Center sued for canceling anti-Darwin film

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 31 (UPI) -- The California Science Center has been sued for canceling a film that attacked the science of evolution and promoted intelligent design, court records say.

The lawsuit, filed by the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges the state-owned center improperly bowed to pressure from the Smithsonian Institution and University of Southern California professors in canceling "Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record" at the museum's Imax Theater.

Science Center President Jeffrey Rudolph declined to comment, but told the Los Angeles Times in a statement the screening "was canceled because of issues related to the contract" with the alliance.

The alliance -- a Los Angeles group that says it "promotes, defends and upholds Western values and ideals" and envisions "a national alliance of people of faith" -- contends the center, not the alliance, violated the contract.

It also alleges the center violated the alliance's rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The alliance seeks punitive damages and compensation for financial losses, as well as a court declaration that the center violated the Constitution and cannot refuse the group the right to rent its facilities for future events, the Times says.

The alliance had planned an Oct. 25 screening of two films at the museum -- a short film called "We Are Born of Stars," which favors Darwin's theory, and "Darwin's Dilemma," a feature-length documentary that criticizes Darwin and promotes intelligent design, the Times says.

Intelligent design asserts certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as Darwinian natural selection.

Intelligent design critics dismiss it as a scientific cloak for the religious belief known as creationism that's anchored in a literal reading of the biblical Book of Genesis.

An overwhelming majority of scientists consider evolution proved beyond a doubt by genetic and fossil evidence.