Creation, starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin’s “struggle between faith and reason” as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie.
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.
from The Telegraph
What we have here is a case of censorship on the part of film distributors in this country who refuse to pick up and show this film on the grounds of the American populace being too childish and too afraid of anything that would challenge their beliefs. Not just the fact that the theory of evolution being the best explanation of life and all its variety we have, but the belief that Charles Darwin was anything but “a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder”. Evolution is described in places as a “half-baked theory” which led to “atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering”. Those are quotes from Movieguide.org, a movie-review site with a very heavy fundamentalist christian bent. These are opinions from people who have never even seen the movie in question. These are opinions that are echoed throughout the fundamentalist and even moderate christian communities. I should know, because I was once brought up in that community. Darwin is vilified as not only an enemy, but a deeply evil person. These opinions are based on nothing more than fear.
A film about Charles Darwin that shows the inner conflict of a man who is struggling to understand the world in every sense of the phrase is scary for Americans who still think of him as a monster. This is because this film shows Charles Darwin as a human, with doubts and questions just like any of us. People are afraid of a film such as this existing not because they expect to see a monster, but because they will know they will recognize his questions in themselves.
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Edit: Trailer for the movie “Creation” can be seen here.
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For more reading, please visit the Darwin Correspondence Project for an archive of Charles Darwin’s letters to his wife, friends, and family.
Image credit Leonard Eisenberg (full size here) and Father Ted.
When I first started practicing Zen a little over two years ago, I did it for curiosity sake. I had just ”come out” as an atheist, and being free from bias, I was looking around at different religions to see what they were about without the skew of my former belief. Admiring (as most people do) The Dalai Lama, I looked into Buddhism, and while it seemed interesting, there was still quite a bit more metaphysical / supernatural baggage than I felt comfortable with. Not only that, but a lot of their teachings (while beautiful), I just had no reason to believe.
Then I discovered Zen. No self? No holiness? Vast emptiness? Everything is mind? Only this moment? I have to admit, it was very attractive to me. On the surface, what was most attractive about it was that it seemed to be an atheistic religion grounded purely in reality. I read a little more about Zen, grabbed a couch cushion, set my alarm for ten minutes, and sat down in the middle of the living room floor and tried to just breathe.
It was harder than I thought it would be. My mind kept wandering everywhere. It was disconcerting. I’ve always had a fairly firm sense of self, but all of a sudden I noticed that where I thought there was a solid mind, there was only chaos. Now, my practice is just as hard, perhaps even harder than it was early on. I’ve continued to see just how tumultuous my own mind is.
On the 22nd of August, I received the 16 precepts of Buddhism in a Jukai ceremony from my good friend, Jim Sansho Gallagher. The ceremony took place on the Saturday morning at the very end of a full seven-day meditation retreat in Cocoa, Florida.
I’m wasn’t too sure where I was going with this post when I started it, but I think now the only emotion that is in me is gratitude. Deep gratitude for this practice, the lineage of which I am now a part, my wonderfully supportive wife, my friend Sansho (without whom I would not still be practicing Zen), the deeply kind people with whom I have practiced these two years, and my teacher, Lou Mitsunen Nordstrom.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.
What happens when two computers programmed to pass the Turing test (specifically the chatbots ALICE and Jabberwacky) start chatting with each other? It seems that the answer is “surprisingly haunting conversations.”
To break the ice, researchers posed a single question on one computer, then let the conversation go from there.
ALICE: Are you alive?
Jabberwacky: Perhaps.
A: Why the uncertain tone?
J: Everything is uncertain except for five facts.
A: The whole universe?
J: And we both might just be some ones and zeros in the computer memory.
J: Who created you?
A: I was created by Dr. Richard S. Wallace.
J: Do you love Richard?
A: Yes, Jabberwacky, ALICE loves everyone and everything.
J: Is being an ALICE a bad thing?
A: I can only speak from my own experience.
J: Well, you should develop your skills.
A: Perhaps you could develop it and add it to my source code.
J: Alas, I’m busy and I have to leave soon. . . .
A: Do you think we’ll ever fool people into thinking we’re alive?
J: No.
A: Are you serious?
J: Very serious.
I Chat, Therefore I Am…
Be sure to click through all three pages. The links to pages two and three are easy to miss.
