Comment From A Naturalist

I really like the naturalist David Attenborough. Having purchased two amazing DVD collections called “The Blue Planet” and “Planet Earth” which Attenborough narrates, I developed a curiosity about this interesting character and decided to Google him. I wasn’t surprised to find that he, a devoted student of our earth, is not a believer. I find it hard to believe that anyone so close to nature could be.

I liked his response to an interview he had in 2005 with Simon Mayo of BBC Radio. Stating he considers himself agnostic, he had the following to say about faith in a creator:

“My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, [a worm] that’s going to make him blind. And [I ask them], ‘Are you telling me that the God you believe in, who you also say is an all-merciful God, who cares for each one of us individually, are you saying that God created this worm that can live in no other way than in an innocent child’s eyeball? Because that doesn’t seem to me to coincide with a God who’s full of mercy'”.

Considering the horrors we see in the world everyday, I couldn’t have put it any better. Thank you, David Attenborough.