Charles Darwin film 'too controversial for religious America'

[sledgehammer]

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<snip>

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.

<snip>

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

"That's what we're up against. In 2009. It's amazing," he said.

"The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it's because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they've seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up.

<snip>

More at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html

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Like the director says, "it's amazing!"

[SPedigrees]

1. I'll watch it the way I do most films, via netflix or by purchasing the dvd. nt

[Lost-in-FL]

2. Buy it HBO, please!!! nt

[JonQ]

3. I'm guessing this is a publicity stunt

Too controversial for america! You guys absolutely can't watch this, it is far too graphic and offensive. And no one will allow us to even show it in america.

And then they find someone who will and they sell out the theaters, because everyone has to see this forbidden movie.

[Hawkowl]

4. Americans are ass clowns

Being one of them, I am no longer surprised after being assaulted on daily basis for over forty years by the belligerent stupidity and ignorance of the average American.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. I'm puzzled by this

I grew up in Minnesota in an era when everyone was either Lutheran or Catholic, and there were a few other Christian denominations and Jews around, but most people identified with one religion or another. Nearly everyone took biology in tenth grade (1965-66 for me), especially the college-bound kids.

Nobody raised a fuss about the evolution unit. It was completely non-controversial. The only people we knew who objected were the small community of Jehovah's Witnesses, and for that reason, their kids didn't take biology.

We saw the film of "Inherit the Wind" in English class, and everyone agreed that those people back in 1920s Tennessee were silly.

A few years later, I took "Studies in Genesis" as one of my required religion courses in college. When we studied the first two chapters, learning about the parallels to other Middle Eastern traditions, no one raised any objection. The professor mentioned that he sometimes found students who objected to his calling the creation story "mythological," but we all just shrugged.

In other words, I doubt that you'd found 61% of people at that time rejecting evolution. It just wasn't an issue in the 1960s and 1970s.(School prayer was another dead issue, especially since most of the country never had it.)

Then, all of a sudden, in the Reagan era, I started hearing calls for school prayer and equal time for creationism in public schools. My reaction was, "Where did all that come from?"

If it is true that the majority of the U.S. population rejects evolution, I have a few questions, 1) What's the age breakdown of people who reject evolution? Are they mostly people who went through high school and college during or after the Reagan administration? 2) What's the geographical distribution of the people who reject evolution? 3) In the polls cited, how was the question phrased? If the question was phrased something like, "Do you believe in God or evolution?" that's a forced choice, and most people have no emotional attachment to evolution. (I refuse to answer forced choice questions like that for pollsters). If the question was phrased simply, "Do you believe in evolution?" and people still answered "no," then that's a scary indication that 1) Our educational level has dropped since 1980, and 2) The megachurches are brainwashing a lot of people.

[FreedomRain]

6. I'd like to know that too

I went to public H.S. in northen Virginia, early '80s. There was no controversy that I recall at that time re evolution, and the moment of silence compromise was pretty much acepted as reasonable

[Voice for Peace]

7. people are so afraid

afraid not to be christians, in case it's true

[Jenny_D]

10. I'm not at all surprised...

but I grew up in the Bible Belt, graduated high school in 1991, then attended a state university in the same state. The study of evolution has always been controversial to a segment of my peers. I've always felt like I was in the minority for "believing" in evolution (in much the same way as I "believe" in gravity).

I worry about my children's generation. Many, if not most, of the evangelical Christians in my area either homeschool their children or send them to a private Christian academy. When I was growing up, the closest private school was a Catholic school in a city over 30 miles away. Since the early-mid 1990s, the number of evangelical Christian academies has exploded and now every town has at least one. My own niece attended one such Christian academy for a few years, because her late autumn birthday missed the public school kindergarten cutoff and my in-laws didn't want her to wait a year to start kindergarten. Once she started school there, she made friends and they were reluctant to pull her out, even though they themselves are not particularly religious. They finally pulled her out of the Christian school in 4th grade, over concerns that her science education was being watered down too much in favor of religion.

My homeschooling next door neighbors traveled to the creation museum with a group of fellow homeschoolers as part of a "science" field trip! I could go on, but I won't bore you.

My kids attend public schools and I have been pleased with their education and the dedication of their teachers. While I don't feel I have to worry as much about religious nuts interfering with their public education, I do worry about this two-tiered educational system we seem to have now, and the implications that has for our society as a whole.

[SPedigrees]

12. bored me you haven't, but scared me you have..

[Tansy_Gold]

11. That's about the time -- early 80s -- the wingnuts began taking over

the school boards to push their agenda. Creationism, abstinence-only sex non-education, de-funding of arts and other creative/cultural programs.

They got what they wanted.

We have to live with it.




Tansy Gold

[nolabear]

8. I went to school in Mississippi in the '60s

and I SWEAR this was not an issue. We were taught Darwinian evolutionary theory. Heck, we watched Inherit the Wind in history class. Mississippi in the '60s was everything it was proclaimed to be--racist, frightened of the rest of the country, deeply religious and with many people who believed in creationism. But they didn't come into the schools and challenge our right to be taught that Darwin had a viable and interesting theory. This is either a crazy response to the perception of the current climate, or we have divided quite neatly between the fundamentalists and the open-minded, with no room in between. It's astonishing.

[windoe]

9. No! Religious nuts don't have that much power!

A film on Darwin can't find a distributor?

I went to public school in the 70s, and had to go to church. We were told that God made scientists and all the discoveries were his work too. What the heck is wrong with that? Everyone can go about their business.

[evenso]

13. Blaming Darwin for the eugenics is like blaming Einstein for the atom bomb...

The creationists belong to the same alliance as the isolationists, white supremacists, southern nationalists, christian fascists who rule the right wing in America. Reagan emboldened them. Now they have a voice. Darwin is not to blame for eugenics. Power hungry evil people like Hitler are. And he was on the right. With the rise of this movement came the decline in science education standards which only makes more fertile ground for right wing extremists to succeed.