It is a short interview and David Attenborough the naturalist and broadcaster who has made many documentaries on wild life says something very revealing. Led on to make a choice between being an atheist and an agnostic, the filmmaker gives well thought out answers to why he is not a “fundamentalist” and why is not an atheist. Both ends of the spectrum are closed to him.
Attenborough says he has no problems with the basic contention of religion, though he says, “… I tend to shrink away from the word ‘religion’ but that does not mean it goes against the existence of God. I do not have any quarrels with basic fundamental religious attitudes. If I have a quarrel, well, I do have a quarrel, it is about the literal interpretation of the texts; fundamentalism. I have a quarrel about people who think the Book of Genesis is literal truth…my argument is…150 years ago people living in Britain may have thought that was the only account….”
Attenborough continues, “Societies all around the world, each have their own account of creation; each feel a necessity to explain why we, the human beings are here. All these accounts differ. If you go to Thailand, they believe at the beginning of creation, there was a sea of milk. There was a huge snake in it and there were demons and god pulling it and churning it and when the curds came out, there came human beings. If you go to a certain aboriginal community, they believe the human being was coughed up by a giant snake which later became a rainbow in the sky…you can produce hundreds of them. How are you to choose? How would you decide which is correct? If you told me I am only going to believe the one that my mother told me when I was brought up on my mother’s her knee and I am not going to question any other beliefs, well, then that is up to you. But, if you take a more general view and say, well, you cannot all be right and there is an answer and you look at the rocks and the animals themselves then the instinctive thing about that is that they are all the same, no matter where they come from, whichever continent, from the aborigines, Europeans or whatever…that is the one I go for…”
The interviewer then asks Attenborough why he is reluctant to say he does not believe in God. This is where he gives a thought-provoking answer…”I cannot help thinking when I have for example taken off the top of the termite hill and I have seen termites in there; all busying about building walls, looking after their queen, caring for the pupae, clearing their nest, all busy about their own chores. They are all blind and they do not have the faintest idea that I am there watching what they are doing because they do not have the sense organs that allow them, to know they are being watched. I do sometimes feel that maybe I am lacking some sense organ, maybe I do not know that there is anybody else watching me from over there. And it is a very confident thing to say, to be absolutely sure to say that I do not have a sense organ to appreciate something out there in the world. That would be my position. You could say that is rather feeble, that is not being very brave…maybe you have got a case.”
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