Video Reviews

What are the best creation/evolution-related documentaries and films?

Free videos: Patterns of Evidence: Young Explorers

Jon Dykstra

Docudrama
190 minutes / 2020
Rating 7/10

While this kids docudrama isn’t directly related to 6-day creation, it does tackle the same doubting spirit. When it comes to the Exodus, the “experts” says that Bible must have it wrong. It’s a familiar refrain, and the answer should hopefully be just as familiar: when facts and the Bible conflict, you must have the facts wrong. And so Timothy Mahoney discovers in this film..

This didn’t actually grab me on a first viewing but that’s only become I wasn’t the target audience. I thought I would still test it out on my kids, and I am glad that I did. What’s good-but-not-great for dad turned out to be downright funtastic for the younger set! This 5-episode series is based on filmmaker Timothy Mahoney’s full-length documentary Patterns of Evidence about his search for evidence of Israel’s captivity in Egypt. The original was part mystery, part biblical history and my wife and I both enjoyed it immensely, which is why I ordered this sequel of sorts.

But what initially put me off of the Young Explorers version was the added element of a whole gang of kids helping Mahoney investigate this mystery. This is now not simply a documentary, but a docudrama, with fact and fiction, education and entertainment, all mixed together. The kids were decent actors but still kids, and while I enjoyed the gags and dry humor, it all struck me as just a bit…cheesy.

However, after testing it out on my daughters, I realized what I was bristling against wasn’t cheese so much as enthusiasm, and though the greybeard that I am should know better, I still sometimes succumb to that weird teenage cynicism that believes enthusiasm is the opposite of cool – I was actually faulting Mahoney’s junior investigators for being eager beavers! But watching this with my own kids, then the gangs’ enthusiasm became a key feature of the film: here were 10 keeners sharing their passions, and no one was getting mocked for gushing about this or that. It was a whole group of geeky kids encouraging and cheering each other on. Would that my own kids can be like that (would that I can be like that!). So yes, a cynical, edgy, or critical audience will find plenty to mock here, and consequently won’t be interested in the gang’s big adventure. But if you’ve got geeky kids of your own, then they may just love it!

There’s a lot of love in the more than 3 hours of content. One highlight is the “Exploration Chamber” – a fictitious holodeck that the group can enter to then see and explore Egypt as it once was. Adults will appreciate how we hear directly from the horse’s mouth, with Mahoney often interviewing the very critics he is trying to rebut. On my second viewing with the family I caught how there is humor on two levels here, with pratfalls for the kids, and dry humor for the adults – there are some snort-worthy moments!

The seven episodes in order cover:

  • The adventures begins when the kids hear about Timothy Mahoney’s work and are eager to help (Parts 1/2)
  • They learn that we may know where Joseph lived in Egypt
  • The team searches for signs of captive Israel’s population explosion
  • The Young Explorers go search for signs of the 10 plagues (Parts 1/2)
  • The search continues on into Israel, where the team now investigates the fall of the walls of Jericho

Caution

There are no real content concerns so the only caution I’ll offer is not to take Mahoney’s conclusions as the final word. Mahoney isn’t the only one trying to solve these mysteries, and while his answers are especially compelling, there seem to be some other creationist contenders.

Conclusion

While this isn’t something for dad to watch on his own, it could be some great viewing for the family…if your teens aren’t going through that overly critical phase. Or skip the teens altogether and watch this with your elementary ages kids: they love it…and mom and dad will too. The one downside? It is pricey, running between $30-$45 US. You can buy it for online streaming at Christian Cinema, and Christianbooks.com, or buy it on DVD at PatternsOfEvidence.com.

But there is a free option too, at RedeemTV.com here (you will have to register for a free account). You can check out the trailer below.

This article first appeared on ReformedPerspective.ca where you can find many more movie reviews here.

Free film: God of wonders

Jon Dykstra

Documentary
85 min / 2008
Rating: 7/10

This is a nature documentary that starts at the stars, and touches on just about everything else: lightning, squids, hummingbirds, seeds, snow crystals, DNA and butterflies are just a few of the highlights.

That’s both the strength and the weakness of the film. Some of this footage is as remarkable as anything seen on the Discovery Channel, or a National Geographic special, but each time a creature is investigated, we learn only enough to know we would really like to learn more… and then we’re on to the next bit of nature. But there is a method to this madness. The theme of God of Wonders is straight out of Romans 1:19-20: God has revealed Himself in the wonder of his creation. If we reject God, we can’t claim we did so out of ignorance – God, through his creation has left us “without excuse.”

Cautions

The pacing is a little slow, with maybe a few too many talking heads, compared to the nature footage, but once we’re about ten minutes in, it gets rolling. That does mean, though, that even as this would be a great film to watch with a questioning friend – it could be a wonderful evangelistic tool – it won’t work if that friend isn’t at least a little patient.

Conclusions

For families used to watching documentaries, this will be another fun one to check out. The breadth of this presentation means there’s sure to be something new to learn for everyone watching, from the youngest to the oldest.

