Evolution (TV series)

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Evolution is a 2001 documentary series by the American broadcaster PBS and WGBH on evolutionary biology. The episodes are:

Darwin's Dangerous Idea (two hours)
Great Transformations (one hour)
Extinction! (one hour)
The Evolutionary Arms Race (one hour)
Why Sex? (one hour)
The Mind's Big Bang (one hour)
What About God? (one hour)

The spokespeople for the series were Jane Goodall (overall spokesperson), Kenneth R. Miller and Stephen Jay Gould (science spokespeople), Eugenie C. Scott (education spokesperson), Arthur Peacocke and Arnold Thomas (religious spokespeople). The series was narrated by the Irish actor Liam Neeson.

The series was accompanied by a book by the popular science writer Carl Zimmer Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea^[1]. An extensive website with teaching resources is also provided.

The episode What about God? features discussion of the issues of evolution and creationism at Wheaton College (Illinois), an Evangelical Protestant college that teaches evolution but has in the past restricted professors from taking a stance on the literal versus the allegorical interpretations of Adam and Eve in the Genesis account of creation.

TV critic Julie Salamon, writing in the New York Times said that the series had "[a] powerful sense of drama, discovery and intellectual enthusiasm runs through this rich eight-hour series ... The series covers an enormous amount of ground but doesn’t leave you feeling swamped."^[2].

Being made and broadcast in the country where creation-evolution controversy is strongest, the last episode What About God? focused on religion, and "through personal stories of students and teachers, it offers the view that they are compatible". Phina Borgeson, Faith Network Director of the National Center for Science Education provided Congregational Study Guide for Evolution^[3].

Creationists however were less than impressed. Answers in Genesis called it a "barrage of evolutionary indoctrination"^[4] The Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture produced an entire website^[5] and started their A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism petition to show that there were "scientists that dispute the claims".