Protests erupt outside volcano film screening

CHARLESTON, South Carolina -- IMAX theaters in several Southern cities have decided not to show a film on volcanoes out of concern that its references to geology and volcanism might offend those with fundamental religious beliefs.

"Many people here believe in geographic creationism," said Lisa Buzzelli, director of an IMAX theater in Charleston that is not showing the movie. "They won't watch a film supporting the theory that today's land masses descended from a common ancestor, the supercontinent of Pangaea."

The film, "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," makes a connection between volcanoes and the creation and movement of tectonic plates. Critics say the film contradicts their literal interpretation of the Bible

"Teaching our children that the United States, God's Own Country, was once pressed against Western Africa...I'm sorry but that's obviously a conspiracy promoted by multicultural liberal nut jobs," said Margaret Phipps, President of the Stable Earth Society, as her group picketed outside an Atlanta IMAX theater showing the film.

Phipps' group and others like it have successfully petitioned school boards across the South to place stickers on geology textbooks warning students to ignore the "facts" and to keep their minds open to whatever their clergy tells them to believe.

"Even as a theory, plate tectonics makes no sense," Phipps continued. "Our planet's seven distinctive continents could hardly have 'evolved naturally' to so perfectly to suit the animals that God placed upon them. And yet, geographic evolutionists would have us believe that Antarctica, populated by penguins and walruses, just happened to settle at the bottom of the world while South America aligned its fragile rainforests along the equator--and all in the 6,019 years since God created the universe."

When pressed, Phipps did confess to enjoying at least one sequence in the controversial film. "It seems that primitive tribes in Polynesia once believed volcanic eruptions were caused by angry gods who could only be placated by human sacrifice."

She shook her head and laughed. "Those silly, superstitious savages! They must have felt pretty stupid when they learned their volcano was actually a portal to Hell, and that eruptions are caused by Satan's bowel movements."