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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.

The number of theaters rejecting such films is small, people in the industry say - perhaps a dozen or fewer, most in the South. But because only a few dozen Imax theaters routinely show science documentaries, the decisions of a few can have a big impact on a film's bottom line - or a producer's decision to make a documentary in the first place.

People who follow trends at commercial and institutional Imax theaters say that in recent years, religious controversy has adversely affected the distribution of a number of films, including "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.

We have definitely a lot more creation public than evolution public," said Lisa Buzzelli, who directs the Charleston Imax Theater in South Carolina, a commercial theater next to the Charleston Aquarium. Her theater had not ruled out ever showing "Volcanoes," Ms. Buzzelli said, "but being in the Bible Belt, the movie does have a lot to do with evolution, and we weigh that carefully."

Pietro Serapiglia, who handles distribution for the producer Stephen Low of Montreal, whose company made the film, said officials at other theaters told him they could not book the movie "for religious reasons," because it had "evolutionary overtones" or "would not go well with the Christian community" or because "the evolution stuff is a problem."

Hyman Field, who as a science foundation official had a role in the financing of "Volcanoes," said he understood that theaters must be responsive to their audiences. But Dr. Field he said he was "furious" that a science museum would decide not to show a scientifically accurate documentary like "Volcanoes" because it mentioned evolution.

"It's very alarming," he said, "all of this pressure being put on a lot of the public institutions by the fundamentalists."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/national/19imax.html?hp&ex=1111294800&en=bac14b20d4620205&ei=5094

 

[Triumph]

*head explodes*

 

[cloudwalking]

"Galápagos," about the islands where Darwin theorized about evolution

wow. just wow. it never ceases to amaze me what these bible thumpers will bitch about.

they're fucking ISLANDS.

 

[Hitokage]

Funny how an institution whose sole purpose is to saturate the senses panders to the blind.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

A minority's opinions should be followed above the majority only when the minority are genious, not idiots. This is Great Truth™ in much in life.

 

[Mike Works]

Accusing people of being stupid while spelling 'genius' incorrectly is almost as bad when others call people "retarts".

 

[Boogie]

Accusing people of being stupid while spelling 'genius' incorrectly is almost as bad when others call people "retarts".

Or "morans"

 

[demon]

That's just retarted.

 

[Shinobi]

That's just wrong...I'm a Christian and think evolution is basically bunk, but that doesn't mean it should be censored. The hypocrisy Christians display over such things is just amazing to me...none of 'em would like it if say a bible reading or prayer meeting at a school was censored.

Bleh...people in general are criminally full of shit.

 

[Alcibiades]

there is no censoring, this is some IMAX theatres not showing the films because either they disagree with it or fear reaction in certain markets...

It's dumb, but it's not "wrong".

At least no more wrong than not running independent films in small markets. Theatres and museums want to make money.

 

[Shinobi]

Not running something due to the odds of it not making money is one thing. Not running something due to fear of mass protests or boycotts is a completely different thing.

 

[Jeffahn]

I can't wait for the IMAX special on Noah's Ark; showing how he managed to resolve the multitude of problems in undertaking such a venture.

...

Edit:

The shortest summary I could find:

http://www.skepticfiles.org/evo2/flood.htm

Article: 183 of talk.origins Subject: Problems with a Global Flood Summary: potential FAQ







Article: 183 of talk.origins
From: isaak@imagen.com (mark isaak)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Problems with a Global Flood
Summary: potential FAQ material
Message-ID: <1992May26.224421.28153@imagen.com>
Date: 26 May 92 22:44:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: imagen.1992May26.224421.28153
References: <1992May24.194913.6752@cs.cmu.edu>>
Sender: news@imagen.com
Organization: imagen
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I've been collecting and summarizing evidences against a global
flood which have appeared in this group. The result appears below.
With the addition of more specific references, it could, I think,
make a good FAQ addition. I'm afraid, though, that I will not be
able to maintain it.


Problems With a Global Flood

The ark:
How did the ark even get _built_ before its frame decays? Tim LaHaye and
Henry Morris assure us that Noah and his three sons could have
easily constructed the ark in only 81 years. Builders of wooden
ships whose work took only four or five years often faced the
problem of earlier phases of their work rotting away. And does the
81 year figure include harvesting and shaping lumber, building
workshops, scaffolds, cages, etc., and gathering animals and
provisions?
How was the ark made seaworthy? The longest wooden ships in modern seas
are about 300 feet, and these require reinforcing with iron straps
and leak so badly they must be constantly pumped.
How were animals collected from all over the world?

