Saturday, March 19, 2005

They also won't sell maps in the gift shop, because, goshdarn it, they show the world is round

The fight over evolution has reached the big, big screen.

Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject - or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth - fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures. ...

"Volcanoes," released in 2003 and sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation and Rutgers University, has been turned down at about a dozen science centers, mostly in the South, said Dr. Richard Lutz, the Rutgers oceanographer who was chief scientist for the film. He said theater officials rejected the film because of its brief references to evolution, in particular to the possibility that life on Earth originated at the undersea vents.

Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said the museum decided not to offer the movie after showing it to a sample audience, a practice often followed by managers of Imax theaters. Ms. Murray said 137 people participated in the survey, and while some thought it was well done, "some people said it was blasphemous."

In their written comments, she explained, they made statements 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." ...

[Producer Stephen] Low said that arguments over religion and science disturbed him because of his own religious faith. In his view, he said, science is "a celebration of what nature or God has done. So for me, there's no conflict."

Dr. Lutz, the Rutgers oceanographer, recalled a showing of "Volcanoes" he and Mr. Low attended at the New England Aquarium. When the movie ended, a little girl stood in the audience to challenge Mr. Low on the film's suggestion that Earth might have formed billions of years ago in the explosion of a star. "I thought God created the Earth," she said.

He replied, "Maybe that's how God did it."
--The New York Times

I hate it when gravity is referred to as fact. The earth sucks--doesn't everybody know that?


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2 comments:

CG said...

When I hear about things like this, I "don't agree with their presentation of human existence." ...

In fact, I wonder about human existance at all.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jim,
Didn't know you'd shaved. I went all the way back to the beginning and found this gem. I am so fed up with the RR and all the other bible thumping idiot's. I read an "editorial" in Suffolk Life a couple weeks back wherein Jim Montalvo went out of his way to to shoot down several of the theories of evolution and then, of course, said that everyone should just believe in "intelligent design", as if that answers it all. I would like to know something about the big bang though, who (or what) lit the match?
Love your musical taste.
(I'm so conscious of
my punk'd uation now).