The Mysterious Islands: A Film to Challenge Darwin

As groups across the world host special celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s landmark book, On the Origin of Species, an independent film company, Vision Forum has released a new documentary, The Mysterious Islands, to challenge Darwin's theories. Filmed on the Galapagos Islands, the documentary debunks the conclusions Darwin reached during his famous trip to this island chain during the voyage of the HMS Beagle.

Shot and directed by the award-winning Jon and Andy Erwin of Erwin Brothers Motion Pictures, the 90-minute documentary confronts the doctrines of evolution without apology.

Watch the trailer of The Mysterious Islands

“The world has Darwin fever, and we think it’s making our culture sick,” noted Doug Phillips, Executive Producer of The Mysterious Islands and Founder of the Vision Forum. “Because of the implications of his famous theory of evolution, Darwin was perhaps the most influential man for evil in the last two hundred years. His ideas have contributed to the rise of Nazism, the proliferation of racism, Marxism, the horrors of eugenics, and abortionism. Nonetheless, over the next month America and the global community will be inundated with the most pro-Darwin celebrations in history.”

The Mysterious Islands documents Phillips as he leads a team of Christian scientists and investigators to the Galapagos Islands to engage with the amazing creatures Darwin chronicled during his storied trip to this island chain in 1835.

Seen through the eyes of 16-year-old Joshua Phillips, who joins his father and noted researchers like Dr. John Morris, The Mysterious Islands is the story of one boy’s search for answers to a great controversy of the modern world. The fast-paced adventure combines cinematically breathtaking footage with high adventure in its quest to determine whether the Galapagos Islands are a laboratory for evolution, as Darwinists claim, or a showcase for the biblical account of creation.

Along the way, the Mysterious Islands examines intriguing questions that Darwin failed to answer, or that he just got wrong:

• Why do the animals on these islands appear to have little fear of man?
• Why have some of the creatures of the Galapagos developed such unusual characteristics?
• Are these phenomena evidences of evolution or something else?
• Does natural selection produce new kinds of animals, or just variations within the same kinds?

“The release of The Mysterious Islands, and its screening in theaters presents a fresh response to Darwin fever by taking viewers on a thrilling adventure to the Galapagos Islands—ground zero in the war of the worldviews between evolutionism and Christianity,” Phillips stated. “Rather than praising the founder of the modern evolutionary worldview, we demonstrate that he was part of a multi-generational legacy of bad science, anti-Christian sentiment, and cultural bigotry that began with his grandfather Erasmus Darwin and continued up through the work of the virulent racist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood.”

In The Mysterious Islands, Phillips and his crew join Captain Robert Fitzroy of the HMS Beagle in opposing Darwin. Captain Fitzroy walked where Darwin walked during their famous journey together. Like Darwin, he acted as a lay-naturalist, collecting the flora and fauna of the Galapagos. “Even though Fitzroy witnessed the exact same things as Darwin, he reached vastly different conclusions. And so do we,” Phillips remarked.

“Fitzroy disputed Thomas Huxley -- grandfather to Julian -- concerning Darwin’s ideas following the publication of Origin of Species as part of a famous debate that took place at Oxford University in 1860,” observed Phillips. “We are following Fitzroy’s example during this anniversary year by offering a counterpoint to Darwinism through our film that was shot where Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was formed.”

The Mysterious Islands also takes viewers deep beneath the ocean waves among hundreds of white-tip sharks, over lava fields covered with salt-spitting marine iguanas, and to the unusual habitat of blue-footed boobies and flightless cormorants. Featuring the only team of Creationists and Christian scientists to shoot a documentary on the Galapagos during 2009 ? Darwin’s anniversary year ? The Mysterious Islands brings a fresh perspective on Charles Darwin and his Theory and presents sweeping cinematography of one of the most remote, desolate, and fascinating island chains in the world.

During the week that marked the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, The Mysterious Islands and another creation film were both declared “inappropriate” by government scientific facilities in California and Alabama. They were denied the opportunity to be shown in these government facilities as part of the anniversary. While the intelligent design film Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record has not been granted permission for a showing in California, The Mysterious Islands, premiered as previously scheduled at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama when officials reversed their decision.

More than 1,000 people attended the premiere.

“We want to commend the U.S. Space and Rocket Center," said a jubilant Doug Phillips, "for allowing equal access to its facilities for a private screening of The Mysterious Islands.” Phillips and his crew — his son Joshua Phillips, Dr. John Morris of the Institute for Creation Research and Jon and Andy Erwin, the award-winning production duo who shot and produced the documentary — have been traveling the country screening the film since its release in November.

“Knowing that the USSRC was a government facility, we contacted attorneys at the Alliance Defense Fund (“ADF”) for assistance,” Phillips explained. In a letter dated November 23, 2009, Daniel Blomberg, ADF litigation counsel, informed the USSRC executives that their “refusal is in direct violation of Vision Forum’s First and Fourteenth Amendment rights,” and he highlighted the fact that the USSRC had shown two pro-evolutionary films, The Magic of Flight and Blue Planet, at their facility.

The USSRC responded to ADF’s letter within hours of receiving it.

Meanwhile, the fate of the other film Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record hangs in the balance. The California Science Center (CSC) has not yet reversed its decision to allow a showing at the museum's IMAX Theater.

Watch the trailer of The Mysterious Islands and learn more about the film by visiting the official website at: http://www.themysteriousislands.com/

Contact Vision Forum at press@visionforum.org about screening The Mysterious Islands in your community.

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