Imax Theaters Demur On Controversial Science Films 2242
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.'"
Evolution offensive? (Score:4, Informative)
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."
Re:religious fundamentalists (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:religious fundamentalists (Score:3, Informative)
Uh, dude, I am assuming you RTFA because you are pretending like you did. However, in the article I read it said specifically:
Re:Scary (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:I don't know what's sadder... (Score:3, Informative)
Galápagos talks about evolution.
Not sure about Volcanoes of the Deep Sea, but its probably about evolution as well.
Re:I don't know what's sadder... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's all down hill from here (Score:3, Informative)
Ummmm, no way. I live in the heart of the freakin' "Bible Belt" (North Carolina) and I can say that every Baptist I have ever known (which is probably 75% of the people I know) believe that the Bible is the literal word of God and all that jazz.
I guess one can quibble over the exact meaning of Fundamentalism, but most of the Christians I've met strike me as pretty darn close, if not completely Fundamentalist.
Re:it's sad (Score:2, Informative)
Re:it's sad (Score:3, Informative)
It's also different from Khomeini since it has not been made illegal to show scientifically correct films. This is not a government action, just a private corporation responding to the pressure of a particular group.
Some numbers (Score:5, Informative)
--
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Or try a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox. [freegamingsystems.com] (you only need 4 referrals)
Wired article as proof [wired.com]
Re:offensive? (Score:3, Informative)
I consider myself religious in that I believe and pray to a higher power, but I am not a fundamentalist by any stretch of the imagination. People get nowhere by denying simple scientific fact, and I pity those who believe that the earth is 6000 years old.
Re:Things like this will destroy the American econ (Score:1, Informative)
Hence the name fundamentalism.
Now if you want to say that Puritanism and Quakerism were involved in the birth of America, then go right ahead. But don't believe for a second the founders of the U.S. were the same kind of blockheaded folks that go around thumping Bibles today.
Vatican Observatory - Science/Religion Compatible (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:No Animals? (Score:2, Informative)
I think that you have asked the right question, but assumed the wrong answer.
Rather than being a film just about "Volcanoes" it seems to digressing into explaining evolution via the underwanter vent hypothesis.
In which case the movie should have been titled "Volanoes and evolution from the bottom of the sea," or similar title.
If the movie had been just about Volcanoes and showing the animals around the vents, I do not think that their would have any test screeners objecting to it because of their world view.
I also doubt that if there had been a one line mention that said "some scientists believe that this is where life started" there would not have been much objection either. Because most "fundies" already know what scientists think in this area and expect mentions like this day to day.
But the film appears to be evolution centric enough that more than one test screener was offended, which means the film spent a significant amount on this topic. In addition, it was not just one, but a few theatres who decided not to show it.
So a few and not all Imax theatres decided not to show the film because of this. If this is such a terrible hit to the producer, he should have been more culturally sensitive when making his film, and just showed the wonders of the animals themselves rather than being a primer on evolution, which it appears to be.
I do not think that theatres in Iraq are not going to be showing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" with James Cagney anytime soon. Does that make them bad people in Baghdad? No, it justs makes them culturally different.
PBS/Nova have been showing evolution theory this past week and I am sure a lot of TV sets in the South were not tuned in. I don't see any TV stations being set on fire. I am sure that a video will be made and it will be available in the South, so people can rent it if the want to see it, though many might not. So people decide not to go and see movies and not watch TV shows they disagree with.
This is called Freedom for all you fundie hating people.
Re:Undersea volcanoes (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, it's a theory -- one that took many hundreds of years to develop, until there were observations good enough to tell us that all the planets and the Sun don't move in circles centered on the Earth. By now, of course, it is a theory supported by so many observations that its truth is beyond doubt. Just like evolutionary theory. But they're both still theories, in the scientific sense: explanatory frameworks describing observed phenomena.
That's because, as the previous poster pointed out, you don't understand what a scientific theory is. A method of calculating observable effects is precisely what a physical theory is. Newton's law of gravitation F = GMm/r^2 is Newton's theory of gravity. Einstein's field equation G_uv = 8 pi T_uv is Einstein's theory of gravitation, the theory of general relativity.
"What gravity is", is a philosophical question and a matter of interpretation. "What gravity does, in terms of phenomena that can be observed and measured", is a scientific theory.
Re:this is why I dont like these kind of people... (Score:1, Informative)
Sorry but as someone that has lived in Cali for 10 years and went to high school there, I have to call bullshit. If you pray on your own time (such as during lunch) and don't bother anyone, nobody cares. That is right, even though California is a blue state there are no prayer police that roam the schools with trained dogs trying to find someone praying so they can toss him in jail.
