Here we have Dell sneaking through godless evolution in the introduction to the Dell Four Color adaptation of the long forgotten Columbia Pictures Underwater City b-movie, but luckily one brave free thinker has managed to set the record straight through some on the spot correcting. Click through for a bigger version.
I’m not sure what would be more sad/hilarious. That whoever “corrected” this was the child who got this comic originally in 1961, or some adult collector who bought it secondhand decades later and felt the need to erase this challenge to his creationist beliefs.
You may have noticed that this is Charles Darwin’s 200th birth year. So did the local creationists here in the Netherlands, especially one Kees van Helden. Kees is a professional Christian, who had been in the news before for protesting against supposedly blasphemous advertisements put out by Dixons in 2007 and who has his own lobby organisation, Bijbel en Onderwijs (Bible and Education), mainly known for agitating against Harry Potter, “the modern face of witchcraft”. This Kees van Helden thought it would be a neat idea to use the Darwin anniversary celebrations by publishing his own anti-Darwin leaflet and delivering it to each household in the Netherlands. Saving souls through direct mailing, so to speak.
Fair enough. Now for the brilliant bit.
Several Dutch bloggers were annoyed enough by this to start a counter offensive: “terug naar je maker” (back to your maker). If you dislike getting creationist propaganda through your letter box, send it back. They set up a website and included nice, polite example letters to make your viewpoint clear. So far, so ordinary.
But then some bright spark downloaded the leaflet from Kees’ own website, then produced an annotated version explaining just what’s wrong with it… It’s a brilliant way of turning creationist propaganda into just another tool to explain evolution, a very teachable moment.
The same person also found out who’s really behind it, as the people who produced the leaflet used an old template identifying the organisation they worked for: the Schreeuw om Leven (Scream for Life) anti-abortion foundation set up by Bert Dorenbos, the ex-director
of the Evangelistische Omroep (Evangelical Broadcaster). And where do we know the EO from? Exactly, from censoring the evolution bits out of David Attenborough wildlife documentaries…
More than three months ago it emerged that the Dutch broadcaster EO had censored Attenborough’s Life of Mammals series, by removing references to evolution. Since they were an Evangelical broadcaster, evolution did not fit in with their beliefs. Now it seems somebody has told Richard Attenborough himself and he is not happy:
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.”
So far the publicity about their censorship has not persuaded the EO to give up their practises. Hopefully pressure from Attenborough on the BBC and from the BBXC on the EO will do the job. If not, the EO should not be allowed to broadcast Attenborough’s series anymore.
The Dutch public broadcaster EO (Evangelische Omroep/Evangelical Broadcaster) has a reputation to uphold when it comes to broadcasting quality wildlife documentaries, both their own as well as series they’ve bought from other broadcasters like the BBC. One series they recently broadcasted was David Attenborough’s excellent (as per usual) Life of Mammals. However, something strange has happened with that series when it crossed the Channel: for some reason the Dutch version only has nine episodes, while the original has ten –and that’s not the only difference.
It turns out that the EO has deliberately removed all references to evolution from the series, as demonstrated by the three videos below. Which is not too surprising, considering the EO is after all a fundamentalist Christian broadcaster and adhers to the doctrine of the literal truth of the bible. What exactly the EO has censored in Attenborough’s series is now documented in several youtube movies, uploaded by somebody called Odurodon:
This shows two scenes cut from the EO’s version of the first episode.
More cut scenes, this time from episode two.
If the EO had problems with the views expressed in Life of Mammals, they should either have declined to broadcast it or put in disclaimers at the start of the programme, not censor it. That they have done so shows a lack of intellectual integrity worrisome in a public broadcaster. Especially since they are using public funds to do this.
UPDATE: confused Richard for David Attenborough; now fixed. Reinder was good enough to link to this post and he has more information about this scandal; go read… Also, forgot to mention I first saw this story at Michiel.