You can watch itfor free in two different ways. It is available in “chapters” on the film’s own website GodofWondersvideo.org/chapters.htm. The advantage to watching it in chunks is that it’ll create the breaks needed for good discussions. But if you want to watch it for free in one go, you can find it (probably for only a limited time) here at the YouTube channel Christian Movies.

Check out the trailer below.

Free film: Is Genesis History?

Jon Dykstra

Documentary
100 min / 2017
RATING: 8/10

This is a guest post by Marty Van Driel

We live and breathe and move in an atmosphere that is full of assumptions. We assume that what we see is how things have always been. And our friends and colleagues at work assume that scientists have disproved the Bible. And even if we know better, we hear so often that the earth is the product of millions and billions of years of slow erosion and evolution, those assumptions can impact us too – we can begin to wonder, “Is it crazy to believe that this planet is only 6,000 years old, that God made all of this in just six days?”

Is Genesis History? is a film that can help to quell those voices of doubt, the voices that ask, “Did God really say?”  Like thoughtful Christian apologetics, this movie can give us confidence that it is logical and entirely defensible for a modern person to fully believe that God’s Word describes historical events and real people.

Narrator Del Tackett opens the documentary showing a series of beautiful rock formations and deep canyons, and wonders aloud how many years these magnificent sites took to develop. We might assume thousands or even millions. But no – he reveals that the landscape around him was formed in just a few months, after the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980! This is a powerful illustration of just how our observations are colored by our preconceptions.

Throughout the film, Tackett speaks with various PhD-holding scientists about their areas of expertise, and often in the midst of beautiful scenery. These passionate and articulate scholars contrast two major competing views of history: the conventional view that all we see around us developed over billions of years, and the Biblical view that points to a young earth in which God acted directly and with incredible power to create and form the world.

Many of these experts point to the great Flood that covered the whole earth as an explanation for the geological formations we can observe in the Grand Canyon for example, and for the way that fossils appear intact and often in groups and herds. The massive power of the waters below, bursting forth, and the windows of heaven opening, caused enormous changes to the earth, killing most life. The flood was universal and catastrophic and awesome in its destructive power, and its effects can be seen all over the world still today – if you have eyes to see it!

The format of Is Genesis History? consisting of questions and answers filmed in interesting locations, with helpful illustrations, makes it easy to understand and engaging. It probably won’t keep the attention of younger children, but middle school students on up to senior citizens will enjoy and benefit from this film. I can see this movie being beneficial for our young people’s societies, and the producers have made available free study and discussion material at their website www.IsGenesisHistory.com. This is a great film that encourages us to view the Bible as accurate history, and is a timely reminder that God’s Word is true yesterday, today and tomorrow.

And right now you can watch it for free on YouTube below:

Further discussion

Other reviews

Tim Challies
Douglas Wilson
WORLD magazine

Paul Nelson controversy

One of the interviewees in the film, Paul Nelson, while a 6-day creationist, is also a major figure in the Intelligent Design movement. He didn’t like how he came out in the film, and explains why here. Del Tackett, film narrator and producer, responds here. Todd Wood, another interviewee, also has some thoughts here.

Biologos and response

Biologos is a group that seeks to promote an evolutionary worldview in Christian circles. They didn’t like the film, and posted a critique here. Creation Ministries responded here.

This review first appeared in the Sept/Oct 2017 issue of Reformed Perspective.

Free film: Genesis impact

Jon Dykstra

Docudrama
68 minutes / 2020
RATING: 7/10

This is a very good…something. The topic matter is plain enough – human origins – but what’s less clear is whether this is a documentary or drama.

The beginning is standard documentary: apologist Ray Comfort, just off camera, interviewing college students about their views on evolution.

But when the camera pulls back we discover these interviews are actually a smartphone’s 3-D holographic projections being viewed by a teen boy sitting on the edge of his couch (presumably a decade or two into the future seeing as there’s no app for that quite yet). When mom wanders by to put away groceries, he shares his doubts about whether God really did create in just six days. “What if they’re right, and we’re wrong?” he asks, “I mean, the scientific evidence for evolution is pretty overwhelming. What if God…used evolution?” To answer his questions, mom takes us through another scene change, shifting back 20 years to modern day when she was still in school, listening to an origins lecture at a Natural History museum. When the speaker concludes and most of the other students leave the auditorium, the young mom-to-be stays behind to question, and eventually debate, the scientist/lecturer. That’s where we stay, along with a few student stragglers, listening to a well-reasoned critique of the lecturer’s evolutionary presentation. While Genesis Impact hardly has a plot, it still has plenty of drama as evolution and creationist go head-to-head over the next hour.

Genesis Impact shouldn’t be evaluated as a drama though. The acting is fine – solid enough not to get in the way, and better than many a Christian drama – but the young lady is far too knowledgeable, and the evolutionist lecturer far too reasonable (readily conceding her every good point) to be realistic. Fortunately, the filmmakers’ goal isn’t realism. They wanted to present a challenging, highly educational lecture on a pivotal topic, and they wanted to deliver it in a really unique and entertaining manner. Mission accomplished!

