In an interview on Irish TV, Stephen Fry went all in when he was asked what he would say to God if he died and went to heaven.
The 57-year-old staunch atheist, who recently married his partner Elliot Spencer, 27, made some fervent comments during the sit down with Gay Byrne for RTÉ One’s The Meaning of Life .
The weekly show features discussions about the purpose of life, religion, and what happens after death. The above clip shows Fry discussing his views on God from his perspective as an atheist.
“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?”
“I think I’d say ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about? How dare you! 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?”
Seeming somewhat perturbed, the host then asked Fry, “And you think you’re going to get in?”
“No, but I wouldn’t want to. I wouldn’t want to get in on his terms. They’re wrong.” Fry answered. “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?”
“Yes, the world is very splendid,” he added, “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 did not exist. It is simply not acceptable.”
Fry finally ended by saying that God is “utterly monstrous and deserves no respect what-so-ever.”
Visibly surprised by Fry’s answer, Byrne then stated, “That sure is the longest answer to that question I ever got in this entire series.”
[Image via Independent]
