Attenborough gets hate mail - January 27, 2009
Here’s a handy tip for religious fundamentalists who question evolution: you’re not going to win any friends by telling an 82-year old man beloved by pretty much the whole of the UK that he’s going to “burn in hell”.
Wildlife documentary maker and general good egg David Attenborough has admitted he receives hate mail from Christians for not giving due credit to God in his programmes.
Quoting from an interview in Radio Times, a number of papers are running stories about the unpleasant letters Sir David has received – “They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance.”
Still, having in the course of his career encountered some of the world’s most venomous animals, Sir David is clearly able to deal with them. He says:
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.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Attenborough also says he finds people scarier than animals (PA):
The times when I’ve thought that things were getting a bit too hairy for comfort have always been with other human beings. If you are with a man on a road and he's got a gun and he’s drunk and he doesn't speak a single word of your language and he doesn’t like the look of your face, that's not nice.
Headline watch
My vicious hate mail ordeal, by Attenborough the evolutionist – Daily Mail
Burn in Hell, Christians tell David Attenborough – The Scotsman
Related
'I wish I could believe in God': What happens when Sir David Attenborough turns his thoughts to human existence? – Daily Mail
Interview: David Attenborough – Daily Telegraph
Comments
If Mr. David Attenborough would have checked the Internet, he would have found that the good God has a cure for the worm in the eye.
"The worm was destroyed by a single shot of laser to its advancing end, which was followed by oral steroid to control the inflammation caused by the dead worm. In case 2, the worm was small and difficult to identify. Initially diffuse neuroretinitis was diagnosed and treated with intravenous methylprednisolone and oral corticosteroid. A week later, a small live worm (400–600 µm) was found and subsequently destroyed by laser photocoagulation followed by a combination of anthelminthics.
Results: The patients’ vision had improved to 6/60–6/36 from counting fingers after a few weeks.
Posted by: Ingrid Lang | January 29, 2009 09:47 AM
In response to Ingrid Lang: Of course, every country in East Africa can afford laser surgery to cure each and every one of its parasitised children, which will also function retroactively to cure all those who lost sight to such diseases throughout history...that whole thing with God making the worm in the first place (and with His thus far neglecting to inspire cures for diseases like Alzheimer's and Huntingdon's Chorea) is just a joke we haven't got yet.
Sarcasm aside, I find it extremely distasteful when people posit advances in medicine (which originate from the cumulative product of generations of hard work by dedicated people) as being evidence of the hand of god(s), rather than of the human race doing its best to alleviate the often terrible suffering which so many of its members encounter.
(And a god that made a parasite, but didn't bother to come up with a cure by itself for thousands of years, would, if it existed, be a lazy, callous, schizophrenic sort of deity and not worthy of the merest regard.)
Sir David Attenborough is a powerful force for good in the world (as well as being responsible for my choosing a career in biomedical research, through my childhood exposure to his wonderful programme "Life on Earth") and deserves to be treated with every respect.
Posted by: Tommy Broughton | January 29, 2009 07:05 PM