Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

It seems he's not a fan.

The look on Gay Byrne's face is priceless.

"Stephen Fry has denounced God as “utterly evil, capricious and monstrous”, if he were to exist.

The comedian’s attack on the notion of a deity will be heard on an Irish religious affairs programme on Sunday night.

A brief clip of Fry on RTE television’s The Meaning of Life on Sunday has already caused as storm on Youtube with over 2m views even before broadcast.

On the short clip, Fry is asked by veteran Irish TV presenter Gay Byrne what he would say to God if he died and had to confront him.
In his imaginary conversation with God, Fry says he would tell him: “How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It’s not right.

“It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”
Pressed by Byrne over how he would react if he was locked outside the pearly gates, Fry says: “I would say: ‘bone cancer in children? What’s that about?’

“Because the God who created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac, utter maniac. Totally selfish. We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him?! What kind of god would do that?”


Indi

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Byrne looked like he was seeing the devil in the flesh. :D

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Well done Stephen. said what I've always said. and what a lot of people know to be true.

We need a nice God. this one's crap.

God takes your baby away in the most evil way imaginable.
you go and thank him for it at the church.
why?

dare I say you're hoping if you're nice to him. he may spare you from one of his evil creations?

if it's Gods will that your baby dies. then why does it have to be a long lingering suffering death?
what was that test?
just let it die there and then. is the lingering time for him to be praised?
asking him to save the baby?
what was his answer?

it was a big fat NO.

But to you it was a test.
go and thank him at the next available opportunity.
he may spare you. and he may let you in the gates at the next life.
where it's really nice.
his brother runs that one. he's not evil.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

A response by Tim Stanley in this morning's Tele:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/reli...s-lost-it.html

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Sounds like Tim hasn't really got an answer. just doing the "Yeh, but"

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

what makes a christian god any more real or important than the greek gods? or the roman gods? or the egyptian gods? or any other god from any other belief system? likewise, the same can be said for all gods compared to any other.

the difference is, the greek gods, roman gods and egyptian gods (and many others) are now part of mythology. they were let go because belief in them disappeared. the same will happen in time to the christian gods. in the mean time, for those who believe, i'm glad it fills that hole for you. whatever your reasons to believe, it is not my concern. the fact I may not agree does not mean I would tell you not to believe. likewise, just because someone does believe, I would not expect them to force their gods onto me.

that said, if god were a real person, or indeed someone wrote a biography and removed all reference of 'god' but implied a living mortal, Stephen Fry is right. He / She would classed as a maniac. A narcissistic, sadistic, psychopath of epic proportions.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

The Graeco/Roman pantheon came and went in the blink of an eye, on the scale of all written history. The Abrahamic God has been around a lot longer and shows no sign of disappearing. Not that I'm making an argument for his existence based on how long-lasting devotion to him has been; simply that there is no evidence to justify the kind of equivalence you're trying to draw. "A failed, therfore B will fail" is an error in reasoning. That said, you should also avoid the mistake of reading the religious state of the UK onto the rest of the world - in most places, Yahweh-worship is thriving.

Stephen Fry may claim that God is a narcissistic psychopath, but the problem with that is that God, assuming he exists (I believe he does, and that the only valid reflection of him is to be found in the Christian church), has the keys to the afterlife. If we are to be judged after we a dead, it will be by him, according to his standard, not our own. Objecting that we don't like God's morals is a bit like objecting that we don't like the questions on an exam paper. The paper is what it is, whether we like it or not, and it is the paper, and only the paper, that stands between us and a pass or a fail.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Yeh. that's what I said.

but the tests can drag on. you carry a baby around for 9 months. and then he makes it suffer for a bit longer after it's born. and then it eventually dies.

he says. exam over. you'll know the reult when you die.

Yes. he created the life. so yes he took it away.
and yes he threw in the pain and suffering.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

A reminder of his power so you better start believing or he'll zap you

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

You don't believe in all that rubbish do you?

he would and should have zapped me ages ago.
but he daren't not :)

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

That was Stephen Fry's point wasn't it? That he doesn't believe in either but that he prefers the Greek gods because they don't pretend to be accommodating to the human race.

I don't Stephen Fry thinks he is the only person who has wondered why folks suffer nor is he upset. He just doesn't believe in a god, was asked why and give his answer. It appears to the Tim Stanley who is imaging these feelings of anger.

