Stephen Fry on confronting god after death

Dan_Solo wrote: »

Since, as I was saying, nobody has suggested doing this, why are you insisting on continuing to use it as an example of those awful down your neck type atheists? You know, the ones the bible bashers can't seem to actually identify unless they lie through the teeth about them?

shruikan2553 wrote: »

eh, not as many as usual. I think they were able to direct their annoyance at a person this time. Took awhile for them to turn up, were probably having to sneak home from mass to prevent them being attacked by the roving gangs of atheists.

Who told you I believe in the Bible?

conorh91 wrote: »

Well that's reasonable in its own way. If God represents perfect virtue, it would appear sensible to conclude that He is responsible for inculcating the human condition with virtious traits which in turn give rise to virtuous acts, and not evil traits and evil acts.

Free will is free will. The good outcomes of free will derive from God; the adverse outcomes ultimately derive from man supplanting original justice.

Well, so the teaching goes.

BS. Who is that is supposed to have made us as we are?

If an all powerful all knowing being makes us (in his image apparently) as flawed creatures capable of great evil, then he cannot fault or punish us when we commit evil. We are only acting in the way he intended (and which he presumably foresaw if he is all seeing).

And that also fails to explain the evil and suffering caused by non-human factors, such as the insects referred to by Fry, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tsunamis etc.

Nor does it get him off the hook for his own genocides. Are you saying all Egyptian first borns were bad people? Or everybody killed by the flood.

If god exists, he's a prick. I'm thankful he doesn't though.

billyhead wrote: »

Well if they are Catgolics and act upon what they preach i.e 10 commandments surely it keeps them on the straight and narrow.

I really hate the argument that being christian or religious makes people better or somehow more virtuous.

For me, its often the opposite way in practice.

Firstly, because there are many "devout" christians tend to be the most judgmental, bitter people who tend to define their own righteousness by how vehemently they condemn people who don't conform to their religions rules - and usually only the negative rules, such as no abortion, homosexuality, children out of wedlock, etc. People like Youth Defence and Coir in Ireland, and the religious right in the US.

They tend not to place much value on the rules which call for them to be kind, virtuous, forgiving and to refrain from judging others however.

(I said many, not all christians. They less devout often ignore the rules on sex etc but focus more on the be nice bits)


Secondly however, I think people who take their morals solely from religion don't always believe in doing good for good's own sake, but simply out of fear of gods punishment or desire to be rewarded in the after life.

Atheists who try to live their live morally however do so simply because the see it as the right way to live and because of their respect from their fellow man. We don't expect to see any reward for our behaviour in the after life, and we know that our kindness and good will will often not be rewarded in the here and now either. But we do it simply because thats how we wish to live our lives.

I'm not trying to argue atheists are better people, but I think our motives for doing good can be described as less selfish.

Mars Bar wrote: »

I've seen people say this a lot and they are all fúcking wrong.

Fry made his career in writing comedy and acting (and then presenting). Himself, Hugh and Emma Thompson made their fame through the cambridge footlights at the Edinburgh festival and they grew from there.
He just happens to have a lot to say. He knows he sounds posh and he acknowledges the fact that for some bizarre reason people take his opinion more seriously coz he is well spoken. He isn't famous solely BECAUSE he has a lot to say.

For those that do like him for his social commentary (and there are manner) it's not only how he says it, but more importantly what he actually has to say.

Grayson wrote: »

But a lot of it sounds like it was made up to justify other stuff. And it all makes sense if you live in a world where magic exists. And those jewish tribes did. Things like illnesses were caused by demons. Bad luck was divine intervention against you.

take the devil. The devil and hell are central parts of christian mythology. There's no mention of the devil until relatively late in jewish thought. It was about 600bc when he finally popped his head up.

the soul didn't even exist. The first person to say we had an immortal soul was pythagoras. It was co-opted in later because it fit with everything else.

The christian image of God and salvation came from St. Augustine of Hippo. He was previously a Zoroastrian. He also felt profound guilt over a love affair that went bad. A lot of the christian outlook on sex and guilt came from him.

The Christian church, along with it's dogma and doctrine, came from a lot of different sources. Some of it came from other religions and some came from the early founders of they church. And those guys had baggage of heir own that centuries of Christians got lumbered with.

I always thought it was history books, not science, which were the greatest argument against the abrahamic (or any) religion.

We know that the Jewish god started out as one of many gods, and I believe in the original Jewish version of the tale of Moses, god sent the plagues to Egypt to prove that he was more powerful than the Egyptian gods.

I believe he was also borrowed from or heavily influenced by a pre-existing Cannite god as well.

We also can trace various concepts within Christianity which were co-opted from other religions and beliefs.

So if you look back through religion in various different communities, you. Can deconstruct the narrative to see which parts were added by who and when, which undermines the whole idea this was a single coherent narrative.

Even the compete change in gods demeanour between the old and new testaments, from being a complete dick to being all warm and cuddly should tell you it's not a cohesive story.

Since when did the being responsible for multiple genocides suddenly become all about forgiveness?

Woodville56 wrote: »

Indeed ! Can't understand why programmers would think that this " personality"s views on organized religion is of any great relevance to us in the scheme of things or why TV license fees are wasted on "import personalities" for this type of show ? I'm sure we could come up with plenty of home grown believers and non believers for this programme whose views are just as (or even more) worthy than Mr Fry's pompous blatherings. Which begs the question where is the great demand for import tv personalities coming from - dont we have enough interesting people here to populate shows such as the Late Late Show etc rather than regurgitating "B" or "C" rated "celebs" from abroad ? I'm not being insular here nor am I having a go at Mr. Fry because of his sexuality or his atheistic views - I'm just asking the question who cares what he thinks or believes ? Are his opinions or rants what we want to be watching on prime time tax payer funded TV? I don't have strong pro or anti religious views, for me each to his own spirituality. As for Mr Fry, good luck to him with his beliefs or unbeliefs, but why do the powers that be in RTE feel he's worth an "extended" Meaning of Life - don't we have any articulate theist or athiest contributors at home to save us from this over hyped over indulgent rubbish ?

I care. That was the very first one of those meaning of life programmes I've ever seen, or ever want to see.

Woodville56 wrote: »

Gay Byrne is no theologian so the excellence of Fry's answer must be seen against him pushing an open door unchallenged. He's been hawking this anti religion thing about for quite some time now and being an actor, he puts in a well polished performance - helps keep his media profile up too I suppose. If he's so angry and aghast at a deity who permits suffering and disasters to befall people, I'd love to know what his rationale is for when bad things happen good people ? If he doesn't believe in the existence of a vengeful God, how does he explain suffering in his atheistIc mindset? Seems to me his logic would be something along the lines of "ah well, sometimes sh*t happens "

It is much easier to understand why bad things happen for an atheist. We know that man is a flawed creature, prone to anger, greed, carelessness etc.

We know the natural world operates under its own processes, many of which we now clearly understand.

We know why most diseases occur, how they can be prevented (it at all) and how they are spread.

In each case, it's a matter of examining the situation and reaching our conclusions from there.

We don't need to be provided with any neat explanation for the unknown or unfortunate - we prefer to examine the facts and gain our own understanding of what actually happens.