Our Team Member AIG reviews new Darwin bio-drama movie, “CREATION,” starring Paul Bettany

Film scheduled for USA DVD release June 29, 2010

The tension between evolution and religion as it played out in the Darwin household is dramatized in this new film. With the provocative and arguably offensive title of “Creation” (originally called “Origin”), the movie not only presents how Darwin lost his remaining Christian beliefs, but also offers an account of his family life, particularly the death of his young daughter Annie. Her death was such a tragic event in Darwin’s life that he soon lost any vestige of his beliefs regarding Christianity. The tension of having a very religious wife (a Unitarian) only complicated matters, as Darwin wrestled over the question of why there is suffering and death in this world if there is a God. In fact, Annie’s death in 1851 became the bleak backdrop to the writing of his book On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), which the film recreates.

In the Origin book, Darwin wove death into the fabric of his evolutionary story as a part of his proposed process for onward-and-upward evolution. He thus depicted death (ironically) as an integral part of life, which is in complete contradiction to the Bible’s teaching that death is an enemy and an invader into creation (as the result of Adam’s rebellion; 1 Corinthians 15:26; Genesis 3). As the film shows, the death of Annie destroyed Darwin’s remaining belief in the Christian faith. As two of his biographers have noted, the death of Annie “chimed the final death-knell for his Christianity. …Charles now took his stand as an unbeliever.” [read more]