SIR David Attenborough’s refusal to “credit” God for beautiful creatures like hummingbirds in his popular wildlife programmes has made him a target for hate mail.

In an interview with the Radio Times about his latest documentary on Charles Darwin and natural selection, Sir David said:

They tell me to burn in hell and good riddance.

According to this report, he toldÂ the magazine that, whenever he is asked about his failure to give the Lord his due regarding beautiful things like hummingbirds, he replies by referring to:

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.

Sir David, who attended the Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester from the 1930s, told the magazine he was astonished at manifestations of Christian faith.

He said:

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!

Sir David also said it was “terrible, terrible” when creationism and evolution were taught in schools as equivalent, alternative perspectives.

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.

Speaking about the relationship between people and the rest of nature, Sir

David said:

People say to me: ‘What is a mosquito for? They’re no good for anything!’ The basic notion that the world is our oyster, that we have domination over all things, that they are here for us …

Asked where that view comes from, Sir David replied:

The Bible, of course. Genesis, chapter one.

Speaking about views 2,000 years ago, he said: