Atheist Stephen Fry Delivers Incredible Answer When Asked What He Would Say If He Met God - http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015...
Jan 31, 2015
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""I’ll say: bone cancer in children, what’s that about? How dare you how dare you create a world where there is such misery that’s not our fault? 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? The god who created this universe, if he created this universe, is quite clearly a maniac, an utter maniac, totally selfish. We have to spend our lives 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.”"
- Mark H
Attenboroughesque :)
- Eivind
see also Pratchett's Patrician :)
- Pete's Got To Go
God might reply, "when you can create a world without injustice and pain, then we can talk"
- Todd Hoff
Worl, as an individual I can't. Nor Stephen. Nor Todd. But God? God *could*. Question is, why not? Ah, theodicy.
- Pete's Got To Go
Thus, god is not perfect.
- Back to just Joe
God never said he was, it's people,that said that. And perfection doesn't aloow for free will, which is a handy thing to have.
- Todd Hoff
Granted that the creator of the universe is not perfect. I would also say the force/energy/being is not all knowing either. (Edit to add- I would say that the creator is an experimenter.)
- Back to just Joe
You guys are in full swing here but I guess I'd ask what your definition of perfect is?
- MoTO Boychick Devil
Generally, that which can't be improved. What is improved? There you go.
- Todd Hoff
I think for a lot of us "perfect" is "what satisfies me"
- MoTO Boychick Devil
"The Problem of Evil" is what led me to abandon my faith when I was 11 or 12. No one around me at the time was willing or able to provide an answer to it. I've since reconciled it for myself, more or less, but it's an ongoing struggle, I must admit.
- Brent Schaus
Recently, for example, I've been reading "The Gulag Archipelago", and it's rattling my faith. I think a part of me seeks to learn about these things for that reason: to rattle my faith, and see how it fares. Probably why I stay on FriendFeed, too LOL
- Brent Schaus
Yeah, The Problem of Evil in the wake of 9/11 and the subsequent lies leading to the invasion of Iraq broke my belief as well. Coincidentally, I started reading a lot of Philip K Dick novels at the time, and his theodicy is probably the only one I'd be willing to believe: God isn't actually omnipotent.
- Victor Ganata
I think Mr. Fry got it in one. Cancer. Why would anyone allow that if they had the power to prevent or stop it? And if they don't have that power, why the hell should we blindly hand over our lives to them?
- Heather
Okay, God gets rid of cancer. Then what?
- MoTO Boychick Devil
If God is omnipotent and benevolent, why does cancer even exist in the first place?
- Victor Ganata
*reserves spot to comment from beyond the grave*
- Micah
Ya'll are going with the assumption that a creator thinks like its creation and feels as its creation feels. That's where modern religion seems to go off the rails in my mind.
- Michael W. May
A Baha'i friend once asked me 'If you met God and he asked you what you had done with your life, what would you say?' I said 'I might ask the same of you.'
- Pete's Got To Go
Could an imperfect human being possessing free will exist in such a way to rail against his creator (or really against the decaying, entropic universe he resides in) if everything was perfect, self-sustaining, and infinite? Guess it depends on what your assumptions or beliefs about God is. If it has human-like attributes but imbued with supreme power, then perhaps we can say the existence of things like cancer are evil. But if it is an unknowable supreme being that sets a finite universe in motion and sits outside our universe-bound frame of reference? I don't think so.
- Mo Kargas
I dunno, wouldn't an omniscient and benevolent God understand and empathize with its creation?
- Victor Ganata
I tend to think we imagined God as the omnipotent, omniscient version of ourselves, warts and all. Where we are vengeful, capricious, insecure - God is the Most vengeful, capricious, insecure. I tend to think that *if* there is a "creator," it is indifferent to us entirely. I can imagine that creator's response to Mr. Fry: "Cancer, blindness, bugs...they all fit within a cycle of creation, sustenance and destruction that plays out on various scales *literally* everywhere in the Universe. You weep, Mr. Fry, for the suffering of human children whilst blithely using antibacterial soap, eating chicken, and paying taxes to support your country's military. I have no more or less concern for children with bone cancer than I have for the entire planets consumed in fire by the dying expansion of the star that once sustained them. How else can I be of assistance?"
- That one guy. Bren.
Inconsistent human qualities applied to something beyond us.
- Mo Kargas
No really, nobody answered my question, what next?
- MoTO Boychick Devil
Well, ok. About what are we talking? The utterly apart Islamic God of Tawhid? The immanent yet transcendent God of the Incarnation? The Demiurge of the Gnostics? The utterly ineffable of Lovecraft? Cos if we don't know *that* all the rest of it is wandering in a maze.
- Pete's Got To Go
But the original question isn't about "next". It's about why things are the way they are in the first place.
- Victor Ganata
The monotheistic God Fry is likely talking of is *claimed* to value humans. But a Creator does not necessarily have to value or care, at least in a way which is understandable to us.
- Pete's Got To Go
Sure, the easiest form of theodicy that doesn't do away with God entirely is to say that God isn't what we think God is, but the obvious logical consequence of that line of thinking is therefore many of the world's religions are utter bullshit.
- Victor Ganata
It also assumes that we are the snake in the cage, not the mouse bred for food.
- Johnny
Well, and quite, Victor.
- Pete's Got To Go
The original quote assumes both that God is powerful enough to affect th course of the world and demands worship. The God of many religions fits that. If you change the parameters, you are creating a new context.
- Heather
That context will change from human to human regardless, due to that initial assumption.
- Mo Kargas
Heather, like Isaac Newton's Clockwork Universe. Put all the pieces together and let it run.
- Johnny
Letting it run, to me, sounds like not having investment in the proceedings. Which (again just my perspective) would not require devotion and worship. If God made everything and walked away, why follow rules or pray?
- Heather
The fact is that many world religions explicitly state that God is active in the proceedings of the Universe, though.
- Victor Ganata
OTOH, we give our lives over to many entities that aren't omnipotent or omniscient but are nonetheless more powerful and/or (allegedly) more knowledgeable than we are—government, the free market, etc.—so if God isn't omnipotent nor omniscient, that isn't necessarily a reason not to worship or offer to service to Him/Her/Them.
- Victor Ganata
Not all NDE's are of heaven.
- Mike Nencetti
ooo dış mihraks fiğdini bulmasyone. otporumsu paralelizasyon
- furi