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Imax Theaters Demur On Controversial Science Films
circletimessquare writes "The New York Times is reporting that a number of Imax theatres are passing on science-themed films that might provoke controversy among a handful of religious fundamentalists. Films that are having their distribution impacted include '"Cosmic Voyage," which depicts the universe in dimensions running from the scale of subatomic particles to clusters of galaxies; "Galápagos," about the islands where Darwin theorized about evolution; and "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," an underwater epic about the bizarre creatures that flourish in the hot, sulfurous emanations from vents in the ocean floor.'"
Apparently some people were offended by brief mentions of evolution in the documentary about volcanoes (it covered the harsh conditions in the undersea vents, and the life there).
from the article:
"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."
According to the article (did you even read it?), several IMAX theatres cancelled the movie because of religious objections. So that you don't have to take my word for it, here's a quote:
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."
I find it somewhat sad that several people seem to have taken your "an editor theorizes it could be because religious people might get upset at these films" as fact instead of reading the article.
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
"I wish this passage was in the bible:
Keep thy religion to thyself."
It is, although not in those exact words. Matthew 6:5-6 features Jesus calling people who shout their faith from streetcorners hypocrites. It really pisses off lunatic street preachers when I mention it.
Just so the rest of the world doesn't think that it's a small minority of Americans who are doing this, a set of polls on evolution vs Creationism. The majority of Americans believe that we were created by a god in 6 days 10,000 years ago. The religious right's ability to keep proper science out of the class is starting to bite us in the ass as it will get harder to aprove biotech and other "controversial sciences" for funding. The same scientific ignorance causes Americans to abhorr homosexuality as a sinful path chosen by evil people rather than realizing it's a natural mindset encoded into the brain before birth. My only hope for the science in this country is that someone in the government will realize that we should spend money on education instead of war before the median scientific knowledge of our "first world" country falls below that of "third world" countries.
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Wired article as proof
Rather than respond to a bunch of similarly themed posts I would simply like to point out that Religion and Hard Science are compatible. For example:
a tican_observe_000716.html
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/v
"This is our way of finding God," said Consolmagno, author of Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist, published in February by McGraw-Hill.
The Vatican Observatory is one of the oldest astronomical institutes in the world and the only research group directly supported by the Holy See. The church funds the observatory to the tune of about $1 million a year, leaving its operation to the Jesuits, a religious order whose "charism," or special gift to the church, is scholarship.
By your logic, not mine, FDR was an oil/religion wacko too. FDR often used the word 'God' in speeches and he fought a war, the Pacific Campaign against Japan, over oil too. We used our oil exports to pressure Japan over their invasion of China, they decided to invade some local oil producers and attack us since we were on the supply line home. Now that I think of it oil was pretty important in the European campaign as well, we suffered heavy casualties trying to knock out oil fields.
Oh BTW, your full of crap, the Iraqi oil fields are being run by the Iraqi's. As opposed to before the war when it was run by the U.N. and siphoning money back to Saddam, via the French and others. Things are far more complicated than whatever you heard in some campus rally. You really need to get past the politics, be it from the left or right, pro-US or anti-US, and do a little more research and read a little more history. Then you'll start to understand how incomprehensibly complicated things really are.
This would be a justification for "creation science" except that creation scientists are not acting in good faith.
They don't use scientific techniques, they don't use scientific arguments, they don't use scientific observations, and they don't use scientific data.
Instead, they use the trappings of science to give a superficial credibility to their ideas, which actually have nothing new or improved to offer serious scientific inquiry. The only theories they "disprove" are strawmen of their own creation. They continue to trot out the same tired hobbyhorse "problems" that serious scientists have long moved beyond (such as the creation of organs such as the eye). Their only goal is to continue to hold their dogmatic beliefs about God and his manner of creation, even when these beliefs are in disagreement with scientifically established facts.
So the answers to your questions
What evidence do they have that can't be explained by the current evolutionary theory? None.
What are the gaps in the current theory they try to explain?. None. The gaps they mention are in their own understanding of modern biology.
Then work on solving those problems and create a more robust theory of evolution. Scientists are already working on more complete and robust understanding of evolution and of natural selection. Spending time responding to fundamentally dishonest criticism from religiously-motivated wackos is just a waste of time.
Once a theory is mature enough and has sufficient evidence, even the church can't deny it. Actually, the Catholic church no longer denies evolution by natural selection. They do use a special pleading that only humans are blessed with a soul, but they do not claim this as a scientific truth.