---------- Post added at 20:47 ---------- Previous post was at 20:38 ----------

I mean wasn't the question Fry was asked also a bit facile anyway?

It's not a unusual question for an atheist to be asked what they will say if they're wrong and they find themselves in, a seemingly very literal, conservation with God. I think it wrongly assumes that atheists have made a decision to reject God almost out of spite or anger towards 'him' rather than simply being unable to believe. So what could we really say? "Opps"?

To be honest I wonder if there is even a vindictive motive behind the question, a implication that our judgement day is coming and we're going to get it.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Shock! Horror! Someone vehemently says they don't believe in a god and why..and people get upset.If they didn't want the answer why ask..

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Pretty weak one to be honest. It seems odd Mr Stanley felt the need to fuel the fire and give it further oxygen. Perhaps lying to himself when claiming he finds it all so passe.

His comments are bizarre, and I think perhaps silence would've been a better option than writing this stuff. Just a couple of quotes:

What level of spite is need to allow harm on the current population of the world for things that allegedly happened over 6,000 years ago? The all-loving God is capricious enough to hold grudges for millennia? Wasn't killing almost every human being and every living thing on the planet bar 2 of each kind enough?

So they're a) one of those things and God declines to get involved, b) the allegedly omnipotent and omniscient God turning a blind eye to the actions of the Devil, or c) I guess we're back to the multi-millennia long grudge. This really doesn't help the case, Tim.

Read the Old Testament recently, Tim? Your God seemed perfectly content to kill every living thing on the planet bar a fraction of them. Even the Greek gods didn't go that far. Fry indicated they were more believable because they were flawed, which explained issues.

It also entirely misses the point of what he had to say. I, too, find a pantheon of gods to be far more believable than a single one as it explains contradictions and doesn't require the absurd fallacies being presented as arguments in this article to try and explain why a God who is apparently deserving of worship and loves us behaves in this manner.

A really quite astonishing article that reads like it was written by a besmirched child.

It's no wonder church attendance is so low when this is the level of discourse that is stooped to by someone so in the public eye.

Shame really, I know a bunch of intellectuals who would present far more reasoned argument to Fry's comments, and even more who just choose not to comment as they don't see a point.

---------- Post added at 21:10 ---------- Previous post was at 21:06 ----------

Indeed. It's so old, passe, and Stephen Fry so irrelevant.

Though the comments section on the few hundred words of butthurt Tim Stanley wrote as it is so old, passe, and irrelevant is pretty entertaining. I highly recommend it.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Not sure we can really compare a psychopath with an exam paper.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Yes they did ,Zeus flooded the world after men got fire from Prometheus who promply nailed to side of a mountain and eaten by birds every day.In actual fact every religion seems to have a flood punishing man for his wickedness

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Shows I need to read my Greek and Roman mythology again!

Thank you for the correction.

Regarding your last sentence: purely coincidence or stolen from the Judeo-Christian, naturally.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Funny that isn't it?

Almost as if they are variations on a theme or borrowed bits of each other, or because one is newer than the others, it may have plundered other older religions.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

I agree with him, 100%.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

I liked this also where Stephen Fry spoke on why the Catholic Church is NOT a power for good throughout the world....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L1xvdZMC10

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Flood myths are common. Ancient Baylon had one. The Chinese have more than one.

They may have borrowed one from another, or they may all have their basis in truth.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

that's shocking God should send a flood for that .

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Given that most religions and cultures have a flood myth i would say that it was more coincidence or even a real cataclysmic event written into religions that where around in the same period because primitive man couldn't explain the events .A documentary i saw a few years back explained the greek flood myth as the flooding of the mediteranean sea which seemed to have geological evidence to back it up

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Sadly there's no physical evidence of a global flood event so this seems unlikely. 'Scientists' who've claimed as such are given rather short shrift.

---------- Post added at 21:44 ---------- Previous post was at 21:36 ----------

Yeah I've seen a few bits on that and a swift Google is useful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_S...uge_hypothesis
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~billr/...al_MG_1997.pdf
http://www.newscientist.com/article/...-no-water.html

I have some light reading for later, which will be handled with extreme caution - that book is very good but also very old. Haven't read it since I was in my very early teens.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2015/02/32.jpg
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2015/02/33.jpg

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

I remember asking a Priest at a friends wedding once about the Story of Noah climbing the mountain and having a conversation with a burning bush and whether he believed the story or not. He gave me a look that could kill and walked away from me without a word.

