UPDATE: Investigative Documentary ‘Is Genesis History?’ Hits No. 1 at the Box Office and Returns to Big Screens Nationwide on March 2 & 7. GET TICKETS
“Is Genesis History?” debuted in movie theaters on February 23 to incredible audience support and sold-out auditoriums around the country, ranking No. 1 at the box office for the day above all other major film releases. In addition, it had the No. 1 per-screen average that day, topping all other titles by more than 5x their average. Due to this popular demand, encore screenings will be presented in U.S. movie theaters for two nights only on March 2 & 7.
Interview by Christine Thompson
We interviewed Dr. Del Tackett for the February 23rd Fathom Event “Is Genesis History?” Tackett is the former president of the Focus on the Family Institute and a former senior vice president of Focus on the Family. He created Focus on the Family’s The Truth Project—a nationwide project to bring the Christian worldview to the body of Christ.
AMFM: I saw the film, it was very compelling. In order to have a civil conversation, it has to be based on facts. There are a lot of naysayers out there, and people who sit on the fence. Something that jumped out at me when I was watching the film was the discrepancies, like the Great Uncomformity, which indicates a catastrophic erosion across the world. Can you address that first?
Dr. Del Tackett: The Great Unconformity. It appears as if the top has been scoured. It is a very fine line between the metamorphic rock below and the sedimentary layers above. From the perspective of a genesis paradigm, that’s what one would expect. In the midst of a huge global flood of the enormity of what we’re talking about, that’s what would have happened. On top of that are these massive sedimentary layers that are filled with fossil graveyards. That again is what one would expect from a huge global flood.
AMFM: Further, extrapolating along that same line of reasoning, the tissue that has been found in the dinosaur is pretty wild.
Dr. Del Tackett: It is wild.
AMFM: So, if Fathom Events is going to release this nationwide in select theaters, how do you think this info will be received, and are you prepared for backlash from the other side? What do you expect from this event?
Dr. Del Tackett: I think the people that will attend this event will primarily be Christians. People that have read Genesis, and declare that it is a historical reading. But they live in a world where the current scientific paradigm does not allow anything except a deep time perspective. So what I hope is that people will be able to realize, first of all is that there is widely credible scientific evidence that would support that historical understanding of Genesis. The second thing is that there is an accusation, and I have personally been told by some people not to do this film because I will be considered stupid, ignorant, and unscientific. I’ve heard all those accusations before. But for people to realize that the scientists that we are dealing with are scary smart. I don’t know if I’ve ever been in the presence of one individual after another that was just so in function. I want people to know these scientists also support the theory of near time and an historical reading of Genesis.
AMFM: That brings us to the historical and scientific paradigms and how people’s belief systems are within those paradigms. You’ve answered the objectivity part of this…it’s objectively possible. A fact is a fact.
Dr. Del Tackett: Yes they are. I tell the story of when I was doing graduate work at Auburn University. There was a big SEC championship game between Auburn and Tennessee. It was down to the last second, the Tennessee was near the goal line, and the quarterback dropped back and threw a pass to the wide receiver, who stretched out and caught the ball just before he hit the ground – or did he? Immediately all the Auburn players and fans said “incomplete.” All the Tennessee players said “touchdown.” They both looked at the same evidence. We have a tendency to want to see things, and to some extent you can say we do see things through the paradigm we have. What we are trying to say is look, there is a lock today by the current deep time paradigm, and you won’t read any contrary evidence, it’s not in the academia, it’s not in textbooks. It’s just not allowed. That’s consistent with every scientific paradigm that has come and gone. The people who lived within the paradigm, that’s just the way it was. That’s the same way it is today.
AMFM: Right, “the earth is flat” is one of those paradigms.
Dr. Del Tackett: Right, there were times when people like Ptolemy, well his theories were good at the time. His math was convoluted but it seemed to work at the time, but it didn’t answer all the questions. In the same way Einstein’s theory was good, but it doesn’t answer all the questions. The same for the Big Bang Theorem, it’s becoming increasingly clear and people who are beginning to say we need to come up with something else.
If you open yourself up to look at this from something other than a deep time paradigm, you are going to be amazed to see some of this evidence. Just like the scientist who smelled the decay when they first broke the T-Rex bone. She wondered where in the world that could come from, at first she thought it was from some creature that had buried itself down in the bone. Well, all of a sudden she sees this spongy dinosaur tissue and thought “this can’t be…this protein cannot still be around after millions of years.” – Now we’re finding it in other bones as well. So it’s a paradigm shift for people, but we want them to recognize and understand that this data is there. If you want to look at it with an open mind, you might be surprised that it points to something other than the current paradigm.
AMFM: One of the quotes that I took from the movie from Dr. Steve Austin, is that evidence in the Grand Canyon points to not a little water in a lot of time, but a lot of water in a little time.
Dr. Del Tackett: We know that to be true today, when we were at Mt. St. Helens, all of that occurred in my lifetime. When we stood in the bottom of that complex geologic canyon, all the layers looked as old as any other any other canyon’s but were in fact younger than me. That massive granite cut in the granite wall of Mt. St. Helens was knifed through like butter. Water can cut through granite. It’s easy to look at the Grand Canyon for example and see the Colorado River, and say well over deep deep time, it was carved out. But like he said, many scientists are dropping that because evidence just doesn’t support it.
But you could certainly understand if there was a lot of water, it doesn’t take much time for a lot of water to do a lot of damage.
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