The South is scared of science..

Okay, last month I heard on NPR that certain IMAX theaters in the South were refusing to screen some James Cameron movie about volcanoes because the film mentions EVOLUTION, and thus would apparently frighten the good, God-fearing folk of South Carolina and Georgia, etc. Now, if I'm not mistaken, one of the supposed reasons to go to an IMAX theater and watch and IMAX movie is to learn something about science in an entertaining way. Yes, I realize that many of the IMAX theaters now show Hollywood blockbusters, too, but IMAX movies have always specialized in edutaining restless knee-biters with really large films about space and dinosaurs and the ocean and ancient Egypt. You know, big, impressive, entertaining movies about SCIENCE. So, apparently now some of the IMAX theaters in the South are afraid to show a science film. I guess the owners have decided that folks in the South can only handle certain scientific theories. I sure am glad that the arch-conservative thought police are around to protect us all from ideas that might challenge us.

What is especially frustrating to me (aside from the fact that the rest of the world thinks Southerners are close-minded religious freaks precisely because of this type of situtation) is that science and faith are NOT incompatible. You can believe that God made the universe and also accept that he (she, it) put certain processes into place to make the universe run. I think that evolution makes the case for God. When you learn enough about science to understand how completely unlikely it was that anything ever happened on this planet, much less evolution and intelligent life and civilization and Guinness on draft, you start to recognize that someone had to put it all in motion.