. This section of the film is absolutely awful. How many times have critics exposed YEC propaganda in these claims.
Potassium-Argon radiometrics is flawed, says Andrew Snelling, because modern day volcanic lava formations test ancient even though they are just a few years old–for example Mt. St. Helens eruption tested over one million years old for its recent eruption. Another PRATT.
Only one complete Homo erectus skeleton has been found. “It is unquestionably human.”
Neanderthals in modern dress would go unnoticed on a New York street. [So what?] He had fire, stone tools, art, instruments, cosmetics, and ceremonial burials. [So what?]
DNA mapping proves that Neanderthals were modern humans. And the fact that they can be mapped shows that they are very recent (because DNA degrades.)
Neanderthals weren’t sub-human! The scientists misled us. (Sounds like somebody is confusing popular media and Hollywood with modern science.)
The hominin family tree is now a messy family tree—not a simple route from ape to man. So there! Evolution is debunked again! [Apparently good science must be neat and simple.]
Humans have always lived around a diversity of apes. [That probably because humans are evolved simians.]
Human versus chimp DNA comparisons are flawed. “They used only snippets to arrive at 98% similar claim.” Nathaniel Jeanson shows up to drive this point home. (All of the big YEC stars are in this film.) “Massive number of single-letter differences” between human and chimp DNA.
John Sanford says that there’s not been enough time for evolution to make the millions of changes in DNA from chimp-like ancestor to humans. And in the meantime, too much damage occurs from bad mutations. [Let’s see his math and why it differs from everybody else’s.]
It takes two millions years for two specific beneficial mutations to spread to entire population. And genetic drift multiplies these delays by a huge factor. Even many billions of years would not be enough for humans to evolve from apes.
Mitochondrial Eve and Y-DNA Adam point to Adam and Eve of the Bible.
Molecular clocks are flawed.
Adam and Eve were packed with all of the genetic diversity needed to produce the variety of humans we observe today. Jeanson draws from multi-ethnic pairs today. Then the narrator describes two-toned twin girls from “mid-tone” parents. Just one generation of variation: one twin is light-skinned blonde and the other twin is dark! Apparently the cute photo is supposed to decide the issue for those who don’t understand evolutionary biology. This is the sort of thing one would only pull on a non-scientist audience.
A designer can build in variance. You don’t have to wait on mutations. The four alleles of two parents are sufficient to explain all resulting diversity.
The Out of Africa Theory sounds like the Tower of Babel. It was a severe population bottleneck, around 10,000 people. The Noahic Flood was another bottleneck.
“The evolutionary model is getting more biblical over time.” “The tide is changing.” Yes, the Bible is winning over the scientists. [You can believe it because the narrator said so! Yes, this is the old, “Evolution is collapsing as a theory any day now!” which has been around for my entire lifetime and probably far longer.]
At around 1:30 (90 minutes) there is a nice summary of the key points of the film, the individual arguments. As an instructional film, that was a very nice touch. The points are weak but replayed in quick sequence, they will impress non-scientists who already hate evolution.
I know some will have that reaction and I’m curious what especially it would be.
