Scientists complain about "sins of omission," reports Roger Highfield
The world's best known wildlife broadcaster, Sir David Attenborough, has called on the BBC to stop Christian fundamentalists from deleting references to evolution from his documentaries.
Censored versions of Sir David's award winning programmes have been broadcast in Holland without any references to evolution, speciation, descent and timescales of millions of years, after being censored by Christian creationists who are opposed to Charles Darwin's ideas.
"Instead of saying "70 million years ago, something happens," they say "a very long time ago something happens". They also omit paragraphs such as: "This is inherited from my warm-blooded ancestors,"" Sir David told the Telegraph. "I would much rather they kept to the letter, as far as that is possible, of what I said."
The edits by the public broadcasting organisation Evangelische Omroep (EO, Evangelical Broadcasting) have triggered howls protests about "deviations and sins of omission" from Dutch scientists, led by Dr Gerdien de Jong, an evolutionary biologist at Utrecht University.
With Dr Hans Roskam of the University of Leiden, she has organised a petition, signed by more than 300 biologists, including 50 professors, and letters of complaint to the Director General of the BBC, the director of the BBC Natural History Unit, and Sir David.
"I am entirely on the side of the biologist in Utrecht," said Sir David. "The BBC should take steps to make sure that the minuteness of the meanings are maintained."
"As its name indicates, the Evangelische Omroep is a fundamentalist Christian organisation inspired by the word of God as revealed in the literal text of the Bible," said Dr de Jong. "The EO denies all science that falsifies this literal text."
BBC documentaries have been made compatible with creationist views by replacing spoken English text by an adapted spoken Dutch text, or by cutting whole scenes. "Nevertheless, such sanitised documentaries are presented to the Dutch public as BBC documentaries," she said.
In particular, she singled out the EO DVD "Het Leven van Zoogdieren" - The Life of Mammals. The series is presented as written and "presented by David Attenborough. Yet it is censored and Episode 10, about apes and humans, is absent. In short, he said, it appears "in a mutilated form, cutting or rephrasing all passages relevant to evolution."
"The BBC as producer and copyright holder and the makers of BBC documentaries have therefore a responsibility towards the Dutch public to help preserve the broadcasting of scientifically sound nature documentaries," said Dr de Jong.
In the petition, the biologists call on the BBC to insist the programmes be broadcast intact, or carry a warning they have been changed.
A BBC spokesman said: "BBC Worldwide takes the protection of its brands and content very seriously. With thousands of hours being sold to hundreds of networks all over the world each year, BBC Worldwide allows local broadcasters to make edits but only up to a narrow margin of five minutes per hour.
"Their edits were less than the margin so did not involve BBC Worldwide on this occasion."
Ugh--why resort to utter dishonesty? I know they're in a war for souls, but why? Why can't they just let me err, eh? Blasted missionaries and evangelicals.
Honestly, there was a time when I would have given faith an equal place in my mind as science, but it was through research and examination that the whole thing fell apart and I was left with only the bits that held their own weight. If this is the process that the religious fear so much, why can't they just... preach better? When your back is up against the wall in a matter like this, why can't they embrace it as they did heliocentrism, or a rejection of slavery, or the idea that it is no longer an impure thing to wear a cloth of two threads? I'm glad for that at least, I wouldn't like to be stoned for wearing something part cotton and part wool.
Theists are choking themselves to death on this damned issue, literally, by refusing to do anything other than assault it. Since we can't hope for them all to give up, I wish they would at least stop with the blatant cheating.
What, christian fundamentalists using lies, distortions, misquotes and butchering a person's opinion to suit their own? That's not new.
Lì ci sono chiese, macerie, moschee e questure, lì frontiere, prezzi inaccessibile e freddure
Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
Uccelli migratori, reti, informazioni, piazze di Tutti i like pazze di passioni...
...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
A BBC spokesman said: "BBC Worldwide takes the protection of its brands and content very seriously.
With thousands of hours being sold to hundreds of networks all over the world each year, BBC Worldwide allows local broadcasters to make edits but only up to a narrow margin of five minutes per hour.
"Their edits were less than the margin so did not involve BBC Worldwide on this occasion."
The last two sentences contradict the claim in the first sentence about taking protection very seriously. To base the validity of editing process merely on time deletion, and not on changes in actual meaning of content, is retarded.
So, on the basis of this "protection" one could edit a documentary that says, for instance, that "the BBC is a well respected broadcaster", to "the BBC is owned by Osama bin-Laden / Nazi Party / US Republican Party / Bugs Bunny (your choice)" - it's only a small change, and of only a few seconds.
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Dr de Jong wrote:"The EO denies all science that falsifies this literal text."
I find the particular wording of this quote absolutely hilarious; science falsifies a literal reading of the bible, so the EO fundies meticulously scrub the offending reality from their lives *after* having been exposed to the evidence. I never cease to be amused by people who have the willpower to literally put in the time, effort, and money it takes to re-brainwash themselves daily and selectively hide from reality.
Note: I'm semi-retired from the board, so if you need something, please be patient.
Heh. Even if this is in line with normal fundie procedure, it's quite amusing how closely this follows Family Guy's Cosmos for Rednecks: "The Universe was created by a exp- <GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD> -bang. When we examine the bones of a Tyr- <Jesus>, we can plainly see that evo- <Mountain Dew is the best soda ever>".
Gotta love when the antics of fundies become so outragous that they aproach parody.
Along the same lines a bit of creative censorship: "Ye shall not know the truth, for the truth would make you free".
I wish to propose for the reader's favorable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. I must, of course, admit that if such an opinion became common it would completely transform our social life and our political system; since both are at present faultless, this must weigh against it. -Bertrand Russell
-"Too low they build, who build beneath the stars."
The EO is an interesting case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too: on the one hand they're desperately trying to be hip, modern and fashionable in order to attract a more than marginal number of viewers, and on the other hand they've got this uptight fundie jackass undercurrent going on.
They way they work is basically, most of their fashionable shows-that-attract-viewers are outsourced to external producers (who are still under oversight, mind- can't have people asking questions about Darwin in your quizzes after all!), whereas their in-house work is, well, basically what you see here. Creepy Christo-TV for the wee hours when no-one but their clique of die-hard adherents is watching. You should see their children's programs--they'll make you beg for some edited Attenborough...
Yeah, whilst I'm a pretty big supporter of the national public television system we've got here in The Netherlands (what can I say, they pay a decent chunk of my income...) the EO still on occasion manages to make me weep for my tax euros.
