Posted on 03/20/2005 12:01:05 PM PST by wagglebee
Some IMAX theaters are refusing to carry movies that promote evolution, citing concerns that doing so offends their audience and creates controversy – a move that has some proponents of Darwinism alarmed over the influence of "fundamentalists."
It's a decision that affects not only the network of 240 IMAX theaters operating in 35 countries, but some science museums that show IMAX-formatted films.
IMAX, which bills itself as the "ultimate movie experience," promises to take viewers to "places you only imagined." The 8-story high screens and crystal clear images have made the theaters ideal venues for documentary science films showing the splendor of nature.
Now, however, about a dozen IMAX theaters, primarily in the South, are shunning movies that carry evolution themes, the New York Times reports. Fear of protests by those objecting to films that contradict the Biblical account of creation is cited as the reason.
A dozen science centers rejected the 2003 release, "Volcanoes," because of it speculation that life on Earth may have originated in undersea vents, says Dr. Richard Lusk, an oceanographer and chief scientist for the project.
Because a only small number of IMAX theaters show science films, a boycott by a few can reduce the potential audience to the point that producers question whether projects are financially worthwhile.
"We have definitely a lot more creation public than evolution public," says Lisa Buzzelli, of the Charleston, South Carolina, Imax Theater. "Being in the Bible Belt, ["Volcanoes"] does have a lot to do with evolution, and we weigh that carefully."
When the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History played the movie for a test audience, the responses were sufficiently negative for the museum to drop it from its offerings. Responses like "I really hate it when the theory of evolution is presented as fact," or "I don't agree with their presentation of human existence" doomed the film's chances.
"Some people said it was blasphemous," says Carol Murray, the museum's director of marketing. "If it's not going to draw a crowd and it is going to create controversy," she concludes, "from a marketing standpoint I cannot make a recommendation" to screen it.
The film's distributor says other science museum officials turned him down "for religious reasons" and because "Volcanoes" had "evolutionary overtones" – a claim that makes Hyman Field, a former National Science Foundation official who played a role in its financing, "furious."
"It's very alarming," he says, "all of this pressure being put on a lot of the public institutions by the fundamentalists."
The economics of large-format science documentaries being what they are, it might not take too much pressure for filmmakers to begin avoiding Darwin.
The films "are generally not big moneymakers," notes Joe DeAmicis, former director of the IMAX theater at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. "It's going to be hard for our filmmakers to continue to make unfettered documentaries when they know going in that 10 percent of the market" will reject them.
Bayley Silleck, who wrote and directed "Cosmic Voyage," another IMAX offering that drew religious complaints, expects to encounter criticism on his upcoming project about dinosaurs. While he's critical of "overcaution, overprotectedness" by theater operators, he recognizes that in the end, it's the audience that counts.
"We all have to make films for an audience that is a family audience," he observes, "when you are talking about IMAX, because they are in science centers and museums."
A Gallup poll, released earlier this month, reveals that 81 percent of U.S. teenagers believe God was somehow involved in human origins, with only 18 percent holding a purely secular view of evolution.
Increasing complexity? Microevolution is a LOSS of information.
Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth by Jonathan Wells
Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins by Dean H. Kenyon (biologist) and Percival Davis (zoologist). It compares the theories of evolution and "intelligent design" but does not mention God, Christ, the Bible, church or creation. It is a textbook that was reviewed by 35 reviewers, including evolutionists and non-evolutionists.
Darwin on Trial by Phillip Johnson
Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds by Phillip Johnson
Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe (biologist)
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton (biologist).
I trust this is enough material to begin your search. Good reading. (And I mean that sincerely, not sarcastically!)
Keep hitting the k instead of the i for closing italics tags. argh. Well, one of these times it'll evolve into an i before it hits the FR server. I'm sure of it.
Please provide me a link to where the scientist said that.
I predict the usual Gould (mis)quote in your future. Creationists love that one, even though Gould has repeatedly pointed out how dishonest their misuse of it is.
They won't read it. Those guys are 'not scientific' because they don't support evolution, silly!
Listen to the Kent Hovind debates. The evolutionists he debated said that several times. You might find it amusing if nothing else.
You're so smart. But... sorry 'thanks for playing.' as you say.
Sorry, but I don't know what this is supposed to mean.
It looks suspiciously like, "I'll believe what I want to believe, and call it as valid as anything else."
Still waiting for your evidence on what part of Evolutionary Theory states anything about "spontaneous generation."
If evolution is so "clear cut" and "scientific," then why has science been unable to elevate it from a mere theory to a law? The fact is that many learned scientists are openly ridiculing evolution as totally without merit because the theory is so full of holes that it cannot be proven and the harder science tries to produce proof, the more evidence there is to disprove it.
And I am still waiting for that Anthony Flew quotation. You know, if you don't provide it we could be forced to conclude that you just made it up.
" Increasing complexity? Microevolution is a LOSS of information."
Wrong, a mutation in the genome can be the addition, alteration or deletion of one or more base pairs.
In the case of a deletion, although the loss of a single base out of a single codon technically leaves that individual with "less DNA", it still makes them distinct in the population which is still an "increase of complexity" at the population level.
Hence, both Darwinism and creationism are theories.
I simply prefer to believe the later, based on what I've learned from other scientists (including Gallileo, Keppler, and others) and Whom I know who was there.
heh!
What would it take for you people to realize that the theory of evolution is not about 'the beginning' (of life on earth)?
Then there is:
Knowing God is There (The guy who runs this site is very friendly and approachable, [I guess unlike me], and used to be an atheist. I am sure he would welcome your comments.]
Lee Strobel, educated at Yale Law School, was the award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and a spiritual skeptic until 1981. He wrote a good synopsis of his interviews when he was searching for answers called _The Case for a Creator_ in which he extensively interviews Jonathan Wells, Stephen C. Meyer, William Lane Craig, Robin Collins, Jay Wesley Richards, Guillermo Gonzalez, Michael Behe, and J.P. Moreland.
So why does science regard gravity as a "law" rather than a theory? In truth evolution should be considered a hypothesis rather than a theory. A theory is "an explanation of a set of related observations or events based upon proven hypotheses and verified multiple times by detached groups of researchers." I am unaware of any of Darwin's hypotheses being proven.
http://wilstar.com/theories.htm
"If evolution is so "clear cut" and "scientific," then why has science been unable to elevate it from a mere theory to a law"
Ohhh Ohhhhh... pick me!! I know that one!!!
Actually to be elevated to "law" requires that the the theory be reasonably simple and concise. The broader the "field of coverage" so to speak, the harder it is to test to the point of conviction. So while aspects of Evolution, like specific processes of mutation might be promotable, a topic as broad a evolution would never be. This is not really a knock against evolution, this is true for all scientific theories of a broad scope.
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