"Any single person who tells you that they know what happens to a human being after they have died is either a liar or a fool." -- Stephen Fry
Most of them are liars who want to sell you something.
"There's a distinction to be drawn between those who claim to have access to revealed truth and therefore claim to know what happens to us after we're dead on the basis of a text, whether it's a Koran or a Holy Bible, which is nonsensical.
If they want to believe it then fine but they mustn't push it down our throats and they mustn't tell me who I'm allowed to go to bed with and who I'm not allowed to go to bed with. It's not acceptable. Anybody who wants to tell me what happens to me after I'm dead is either a liar or a fool because they DON'T. KNOW."
-- Stephen Fry
It's not merely that they don't know, it's that they can't know.
Gay Byrne: Suppose it's all true, and you walk up to the pearly gates, and you are confronted by god. What will Stephen Fry say to him, her or it?
Stephen Fry: I'd say, bone cancer in children? What's that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there 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 god which is so full of injustice and pain? That's what I'd say.
Gay: And you think you're going to get in?
Stephen: No. But I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to get in on his terms. They're wrong.
Now, if I died and it was Pluto, Hades, and if it was the twelve 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?
Yes, the world is very splendid but it also has in it insects whose whole life cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind, they eat outwards from the eyes. Why, why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a creation in which that didn't exist. It is simply not acceptable.
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? It's perfectly apparent he's monstrous, utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him your life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.
Source: twitter.com
"Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?"
-- Stephen Fry
"Because he'll send you to be tortured in a pit of fire for eternity if you don't" isn't the vindication you think it is.
"The Pope could decide that all this power, all this wealth, this hierarchy of princes and bishops and priests and monks and nuns could be sent out in the world with money and art treasures, to put them back in the countries that they once raped and violated.
They could give that money away, and they could concentrate on the apparent essence of their belief, and then I would stand here and say the Catholic Church may well be a force for good in the world.
But until that day, it is not."
-- Stephen Fry, "The Catholic Church is a Force for Good in the World" (2009)
Source: youtube.com
“I've always believed that everything that is said from authority is either the authority of one's own heart, one's own brain, one's own reading, one's own trust, but not the authority of someone who claims it because they're speaking for god and they know the truth because it's written in a book.
That, essentially, is where I come from.
In a sense, tolerance is my religion. Reason is my religion."
-- Stephen Fry
Source: facebook.com
Source: youtube.com
If forced to pick between the two, which would you rather have: a world governed by the Xtian God, or a world run by a pagan pantheon, like Greek or Norse? I'd personally pick the latter, since they at least don't pretend they're perfect.
The latter. In a heartbeat. No "Phone a Friend". Lock in "B", Regis.
The Xian god is profoundly evil.
As Stephen Fray said about dying, finding out the Xian bible-god is real, and trying to get into heaven:
"No, but I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to get in on his terms, they're 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 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?"
A world of, say, the Greek gods would be chaotic and magical, and would also make some kind of internal sense. You would go to a god and ask "why did you give me cancer?" and the god would shrug and say "because I'm a dick. And it was part of a plan to bed my sister."
The god of the bible gives you cancer because it's good and loving and just while also being mysterious and erratic and incomprehensible. Then sets you on fire for eternity for not feeding it sufficient applause, or acknowledging its mysterious-ways, beyond-human-comprehension ass is even there.
It gives me tremendous comfort at night to know that the bible god literally cannot exist, because everything about it is self-refuting.
And hey, who wouldn't rather live in a Disney movie than a torture-porn horror? Xians, apparently.
Atheists don’t need to be certain about gods not existing. We can simply be certain that we find human claims of god existence to be unconvincing, and unconcerned about the demands or desires of any creature we’re not reasonably convinced exists at all.
“For years, mankind has been told what to think and what to believe by shamans, priests and ideologues.
There is an alternative: free thought, trusting our ability to find out, investigate, question, and test according to repeatable, reliable evidence.”
-- Stephen Fry
Source: facebook.com
Banish gods.
Source: facebook.com
i think if god somehow proved he was real i still would not worship him unless he explains why he created humans flawed and wants us to suffer for said flaws, and also if hes all knowing why would he write things that would be interpreted by people in a way that it could cause violence, wars, death and suffering, etc
Agreed. Even if it existed, I wouldn’t worship it. Stephen Fry covers this beautifully.
Something that needy and that willing to abuse lesser creatures in support of its ego and narcissism, exhibiting a morality that’s less than ours - demonstrable in the difficulty of finding a human parent who agrees that setting their child on fire for disobeying them would be justified - means I’d be more inclined to hunt it down and destroy it than worship it.
Anything that needed worship would would be, by definition, imperfect. Perfect things are complete in and of themselves, lacking nothing. Least of all worship.
A thing that is imperfect doesn’t deserve worship. A thing that is perfect would have no use for it.
I have an honest question. What do you think of James 1:27? “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27 KJV
I think it’s like an in-bibleverse version of this:
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"I'm afraid I don't believe there is such a thing as blasphemy, just outrage from those insecure in their own faith." -- Stephen Fry
When religionists have to protect their divine, eternal, magical master of the universe from getting a feelings-ouchie.
I want to be clear here. There is nothing I’ve said about any of the various gods, such as calling bible-god irrational, genocidal, murderous and psychopathic, that these gods could say back to me that would actually offend me. Partly because I have enough self-confidence to not be bothered by mere names, partly because I have enough self-awareness to know I hold the moral upper-hand, and partly because I don’t hold in very high regard the opinions of the irrational, genocidal, murderous and psychopathic.
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Stephen Fry on the Catholic Church "It's the strange thing about this church, it's obsessed with sex. Absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we with our permissive society and our rude jokes, we are obsessed. No, we have a healthy attitude, we like it, it's fun, it's jolly, because it's a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It's a bit like food in that respect only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell."
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