In a newspaper preview of Sir David Attenborough’s forthcoming BBC 1 documentary, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, Attenborough is quoted as saying: “What really gets me down is when people say, ‘It’s only a theory that we are related to apes.’ It’s not a theory. It is a historical fact, evident and provable.”

May I reply that what really gets me down is when the fact that we share some genetic information with gorillas is taken to mean, as I regret to say that Attenborough seems to take it to mean, that man is no more than or better than or substantially different from a gorilla.

I am apprehensive about this coming programme, because what Attenborough has said in the past indicates that that is how he does think.

I base my case on Attenborough’s statements supporting a half-page article headlined “Is man an ape or an angel?” by Professor Steve Jones in the Daily Telegraph of Tuesday, June 17, 2008. Sir David’s comments were made in a 3-minute video clip accompanying Jones’s article.

I read and re-read the article and also listened repeatedly to the associated video from Sir David.

On successive days I sent four Letters to the Daily Telegraph Editor commenting on the article/video with slight modifications in each case, but none of them was published. I consider it a serious failure on the part of the Telegraph that it did not publish any alternative view on this fundamentally important subject.

I summarize (though at some length!) what my letters said. They criticize the position taken by Attenborough, and also refer to Jones’ views, as they are the context of Attenborough’s statements.

The case made by Professor Steve Jones and supported by Sir David Attenborough seems to me to be unsafe at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. I fear that Attenborough’s forthcoming programme will be more of the same.

First,at the beginning, neither defines what he means by ‘Darwinism’, a theory that has developed since Darwin’s own day. I take its foundation to be, now, the view that the existing universe appeared out of nothing by pure chance (unproved), and that life then emerged by blind chance (also unproved).

Second, the middle of this Darwinian case then states that everything that now exists, including mankind, has evolved blindly by endless small random mutations and natural selection, from the first cell to invertebrates to fishes to amphibians to reptiles to mammals to rational man. This, likewise, is unproven. A fast-growing literature now denies that this once-unchallenged theory can explain our natural living universe. In his book The Goldilocks Enigma (2006, on p. 302), Paul Davies, ‘Britain’s most eminent cosmologist’according to a back-cover blurb, says: “I concede that the universe at least APPEARS [italics in the original] to be designed with a high level of ingenuity. I cannot accept these features as a package of marvels which just happen to be, which exist reasonlessly. It seems to me that there is a genuine scheme of things – the universe is ‘about’ something.”

Attenborough says when supporting Jones: “The acceptance that evolution has taken place as a historical fact [is] as certain as, say, [that]William the Conqueror landed in this country in 1066″. Yet a book by Antony Latham, ‘The Naked Emperor: Darwinism exposed’ (2005), can say (with much supporting evidence), “we are now at the stage when an accumulation of facts does in fact lead us to severely doubt [Darwin's claim, that every complex organ that exists must have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications]”. Furthermore, innumerable such negative assessments now exist. Jones and Attenborough should have at least acknowledged this trend .

After the beginning and the middle, there is the end: rational mankind.
Attenborough sums up his position by saying that the unshaken acceptance of evolution as a historical fact “has profoundly affected the way in which we see ourselves in the context of the natural world.” My comment: Attenborough is simply a fundamentalist believer in the unproven and increasingly discredited theory, that evolution from primordial soup to man has taken place along Darwinian lines. Furthermore, Attenborough’s Darwinist view reduces man to being just another animal, and Attenborough thinks that this ‘has affected [Attenborough means 'correctly affected'] the way we see ourselves in the context of the natural world’ For Attenborough, we must now reject the view that man is anything special. For him we are mere animals. I protest: Are we supposed to be proud of this new animal-only society that Britain is now in the process of producing?

Jones for his part concludes his article ambiguously: “Man may be an ape, but his brain is on the side of the angels”. This both summarizes and condemns his Darwinian position. Of course man shares natural qualities with the rest of the universe. But he is not an ape. Jones does not attempt to resolve the dilemma that he proposes here, nor show how (or if) the powers which define humankind, like reason and morality, can be derived from irrational animal cells. The evolutionist can only say: “I have no idea how these key features of man arrived”.

Yes, evolution does show how some Galapagos finches derived from other Galapagos finches. But Darwinism – as the explanation of everything – seems to be a failed system. Try Intelligent Design. Try God.

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