The folks at Planet Magrathea have seen some showings of the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide movie, and have compiled a list of elements found in previous versions of the story (the radio show, the books, the television adaptation) that are not to be seen in the movie. One noted missing element, which jumped the heck out at us, was:

The second part of the Guide entry on Babel fish, about proving the non-existence of God

For those of you not in the know, author Douglas Adams provided a very clever argument against the existence of God, centering around the idea that the Babel fish — which can translate any spoken language when you put it in your ear — is so improbably useful that it could not possibly have evolved without divine guidance:

Now it is such a bizarrely improbably coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God.

The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This clever bit of philosophizin' will not be in the Hitchhiker's movie. Note, however, that Planet Magrathea's list specifies that only this second part of the Babel fish passage — the first part describes the Babel fish and how it works — will be omitted...so the filmmakers are keeping the fish, and the Guide entry on the fish, but excising the mention of God, or — more specifically — the argument against his existence.

Sure, we may just be jumping at shadows here, but in today's socio-political climate, we're certainly not stretching too far when we suggest that this classic Hitchhiker's exchange was removed in order to avoid any entanglement with the Religious Right. This is especially disheartening given that Douglas Adams was such an intelligent, rational atheist. If you have any doubt of this fact, be sure to check out the voluminous collection of Adams' essays and extemporaneous speeches in the tragically unfinished The Salmon of Doubt.

Yes, perhaps the filmmakers had other reasons for taking out this famous portion of Douglas' book. But the deletion of less than 200 words, which we can estimate to be approximately 54 seconds when spoken (based on timing the same passage in the original radio show), seems quite needless in terms of filmmaking concerns (such as running time), and leads us to believe that our suspicions of a more cowardly motivation may be highly accurate. Which is, to say the least, very disappointing.

But hey, we'll say the same thing about the Hitchhiker's movie that we do with each of the new Star Wars prequels: we're die-hard fans, we can't wait for it to open, we'll undoubtedly pick it apart in some respects, but will just as undoubtedly love the damn thing because we've waited 20 years for it to come out!

Planet Magrathea also has some reviews up (including a long one with spoilers), if you're interested. We were guided to all of this by Majikthise, who is, sadly, also absent from the upcoming film.

I don't know if you know it, but the second part of the entry is on the DVD.
And I've seen cases where filmmakers cut out a few seconds of a movie.
It's not just because of the running time, sometimes filmmakers have the feeling that a specific part thwarts the flow of the movie or is just unnecessary for the plot (which was definitively the case here).

Yeah, I'm not inclined to suspect undue religious pressure here. Anytime you make a novel into a movie, you pretty much have to use a machete just to get the running time under two hours. If you watch the deleted scenes or director's cuts of various DVDs, it's common to see material cut out that would have actually made the theatrical version make more sense and flow better.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, for example, there's a scene in the theatrical release where Sam and Frodo stagger oddly into Bag End. In the director's cut, you see the deleted scene in the bar they had just left. Of course, hobbits are known for their drinking, so I suppose we could have just assumed they had been drinking, but, well, you get the point.