What Stephen Fry Would Say To God

Transcript:

Gay Byrne: 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?

Stephen Fry: 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: And you think you are going to get in, like that?

Fry: 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 were… They 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.

Atheism is not just about not believing there’s a god. On the assumption there is one, what kind of God is he? It’s perfectly apparent that was monstrous, utterly monstrous, and deserves no respect. The moment you banish him, your life becomes simpler, purer cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.

Byrne: That sure is the longest answer to that question I ever got in this entire series.

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112 Responses to What Stephen Fry Would Say To God

  1. 101
    Patrick says:

    I’ve never bought the “Job as comedy” thing, it always sounded like a stretch, an effort at imposing a particular interpretation on an ancient people in order to make modern people feel better.

    Jonah, by contrast, is definitely a comedic writing. It wears that right on it’s sleeve. It’s got timing, punchlines, everything.

  2. 102
    Falstaff says:

    I certainly agree about the Jonah-as-comedy interpretation. One’ve the things that kind of blew my mind all those years ago — I’m talking about… holy shit, just short of twenty goddamn years ago… so the memories are a little foggy, but the idea that not only should ancient texts (especially ancient texts in Hebrew, written with the concept of midrash in mind) not be read literally, but that there’s a specific way other than literally they’re meant to be read (and I agree that at the very least there’s room for debate over the Job-as-comedy thing; now that you say that, the more I think about it, the more sure I feel that it was Jonah-as-comedy, Job-as-the-first-novel-in-the-modern-sense-of-novel. Gah. I hate messing up like that), like the point of the story of Elijah parting the waters of the Jordan river and walking across without getting his feet wet not being “Elijah had magic powers,” but “Elijah is an important figure in our history, like Moses, although not quite as awesome.”

  3. 103
    nobody.really says:

    I don’t remember a lot of the discussion, but one thing that’s always stuck with me since is that Satan’s name in that context is a pun; when God asks him where he’s been and what he’s been doing, Satan says he’s been walking up the land and down the land, and apparently (or so she said — I want to be clear that this is totally secondhand and I’m only a very amateur religious scholar) the word used for Satan’s name sounded very like the name of the roving Babylonian imperial secret police, and this is the sort of thing that would’ve gotten a laugh way back when.

    I’d heard a somewhat similar account. The word “Satan” was not a pun exactly, but our interpretation is confounded by the the different meanings given to the word.

    As I heard it, a “satan” was someone who walks among the commoners, hearing their unguarded remarks, and reporting back to the king who is disregarding the king’s edicts or posing a threat. Thus, the Book of Job begins as a discussion between the god/king and the satan — basically, the head of his secret police. They are not enemies; they are collaborators.

    An accused citizen would respond: “No, the satan is wrong! He’s lying to you! Or he entrapped me! Honest, I’m a loyal, law-abiding citizen; the only problem here is this damn satan!” This is little different than the way accused people respond to being arrested today. Or the way people talk about disfavored policies of a favored president, attributing the fault to advisors rather than to the leader himself. (“Obama has simply received bad advice about how to proceed in Iraq….”)

    Of course, everyone HATES being spied on, tempted and found wanting, accused, etc. Moreover, while it may be treasonous to criticize the king, criticizing the satan seemed less threatening. Thus the satan, not the king, became the locus of public dissatisfaction.

    Over time the role of the satan shifted in public consciousness to the point where people characterize the satan as not merely misguided or overzealous, but evil. And because people did not want to (publicly) suggest the king was evil, they would conclude that the satan is opposed to the king, plotting to deceive and overthrow him. We mere mortals are just pawns in the satan’s game. Arguably this is the concept of Satan that appears in the New Testament.

    I’m told that the now-familiar God vs. Satan relationship does not get fully developed until Dante’s Inferno. Thus, applying this interpretation to Biblical references to Satan is anachronistic.

  4. 104
    Myca says:

    Gah, I can’t believe that I left off the most important reason for us to be able to make moral judgments about God:

    You’re always allowed to make judgments about someone who is acting on you.

    Otherwise, we end up with not being able to judge your abuser, your bully, your rapist, etc. “How can you judge him, he’s your father!”

    Fuck. That.

    When someone “does something to you,” you’re allowed to say, “That was not okay. That was wrong. That was morally unacceptable.” Always.

    —Myca

  5. 105
    Falstaff says:

    Myca @104:

    Absolutely agreed. There’s not question of even qualifying that, at least as far as I’m concerned.

    I have kind of an instinctive disagreement with what Fry said (in that, and only in that, that’s not at all the character of the God I was raised to believe in, or told existed, etc. — I was brought up a Methodist in the Pacific Northwest, and the culture in the religious community there was very focused on the ideas of love (God loves, and in some ways is love, and the message of Jesus’s movement is about love and empathy, not obedience or control) and service to others (not, like, involuntary service, but choosing to help people because they need help)) but… well.

    The thing is, even though I don’t usually get as worked up about it as Mr. Fry apparently does, if God was like that (I don’t think God is, but granting the premise) then I wouldn’t want any part of worshiping that kind of God. You’re allowed to be as angry as you want at an abuser, an active one or an inactive one, on whatever scale you like. The rest is just detail.

  6. 106
    Duncan says:

    I want to thank Patrick for his remarks on Job, which saved me the trouble of writing along the same general lines. To this:

    “The vast majority of the text consists of Job loudly proclaiming that his punishment is arbitrary rather than just, and that he has done nothing to deserve it.”

