The Religion and Political Views of David Attenborough

I personally see no conflict between the idea that there could be an omnipotent creator spirit that created this world and chose to do it by allowing things to evolve in the way they have, there is the evidence and if you believe that God chose to do it that way that’s fine, and if you don’t that’s fine, but the evidence that it went that way is irrefutable. [...] Oil palm is grown in that quantity because there is a lot of hungry people in the world, if they don’t do that they’re going to starve, so what is your choice? Well the choice actually is to try and slow down the increase and the rate in increase in the human population.

I have no quarrel with basic fundamental religious attitudes. [...] I have a quarrel about people who think that the book of Genesis is literally true, and my argument to dealing with that is 150 years ago people living in Britain might think that is the only account of creation, but we now know all societies around the world have their own account, each felt the necessity to explain why they as human beings are here, and each of these accounts differ. [...] I do sometimes feel that maybe I’m lacking in some sense organ and that I don’t know whether there’s anybody else involved in this sort of thing and its very confident thing to say your absolutely sure that there’s nothing in this world that I don’t have the sense organs to appreciate.

I don’t think an understanding and an acceptance of the 4 billion-year-long history of life is any way inconsistent with a belief in a supreme being. And I am not so confident as to say that I am an atheist.