Whenever people complain about not being allowed to pray in schools, they are not really talking about prayer -- which is always between a single person and God, they are talking about preaching. I.e., praying in a manner that is designed to communicate not with God but with the other kids in the school. And I think this is quite inappropriate, aside from the consitutional arguments, people should be able to send their kids to school without fearing that they will be preached to. Religous education should be up to the parents.
Then FDR was a oil/religious wacko too ... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:we need another /. religion bash story (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Then FDR was a oil/religious wacko too ... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Ah huh... And I guess your blanket statement that the Iraqi's are running the oilwells is based on your complete understanding of the incomprehensibly complicated things right?
Maybe you should read a bit of history. Roosevelt passed legislation in 1939 that kept the US out of the war until attacked by the Japanese in 1941.
Oil has always been an important resource ever since we figured we could use it for machinery. Humans have always squabbled over resources, be it oil, food, land or water.
To compare Bush and Roosevelt and say "these two are the same because oil was involved somehow in both wars" I think is a little short sighted - the world is a bit more complicated than that.
By the way, I've never been to a campus rally. But I don't simply accept the Bush Administration's party line that Iraq deserved to be invaded because they were part of the "Axis of Evil". The reasons for the invasion are many and complicated but what it boils down to is an oil grab by the US.
PS: I am decidedly not anti-US. Far from it, I stayed for a while in that fine country in 1996, and loved every minute of it. I am however appalled at what the Bush Administration has turned it into.
Re:Fundamentalists eagerly set the stereotype (Score:5, Informative)
"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. [religioustolerance.org] 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?
Re:I don't know what's sadder... (Score:1, Informative)
Usually, in discussions like these it's more sensible to use that term than to paint with a really wide brush and call 'm christians, which offends various people who are christians but who want nothing to do with these.
It's become insulting because the folks themselves are of the foam-at-the-mouth moral-outcry kind when it concerns these subjects. They claim to be fundamentalist. They also happen to spout utter crap in the name of their faith. Since more people hold to that faith but practice it in a different way, it's the fundamentalist attitude that makes the difference.
You'd definately hum another tune if you saw some of their attempts and their works. They simply won't even accept your claim about faith having to take what they perceive as a backseat to science.
Yet they hammer away their sermons on a computer. Millions of electrons somehow going their guided ways, all over the planets, thanks to complex, networked systems which gradually arose, all devised by man. Ah, the irony.
Re:religious fundamentalists (Score:1, Informative)
Little did the religious fun-duh-mentalists realize that they were secretly representing the fine structure constant! Science wins again!
Re:this is why I dont like these kind of people... (Score:3, Informative)
It is not does to make God hear you, it is done to change your own frame of mind - prayer is mostly done for its affect on you (to make you more open to God), not its affect on God.
Re:Scientific Theory (Score:3, Informative)
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.
It seems your post is illogical (Score:1, Informative)
First, let me say that I am a Christian, but I am also a firm believer in science, reason, and logic.
The argument about a 4000 year old universe having objects billions of light years away is going on the assumption that the universe started out as a point. This is omething not everyone accepts and, as far as I can see, there is no simple explanation understandable by a non-scientist (note: I'm not sure I go for this - the big bang seems plausible to me - but there are those who do).
I also find it disturbing that you are willing to sacarifice logic in order to take a jab at a particular group: "Thou shalt not kill" is a commandment in the Old Testament; "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" refers to a horrific dogma adopted by a particular historical group who happened to call themselves Christians. This is a classic fallacy: using the actions of believers in a doctrine to condemn the doctrine itself. I think (and hope) that almost all Christians would thoroughly condemn witch hunts, crusades, crucifictions, and any number of other atrocities committed by 'Christians' in the past (and present).
Re:Undersea volcanoes (Score:1, Informative)
2) The evidence is in the fossil record, geology, cosmology, contempory biology, etc. etc. Don't ask here - go look it up yourself.
3) Try googling for fruit flies sometime, and go from there.
4) See the fruit fly thing, and extrapolate.
5) Damned straight.
Just because you can't comprehend something due to insufficient intellect, insufficient education or insufficient attention doesn't make it untrue.
I take the fact that you're chest-beating on slashdot instead of out there looking for information as evidence that I've been successfully trolled.
Story may be bogus (Score:5, Informative)
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 [fwmuseum.org].
The Charleston Science Museum [charlestonimax.com] 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 [amazon.com], by Charles and Ray Eames.
Galapagos [imax.com] 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.
Re:I don't know what's sadder... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Undersea volcanoes (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Scientific Theory (Score:3, Informative)
29+ Evidences for Macroevolution [talkorigins.org]
And while you're there, read more of their stuff, such as Evolution is a Fact and a Theory [talkorigins.org] and Can Evolution Make Predictions? [talkorigins.org]
Re:Cosmic Voyages is awesome! (Score:3, Informative)
And hey, why try to ruin my good buzz of righteous anger?! I get annoying religous types knocking on my door several times a year (most recently last Sunday), and I hate it. We'd be better off with scientists knocking on doors educating people, except I wouldn't want to be so annoying!
