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.
Movieguide.org, an influential site which reviews films from a Christian perspective, described Darwin as the father of eugenics and denounced him as "a racist, a bigot and an 1800s naturalist whose legacy is mass murder". His "half-baked theory" directly influenced Adolf Hitler and led to "atrocities, crimes against humanity, cloning and genetic engineering", the site stated.
The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment dismissing evolution as "a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying".
The films available in our city this weekend include Halloween II, Inglourious Basterds, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Transformer: Revenge of the Fallen, and Sorority Row - Experience the Terror. But a film about Darwin is deemed to be inappropriate. This country is doomed. I'm almost glad to be old enough not to have to be around as we slither deeper into the intellectual backwaters of the world.
Photo: ALLSTAR