documentary

Attenborough reveals creationist hate mail for not crediting God

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Attenborough reveals creationist hate mail for not crediting God

Sir David Attenborough has revealed that he receives hate mail from viewers for failing to credit God in his documentaries. In an interview with this week’s Radio Times about his latest documentary, on Charles Darwin and natural selection, the broadcaster said: “They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance.”

Telling the magazine that he was asked why he did not give “credit” to God, Attenborough added: “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.”

Attenborough went further in his opposition to creationism, saying it was “terrible” when it was taught alongside evolution as an alternative perspective. “It’s like saying that two and two equals four, but if you wish to believe it, it could also be five … Evolution is not a theory; it is a fact, every bit as much as the historical fact that William the Conqueror landed in 1066.”

Attenborough, who attended the Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester in the 1930s, said he was astonished at manifestations of Christian faith.

“It never really occurred to me to believe in God – and I had nothing to rebel against, my parents told me nothing whatsoever. But I do remember looking at my headmaster delivering a sermon, a classicist, extremely clever … and thinking, he can’t really believe all that, can he? How incredible!”

In 2002, Attenborough joined an effort by clerics and scientists to oppose the inclusion of creationism in the curriculum of state-funded independent schools receiving private sponsorship, such as the Emmanuel Schools Foundation.

‘Religulous’ a laugh-out-loud assault on organized religion

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‘Religulous’ a laugh-out-loud assault on organized religion

Bill Maher is preaching to the choir with “Religulous,” a documentary that dissects organized religion, but he’s doing it in his laceratingly funny, typically sardonic way.

The comic has touched on this topic often in his standup act and on his HBO talk show “Real Time With Bill Maher,” but here he uses his formidable debating skills to go on a full, focused attack. Pretty much no one emerges unscathed (except those who practice Eastern religions, for some reason).

Although Maher’s mother was Jewish, he was raised in the Catholicism of his father’s side of the family; now he calls himself a rationalist, and thinks the idea that we all came from a garden with a talking snake is a fairy tale for overgrown children and crazies.

If you’re an atheist or an agnostic, you’ll be completely on board and happy to tag along with Maher as he travels the globe asking people about their faith — everywhere from Jerusalem to the Vatican to Amsterdam, where he finds not only the Cannabis Ministry but also a Muslim gay bar (with two people in it). At a makeshift truckers’ chapel in Raleigh, N.C., the drivers put their hands on his shoulders and pray in a circle that he’ll find the Lord (good luck with all that); at the shlocky Holy Land Experience theme park in Orlando, Fla., Maher interviews the actor playing Jesus, a hippie who wears a headset microphone to perform on stage.

If you’re a true believer, though, you’ll probably be offended — and some of his subjects become visibly agitated with him on camera. Maher is surely smart enough to realize that his movie will convert no one, but he seems to get off on the thrill of the challenge nonetheless.

“Religulous” comes from director Larry Charles, who teamed up with Sacha Baron Cohen for “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan,” and it has a structure reminiscent of that 2006 comedy as well as similarly uproarious laughs. The ones on the receiving end of Maher’s Socratic-style questioning are often humorless — they don’t get that he’s toying with them — which makes the results even more absurdly amusing. The more Maher probes, the more hypocrisies he exposes.