Life on the ark:
How did all the different species fit on the ark? 30 million species is a
conservative estimate. If you hypothesize significantly fewer than
that on the ark, you must explain evolution rates faster than any
evolutionists propose to account for all the present species.
How did Noah supply food and water for all the animals for a year?
How did creatures needing special environments survived on the ark?
How do you explain how all host-specific parasites/diseases made do with
only one pair of hosts (and if they did OK, how the hosts survived!)
How well ventilated was the ark? The body heat from millions of closely
packed animals must have been very intense.

The flood:
Where did the water come from? (It would take 4.4 billion cubic
kilometers to cover Mt. Everest.)
Where did it go?

Geological effects of the flood:
How was the fossil record sorted in an order convenient for evolution?
Ecological zonation fails to explain:
(1) the extremely good sorting observed. Why didn't at least one
dinosaur make it to the high ground with the elephants?
(2) the relative positions of plants and other non-motile life.
(3) why some groups of organisms, such as mollusks, are found in
many geologic strata.
(4) why extinct animals which lived in the same niches as present
animals didn't survive as well. Why did no pterodons make it to high
ground?
How can a single flood be responsible for such extensively detailed
layering? One formation is six kilometers thick. If we grant 400
days for this to settle, and ignore possible compaction since the
flood, we still have 15 meters of sediment settling *per day*. And
yet despite this, the chemical properties of the rock are neatly
layered, whith great changes (e.g.) in percent carbonate occuring
within a few centimeters in the vertical direction. How does such a
neat sorting process occur in the violent context of a universal
flood dropping 15 meters of sediment per day? How can you explain a
thin layer of high carbonate sediment being deposited over an area
of ten thousand square kilometers for some thirty minutes, followed
by thirty minutes of low carbonate deposition, followed by thirty
minutes more of .... well, I think you get the picture. [From: Bill
Hyde; see also [2]]
How do you explain the formation of varves? The Green River formation
in Wyoming contains 20,000,000 annual layers, or varves,
identical to those being laid down today in certain lakes.
[From: bill@bessel.as.utexas.edu (William H. Jefferys); see also [1]]
How do you explain worldwide agreement between "apparent" geological eras
and radiometric dating methods?
Why is there no evidence of a flood in ice core series?
Deep in the geologic column there are formations which could have
originated only on the surface, such as footprints, rain drops,
river channels, wind-blown dunes, beaches, and glacial deposits.
How could these have appeared in the midst of a catastrophic flood?
How do you explain the relative ages of mountains? Why weren't the Sierra
Nevadas eroded as much as the Appalacians during the flood?
How do you explain Fossil remineralization - the replacement of the
original material with a different mineral?
* Buried skeletal remains of modern fauna are negligibly
remineralized, including some that biblical archaeology says are
quite old - a substantial fraction of the age of the earth in this
diluvian geology. For example, remains of Egyptian commoners
buried near the time of Moses aren't extensively remineralized.
* Buried skeletal remains of extinct mammalian fauna show quite
variable remineralization.
* Dinosaur remains are often extensively remineralized.
* Trilobite remains are usually remineralized - and in different
sites, fossils of the same species are composed of different
materials.
How are these observations explained by a sorted deposition of
remains in a single episode of global flooding?
[From: jjh00@outs.ccc.amdahl.com (Joel J. Hanes)]
How could the flood deposit layers of solid salt --- sometimes meters in
width. This apparently occurs when a body of salt water has its
fresh-water intake cut off, and then evaporates. These layers can
occur more or less at random times in the geological history, and
have characteristic fossils on either side. Therefore, if the
fossils were themselves laid down during a catastrophic flood, there
are, it seems, only two choices:
(1) the salt layers were themselves laid down at the same time,
during the heavy rains that began the flooding, or
(2) the salt is a later intrusion.
I suspect that both will prove insuperable difficulties for a theory
of flood deposition of the geologic column and its fossils.
[From: marlowe@paul.rutgers.edu (Thomas Marlowe)]
How are the polar ice caps possible? Such a mass of water as the flood
would have provided sufficient buoyancy to float the polar caps off
their beds. No way to drop them _exactly_ back onto their original
location, _or_ to regrow them. (In fact, the Greenland ice cap
would _not_ regrow under modern (last 10 ky) climatic conditions.)
[From: Bob Grumbine rmg3@psuvm.psu.edu]
Finally, remember that the geological column and the relative dates
therein were laid out by _creationists_ before Darwin even
formulated his theory.

