Thursday, 5 February 2015
Wednesday, 4 February 2015
TL:DR - Barnett vs Fry
I have a lot of time for Stephen Fry. I find him clever, witty, kind-hearted and often very funny. And it just so happens that this week something he said has gone viral on the internet. Everyone's already talking about it so I'll just let you watch it...
It's a good question, voiced angrily and with passion by a man in the public eye known for his intellect and quiet polite demeanour, all of which give it extra impact. This is the kind of thing that any faith has to be robust enough to weather, or else be discarded. People have already been responding, and the responses have fallen into two categories. There's Giles Fraser's 'I Don't Believe In The God Fry Doesn't Believe In Either', which hears Fry saying he can't believe in a God who is such evil maniac to allow the suffering he does and replies "Well it's a good job he isn't like that. God is actually very loving." but for me that is too vague and doesn't really answer the question. If Fry is mistaken in his idea of God as a "capricious...evil...maniac" and Fraser's loving, good God is the reality then why, as Fry puts it, do there exist small parasitic insects that burrow into your eyes and eat them from the inside out? We're back to square one. (Incidentally I also don't think God is capricious because if I was a capricious God and someone told me I was unacceptable and evil, they wouldn't have long left to say anything else! And I wouldn't use a burrowing eye-worm to do it either. True psychopaths don't murder by proxy.)
The other response doing the rounds is Pete Greig's 'Amen to Fry's Atheism', which actually attempts a little theology and some helpful anecdotes, but for me is still too vague. It talks about God actually sharing our suffering with us, but this can come across as very disingenuous, like when you tell a friend about something awful happening to you and they sympathetically reply "Oh yeah, I feel your pain." They don't. They mean well but they just don't.
Before going any further, I would recommend Krish Kandiah's response, which to me best addresses the question that's actually being asked. And in a lot fewer words than I'm about to use...
It's a good question, voiced angrily and with passion by a man in the public eye known for his intellect and quiet polite demeanour, all of which give it extra impact. This is the kind of thing that any faith has to be robust enough to weather, or else be discarded. People have already been responding, and the responses have fallen into two categories. There's Giles Fraser's 'I Don't Believe In The God Fry Doesn't Believe In Either', which hears Fry saying he can't believe in a God who is such evil maniac to allow the suffering he does and replies "Well it's a good job he isn't like that. God is actually very loving." but for me that is too vague and doesn't really answer the question. If Fry is mistaken in his idea of God as a "capricious...evil...maniac" and Fraser's loving, good God is the reality then why, as Fry puts it, do there exist small parasitic insects that burrow into your eyes and eat them from the inside out? We're back to square one. (Incidentally I also don't think God is capricious because if I was a capricious God and someone told me I was unacceptable and evil, they wouldn't have long left to say anything else! And I wouldn't use a burrowing eye-worm to do it either. True psychopaths don't murder by proxy.)
The other response doing the rounds is Pete Greig's 'Amen to Fry's Atheism', which actually attempts a little theology and some helpful anecdotes, but for me is still too vague. It talks about God actually sharing our suffering with us, but this can come across as very disingenuous, like when you tell a friend about something awful happening to you and they sympathetically reply "Oh yeah, I feel your pain." They don't. They mean well but they just don't.
Before going any further, I would recommend Krish Kandiah's response, which to me best addresses the question that's actually being asked. And in a lot fewer words than I'm about to use...
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