    — I’d add, as I think Patrick already has pointed out, that not only does Job loudly proclaim that he has done nothing to deserve suffering, God agrees with him. And of course, the prelude to Job makes it clear as well: God doesn’t want to “punish” Job, he merely makes a bet with Satan about what will happen if he (God) withdraws his protection and lets Satan make him suffer. (By analogy, suppose X makes a bet with me about what Y will do if I unlock Y’s locked door and let X go in and torture Y; would anyone want to claim that only X is responsible, but I’m not responsible at all?) Someone mentioned the interpretation that God had been “tricked” by Satan into allowing this to happen. As Patrick has said of some other interpretations, this is not merely non-literal, it’s illiterate. But most Christians never read the Bible themselves, they just accept whatever interpretations they’ve heard in church.

    One interesting thing to me about the apologetic interpretations of Job that have been posted here, and all the others floating around, is what they show about people’s desire to avoid blaming powerful, prestigious people for the bad things they do. It’s not limited to gods, of course; they do the same about politicians, leaders, scientists, and many other people. The same excuses get made, too. In this case, it’s remarkable how much violence people are ready to inflict on the text to avoid uncomfortable conclusions.

    By the way, Patrick’s reading is very similar to that of Walter Kaufmann in his 1958 book The Faith of a Heretic, which devotes a long chapter to the problem of suffering that is still the best thing I’ve ever read on the subject. Kaufmann pointed out that most Jewish/Christian attempts to address the problem of suffering (or of evil, as it’s often framed) solve the problem by denying Yahweh’s omnipotence in order to save his perfect goodness; and he argued that in the Tanakh, at least, Yahweh’s omnipotence is constantly stressed, while his perfect goodness is not. In the book of Job and elsewhere, his goodness is not on the table. The New Testament tends to try to square the circle by asserting dogmatically his goodness and his power and his knowledge, which leads to difficulties that can only be avoided by misreading the text.

    Falstaff: ” … Job-as-the-first-novel-in-the-modern-sense-of-novel.” I think a better analogy would be to drama, especially Greek drama contemporaneous with the book of Job. The book is set up like a play, after all, and most of it is speeches.

  7. 107
    Grace Annam says:

    Myca:

    When someone “does something to you,” you’re allowed to say, “That was not okay. That was wrong. That was morally unacceptable.” Always.

    Falstaff:

    Absolutely agreed. There’s not question of even qualifying that, at least as far as I’m concerned.

    I want to agree, but I find myself thinking about the fellow we held down in a local parking lot awhile back. Long story short, he was a diabetic with crashing blood sugar (he had taken his insulin, but skipped breakfast). As we held him down to keep him from bolting into traffic, he was screaming at passers-by, “Help me! HELP ME!” We got him into handcuffs and when the paramedics arrived they did what you do: they administered oral glucose. In a few minutes, the man was recovering, and in about twenty minutes he was 99% normal, just a little shaky and hungry. He was also profoundly thankful.

    I’m also thinking of the many suicidal people I have taken against their will to the local psych ward, a few of whom have approached me months or years later and thanked me.

    Some of those suicidal people absolutely said, at the time, and later, words which added up to “That was not okay. That was morally unacceptable.”

    So, if I were to agree 100%, rather than 99.9%, there would have to be a caveat for the passage of time and change of circumstances, at the very least.

    Grace

  8. 108
    nobody.really says:

    Grace, I’m shocked. You would physically impose your will on another person – merely because you imagine you have a superior perspective about long-term consequences than that person does? Who do you think you are, God? Oh, I’m sorry – right-thinking people wouldn’t even extend such discretion to God….

    It’s fun to imagine Mirka shaking her inked fist at Amp: “How dare you bring me into existence only to confront me with challenges? You could have spared me all pain, made me more beautiful, caused me to better conform to my social environment, spared me this insane and dangerous drive to fight supernatural creatures, spared my mother’s life — or at least GIVEN ME BOLD COLORS! I hate sepia tones. All that was wholly within your power. Ok, I don’t honestly know which inks you have on hand, but I expect you could get a few pinks and blues from somewhere. Yet for your own inscrutable reasons you withhold all that from me. Well, Ficken. Dass.*

    [*Obscure Yiddish expression of frustration.]

  9. 109
    Grace Annam says:

    nobody.really:

    It’s fun to imagine Mirka shaking her inked fist at Amp: “How dare you bring me into existence only to confront me with challenges? You could have spared me all pain, made me more beautiful, caused me to better conform to my social environment, spared me this insane and dangerous drive to fight supernatural creatures, spared my mother’s life — or at least GIVEN ME BOLD COLORS! I hate sepia tones. All that was wholly within your power. Ok, I don’t honestly know which inks you have on hand, but I expect you could get a few pinks and blues from somewhere. Yet for your own inscrutable reasons you withhold all that from me. Well, Ficken. Dass.*

    Amp, I demand that you drop everything and create this image. Immediately.

    Also, this.

    Grace

  10. 110
    Myca says:

    Some of those suicidal people absolutely said, at the time, and later, words which added up to “That was not okay. That was morally unacceptable.”

    Totally. I’m just saying that we have the right to make the moral judgment … we might well be wrong about it or reconsider later.

    It’s a response to “who are you to question God,” which I really can’t imagine being the sort of thing you would ever say in reference to you and your work, Grace. ;)

    —Myca

  11. 111
    Ampersand says:

    That was awesome, N.R.!

    …but I feel it would have been a little more in-character for Mirka, instead of saying “caused me to better conform to my social environment,” to have said “caused my social environment to better conform to ME.” :-)

  12. 112
    hf says:

    @nobody.really: Can you hear yourself? Do you know why P does not equal NP?

    If there exists even one scenario where we can quickly* verify the answer to a problem if we have the answer in front of us, but we can’t quickly find the answer, then the general claim P=NP would be false. So even though nobody can disprove it yet, it’s clearly false. There are too many ways for it to fail.

    In order for a benevolent deity to be logically absurd, it suffices for there to be one event in history that said God would not allow.

    *for large values of “quickly”