The following is an extract of a recent article which appeared in the U.K.'s Guardian Newspaper.
"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."
There are two things to say about Sir David Attenborough's comments.
First, if he is accurately quoting Christian Creationists who contacted him then shame on them. It is not theirs or our place to assign people to heaven or hell. It is a matter for the Lord and, from what we observe in Scripture, it depends on the person's relationship with Creator, Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
The second thing to say is that the Most Rev Peter Jensen, Archbishop of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, has nothing convincing to say to Sir David Attenborough that might help Sir David come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. Why is this so?
Sir David has 'observed' that by evolutionary process a worm has evolved which has no other means of survival than to burrow through the eyeball of a little child in east Africa. Sir David concludes that a god who could create this scenario is not a god that he wants anything to do with. The problem for Most Rev Peter is that, being a Theistic Evolutionist, he also believes that the worm evolved that way and that the god he espouses is the one who did it. Most Rev Peter can't really introduce the Fall as explanation because, according to his theology his god had been creating in this way both before and after the Fall.
So here we are launching into Connect 09 under the inspiration of the Most Reverent Peter Jensen but if Sir David Attenborough were to stumble into Sydney there is nothing Most Rev Peter or many others in the Diocese could say to connect with Sir David. Amen, Sir David.
Neil
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5 comments:
Maybe they have already met, and Uncle Dave is the one who told Uncle Pete that evolution is true: “"Evolution may be true and I'm told it's true…” (SMH 15.11.05)
Yes, of course, let an atheist determine your theology. Makes living in this world more comfortable.
Neil
Neil you quote Attenborough 'I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball.'
I have heard Dr Carl Wieland of Creation Ministries quoting the hymn 'all things bright and beauutiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful the Lord God made them all.' To this he adds ‘All things marred and mutated—the Lord God cursed them all.’
Many Christians because of their disinterest in, or ignorance or rejection of Genesis, forget that because of Adam's sin God cursed our world. This is the result of Adam's rebellion against God's authority; and mankinds enthusiastic continuance of this, to this day.
If this was still the same world God created then Attenborough would have a point. But he doesn't because the fossil record is a testimony to death, disease and suffering, the result of Adam's sin.
What is even worse is that Christians who should know better are either ignorant of this or ignore this. Attenborough has some excuse whereas no Christan does.
It brings home how important the acceptance of an historical Genesis is, and how badly the church has done, and continues to do in this regard.
I don't have an email address for Attenbourogh but would like to point out that if he believes in evolution then the worm in the child's eye is normal, more of the suffering and disease which evolutionary theory says formed the world in which we live.
And that in God's world it is abnormal, and to be fought against, as Christian missionaries and doctors have done for hundreds of years.
Happily Jesus came to reverse the curse. What is Attenborough doing to rid the child of the worm, I ask?
Post script to my previous message: what answer could the Theistic Evolutionists of Sydney Anglicanism give to Attenborough?
They believe the fossil record is from a time before Adam and represents the method by which their god created. Therefore they have no 'good' answer.
At the completion of creation God said that which He had made was 'very good' Genesis 1:31. Therefore that represented in the fossil record, being from before He uttereed this statement, must be very good. Death, disease and suffering must be very good.
The fact that God disagrees is lost on them.
So Mr Attenbourogh, they must say, that's just the way our god did it.
Warwick, it is as you say. They have nothing to say.
Big launch of Connect 09 today. I wonder how it went?
Neil
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