Re:I don't know what's sadder... (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:Undersea volcanoes (Score:3, Informative)
A theory in science means an explanation. You can't "upgrade" from explanation to fact. A theory explains the facts. Apparently you think a theory is a potential fact that might someday become a real fact. That's not a correct understanding. A theory cannot become a fact. It's a nonsensical thing to even suggest.
Evolution is a fact. We've seen it happen. We have several explanations (aka theories) as to how it happens. Natural selection is a rather good theory that explains all the existing facts and is our best understanding of evolution. You can dispute the theory, but it's silly to dispute the facts.
+4 Interesting? Mods on crack? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Here's my reasoning (Score:3, Informative)
Although many of those who settled America did come with the intention of founding a religious community, enthusiasm waned as that ferver failed to transmit itself through generations. By the time of the Revolutionary War, the "Great Awakening" had passed. Although the Founding Fathers thought of themselves as Christian, they were mostly what we would now refer to as Deists. Much of the real religious fervor had been transmuted to other things. (A good read on the topic. [amazon.com])
When technology did arrive and the USA took the lead in technological development a lot of these small churches had their world views shattered. I think they're going through what the Roman Catholic church in Europe went through with Copernicus and Galileo, and displaying much the same unhealthy response.
Many of the denominations that react unfavorably to these challenges to their world-views are significantly younger than this. Many were shaped by relatively recent developments in Millenialist thought (1960s and beyond). The popularity of the Left Behind series of books and movies is evidence of a continuing connection.
Other creation myths... (Score:5, Informative)
Just about every culture across the world has their own great flood myth [talkorigins.org]. There is some scientific evidence that there was a sudden flood in the Mediterranean region [mystae.com]
Re:Extreme fundamentalists are ridiculous. (Score:3, Informative)
It's not the levels of translation that harm the authority of the Bible's meaning, but the levels of transcription. At its worst, the Bible has sometimes been a translation of a translation of a translation, but in recent centuries they've pretty consistently gone back to texts in the original Hebrew and Aramaic to work from, so it's typically just a single level of translation for them to mess up. The greater credibility problem is that most of these original-language texts themselves were centuries removed from the original writings, and (judging from the inconsistencies between them) suffered from revisions and transcription errors.
Reasoning? (Score:3, Informative)
It is your Most Sacred and Holy duty to fuck the world up as much as you can to speed on The Rapture(sic).
Ah and the Rapture Index, tracking such milestones in the breakdown of social morality as:
1968
U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Epperson v. Arkansas:
State statue banning teaching of evolution is unconstitutional. A state cannot alter any element in a course of study in order to promote a religious point of view. A state's attempt to hide behind a nonreligious motivation will not be given credence unless that state can show a secular reason as the foundation for its actions
Re:I don't know what's sadder... (Score:3, Informative)
the Norse [wikipedia.org] creation myth...
or how about the Egyptian [wikipedia.org] one? Or maybe Greek [pantheon.org]? or Babylonian [northpark.edu]
Re:I don't know what's sadder... (Score:2, Informative)
Thank you for this quote--it succinctly expresses something I've been trying to formulate clearly for some time.
Searching for the origins of this quote, I came upon an interesting page (Evolution Facts [talkorigins.org]) on talkorigins.org. From the site, " the Talk.Origins Archive [talkorigins.org] is a collection of articles and essays most of which have appeared in talk.origins [usenet newsgroup] at one time or another.
I have a tendency to keep clear of discussing religious issues, in order to avoid becoming a unwitting vector for religious memes (I think the gods will disappear when we finally stop carrying them around in our collective brains), but enough is enough.
If this keeps up for too long, I'd expect a mass exodus of grey matter from the US--scientists and rational people will go looking for actual freedom of thought and expression elsewhere, and the states' position as one of the scientific and technological leaders will wither away. Though perhaps, in the big picture, that would be a good thing...
Re:I don't know what's sadder... (Score:2, Informative)
This is WILDLY off topic, but here goes:
It's relevant because the disproportionate number of African Americans in prison dramatically increased with the drug "epidemic" in the mid 80's and anti drug legislation. As a side regarding that, when you have those same laws, not applied to those higher up the distribution channel it depends on who you want to label a criminal. It appears your definition is that if you havent been convicted but your hands are dirty, you're not a criminal.
The prison population as a whole is just as irrelevant if you take that into account. You can't base who gets executed versus who is in the system. You have to do it by similar crimes.
Fair enough. Then let us set that aside, and deal only with offenses of a capital nature. When dealing with the federal death penalty, it's hard to say that there is significant bias. However, the states, that's a different story.
