Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Solid Science, October 14, 2004
The Privileged Planet sets forth numerous enlightening facts about Earth's unique place in the universe. Students from about 12 years to 100 will find valuable information set forth in clear logic with vivid illustrations. The video uses factual information to counterbalance and refute so much of the pseudo science popularized in most educational settings. This one is well worth the price!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Carl Sagan was wrong!, June 9, 2008
The authors point out that, contrary to the slogan of Carl Sagan's TV program "Cosmos," the earth is NOT just an "insignificant blue dot in the backwaters of the galaxy" (or something like that)!
Beautifully filmed, logical, filled with facts I hadn't known about what it takes to make a planet where life can exist. The author's thesis is further that the same conditions that make life possible also make possible scientific study of the sun and the universe. Only perhaps 1 in a trillion trillion potential planets would have these properties!
In fact, everywhere we look in nature, the evolution model fails to produce evidence of NON-design, which ought to cause us to conclude that there has to be a Designer. This particular video concerns astronomy and cosmology, but the pattern exists in biology, geology, paleontology, history, archaeology, and their subdivisions. [...]
It's interesting that Guillermo Gonzalez, the astronomer who authored the book from which the video was made (The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery) -- was denied tenure at Iowa State U strictly because the authorities don't agree with his viewpoint! Do you believe in freedom of thought? Iowa State doesn't! And neither do many other publicly-funded schools!
This one is a "must see!"
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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Science???, January 27, 2007
The two principal personalities interviewed in the movie, theologian Jay Richards and astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, are involved with projects and organizations that are busy rewriting science and history from a Christian perspective (the Discovery Institute, the Center for Science and Culture, Wiki or Google them). The Privileged Planet is a thinly veiled direct appeal for Intelligent Design.
The science in the film starts honestly enough with numerous observations of the remarkable beauty and complexity of life on earth. But when the list of wondrous observations is completed and the work of science begins, this film takes a sharp right turn into speculation and theology. The calculation used to speculate on the rarity of life in the universe (us on earth) is laughable. A list of 20 something requirements for life on earth are each given a 10% chance of existing on any given planet, then multiplied together as if they are exclusive of each other. Scientifically, this is useless math. It is rabbit out of the hat speculation, but it is the principal 'fact' that underscores the premise presented. This film's science credentials are best described as pseudo science, or agenda science, or top-drawer science (the stuff that supports your conclusion stays in the top drawer, everything else goes in the bottom drawer).
Real science is far more wondrous, awe inspiring and spiritually satisfying than anything that Christian apologists like Richards and Gonzalez and the makers of this film can conjure up.
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