Not coming to a theater near you

This fall, Hanway Pictures will be releasing to theaters the film “Creation,” about the famed scientist Charles Darwin and his life.

However, unless you are studying abroad this semester, you will not be able to see it in the theater. In fact, unless you read the British newspapers, you would struggle to even find evidence of the trailer, despite its inclusion of well-known American actress Jennifer Connelly. 

Currently, there are no U.S. distributors willing to carry the film.

While beating the “tar” out of Jesus for three hours results in a U.S. box office return of $370 million, the story of the man who found that animals of the same species change over time in separated environments has yet to find a distributor.

The fact is that the Beagle’s trip to the Galapagos Islands led to one of the most monumental scientific discoveries of human history, alongside the revelations of a round world and heliocentric universe.

When Galileo defended Copernicus’ heliocentric model, he was censored by the Catholic Church, which famously took 400 years to officially apologize for ignoring the facts of his discoveries.

Darwin’s discovery happened more than 150 years ago, yet Americans still find this basic science to somehow be blasphemy against God. 

It is patently offensive that as we enter the 21st century, a majority of Americans would not hesitate to believe in a “magic” Jesus (sorry, Sarah Silverman), yet the idea of believing the data of a scientist with facts and evidence that a group of birds over long periods of time evolve is somehow blasphemous and ridiculous. 

Evolution admittedly doesn’t have all the answers for everything, nor does it claim to.
Evolution does not as yet have an answer for the origins of life itself, and believing in evolution certainly does not preclude one from being Christian.

But simply because a handful of (mainly old) movies and certain Americans describe humans and dinosaurs as co-existing does not invalidate the entirety of evolution. 
 
One of the great aspects of our society is the ability to believe in whatever you so choose, be it a young earth, Bigfoot, UFOs, the Chupacabra, the Loch Ness Monster (Nessie, where are you?!) or any of the myriad conspiracy theories that float around regarding various parts of human history.

Many of these might rightfully be seen as ridiculous, but we still have generally honored the right of people to suggest these ideas.

However, this great belief in the ideal of “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” has apparently taken a great tumble with regard to evolution despite the verifiable data associated with it.

You don’t have to believe in evolution, but to allow the censorship of a fictitious film about Darwin goes against all we stand for as Americans.