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.
While there is obviously a great deal of incompetence among the creationist "authors", it is unfortunately true that there is a large amount of dishonesty as well. Check out the links I provided -- many of them involve creationists who continue to repeat their falsehoods even after they've been given indisputable evidence that they *were* falsehoods (e.g., pointing out that they were misquoting a researcher and the researcher specifically repudiated the creationist's misstatement of the research, etc.)
There IS no answer that either "proves" or "disproves" Darwin theory as to the origin of species
Well of course not -- science does not deal in "proofs". On the other hand, science *can* disprove a theory (known as falsification) if its predictions don't match the evidence. And for over 100 years evolutionary theory has survived all such potential "disproof" tests.
- all the Darwin theory does is concentrate a greater number of particular genetic combinations for specific conditions, but it does not, CANNOT, explain differences in chromosome numbers,
Please support this claim of yours. I've seen it explain differences in chromosome numbers quite well.
or further interactions that cause sharp inheritable differences from the parent stock,
And this one.
sufficiently so to rationalize calling the offspring a different species altogether. Porcupines do not produce bears, and worms do not produce butterflies.
Of course not, but then evolutionary biology doesn't say that they do. Are you sure you understand the science you're attempting to critique? Isn't knowing something about a field a necessary prerequisite to actually being able to determine if it's valid or not?
Flaming is such an unattractive quality.
Indeed. Please direct that excellent advice to Terriergal.
"The most closed minded people in the world are evolutionists who refuse to allow competing theories to even be discussed in the classroom."
On the contrary, all it takes is one really good, reproducible experiment to blow a theory out of the water. One that I can test over and over and get the same result, one that others can test over and over and get the same result.
So, I AM NOT asking for a mountain of evidence that evolution is bogus. Give me ONE experiment and a detailed description of all the steps I need to do to reproduce it. If I come up with the same result that unequivocally. shows that evolution is bogus I will denounce it. If it also shows that God did it all, I will run down and get baptized this afternoon.
All the other reasons for teaching evolution in school take a back seat to this one very simple one.
Evolution is science and science is what we teach in a science curriculum.
If you want to include a mandatory comparative religion class where our children could ponder such questions as the origin of morals and the nature of G(g)od(s). I would back you 100%. These are question that everyone should ponder and so few do.
Here is a list of religions you can start with ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religions ) . When your done compiling a curriculum, I will be happy to double check it for accuracy.
Download some of the debates at www.drdino.com It's all free for downloading but if you order physical hard copies it costs to make and ship the media - however you can copy them and hand them out with no copyright violation. He wants the message to get out.
He doesn't claim tax exemption either, because he wants no government telling him he can't speak the truth. My kids love it.
I especially like the debates with these college profs who continually contradict themselves. He said he had a debate at Berkeley and it was the most fun he'd ever have. No one there liked him.
Of course not. I call the liars liars, and the idiots idiots. There are unfortunately a large number of both on among the more vocal creationists. But nowhere have I ever said or even implied that anyone who objects to "neodarwinism" is necessarily either.
Evolution is propaganda.
Science is science. And science does not support "spontaneous generation."
Of course, we DO teach propaganda in public schools. Evolution is only part of that.
ex darwinut? What made you an EX darwin nut?
Fear. They're very frightened.
This means that seven decades of leftist anti-religious secularism is FAILING!
I don't know what Evolution which is a scientific theory has to do with leftist anti-religious secularism.
But touting this a good news is typical creationist distortion.
Here are the actual Gallup results they are talking about
The poll of 1,028 teenagers ages 13-17 found that 38 percent don't believe in evolution, believing instead that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Another 43 percent believe that humans "developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided" the process. All total, 81 percent believe that God was somehow involved. Only 18 percent believe that evolution took place without God playing a role.
So you are still talking about big majority 61-38% who believe in evolution over the fundamentalist Biblical view
and it gets better
Compare that to the adults
Adults actually are somewhat more likely not to believe in evolution. In a Gallup poll of adults last November, 45 percent said they believed in creationism while 38 percent believed that God guided the process of evolution. Only 13 percent of adults said they believed that evolution occurred without God's guidance.
So it's the Creationoids who are actually losing ground.
Let's knock off the Hitler talk. Thanks.
Lookit that! It's been moved to the Smoky backroom. Apparently it's not a scientific topic to criticize evolution.
All right I will. Sorry
aren't you in for a rude awakening....!
Goedel said he could not believe the theory of evolution because it relies on chance and in Goedel's world there is nothing happening by accident or stupidity.
I was wondering about the Smokey Backroom thing myself.
"Now you'll probably pull out the argument "well, the fact is that macro-evolution did happen, so that's a proof that there was enough time," or some other tautological argument."
Actually no not at all. If God is the omnipotent being most believe he is, then he could have created the world any way he darn well felt like doing it. It just so happens that it was put together in such a way that all or at least the vast majority of the evidence points to an evolutionary theory of life.
Does that mean God didn't do it? No. Maybe he just has a sense of humor. Maybe he did it as a test of faith. Maybe he does not exist. Maybe he does exist and Satan planted all the bones. Those questions are the realm of religion. Science is just about coming up with the best explanation for the evidence at hand without calling on superpowers or "ether".
Have you taken into account those that believe in theistic evolution? (That wouldn't include me, but it probably wouldn't include you either.)
What do bones have to do with anything? Evolutionists admit the fossil record doesn't support their theory either.
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