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.
And crude petroleum is dinosaur soup. Well, not really, but it is only recently that the whole cycle of organic materials has been mapped out, and while all the building blocks were in place when the earth cooled, how were the first proteins created? Recall that the major constituents of any primitive atmosphere were carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane and water as vapor and liquid. By combination, and by repeated pressure and heat, there are various compounds formed by these scattered and random molecules, primarily ammonium carbonate, composed of a molecule of water, a molecule of carbon dioxide, and two molecules of ammonia, forming a white solid, that under heat and pressure, proceeds to form another solid of stable nature called urea, a precursor of most proteins. With the presence of methane and additional water, the first of a series of free protein molecules, better known as amino acids, which have an odd chemical property of being both acidic and basic, begin to link up end to end to form more and more complex proteins. But at what point, does this collection of proteins become self-replicating and take on the first characteristic of life? Something about this has to be WAY more than just random.
good for you!
This is my favorite post of the day, so far, a surprising blend of surreal whimsy and lurching cant, but then I love pizza with anchovies!
De gustibus non est disputandum.
"Evolutionists admit the fossil record doesn't support their theory either"
Please provide me a link to where the scientist said that.
yes, it is the epitome of whimsy. I saw it on PBS
Which part of Evolutionary theory says anything about "spontaneous generation?" Evidence, please.
Or are you confusing Evolution with Abiogenisis?
"When you have ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth."
The key is deciding what is impossible. There is either
A. preexistent or eternally existent time/space/matter/life
Or
B.preexistent or eternally existent and transcendent intellect
Which do you choose, and why?
That is the ENTIRE foundation for both evolution AND creation.
LOL that *is* good! "millions and millions of years ago" = "once upon a time, in a land far far away..."
and they always present it so convincingly. I guess they'll be making documentaries next
Please provide the citation, complete with source, where Anthony Flew complains that the theory of evolution doesn't "explain the origins of the Universe."
If he has in fact made such an absurd complaint, senility would be as plausible an explanation as any. But I seriously doubt that he has.
Try to understand this: evolutionary science does not address questions about the origins of abiotic nature, or even of life. It explains certain features of life on this planet, notably how it has changed and diversified over time. It is not a theory of everything and does not aim to be one.
I will be waiting for the citation from Professor Flew.
..and for those Freepers who want to learn just how badly "DrDino" (Kent Hovind) mangles the science he attempts to address, and how often he presents gross misrepresentations as "truth", see for example:
Analysis of Dr. Dino (Kent Hovind)
Dr. Dino's "Fractured Fairy Tales of Science"
300 Creationist Lies (All from Kent Hovind)
And so on.
He doesn't claim tax exemption either, because he wants no government telling him he can't speak the truth.
ROFL! Well, that's *one* excuse, anyway.
My kids love it.
Why are you filling your kids' heads with this sort of propaganda and nonsense? Seriously, you're crippling their minds.
He said he had a debate at Berkeley and it was the most fun he'd ever have. No one there liked him.
Not even the folks at Berkeley like a liar.
Oh PLEASE ask that that statement be inserted into public school textbooks. I beg of you.
I guess truth is in the eye of the beholder then.
Come on now. I clearly emphasized "screaming" in my post, and did not argue that they didn't say that they were offended. Yes, they said they were offended. As is their right to in America.
BTW, wasn't it a screening to see what the reaction of the planned audience was going to be. Thus weren't they probably asked to provide feedback.
If I just speak softly, I am still being vocal. But your suggestion that they were "screaming" was, I believe, intended to infer some sort of out of control "fundamentalists", instead of some people responding to a request for feedback.
I'm still trying to figure out what your position is.
You said they should not attend the IMAX showing, but the point of the article is that if they don't, the films won't make any money, and won't be shown.
Are you upset at them because they plan to take your advice, or are you upset at them because they won't agree with you and spend their money to support the films, and just shut up about their concerns?
He just knows how to milk rubes.
While I don't agree with all of his assertions, he does present a lot of good evidence and doesn't tend to contradict himself nearly as much as the evolutionists he debates. (in fact I'm having a hard time recalling a time when he did.)
Maybe you should take your blindfold off and actually listen to the information, since you asked for it.
Telling people they're blind and ridiculously narrowminded is flaming now? Oh, that's just like redefining science! I get it!
I totally support the idea of himself calling himself a doctor. It's great humor. A sign of intelligence is a good sense of humor. I can see the joke has been lost on you.
Thank you.
Isn't that considered a flame by the new definition now?
Sorry, but I don't know what this is supposed to mean.
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