"Just like another poster, I've never known any Christians that believe Muslims are evil or that people of Arab descent are automatically terrorists"
Then my I respectfully suggest that you've got your head in the sand. Here's a sample:
"Jerry Fallwell called the founder and revered prophet of Islam, Muhammed, a 'terrorist' on CBS's '60 Minutes' on Sunday, October 6. In so doing, Fallwell set off a firestorm in the American Muslim community to which MPAC responded. Fallwell's comments came on the heels of a slew of other vicious attacks lodged by the radical sector of the Evangelical Christian denomination...The Reverend Franklin Graham called Islam a 'very evil and wicked religion' and said the Qur'an, Islam's revealed text, 'preaches violence.' Pat Robertson said Islam is a 'monumental scam' and claimed the prophet Muhammad was 'an absolute wild-eyed fanatic...a robber and brigand...a killer.'"
Hmmmm. Nothing but tolerance there alright. How many followers do you think Fallwell, Graham and Robertson have? And that doesn't even touch on the crap I've heard directly, in person.
"I think the few responses you've received to your posts should be enough to show you that your stereotype of fundamentalist Christians ISN'T accurate."
To the contrary, the responses have shown me that you, as a community, are ignoring the rotting buffalo carcass in the living room that is the very real hate-mongering within your ranks. My interaction with Christian fundamentalism comes largely from Alabama, Texas and rural California. Lots of racism even without the religious overtones added in. Maybe that's the difference. From where do you hail?
Events aren't falsifiable, *theories* are.
As an example, historians can develop theories about "the causes of the American revolution" and then they can go about examining letters, contemporary accounts, and other historical documents to test whether their theories are correct or not.
The examination of documents is the experiment in this case.
Now, history is not a scientific endeavor, because one can't really make testable claims about what caused people to decide to do or say what they apparently did or said.
There is a huge amount of diversity in today's biosphere, which offers ample opportunity to find test cases for various theories of speciation, for instance. If I go and study the speciation of a hundred different types of existing snails or beetles, for instance, I can get a reasonably good basis to try to disprove one theory or another.
To claim that laboratory experiments are so much better than biological fieldwork is really not fair.
The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, which supposedly didn't want to show "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea", is showing Aliens of the Deep.
The Charleston Science Museum is also showing Aliens of the Deep.
"Cosmic Voyage" is from 1996. It's perhaps the biggest zoom shot of all time, starting from the quark level and zooming out to the entire universe over 35 minutes. It wasn't controversial at the time, and it doesn't seem to be that controversial now. Just dated. It's basically a remake of Powers of Ten, by Charles and Ray Eames.
Galapagos is playing at the IMAX in Fort Lauderdale, FL, along with two other IMAX theaters in the US. It's from 1999. Nobody seems to be that wound up about it.
It looks like some casual comment by the marketing guy for the museum in Fort Worth has been blown up out of proportion.
The big problem with "Volcanoes of the Deep Ocean" may be that it's "too educational". There's a teacher's guide, with quizzes and homework assignments. And really, there's a glut of undersea IMAX movies.
"1. Doesn't seem to be a very good support for evolution.
2. What evidence?
3. What tests?
4. Evolution hasn't put forth any predictions that have survived real world tests.
5. Maybe."
===
1. To you, maybe so.
2. Fossil record, myriad techniques for establishing age of relics & fossils, size of the universe, temperature of the earth, background cosmic radiation, observed evolution (particularly in micro-organisms), the twin hiearchies (to name just a few pieces amongst literally millions of pieces of coroborating evidence).
3. Tests such as breeding new species of bacteria by placing them under environmental stress.
4. The major successful prediction that the original theory of evolution made was that there must exist a mechanism of inheritance whereby partents pass on their attributes to their offspring. Many years later - hey presto, DNA was discovered.
5. Definately.
*yawn*
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution
And while you're there, read more of their stuff, such as Evolution is a Fact and a Theory and Can Evolution Make Predictions?
Your job would not be so frustrating if you simply treated your theory as it is - a theory.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but evolution is a fact. Well, and a theory. The fact is that evolution happened. The theory part is how that evolution happened.
A good quote:
"It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a fact, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution. It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old. It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago. It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now. It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms. Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans. No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun.
The controversies about evolution lie in the realm of the relative importance of various forces in molding evolution."
- R. C. Lewontin
I belong to the ______ generation.
You're full of taurine excrements.
I'm fed up with this bullshit about evolution being "not proven". It is proven and is solid like a T-34 shell. As in every branch of science it's a large patchwork, it may require refining, adjustments, interpretations, contributions, but there is no way the world was created from a space fart by some nutty long-bearded prick. Dammit, genetic algorithms are regularly used in mathematics! What other proof do you morons need to understand that it works?
And I'm puzzled why the creationist nuts don't use the most obvious argument against evolution: Americans are getting dumber and dumber.
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I'd actually love to see more documentaries about OTHER creation myths.
Just about every culture across the world has their own great flood myth. There is some scientific evidence that there was a sudden flood in the Mediterranean region
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