The cutting edge of creationism is at nigh!
Just in: hereâs a review of the movie on the GeoChristian blog:
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Thanks for sharing. As usual, a respectful and thoughtful work by the author.
I wasnât going to add to this discussion, but couldnât stop myself. My wife and I have been teaching a class in our church on science and religion, taking an approach much like Biologos. As a neurosurgeon, I guess I count as a scientist of sorts, at least I have a passion for science and for the interaction with my faith. I felt the need to go to see Genesis: Paradise Lost so I could see and hear the YEC arguments directly, not just through online resources. I left the theater with a profound sadness, as you will see, mainly due to the high tech nature of their presentation, arguments that sound plausible but only on the surface, and the positive comments I heard from people walking out of the theater. People seemed to be persuaded, or maybe just reinforced.
I will try to recall and describe a few standouts as best I can, but please note this is from memory and my own notes (in the dark with my handwriting, no less) and any misquotes are unintentional. Since all the arguments have refutations that are easily found, I wonât go into each oneâperhaps others would like to do this, but many are already in this thread.
The movie begins with the standard (false in my opinion) dichotomy between evolution and creation, equating evolution with atheism. This is a persistent theme.
Several claims are made in astronomyâthey state that gas clouds canât form stars because compressed gas heats up and would expand, spiral galaxies are unstable, Saturnâs rings should have become uniform, short period comets should all have disappeared. They claim the first and second laws of thermodynamics are violated and the vast distances to galaxies can be explained by stretching of spacetime within 6000 years. Moving on to evolution they then go to Lucy. They show the skull of Lucy, conclude therefore that it is a chimp, but do not discuss the remainder of the skeleton. They do a classic quote mine on Dr. Donald Johanson quoting him as admitting âLucy has been dethroned.â Looks like they pulled it from National Geographic 1996 where he said:
â Even today A. afarensis â and those of us who study them â must adapt. Lucy has been recently dethroned. Last year Meave Leakey of the National Museum of Kenya announced that she and her team had found a human ancestor older than Lucy.â
Then we have dinosaurs. There is an animation of a T. Rex eating something off a tree (coconut?), since they were vegetarians then. They claim to have some positive arguments for their young earth position, as opposed to arguments just against âsecularâ science. They mention Mary Schweitzerâs findings of soft tissue in dinosaur fossils.
I found this interview with her here:
Interesting that she says in that interview, âOne thing that does bother me, though, is that young earth creationists take my research and use it for their own message, and I think they are misleading people about it.â
Then they state that there is abundant evidence for dinosaurs and humans coexisting. Here it is âŚdragons. Wait, what??..Dragons? Yes, some dinosaurs were dragons and coexisted with humans based on folklore, cave drawings, legends, the biblical behemoth and leviathan⌠Also, animals were bigger back then, since there was no death or disease before the fall, and closer to the time of the fall, they lived longer.
After the end of the film, they showed a panel discussion with the filmâs experts. Here they go into political agenda arguments. The wildest, I thought, was stating that the polar ice caps were formed by the global flood, so they are supposed to be melting! Why donât people understand this? Why are people worriedâŚ.? Wow. Just wow.
Near the end of the film, they talk about our Savior, Jesus Christ. They discuss our own sin, the need for salvation. For the last hour and a half they have misled the audience and lost all credibility. Now the same people who think dragons are real want to tell us about Jesus. If I were a non-Christian I could laugh at this movie, but as a Christian ⌠OK, maybe I donât cry, but I do shake my head a lot and mumble to myselfâŚ.
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I share your frustration. I think it is good to put forward other views, especially when they come from a variety of sources, like the above review. Hopefully, it makes people realize there are other thoughtful views out there, and it is not just Biologos.
I really like this observation from this blog:
[quote]This is a bone I have with AiG. Adrienne Mayor from Stanford wrote a famous dissertation in which she pinpointed the geographic origins of dragons and other popular myths and found that those locations overlapped heavily with known ancient fossil beds. Her books trace ancient fossil hunting history and mythology in regions like Native North America, Greece and Rome. Itâs not just dragons. People in the ancient world are known to have offered fossil remains of griffins, centaurs, cyclopes, and giants too. If you are an ancient Roman at a construction site and your team exhumes a giant reptilian skeleton, you are going to believe in a past age of dragons; if you are an ancient Scythian nomad and you encounter protoceratops remains in the desert you are going to interpret them as a griffin; if you are an ancient Sioux who finds himself upon pteranodon remains you are going to invent the thunderbird legend. In many cases it is certain that ancient people were offering extinct animal fossils as the origin of mythological creatures. We are able to go to the fossil beds and check for ourselves because, in a few cases, the ancients told us exactly where they were. (They named some of them!) This is the mainstream view of modern anthropology. If you were to visit the Mythic Creatures exhibit at the Fraizer History Museum here in Louisville, you would find Mayor cited ubiquitously on these issues. Itâs an extremely powerful and convincing thesis.
If Creationists want to parade dragon legends as if they are moly herbâreducing conventional scientists to crying hissy fits, it would be comforting to at least know that the Creation Museum posse are even aware of Mayorâs dissertation. A Google search reveals they are not. [/quote]
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That is incredibly helpful for me. Thank you.
@Joel_Duff had a good article on Adrienne Mayorâs writings too, if youâre interested in more details. Dinosaurs, Dragons and Ken Ham: The Literal Reality of Mythological Creatures â Naturalis Historia
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I just told my kids something like this the other day, but didnât have the source material to draw from. This is great! Thanks!
I want to read her book! Looks like thereâs also a childrenâs book about her too â wouldnât mind getting my hands on that one too.
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Nice find! 
Looks like the exhibit on Mythic Creatures, referenced in the blog, is a traveling one from the American Museum of Natural History.
Currently it is in Grand Rapids, MI. It will be in Peoria, IL summer 2018. Iâm going to go thenâitâs only 3 hours from us.
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I saw that exhibition at the AMNH. I thought they did a great job.
@glipsnort, I can never tell whether @jpmâs auto-spell is telling the truth, or if it is trying to hide JPMâs truthes!
I blame fat fingers and ipad keyboard issues. But it may have something to do with terrible spelling, as I was not home schooled.
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Thanks for your thoughts and input. Wish you could have used more âdirect quotesâ but you did give a fuller quote of the remarks on Lucy. I appreciate that. I also am Christian â and not a scientist. But my interest in things like history/archaeology (and related) have given me reason to re-think YEC arguments. I enjoy this site (most of the time) and the input from others who seek to make their faith interact âhonestlyâ with the realities of knowledge. Even when it is tough.
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Note: âGenesis: Paradise Lostâ is showing again on December 11th, just in case you missed it, and were heartbrokenâŚ
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Jonathan, I sure wish all YECs were more like you. We could agree to disagree, and do it with friendly, good humor!
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I share similar sentiments when it comes to you as well, @cwhenderson. I am a huge fan of friendly, good humor, but I am still troubled when I think about the fact that, in the end, only one of us can be right (about whether evolution is true). That is why I carry on the debateâŚ
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I believe @cwhenderson will warmly agree when I say that many of us here think you are quite stalwart, and will handle the ultimate disappointment better than most.
stalwart
[stawl-wert]
Best Definition for this Context:
Definition 2. strong and brave; valiant:
a stalwart knight.
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