Biological effects of the flood:
How do you explain the survival of any sensitive marine life (e.g.,
coral)? Since most coral are found in shallow water the turbidity
created by the runoff from the land would effectively cut them off
from the sun. The silt would cover the reef after the rains were
over, and the coral would ALL DIE. By the way, the rates at which
coral deposits calcium are well known, and some highly mature reefs
(such a the great barrier) have been around for MILLIONS of years to
be deposited to their observed thickness. [From: bmb@bluemoon.rn.com]
How did _all_ the fish survive? Some require cool clear water, some need
brackish water, some need ocean water, some need water even saltier.
A flood would have destroyed at least some of these habitats.
How did all the modern plant species survive? Many plants (seeds and all)
would be killed by being submerged for a few months.
Why is there no evidence of a flood in tree ring dating?
How does the flood explain the geological sorting of pollen? Fossil
pollen is one of the more important indicators of different levels
of strata. Each plant has different and distinct pollen, and, by
telling which plants produced the fossil pollen, it is easy to see
what the climate was like in different strata. Was the pollen
hydrolically sorted by the flood water so that the climatic evidence
is different for each layer?
How does a flood explain the accuracy of "coral clocks"? The moon is
slowly sapping the earth's rotational energy. The earth should have
rotated more quickly in the distant past, meaning that a day would
have been less than 24 hours, and there would have been more days
per year. Corals can be dated by the number of "daily" growth
layers per "annual" growth layer. Devonian corals, for example,
show nearly 400 days per year. There is an exceedingly strong
correlation between the "supposed age" of a wide range of fossils
(corals, stromatolites, and a few others -- collected from geologic
formations throughout the column and from locations all over the
world) and the number of days per year that their growth pattern
shows. The agreement between these clocks, and radiometric dating,
and the theory of superposition... is a little hard to explain away
as the result of a number of unlucky coincidences in a 300-day-long
flood. [From: stassen@alc.com (Chris Stassen)]
If a single flood is responsible for all fossils, where were all those
animals when they were alive? From "Six 'Flood' Arguments
Creationists Can't Answer" by Robert Schadewald,
_Creation/Evolution_ IV (Summer 1982), pp. 12-13:
"Scientific creationists interpret the fossils found in the earth's
rocks as the remains of animals that perished in the Noachian
Deluge. Ironically, they often cite the sheer number of fossils in
"fossil graveyards" as evidence for the Flood. In particular,
creationists seem enamored by the Karroo Formation in Africa, which
is estimated to contain the remains of 800 billion vertebrate
animals (see Whitcomb and Morris, p. 160; Gish, p. 61). As
pseudoscientists, creationists dare not test this major hypothesis
that all of the fossilized animals died in the Flood.
"Robert E. Sloan, a paleontologist at the University of Minnesota,
has studied the Karroo Formation. He asserts that the animals
fossilized there range from the size of a small lizard to the size
of a cow, with the average animal perhaps the size of a fox. A
minute's work with a calculator shows that, if the 800 billion
animals in the Karoo formation could be resurrected, there would be
twenty-one of them for every acre of land on earth. Suppose we
assume (conservatively, I think) that the Karroo Formation contains
1 percent of the vertebrate fossils on earth [land fossils
only--whj]. Then when the Flood began, there must have been at least
2100 living animals per acre, ranging from tiny shrews to immense
dinosaurs. To a noncreationist mind, that seems a bit crowded."
A thousand kilometers' length of arctic coastal plain, according
to experts in Leningrad [N. Newell, _Creation and Evolution_; 1982,
Columbia U. Press, p. 62], contains about 500,000 *tons* of tusks.
Even assuming that the entire population was preserved, you seem to
be saying that Russia had wall-to-wall mammoths before this "event."

Historical effects of the flood:
Why is there no mention of the flood in the records of Egyptian or Chinese
civilizations which existed at the time?
Biblical dates (I Kings 6:1, Gal 3:17, various generation lengths
given in Genesis) place the flood 1300 years before Solomon began
the first temple. We can construct reliable chronologies for near
Eastern history, particularly for Egypt, from many kinds of records
from the literate cultures in the near East. These records are
independent of, but supported by, dating methods such as
dendrochronology and carbon-14. The building of the first temple
can be dated to 950 B.C. +/- some small delta, placing the Flood
around 2250 B.C. Unfortunately, the Egytians (among others) have
written records dating well back before 2250 B.C. (the Great
Pyramid, for example dates to the 26th century B.C., 300 years
before the Biblical date for the Flood). No sign in Egyptian
inscriptions of this global flood around 2250 B.C.