Here's a few links:
CBS News [cbsnews.com]
Indynews Article on the Federal Death Penalty [indystar.com]
Reprint of a Chicago Tribune article regarding Illinois' moratorium on executions [truthinjustice.org]
More. [deathpenaltyinfo.org]
Re:I don't know what's sadder... (Score:2, Informative)
-DU-...etc...
Re:offensive? (Score:3, Informative)
This is the crux of the problem -- fundimentalist doctrine holds that the Bible is the literal and inerrant Word of God, and the King James Bible is [a|the only] divinely inspired translation thereof. This belief dictates that the Bible is ALWAYS right, and it CANNOT have any errors in translation.
According to this doctrine, God was holding the translator's hand when he translated the Hebrew text as "thou shall not kill" instead of "thou shall not commit murder", so that translatation MUST, by their own definition, be *exactly* what God wanted it to be. Any real-world evidence which contridicts this belief needs to be discredited, supressed, ignored, or explained away with convoluted logic.
Re:As an evangelical Christian and creationist... (Score:3, Informative)
The process of evolution is FACT!
Repeat after me...
The process of evolution is fact.
The details are continuously modified and refined to adapt to new evidence, but all science works this way. Newton's laws of motion are fact, but only an approximation. A better approximation is Einstein's relativistic approach. A new theory may soon (or not) be developed that is even better than Einstein's approach. If fact, some people think that Einstein's theories are completely wrong. But they work and are a good predictor for specific conditions (think GPS calculations). And so on!!!
PCB
Re:Censored or Mindfucked? What's better? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:As an evangelical Christian and creationist... (Score:3, Informative)
No matter how far out on a limb you have to go to understand the evidence of the theory of evolution. It is still on a very strong portion of the limb compared to that of the raw leap of faith in absolutely no evidence supporting creationist stories.
Re:You bought that crap? Saved your receipt, I hop (Score:2, Informative)
It would be trivial to falsify evolution, if it was wrong.
My take is that you have been indoctrinated in evolutionist boot camp? If any other scientific theory was under as much controversy and disagreement as evolution, it would hardly be considered a scientific "fact". One of the major reasons for acceptance of Darwinian evolution is branching away from religion, which interfered with science on more than just numerous occasions.
Scientists are confident in evolution because nothing even remotely like this has ever been found.
I do not think I understand your sentence, but scientists are confident in evolution (mind you, only a certain percentage of scientists believe in evolution, and only a fraction of that are confident) because this is the only explanation for intelligent life outside of religious creation stories.
It's "reproduced" every time new data is dug up, and it confirms the same patterns. It is also reproduced in the laboratory, where short-lived specimens are observed to evolve (and even speciate) within the scale of individual researcher's careers.
What data? If evolution were a fact, surely in all of fossil record there should be ample evidence of one kind of living thing evolving into another kind. Darwin himself was embarassed by the fossil record because it did not prove to be what he predicted. With time, the more abundant fossil evidence shows that some of the examples that were once used to support evolution now are seen not to do so at all. Eohippus, Archaeopteryx, Lungfish are just some examples of animal life thought to exist, but proven false. I will reiterate, the only data that is dug up supports sudden life forms according to their kinds, not gradual, and no transitional forms.
Moreover, genes are qutie a powerful stabilizing mechanism, the function of which is to prevent new forms evolving. And mutations, while they exist, cannot explain the growing complexity of living organisms.
Oddly, anti-evolutionists claim that every discovery of an intermediate form makes TWO "unexplained gaps" in the fossil record where there was only one; their objections appear increasingly dishonest and desperate.
I just one to make one thing clear, and that is that I do not support dishonest fabrication of one kind or another. I am no less displeased about the fundamentalists who fabricate evidence in support of creation than with the scientific fundamentalists who fabricate evidence to support evolution.
One rabbit fossil in the same strata as dinosaurs would do it. One bird with the ammonites. One bony fish with wiwaxia. Yes, but that would support neither evolution nor creation. The pattern of intelligent design speaks of sea life appearing in one era, bird life in another, land life in yet another. It anticipated a fossil record that contains:
1. Complex life forms suddenly appearing.
2. Complex life forms multiplying after their kinds (biological families).
3. No transitional links between biological families.
4. No partial body features, all parts complete.
If evolution were founded in fact, the fossil record would be expected to reveal beginnings of new structures in living things, such as developing arms, legs, lungs, other bones and organs. Even looking early in the Cambrian period, fossils of the major groups of invertebrates appear in an explosion of living things, unconnected to any evolutionary ancestors.
This is a huge gap, this is a hole. You simply cannot ignore this, and give excuses that "creationists" stick to this like a barnacle as if it's their only desparate last hope. It's like attempting to treat acne in a person with skin cancer. Cancer is still there, and there is no circumventing it.
The bottom line is that the fossil record is much stronger in support of intelligent design than in random, chance-based evolution.