Faux Rage

Pitiable, Risible Stephen Fry

Poor old Stephen Fry.  There are few things more pathetic than the moral indignation of an ageing atheist.  And, sadly, Stephen in his dotage appears to be growing in his particular moral outrage.

Stephen does not believe in God's existence.  His reason?  There is EEEEEvil in the world!  He works himself up into a lather telling us that the Creator of such eeeeeevil must be hated and rejected, were He to exist.  But Stephen Fry, either consciously or unconsciously, is holding himself up to ridicule.

He was asked recently by a media interviewer what he would say to God if he were to die (which is a certainty) and were confronted by Him (also a certainty).  Suddenly amoral Stephen got all morally indignant.  It almost sounded like he was trying to deflect his own deep sense of guilt and blame, as in, "I have done bad things, but God has done worse than me."

In his imaginary conversation with God, Fry says he would tell him: “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?”

Now, it's somewhat embarrassing to his argument that poor old Stephen appears to hold to antiquated notions of right and wrong, misery and felicity.
  Apparently  no-one has told him back along the line (or maybe he wilfully has suppressed the memory) that since in his world view there is only matter, and that matter is brute and neither right nor wrong, all that mere matter can give us is a brute, deterministic world.  Concepts and categories such as fault, misery, evil, capriciousness, and injustice have no reference point, no standard, have no meaning whatsoever and cannot possibly exist.  They are fatuous middle-class bourgeois constructs.  They are devoid of meaning.  Useless twaddle.  Nonsensical.  Contradictions in terms. 


Therefore, all his moral outrage over evil in the world is mere bluster, the empty bluster of a wilful fool.  Or, perhaps Stephen at this point is mentally unstable.  Or, maybe he knows his clinging to an atheistic world is a charade, a tortuous self-dissembling, of which, if truth be told, Stephen on some deep level of consciousness is aware.  But, caught out by a sense of deeply suppressed guilt, he prefers to double down with even more splenetic outbursts of faux moral outrage. 

Pressed by Byrne over how he would react if he was locked outside the pearly gates, Fry says: “I would say: ‘bone cancer in children? What’s that about?’  “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?”

On how to explain the wonders of the world, Fry then launches an another attack on all seeing, all knowing God creator.  “Yes, the world is very splendid but it also has in it insects whose whole lifecycle 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.

“It’s perfectly apparent that he is monstrous. Utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.”

Come on.  There is something deeply offensive and unbecoming when someone, who knows better, plays the hypocrite.  Let's rephrase Stephen's little outburst so as to remove the hypocrisy and make it more consistent with his atheism:

There are plenty of things which offend superstitious and ignorant people.  For example, people might get wound up about bone cancer in children. They insist upon bringing bourgeois middle class values into a value-free world. What’s that about?’  Let's get this straight: there ain't anything wrong with bone cancer in children.  There ain't anything right or wrong, period.  There just is what is.  Get over it.

There are some small minded, superstitious people who try to make out the world is splendid, glorious or good.  Nah.  Such concepts are bourgeois gobbledygook.  Yes, to the sentimental or feeble minded the world may be splendid in a kind of emotive way, but it also has in it insects whose whole lifecycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. They eat outwards from the eyes. That is neither good nor bad, splendid nor ugly.  Is a stone good or bad?  Sentient life is mere brute matter, no higher nor lower than a stone.  To hold to anything else is vanity and a self-parodying untruth.

It's only when you lay aside such antiquated notions that belong to a primitive past that you face the final liberation.   Only then does life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion. And, let me remind you, my opinion is the result of the absolute causation of matter. It is neither right nor wrong, correct or incorrect.  It just is. And so is yours. Deal with it. 

Will the real Stephen Fry please stand up, sans the faux moral outrage and the self-parodied dissimulation.