I have often found the Creationist movement willfully ignorant. It’s the same “la-la-la, I can’t hear you” numpty emanating from the anti-vaccine crowd. Or the 9/11 Truther idiots, and assorted other conspiracy morons who believe in “chemtrails”, UFOs, the supremacy of the “Elders of Zion”, or that Laetrile cures cancer (and the nameless yet omnipresent “they” are trying to prevent you from getting it). Or, in the case of my favorite creationist jail bird, Kent Hovind and his followers, all three!
These are people who won’t let something as trivial as “science” or “reason” disturb what is an otherwise really good theory, and I tend to have a laugh at their expense whenever possible. But today, they have gone too far.
“Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week’s Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: “They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance.”
Hate mail from people who claim to be Christians. Whom would Jesus tell to burn in Hell?
Now, I’ll admit I adore Attenborough, and always have. His intelligent, measured tones and fascinating wildlife programmes spanning the globe have been a constant in my life since I was a small child. And I am not alone, his fan base is immense and growing thanks to his life-long devotion to bringing the natural world into our homes and lives.
“Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give “credit” to God, Attenborough added: “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.”
Attenborough has this to say about the teaching of evolution and creationism side-by-side:
“It’s like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five … Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066.”
And here, once again, gentle reader, I fall back on Monty Python:
All Things Dull and Ugly
(To the tune of ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’)
All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.
Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom,
He made their horrid wings.
All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.
Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid,
Who made the spiky urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did.
All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.