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.
"This means that seven decades of leftist anti-religious secularism is FAILING!"
It is for this reason that I fear that in the end it will be forced upon us by the ACLU and the Liberal Supreme Court.
"Well evolution certainly can't produce such an experiment. This subject matter doesn't lend itself to such textbook experiments."
Actually, in experiments, you are not really trying to prove anything true, that is impossible. You are trying to prove it false. The problem of proving something true, is that you can run an experiment 1000 times, 10,000 times and have it validate your hypothesis. But if you run another experiment, and it proves your hypothesis false, out it goes (the hypothesis, not the experiment), or at least you have to go back and modify your hypothesis.
So, yes, YOU DO need to prove it false.
I think there a couple still moving over there in the corner. Need me to hold them down, or you just want to 'show them the light' where they are?
Care to name a few evolutionists that are steering away from it? Without quote mining. You might also name a few that label themselves as 'evolutionists'.
If the 'evidence' is solidly based in reality he might; why not give it a try?
Carl Sagan's 'Contact' supports the IDist's version of ID? Care to show me how?
That would be rather fitting. Fiction in support of fiction.
It's unfortunate, but you show clear evidence of having a distorted idea of what a theory is. This is one of the aspects of the anti-evolution lobby that is most frustrating, the lack of knowledge and understanding exhibited by most creationists.
Of course the anti-evolutionists are far more intellectual, intelligent, knowledgeable and honest than the scientists that actually work in the field. Is this what you are saying?
You are quite wrong. All scientists are willing to examine other theories, as long as the theories meet all the scientific criteria of a theory. In other words, as long as the theories are actually theories and not hypotheses and or conjectures. If you can bring forth a theory of creationism, or a theory of ID, I would be happy to not only look at it but pass it on with recommendations to a number of very bright evolutionary scientists.
I just ask that your theory actually be a scientific theory.
I'm sure that you have the proof of that since you are so bold as to state it. Could you please share with the rest of us the proof of that assertion.
I thank you in advance for your cooperation. I'm sure it will be enlightening.
If man's closest relative is the ape, how come the human brain is so far advanced beyond the apes. Consider what man can do with his intelligence compared to apes which do little more than swing from trees eating bananas. Just because I like bananas too, doesn't mean I evolved from apes.
Where are the animals that should be filling the gap between modern-day apes and man? (And liberals don't count!)
If you are implying that Flew speaks for all of science, that is news to me. I will have to let the rest of science know that our 'voice' has just falsified our life's work. It is apparently time to pack up the lab and head home.
condon volatility location ----from Oxford Journals
Codon Volatility As an Indicator of Positive Selection: Data from Eukaryotic Genome Comparisons
Robert Friedman and Austin L. Hughes
Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia
Adstract:
It has been suggested that codon volatility (the proportion of the point-mutation neighbors of a codon that encode different amino acids) can be used as an index of past positive selection. We compared codon volatility with patterns of synonymous and nonsynonymous nucleotide substitution in genome-wide comparisons of orthologous genes between three pairs of related genomes: (1) the protists Plasmodium falciparum and P. yoelii, (2) the fungi Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. paradoxus, and (3) the mammals mouse and rat. Codon volatility was not consistently associated with an elevated rate of nonsynonymous substitution, as would be expected under positive selection. Rather, the most consistent and powerful correlate of elevated codon volatility was nucleotide content at the second codon position, as expected, given the nature of the genetic code.
Which seems to conflict with your meaning, concerning what has been found.
...in the above mutation map, and unlike the pig/cow/mouse/rat mutation map, the mutations aren't predominantly at the "safer" third base of a codon, nor of a type that would be "safe".
The DNA data you are using (or posting from), is in conflict with that of Friedman & Hughes?
woops,
Abstract, not ad-stract!
Please, for everyone's sake, learn what theory means.
aren't you in for a rude awakening....!
We are all in for a rude awakening if Hillary is elected President in 2008 due to reasonable people being scared away from the Republican party because of overzealous fundamentalist shoving their beliefs down their throats. Refighting the Scopes Monkey Trial will do just that. The election of Bill Clinton not once but twice shows you Evangelicals can't win an election all by yourselves.
But no I'm not in for a rude awakening, The numbers are what they are and they get worse for the creationst.
According to the 2002 Annual Meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention 88 percent of the children raised in evangelical homes leave church at the age of 18 and overall your numbers are dwindling.
So in the coming years those numbers will only get worse for the Creationist, The truth always does win out in the end. I just worry about the damage you will do in the short term.
you are still talking about big majority 61-38% who believe in evolution over the fundamentalist Biblical view
Have you taken into account those that believe in theistic evolution? (That wouldn't include me, but it probably wouldn't include you either.)
Yes that's in the numbers, But while I don't agree with theistic evolution, unlike YEC it is a reasonable position and it really doesn't concern me because unlike fundamentalism which wants to bring our science education back to the Dark Ages, theistic evolution doesn't effect our science education one bit.
Even Ichnuemon has his more pleasant moments, and he does indeed seem well educated. Much, much more than I, for a certainty.
He offers up fairly *dense* writing at times, difficult to follow, *precisely*, but then again, the subject matter discussed can be as dense, as it is wide-ranging, while all the while, be inter-related.
Ha! Accidental pun!
The "not a blue meanie" tag, is a reference to another thread where blue highlighting was used extensively in the posts from one critic. That, and an oblique reference to yellow submarines, , my stupid moniker, and the (climbs down under desk) sea of holes.
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