Caution

While the topic matter is the sort you might want to share with an atheist friend, that this is a staged debate – an acted out debate – provides the “out” any skeptic would take to dismiss it entirely, arguing that a real evolutionist would have had better responses, or wouldn’t have conceded so many points. So one caution would be that this isn’t one to win over an unsympathetic or hostile audience.

Conclusion

What makes it valuable is that the creationist critique is a really good one. Evolutionary proofs aren’t so overwhelming as it seems, with guesses built on assumptions, stacked atop beliefs. Secular science presents their conclusions as being unassailable, though sometimes the hype is as much the fault of the media as the scientists. Even when researchers couch their guesswork with phrases like “could be” and “might” and “probably” the media is likely to trumpet “Evidence of life has been found on Mars!” in 36-point front-page headlines.  Still, the same sort of unwarranted certainty can be found in Natural History displays, and in university classrooms, so evolutionary arrogance isn’t simply a mainstream media invention.

Who should see Genesis Impact? It’s best suited for bible-believing Christians who are interested in, or troubled by, evolutionary accounts. It’ll be an encouragement and could serve as a leap-off point for further study. The depth of the material discussed also means this is best suited for college-age and up.

You can watch it for free below, and visit the film’s website to dig deeper: GenesisApologetics.com/Impact.

Dismantled

Jon Dykstra

A scientific deconstruction of the theory of evolution
Documentary
2020 / 93 minutes
Rating: 8/10

The Creation vs. Evolution debate is sometimes portrayed as being the Bible vs. Science, but Dismantled wants us to know that while creationists certainly stand on the Bible, they aren’t conceding on Science. Flipping the script, the documentary begins by asking if evolution should be considered scientific.

“Is it proper to equate evolution with science? Does science have the ability to address questions regarding past events that we were not there to directly observe or verify – events like the spontaneous origins of the universe, the origin of life from non-life, and the evolution of the earliest life forms into mammals? Or might we be giving science a power that it does not have? To answer this, it is important that we accurately define science, as well as its limitations.”

Evolution has street cred because it’s supposed to be scientific – it claims to come from the very same source of knowledge that gave us rockets, microwaves pizza, smartphones, and self-driving cars. But as Dismantled notes, evolution has little in common with that sort of science. A quote from the film, taken from a biology textbook, explains that:

“Scientific inquiry is a powerful way to know nature, but there are limitations to the kind of questions it can answer. These limits are set by science’s requirements that hypotheses be testable and falsifiable and that observations and experimental results be repeatable.”

It is precisely the testable, repeatable, falsifiable nature of operational science that got us a man on the moon, and it is precisely those points that evolution’s historical science doesn’t share. Our origins involve events that happened long ago and aren’t repeatable, making these events hard to test, and these theories hard to falsify. So the origins debate isn’t about the Bible vs. Science, but more about one historical account vs. another… with the notable difference that one of those historical accounts is thousands of years old and unchanging, and the other is a recent creation and constantly being revised. That’s the film’s lead-off point, and it takes the first 20 minutes to make it.

From there, they go on to assess which of these two historical accounts seem a better fit with the world we observe around us. That’s the bulk of the film, and this 70-minute tour takes us through topics including:

  • the micro = macro fallacy which assumes, without evidence, that small changes can add up to bigger ones
  • genetics including the limits of supposed “beneficial mutations,” and the problem of genetic entropy – that we as a species are breaking down faster than natural selection could ever build us up – and the supposed genetic similarity between man and apes
  • the fossil record including Man’s supposed ape-like ancestors, and the humanity of Neanderthals
  • radiometric dating and its problems

Dismantled is a slick production – the visuals are fantastic! – but its strength is in the scientists consulted. Whether it is Jason Lisle, John Sandford, Georgia Purdom, Rob Carter, Andrew Snelling, Nathaniel Jeanson (PhDs one and all), they all know how to explain big ideas to the rest of us who may not have been in a science class for decades. That doesn’t mean this is all easy to understand, and I think most of us will have to (and be happy to) watch this twice, just because there is so much here to chew on.

Cautions

The one caution I’ll note regards a mistake the film could, indirectly, encourage: believing the Bible only when the evidence says it is reasonable to do so. It is important to remember the evidence discussed in Dismantled wasn’t available 100 years ago, and yet God’s Word was just as true then. We need to know the Bible isn’t true because it syncs up with the evidence; rather, the reason the evidence syncs up with the Bible is that the Bible is true. If that doesn’t seem like much of a difference, its significance becomes apparent when the evidence doesn’t seem to fit with the Bible. In those circumstances, if our trust is grounded in the evidence rather than the Bible, then we will side with it, against God’s Word. But if we trust God, then we’ll always stick with the Bible, trusting that any apparent conflicts will be resolved in time.

Conclusion

Dismantled is superb, summarizing important foundational concepts even as it presents the most current findings. I’d recommend it as a purchase, rather than a rental, because you’ll want to watch it again to be able to properly digest all that is on offer. The target audience is high school and up, and for those who want to dig in even deeper, a great place to start is the recommended resources list available on the film’s website. You can check out the trailer below, and then rent it on Amazon.com or buy the DVD or Blu-ray at Creation.com.