Quote of the Month 21
The quote for February:
“…the god that created this universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly a maniac… utter maniac, totally selfish.”
Stephen Fry
This was part of Stephen Fry’s response to the question, “Suppose it’s all true, and you walk up to the pearly gates, and are confronted by God. What will Stephen Fry say to him, her, or it?” asked by Gay Byrne on a program entitled The Meaning of life.
I’ll put the whole quote below the video. Really, the first part is the best, but the above quote just sums it up in such concise terms that I chose that for this month’s thought.
The full quote in context thanks to The Independent:
“Suppose it’s all true, and you walk up to the pearly gates, and are confronted by God,” asked Bryne. “What will Stephen Fry say to him, her, or it?”
The 57-year-old replied: “I’d say, bone cancer in children? What’s that about?
“How dare you? How dare you create a world to 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 that is so full of injustice and pain. That’s what I would say. ”
Byrne’s second question, “And you think you are going to get in, like that?” only served to fuel his fervour.
“But I wouldn’t want to,” Fry insisted. “I wouldn’t want to get in on his terms. They are wrong.
“Now, if I died and it was Pluto, Hades, and if it was the 12 Greek gods then I would have more truck with it, because the Greeks didn’t pretend to not be human in their appetites, in their capriciousness, and in their unreasonableness… they didn’t present themselves as being all-seeing, all-wise, all-kind, all-beneficent, because the god that 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?
“So, atheism isn’t not just about not believing there’s a God, but on the assumption there is one, what kind of God is he?”
