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.
First, some scientists who change their minds on evolution/creationism may "stay in the closet," (to borrow a phrase) about their change of belief, only because of fear of reprisal, intimidation, etc. at their workplaces. I don't know anyone like this, but I know others in other fields who experience the same pressures when they leave the "philosophical reservation" so it is only common sense that it would happen in the scientific community also.
Second, now it sounds like you're just making things up. You're claiming that a "larger number of folks 'converting'" toward evolution. Name 5-and give source materials as proof.
See what I wrote in #119. Which specific Darwinian hypotheses have been proven true?
Kent Hovind says (in his statement above) that he doesn't care whether he is addressed as "Mr." or "hey you" by the scoffers. In fact, his Ph.D. is very precious to him or he would not be listed as "Dr. Kent Hovind" in the Pensacola, FL, phone book (it is very unusual for a person with a Ph.D., even a real one, to do this). One has only to look at his itinerary to substantiate my claim that being called "Doctor" is very important to him.How is anyone looking up the phone book supposed to "get the joke"? They have no way of knowing at thar time that Hovind's title is a facade.
"I am unaware of any of Darwin's hypotheses being proved. "
Well for starts, there is the presumption that there must be some sort of physical "hereditary information" passed from a parent to offspring. Later proved true by James Watson & Francis Crick in 1953 with the discovery of DNA.
The amount of Helium 4 in the atmosphere, divided by the formation rate on earth, gives only 175,000 years. (God may have created the earth with some helium which would reduce the age more.)
Notice that the beginnings of this "proof" doesn't support Hovind's claimed Earth age. Hovind then invokes the supernatural to overcome this flaw.
LOL It doesn't support Hovind's claimed earth age? Does it support evolution's claimed earth age? 175,000 is a lot closer to 6000 than 6,000,000,000.
There is nothing there that actually supports evolution in these links.
In addition I heard from Ken Ham's mouth that he doesn't have that big a problem with Kent Hovind - they were just recommendations. But atheists don't balk at using Ken Ham (answers in genesis) to put Hovind down. However try to get them to actually consider Ken Ham's main message about creation, and they will crucify him just as badly as they try to crucify Hovind.
And the discovery of DNA bolsters Darwinism how exactly?
You are abosolutely correct!
So you're now waffling away from your stance that none of Darwin's hypothesis have been proven, now that you've been shown to be wrong.
Evolution may occur. Postulated theories SEEM to support this point of view. The question I am attempting to raise, however, is, "What is the driving force for evolution?"
It is approaching the preposterous to assert this is all just "a random chain of circumstances" as seems to be implied.
Automobiles, for example, do not "evolve", they are the result of applied engineering, tested to the point of destruction, and the lessons learned from the failures are applied as modifications to the original design, so we go from 1903 Olds runabouts to a 2005 Toyota Prius. But we do not simply add parts to the runabout to make a Prius.
The point I am trying to make, is that there is an "engineer" that goes back and does the tinkering, far outside the realm of random chance that some good modification may come along and just magically apply itself to the failed design. Wherein comes this "intelligent design" argument.
Science may not deal in "proofs". But mathematics, on which the science is based, DOES insist on "proofs". Have you ever tried to explain to your geometry teacher that you "discovered" how to trisect an angle? At whatever level, the geometry instructor simply scoffs. Seems there is no demonstratable "proof" of the theorem. Therefore trisecting an angle is a mere "trick" and regardless of the number of times it may be replicated, is not accepted. But the technique has never been disproved, either. As an engineering concept, it would work just fine.
Biology is just a specialized branch of engineering, where pragmatic deductions are made from the observed reactions of the subject under study to various stimuli or situations. The study has gotten VASTLY more refined in the past fifty years, as the more intricate parts of the mechanisms have been recognized and their function studied, but we are still a long ways from knowing how the design was introduced in the first place.
Which brings us back to "intelligent design". Biological entities do not "evolve", they adapt to their environment. New life models are introduced, by some mechanism we yet do not know, to replace the failed entities that cannot adapt.
But Darwin does not begin to explain how some different life form arises from what is adduced to be a more primitive form. Does some virus infect the host, and add or transfer genetic material, making the changes permanent, irreversible, and incompatible with the parent stock, all the while maintaining viability? Because any biologist worth his salt is well aware that the vast majority of mutant genetic changes are either deleterious to the point of being downright lethal, or have no known positive effect. And the more the change, the more the negative effect is compounded.
Which means that the death rate of the incompletely or poorly adapted offspring would be horrendous before reaching the age of reproduction, and there is no certainty that there would be offspring in sufficient number to assure a minimum number to maintain a population.
Sko I ask one more time, "What is the driving force for evolution?"
"And the discovery of DNA bolsters Darwinism how exactly?"
Someone asked for an example of Darwins hypotheses being proved right. That was an example.
Thats what you do with hypotheses, you use them to predict something else. The (at the time) hypothesis of evolution suggested that there would have to be some "physical carrier" (now known as DNA) of information from one organism to it's offspring.
Observations of heredity preceded Darwin by thousands of years, this was not a theory of Darwin's he merely made use of existing ideas.
http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/darwin/sect5.htm
I would not consider Ken Ham's message about anything. The man disgusts me.
The term 'law' is also conventionally reserved for principles expressed as simple equations. Though conceptually straightforward, evolutionary theory is a little too rich for that. Its central mechanisms like natural selection can be formulated in terms of laws if one insists.
Could it be that their explanations have changed because their conclusions have been found to be incorrect?
Just asking....
"Observations of heredity preceded Darwin by thousands of years"
It's called "standing on the shoulders of giants". It's how siciense works. Nothing Darwin said had not been said before, Darwin was just the one that manged to put the pieces together and present it in a package that "sold".
That does not change the fact that his theory predicted many things that have been proved. That does not mean that he was 100% on the ball, no one ever is. Details are still hotly debated but the overall theory holds.
"The term 'law' is also conventionally reserved for principles expressed as simple equations. Though conceptually straightforward, evolutionary theory is a little too rich for that. Its central mechanisms like natural selection can be formulated in terms of laws if one insists."
Well put.
Oh yeah, you're right. But then he would prove the original point I made in post #14.
If your teachers and textbooks taught you that the theory of evolution addresses the origins of life as such, then you had inferior teachers and textbooks, I am sorry to say.
Could it be that their explanations have changed because their conclusions have been found to be incorrect?
In that case one would expect Darwin to address the question of life's origin in his 1859 classic The Origins of Species, no? Yet in my copy not one of the fourteen chapters deals with that.
You ought to get a soap box and go position yourself in front of the Smithsonian! Cheers!
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