CMI’s response to PBS-TV series Evolution
The two-hour premier episode of the PBS/Nova series Evolution tries to set the tone for this propaganda effort. Much of it involves a dramatization of the life of Charles Darwin (1809–1882), interspersed with alleged evidence for evolution and against creation. Of course, they provide no space to scientific criticisms, giving the impression that there is only ‘religious’ criticism of evolution. They also ignore the rabidly atheistic faith of many of evolution’s proponents, including many of those involved in the series, e.g. Daniel Dennett, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward O. Wilson and Eugenie Scott (see also A Who's Who of evolutionists). To try to deflect the charge that the series is anti-Christian they try to pretend that evolution and ‘religion’ are compatible, with the aid of compromising churchians who deliberately overlook many key points of conflict.
To avoid the impression that this was one-sided propaganda, they claim that the Discovery Institute, part of the Intelligent Design Movement, was invited for ‘balance’. But the Discovery Institute pointed out that they declined because they would have been slotted in to the ‘religious’ objections sections whereas their objections to evolution are purely scientific. Our website also features on Episode 7: ‘What about God?’ but again the scientific objections were not shown.
It opens with a drama of Darwin and starts with Darwin’s voyage on HMS Beagle. Darwin introduces himself and Captain FitzRoy in broken Spanish to villagers in South America. They lead him to the skull of an extinct ground sloth, and this conversation occurs:
Darwin: I wonder why these creatures no longer exist.
FitzRoy: Perhaps the Ark was too small to allow them entry and they perished in the Flood.
D: [laughs]
F: What is there to laugh at?
D: Nothing, nothing.
F: Do you mock me or the Bible?
D: Neither.
F: What sort of clergyman will you be, Mr Darwin?
D: Dreadful, dreadful.
Then the drama moves to a scene on the Beagle, where Capt. FitzRoy was reading from Genesis 1, and Darwin was below deck rolling his eyes.
There we have it—the alleged struggle between science and ‘fundamentalist’ religion. Of course, the representative of ‘fundamentalism’, Captain FitzRoy, is made to spout a silly straw man argument. Nowhere in the series is there any hint that there could be any scientific objections to evolution.
