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Tuesday, 27 January 2009

All things vile and horrible . . .

If anything is going to discredit religion it’s religionists themselves. The nuttier ones, obviously.

It’s now emerged that the conservationist, TV presenter and documentary maker Sir David Attenborough (pictured) gets hate mail because he doesn’t credit God for all things bright and beautiful in the world.

“They tell me to burn in hell, and good riddance,” he says.

When viewers ask him why he doesn’t credit God for the flora and fauna, “They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in East Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator.”

Quite! And a few other things, too. I mean a lot of other things. Scores. Hundreds. Too numerous to mention.

Well said, Sir David!

The Telegraph tells us:

In an interview with the Radio Times, Sir David, 82, attacked the “terrible, terrible” fact that some British state schools are allowed to teach children that creationism and evolution have equal merit.

“It’s like saying that two and two equals four but, if you wish it, it could also be five. This is one of the errors. Evolution is not a theory. It is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066. Indeed, more so, because all we have to tell us about William are a few bits of paper here or there – not very much at all. For evolution we have much more evidence: palaeontology, embryology, biology, geology.

“Darwin revolutionised the way we see the world fundamentally, but his basic proposition is still not taken on board by a lot of people.” Sir David acknowledged, however, that “it would be a very bold scientist, and certainly not me, who believes it’s the be-all and end-all”.

1 comment:

Buffy said...

When are they going to teach the Pastafarian Creation theory in classes? It's not right that only the Christian version be taught. They should present all theories and let the children decide.