| Rating: | ★★★★ |
| Category: | Movies |
| Genre: | Documentary |
To view the documentary, go here.
Oh, and spoiler alert!
A Very Good, Almost Great, Documentary
Much verbiage has already been spilled in the great debate between Christian fundamentalism and evangelical Atheism. This documentary attempts to charter one particular strand of the debate: Darwinism as debunker of God as Creator.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the arguments against God's existence fall into two main types: (1) There is suffering in the world, therefore there is no God, and (2) Everything is working fine without God's interference, therefore there is no God. So far, the Atheists have proven Aquinas right, and have come up with no new arguments. The Darwinism strand rests firmly in the second type of argument.
The documentary's presenter, theologian and philosopher Conor Cunningham, has come up with a work that cuts both ways, attacking the fundamentalist Christians for misreading Christian tradition, and attacking ultra-Darwinists for misreading both Darwin and the limits of the scientific process. The result is a beauty to behold.
The documentary proceeds chronologically, starting with the very first broadsides fired in the debate, coming from the Christian side. Cunningham begins by masterfully dismantling the claim of both ultra-Darwinist and creationist that Christian tradition demands a literal reading of the Book of Genesis. He hits the usual sweet spots, from Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria to St. Augustine of Hippo, who definitively concludes for all of classical Christianity that Genesis cannot be read literally. The literal reading of Genesis only returned after the Reformation, when Anglican Bishop James Usher calculated the age of the world by counting Bible dates, and theologian William Paley suggested a "watchmaker" God.
The war between Christianity and Darwinism, according to Cunningham, did not even begin in Darwin's time, as nobody found it too controversial. The first attack came, not in the UK, but in the US, embodied in the Scopes Monkey Trial. I found this part very well made. Cunningham's insight into anti-evolution crusader William Jennings Bryan does much to humanize the man reduced to caricature by modern non-thinkers. He finds Bryan a socialist with right-wing religious views, whose main reason for challenging the teaching of evolution in schools was his disgust for Social Darwinism and it's implications for the treatment of African Americans and other peoples dissimilar in cultural development to the white man. This was a view that fueled much of the initial Protestant Christian resentment against Darwinism. This differs from modern creationism, which, according to Cunningham, found its starting point in the Evangelical reaction to the collapse of traditional morality in the 60's. Creationism, therefore, is rightly framed not only as a view well outside Christian orthodoxy, but as a social rather than theological phenomenon.
The documentary's second half is dedicated to exploring the arguments on the opposite side, as presented by Darwinian fundamentalists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. Here, he eviscerates two of the pillars of the ultra-Darwinist case against a Creator God: the "selfish gene" theory and "meme" theory as propagated by Richard Dawkins. The first theory implies that human survival and human behavior are dictated by genes, therefore it is genes and not God that designed human nature, eliminating God from the human equation. Cunningham goes through a scientist and an atheist philosopher to counter these (already absurd) claims. Dr. Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project, debunks the theory of a gene dictating behavior, let alone a gene aware enough to have "selfish" motivations. Philosopher Michael Ruse, an atheist, then proceeds to debunk the connection between genes, human decision-making and belief. The second, more laughable theory is about "memes", bits of information that supposedly colonize human minds in order to propagate themselves like the selfish gene. Here, Cunningham wisely lets the argument defeat itself, letting Meme Theory proponent Dr. Susan Blackmore dismantle the theory by simply describing it. Never have I seen a more ignorant academic, implying that ideas are individuals with actual motivations and no inherent truth value. I get the feeling that we are in for another round of those circular "what is an idea" debates that plagued the Enlightenment, brought about by the sheer stupidity of certain people with PhD attached to their names. But, I digress.
The genius of this documentary owes in large part to the fact that Cunningham looks for people on different sides of these positions and lets them speak of themselves. Often, this is simply the best tactic for disproving a positions. The best way to expose a fool is to rent him a hall and let him speak. This was done with the rather silly creationist curator, as well as with the aforementioned Dr. Blackmore and with Dawkin's co-star Daniel Dennett, whose statement that "it's natural selection, and nothing else" forever confirms the existence of a Darwinian fundamentalist. (A point missed by the mass of ignorant yobs who tend to flock to Youtube comment boxes.)
Missteps
I say this is an almost great documentary because there were inconsistencies that mar the presentation. For me, the most glaring one was the absence of any proponent of Intelligent Design, who were not allowed to elaborate on their theory. What remains is a blatant misreading by Cunningham of the Intelligent Design argument, reducing it to the "God of the Gaps" stereotype that it isn't, postulating that the God of ID is the God of Paley, which is a falsehood. At the very least, ID is a philosophical argument, not a fundamentalist one as Cunningham says. He even lapses into a typical philosophical pitfall, saying that an interfering God who does not interfere in human suffering cannot be good. He seems to forget that even an interfering God would not interfere with Free Will, and thus cannot interfere in human suffering.
The ending was somewhat weak, with the inclusion of a yammering paleo-biologist who seems to think that birds singing and whales exchanging sound is "music", another instance of a scientist stepping way out of his field.
He also does not touch on the most contentious of the Darwinian arguments against God, which is the notion that evolutionary theory implies that man is just another ape, and therefore cannot be a special Creation made in the image of God, ergo, no God. It was this argument that I have been waiting for, and it did not get even a mention. The way I see it, expose this argument, and you expose the greatest reductionist weakness of any ultra-Darwinian. But, I suppose that documentary can be made another time.
Overall, it was a very well-made documentary. My only disappointment was that it could have been much, much better.
Plus, if you ever want to see a mass exercise in "missing the point" with complete pants-on-the-head retardedness, check out the YouTube comments.
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