The Voltage Gate

I'm always ready to hear what David Attenborough has to say off the cuff, and if you're as much of a fan as I am, this interview is right up your ally. He talks of his life as a documentarian, poignant moments of his young life, his parents, global warming:

ANDREW DENTON - VO: Are you optimistic for the future of the planet?

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: No, no. Ah well I, ah, I think it's very difficult to think that it won't get worse. I'm not necessarily saying that it's going to um become intolerable or that we're going to disappear or anything of that sort. Um but I think that living conditions will get worse.

[snip]

I think there will certainly be global warming, ah and as a consequence of global warming um a lot of there will be famines, ah there will be the amount of land ah on this earth which is suitable for growing food is a very small proportion of the earth's surface ah and it just happens to be the proportion on which we've decided to build all our cities um and I think that it will be becoming increasingly hard for people ah to get enough food and when on a worldwide sense. I mean there is a gleam of hope in that ah some people say that first of all we're going to peak on the audience uh on the on the population of this planet around 10 million though exactly why and whether it's that's really true I don't know but let's say it is. Ah and secondly that ah wherever ah there is female emancipation and literacy and the ability to restrict, ah popula-, ah birth cont-, ah,... then that population, the birth rate does fall, which is an argument for literacy and education and that you do that not only because it's the right of human beings but because the human population demands it.

And even creationism:

ANDREW DENTON: Let's talk about the imagination of human beings. You're strongly on the record as being opposed to the concept of creationism. Why do you feel so strongly about it?

I feel so strongly about it because I think that it is in a quite simple historical factual way wrong. Um the arguments I would ah put forward ah now that we are um more knowledgeable about the world as a whole, we know that every single society has want has found it necessary to get some explanation as to how human beings came into existence and Australian Aboriginal societies and or some sections of it think it was a great sort of rainbow serpent that arches up in the sky and which vomited up the first human being from a water hole ah and there are people in South East Asia who think that the world started as a sea of milk in which there was a great snake and demons were pulling at one end and ah and another lot at the other and they churned it and it turned into coagulations which human beings and there was a there was a people 3,000 years ago wandering around the Middle East ah who thought that ah, the, what happened there was a garden and ah a man from the sky created, m-m-made, moulded out of mud, blew into it and then and that was the first man and then in order to make the the woman he took a rib out of its side. Now all those things can't be right. How do you ah decide which you're going to believe or are you simply going to accept what it was your mother told you or your father told you? Ah well there are good historical clues to be found and they're found all over the everywhere and they're all the same everywhere. I mean the truth about our own bodies, about the shape of our own bodies and what they look like, ah the ah looking at fossils and the ground, looking at the rest of animal creation and so on ah and if you do that which is the same everywhere and if you no matter what nationality of people who look at that you come to the same conclusions which is that all life has evolved over a very long period of time and you can plot the course and the range in which it works so um simply from a taking an objective point of view ah the answer is that that life has evolved on this planet.

ANDREW DENTON: But of course not everybody does to come that conclusion and there are plenty of people who would say to you all very well David but God did that.

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: The idea that that when people say why don't you give God the credit for all these wonderful things. When people say that ah they nearly always want to ah as take the example of butterflies or hummingbirds or orchids or something, lovely. Um and I'm or I write back because they write to me on ah on this and say yes well it's all very well ah but of course um I think of a little boy sitting on a bank of the river in West Africa with a worm that's boring through his eyeball and which will certainly turn him blind ah within a few years. Now this God that you so-, that created every single species, he must presumably have created that worm. Now are you telling me that this is a Christian God who um has compassion and mercy for every individual one of us and that he did it he did it did it deliberately put a, in, ah make a worm and put it in the eye of this child. I, ah, this worm can't exist anywhere else. Well I don't find that compatible with the notion of a of there being a a merciful creator, God. If you're a creationist do you actually believe that this worm together with tape worms and everything else actually were created at the same time as Adam and that God said OK I'll make Adam and I'll give him, I'll kick him out with every, every one of these little animal parasites. Did he do that? And if he didn't do that, then what had happened presumably is that these worms related to other worms in the Garden of Eden and eventually moved into the ... in which case they then changed and so they couldn't live anywhere else as the condition is now. They've evolved. Dear me, there's a rude word.

ANDREW DENTON: If you don't see that as compatible with the concept of a merciful God that worm that bores into the eye, does that therefore that life has no meaning?

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: Ah it would mean that life ah has ah evolved. Ah I don't think we can know what the, whether there is a purpose of life um and the, ah, for all I know there are all kinds of divine purposes which are beyond our cognition.

ANDREW DENTON: We're in a time of great debate. Which is more powerful do you think, faith or knowledge?

SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: I think in the end you have to vote for rational thought because there are all kinds of beliefs that you can have, all kind of beliefs that are plainly ah wrong um and by that I don't mean religious beliefs, I mean you can believe all kinds of things about um ah what food to grow or or where to go or what dangers are or how to organise ah and you can believe all sorts of things that are wrong but it is much better that you should have a rational ah insight into what these various problems are, so rationality has to win over faith.

I think what I appreciate and respect most about Attenborough is his pragmatic worldview. He's not vicious or hypocritical or gloomy or theatrically pretentious like many of our modern heroes of science. He's just straightforward and honest.

It's nice to hear a lack of optimism from someone who is genuinely concerned with the environment. Why? Because I'm sick of hearing about political will and living green. It's a load of crap, and the NGO's, politicians and other proponents that push these memes know it's just a smoke screen. Do I want things to change? Yes, most definitely, by any means. Do I think the world's conditions will change for the better? Perhaps sometime in the distant future, but not before we have more problems. I'm happy that someone as prominent as Attenborough is acknowledging the reality of our predicament publicly.

As far as his comments on creationism, Attenborough has made this statement before, supported by the same specific example (the infected child). This, I think, has always been the strongest argument against a personal god, the idea that God blesses certain people with wealth and prosperity and leaves others to fend for themselves, suffer financially or through a life of physical or emotional pain.

When I graduated from college last year, one of my mother's friends congratulated me, sort of. Instead of praising me for hard work, she told me that God had blessed me with intelligence and helped me along through college. I couldn't help but be offended by this statement. First of all, if he blessed me with a brain and a degree, why not everyone? Does he love me more? Second of all, way to lessen my hard work. Last time I checked, God wasn't paying my bills and showing up for my tests and labs. What a stupid, insulting remark to make to someone.

Anyway, always good to hear from Attenborough. A note to the transcriber of the interview: what's up with the ah's and um's haha's? I'm all for accuracy, but that's a bit much. Reading all of these pauses is a lot different than hearing them. It breaks up the sentences into nonsensical phrases, especially when they're stringed together.

Tip: John