What i find funny about religions is they change their rules to fit the day and kind of whats in fashion, such as Catholics now can divorce where before it was banned. Also the fact some catholics now believe that the story of Adam and Eve never happened because of scientific proof where as in the years past Scientists would have been mocked and slammed for questioning the church and its teachings.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

That would be Moses not Noah :D

---------- Post added at 21:55 ---------- Previous post was at 21:48 ----------

I don't believe they can at least in the eyes of the church

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Yeh. Noah built the boat and gathered all the animals from around the world. they had to fly some animals in from the other side of the world because it would have took too long for someone to walk and go and get them.

No one's really sure whether it's true that the Unicorns missed the boat. or that Unicorns didn't really exist.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

On the surface religions may appear to change with the times but in reality they don't.Christianity at it's birth is still the same religion as it is now ,it is still the belief in one God and Jesus is still the Messiah

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

I realised this many years ago, it was a kind of eureka moment, I suddenly felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders and the blinkers obscuring my view vanished in a flash... Whereas I was blind, now I see.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

The Jaffar nation shall be free and shall not serve the Goa'uld who are false gods and prophets. I know this is a Sci-Fi programme but mankind's love for a religion of what ever denomination is a way for atoning for his/her own failings in life, they then turn to a mystic being for guidance, appeasement and forgiveness and then go on to commit more of the same failings, etc., etc.

As for natural planetary disasters throughout history these were put down by religious leaders/people by way of gods will or anger not due to Ice Age melt or Earthquakes, Tsunamis etc.

EACH TO THEIR OWN I SUPPOSE.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

"Melchett was weakest Black Adder character" says God.

"As the creator of the universe and by extension all humour, I consider myself an expert on the topic and that character did not really work.”

Pie & Mash, without the pie.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

God sounds really bitter.
is he feeling stupid. I wonder.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Nope, Prince George was by the far the worst.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Scary part is that Ireland could prosecute Stephen Fry for that. Gotta love blasphemy laws.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Then all his fans would repeat it, I'd like so see them try and prosecute several million people :D

If a guy who was mugged can get £320,000 from 24,000 strangers, then a respected person like SF should have no problem

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

In fairness to Stephen, I don't believe he is saying he prefers the Greek Gods because he believes they are paragons of virtue, but he prefers them because they aren't pretending to be anything other than what Tim says they are. Christianity, on the other hand, appears to be telling us that God loves everyone while God is busy killing people by the million.

---------- Post added at 12:14 ---------- Previous post was at 11:47 ----------

That's something that angers me a little. We have various programmes about religion, sometimes telling us how great various Gods are. We even have fairly frequent broadcasts from various Churches. This is, at the very least, allowed to pass with little comment, if not actively encouraged.

Yet the minute one man dares question that God's motives, people are seemingly up in arms about it.

Chris bought up the example of the exam paper. It is possible to question exam papers as happened at Sheffield Uni. Exam papers can also be wrong, as I experienced in one of my exam papers. It was a programming exam, and we had to dissect some code, explaining it line by line. There was one command I did not recognise, so I had a guess at what it did. I then consulted a friend who was an expert in that language (and won a BAFTA for one of his games), and he said the command did not exist, but my guess at what it was trying to do was probably fairly accurate.

My point is that exams *can* be questioned. Marks can also be adjusted if they are found to be unfair. Why can't God's motives be questioned? Why aren't Atheists given the same rights to question the existence of God in our media that the various religions are given to tell us how great He is? Most programmes don't mention God, but that is not the same thing as questioning whether God exists.

Don't get me wrong, while I personally don't believe in God, I believe everyone has the right to decide whether to believe in God or not. But I also feel that questioning our understanding of God will also (assuming he does exist) increase that understanding and actually benefit everyone.

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

Rowan Williams responds to Stephen Fry's tirade on God

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31360903

Re: Stephen Fry calls God an ‘evil, capricious, monstrous maniac’.
 

He said that the same protest voices appeared in the book of Psalms and Job in the Bible.
He added that the fact many people "at the heart of suffering" still maintain a trust in God should make one refrain from blaming him for such events.

does he think that's it then?
everyone shouldn't question why 'God' is so evil in that he makes people suffer. for his gain even?

If anything we should look at it in more detail.
who wants a God that hurts people?
you know you would want a nice God that doesn't take your babies and loved ones from you. so question yourself.

21st century!
mobile phones.
SKY TV!