Aftermath of the flood:
How did marsupials get back to Australia, where their ancestors' bones
are? And why are so many marsupials limited to Australia? The same
argument applies to any number of groups of animals.
How do you explain the genetic variation in all populations today?
How did all of the animals survive after being unloaded from the Ark? All
of the predators at the top of the food pyramid require larger
numbers of food animals beneath them on the pyramid, which in turn
require large numbers of the animals they prey on, and so on, down
to the primary producers (plants...etc.) at the bottom. How would
"pairs" of animals get enough food from what must have been a
limited supply of plants and animals?

Is the flood model consistent with the Bible?
The model seems to say that large numbers of kinds of land animals
became extinct because of the flood, while Genesis repeatedly says
that Noah was ordered to take a representative sample of all kinds of
land animals on the Ark to save them from extinction, and that Noah
did as ordered. Which is right?
How could Noah have gathered male and female of each kind when some
species are asexual, others are parthenogenic and have only females,
and others (such as earthworms) are hermaphrodites? And what about
social animals like ants and termites which need the whole nest to
survive?
Other civilizations have flood legends, too. This is often given as
evidence for the flood, but doesn't it mean that more people than
Noah's family survived?
What was used to waterproof the ark? We are told that God instructed Noah
to coat the ark with pitch inside and out with the naturally-
occurring hydrocarbon pitch, which causes a bit of a problem since,
according to Whitcomb and Morris, all oil, tar and coal deposits
were formed when organic matter was buried DURING the flood.
Does the flood story make the whole Bible less credible?
Davis Young is a working geologist who also is an Evangelical
Christian. He has personal doubts about some aspects of evolution,
but he makes a devastating case against "Flood Geology." He writes
(_Christianity and the Age of the Earth_, p. 163):
"The maintenance of modern creationism and Flood geology not only is
useless apologetically with unbelieving scientists, it is harmful.
Although many who have no scientific training have been swayed by
creationist arguments, the unbelieving scientist will reason that a
Christianity that believes in such nonsense must be a religion not
worthy of his interest...Modern creationism in this sense is
apologetically and evangelistically ineffective. It could even be a
hindrance to the gospel.
"Another possible danger is that in presenting the gospel to the
lost and in defending God's truth we ourselves will seem to be
false. It is time for Christian people to recognize that the defense
of this modern, young-Earth, Flood-geology creationism is simply not
truthful. It is simply not in accord with the facts that God has
given. Creationism must be abandoned by Christians before harm is
done...."
[From: bill@bessel.as.utexas.edu (William H. Jefferys) See also [3]]
If God is omnipotent, why not kill what He wanted killed directly?
And the whole idea was to rid the wicked people from the world. Did it work?

Notes:

[1] Short, D. A., J. G. Mengel, T. J. Crowley, W. T. Hyde and G. R. North
1991: Filtering of Milankovitch Cycles by Earth's Geography.
Quaternary Research. 35, 157--173.

[2] Kent and Olsen (Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Geological
Observatory) Discover, Jan. 1992

[3] Davis Young: _Christianity and the Age of the Earth_. Now published by
Artisan Sales, POB 2497, Thousand Oaks CA 91360. Single copies (at
last report) were $8.50 postpaid, and in lots of 10 or more,
$4.50/copy.

[4] "Creation/Evolution" Issue #11, Winter 1983, "The Impossible Voyage of
Noah's Ark" by Robert A. Moore, pp. 1-43. The entire issue is
about the ark. Moore lists over one hundred references.

Re frozen mammoths as evidence of a catastrophy:
[5] Farrand, Wm. R.;_Science_, 133:729-735, March 17, 1961
--
Mark Isaak imagen!isaak@decwrl.dec.com or {decwrl,sun}!imagen!isaak
"The color of truth is gray." - Andre Gide











E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank

 

[Bishman]

I can't wait for the IMAX special on Noah's Ark; showing how he managed to resolve the multitude of problems in undertaking such a venture.

...

Edit:

The shortest summary I could find:

http://www.skepticfiles.org/evo2/flood.htm

Article: 183 of talk.origins Subject: Problems with a Global Flood Summary: potential FAQ

Good article Jeffahn. Whoa.

Is it only me or has the internet made people less religious?

 

[human5892]

How did the ark even get _built_ before its frame decays?

GOD DID IT

How did all the different species fit on the ark?

GOD DID IT

Where did the water come from?

YOU'RE A SATANIST

Why is there no mention of the flood in the records of Egyptian or Chinese
civilizations which existed at the time?

GO READ HARRY POTTER