Quoting the article,
In the interview, Sir David said that people asked why his documentaries did not give "credit" to God for the creation of life.
"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."
I love this man
(, Wed 28 Jan 2009, 13:13, Reply)
It seems like a simple refutation of 'god is love' yeah right, and the eyeball worm fits into this compassion how exactly?
(, Wed 28 Jan 2009, 13:21, Reply)
Michael Behe (I think) did admit that God created malaria. So at least he's honest enough to bite that bullet.
It's a shame it's not true.
(, Wed 28 Jan 2009, 13:23, Reply)
To the extent that when hypnotised in front of an audience, I was asked who my favourite celebrity was and said "I don't like celebrities, I like David Attenborough" (he then made me talk to 'David' in the audience, then convinced me I was a gorilla)
This only affirms my admiration
(, Wed 28 Jan 2009, 13:37, Reply)
However, appeals to the apparent moral failures of a creator strike me as being less powerful than simply pointing out that the existence of a non-material and non-temporal living thing is incomprehensible.
I can tolerate people believing in fairies or unicorns - I can imagine a world in which winged homunculi or horned horses exist. It's not this world, but there's nothing incoherent about it. However, a world in which supernatural beings exist simply doesn't make sense.
(I was impressed by Jonathan Miller's point that he doesn't call himself an atheist because theism seems to him to be too absurd to waste time opposing...)
(, Wed 28 Jan 2009, 13:21, Reply)
The most convincing argument, for me, is that to 'create' the staggering amount of complexity in the Universe you must concede that the Creator him/her self must be even more staggeringly complex.
Which is impossible, of course, as complexity doesn't just appear, it's the product of evolution! So who created the Creator? And so on, and so on...
(, Wed 28 Jan 2009, 13:30, Reply)