Sir David Attenborough is probably the greatest living Briton of the past 20 years or more. Palaeontologists under the age of 40 attribute their interest in whatever they study to a timely visit to a natural history museum of their choice, and to David Attenborough documentaries. When he announced his retirement from natural history documentaries it was impossible to think of anyone who could fill his shoes.
So I was more than a little distressed to read that Sir David receives hate-mail from religious nutjobs telling him to "burn in hell". Firstly, I'm pretty sure that in the Gospels, that Jesus bloke said "love God and love your fellow human", and as such inviting another person to burn in hell is not really very Christian, now is it? Secondly though, Sir David is an atheist. Apart from being an unwelcome display of hatred on the part of the people writing to him, do you think he's remotely bothered about going to hell?
The nutjobs concerned have complained that in a science and nature documentary, Sir David doesn't credit God. I assume they want him to say, as he gives his summing-up at the end of each episode "and of course, this was all intelligently designed by the Almighty God".
It reminds me of a time when I worked at the Mammoth Site. One Sunday lunchtime, a good friend of mine was giving a tour, and was interrupted about halfway through by a loud baseball cap-wearing member of the tour group saying "Are you going to talk about evolution here, because I don't want my kids hearing that crap!". My friend was, as instructed by the big boss, extremely polite, said that it may come up, but that if the visitors wanted to move ahead and see the exhibits at their own pace they were welcome to do so.
Now, what we would all have liked to do was to smack tht guy upside the head with an expanding foam cast of a Mammuthus femur and say "Of course we're going to talk about evolution - it's a fucking palaeontology site! You'd be appalled if we went into your church and asked if you were going to talk about Jesus because we didn't want our kids hearing that crap!", but apparently you can't say that. Science shows have as much business crediting God with the natural world as religious shows have saying "Of course this is all woo and mumbo-jumbo" at the end, i.e. absolutely none at all.
Science is agnostic. It has to be. If it does not assume that there is no way of ascertaining one way or another whether there is a God, then the moment we come up with something too difficult to understand then we say "It must be God doing it" rather than actually trying to dig a bit deeper. It can stifle an investigative mind. It also short-sells nature. I find it so much more awesome that all this came about by chance, from atoms colliding, membranes forming, cells developing and then joining together, with random mutations responsible for all the amazing diversity of life on the planet, than that there is some all-powerful super-being playing with us like Sylvanian Families.
So I was more than a little distressed to read that Sir David receives hate-mail from religious nutjobs telling him to "burn in hell". Firstly, I'm pretty sure that in the Gospels, that Jesus bloke said "love God and love your fellow human", and as such inviting another person to burn in hell is not really very Christian, now is it? Secondly though, Sir David is an atheist. Apart from being an unwelcome display of hatred on the part of the people writing to him, do you think he's remotely bothered about going to hell?
The nutjobs concerned have complained that in a science and nature documentary, Sir David doesn't credit God. I assume they want him to say, as he gives his summing-up at the end of each episode "and of course, this was all intelligently designed by the Almighty God".
It reminds me of a time when I worked at the Mammoth Site. One Sunday lunchtime, a good friend of mine was giving a tour, and was interrupted about halfway through by a loud baseball cap-wearing member of the tour group saying "Are you going to talk about evolution here, because I don't want my kids hearing that crap!". My friend was, as instructed by the big boss, extremely polite, said that it may come up, but that if the visitors wanted to move ahead and see the exhibits at their own pace they were welcome to do so.
Now, what we would all have liked to do was to smack tht guy upside the head with an expanding foam cast of a Mammuthus femur and say "Of course we're going to talk about evolution - it's a fucking palaeontology site! You'd be appalled if we went into your church and asked if you were going to talk about Jesus because we didn't want our kids hearing that crap!", but apparently you can't say that. Science shows have as much business crediting God with the natural world as religious shows have saying "Of course this is all woo and mumbo-jumbo" at the end, i.e. absolutely none at all.
Science is agnostic. It has to be. If it does not assume that there is no way of ascertaining one way or another whether there is a God, then the moment we come up with something too difficult to understand then we say "It must be God doing it" rather than actually trying to dig a bit deeper. It can stifle an investigative mind. It also short-sells nature. I find it so much more awesome that all this came about by chance, from atoms colliding, membranes forming, cells developing and then joining together, with random mutations responsible for all the amazing diversity of life on the planet, than that there is some all-powerful super-being playing with us like Sylvanian Families.
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