Stephen Fry on God, drugs and sex

well this was a friend of mine who swears to me that it's true when the same-sex marriage law came that was passed by both houses of parliament in Britain it eventually went up to back in Palace and the Queen was in the room with the privy councillor have come for her to sign it and there were a couple of other Lords future pals she said well who'd thought 60 years ago there was this like pause and I thought oh my god what'd you say did you come to regret the denunciation earlier this year of an utterly evil capricious mean minded and stupid god no not in the least because you see I don't believe in God this was the the the the basic premise on which the question that an Irish journalist asked me he said well if you're wrong mr. Frey if you're wrong and there is a god what would you say to him so the whole thing is sort of premise on a premise it's a it's a supposition it's a hypothetical as they say in America it says it was of course but he did also say if you meet him at the pearly gates we are talking about a Christian God if you meet someone that you don't believe exists and what would you say well I would say how dare you those who didn't see it tell us how you came to conceive of an evil God a mean mind I don't conceive of one I'm talking about the universe as I see it yes just saying if there is a loving God how come children get bone cancer answer me that it's that simple it's not it's not a game I'm not going to be funny it's just well how can you begin to say there is a loving God and give children bone cancer so they howl and scream in agony and die or because I want them in heaven that's a ridiculous nonsense there can't be true it just can't be true so there is a lot of thinking to be done and I'm not undermining the thinking that the serious theologians do and the branch of scholarship that they embark on to try and justify pain and evil in the world and so I made the mistake in the modern world like of saying what I thought and one of the biggest errors that you can commit in our in our times is to be honest if asked a question more and I was a lot more on that in a minute because honesty can get you into trouble across a range of things especially oddly enough it gets you into trouble with moral religious people well it did on Twitter didn't it there was a viral explosion on Twitter always mostly favorable by a huge amount it was favorable because I think that's an obvious question it's in the simplest question we all ask about religion there's the obvious Prime 1 which is the what's actually known as the prime mover argument in religion which is if there is universe who made it but someone must have there must be a first cause and then any channel can say well then if it's God who made God and and and so on these are simple questions but they're beautiful like all the best questions in intellectual life in physics and other things they're very very simple and an extremely simple one if you're told God is loves you and loves the world and loves everybody's why does he call such a pawn or allow such a boring pain and 6th century BC philosophers who said if God Allah doesn't allow it then he isn't all-powerful it just happens without his permission and he's not all-powerful I'll come to the to the problem of pain yeah as it's called in a magazine wrote about this quite a bit but the the the Christian backlash earlier this year although it was outweighed by non-believers got so bad that the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in an interview had to weigh in on your favor yes because he's editions well is it to thing is he's a thinking man a very intelligent man and I think if there were a God one of the things he would want us all to do as much as possible is for us to use this extraordinary instrument he's given man more than any other creature and that is his ability to reason his reason deductively inductively and to to try and understand and embrace the real complexities of reality what she would not want us to do is to abandon intelligence and just shout and scream and hearson throw petrol bombs or the verbal equivalent of petrol bombs on Twitter Stephen Jay Gould the the zoologist panel intelligence proposed I think partly because he was from quite a religious background he proposed a sort of ceasefire in the war between reason and religion and it's it's called numb because the word people use to describe delicious food but it stands for non-overlapping magisteria and he takes it there are these two magisteria Magisterium being just a fancy word for a realm a domain so the two domains or realms or magisteria are science and religion and his proposal was that sounds to do with all the things science could deal with and anything he couldn't then religion could and religion could deal with all the stuff of religion corden anything it couldn't could give to science and then both sides would respectfully wave with each other across the chasm this is difficult because obviously science and this makes discoveries that are empirically testable and reproducible which fly in the face of any such ideas as transmigration of souls or of any ideas of literal interpretations of the Bible did you see Russell Brand's video by the way I guess I did yeah so he does he makes a similar point I guess to Gould in a sense he's saying there are certain things that science can't explain but if you actually decide to believe in science you have to accept the one big miracle that happened at the beginning which is the Big Bang good ads no question about what happened before it but that's exactly my point what happened before God then it's exactly the same argument meaningless it says basically logical collapses that point of Russell's straight away yes of listen there's this rather feeble thing that people says science doesn't know everything and the assumption therefore is it you can then proceed as if what you said is science knows nothing all right there isn't decided alive who claims that science knows everything any scientists would be incredibly disappointed if they felt that the end of science had come and that the last some had been done and that the last apprehension about the universe had been made I mean look at the Large Hadron Collider they're all terribly excited at the possibility that the Higgs boson field won't it discovered won't be proven and then then the standard model will have to be totally rewritten and that'll be something thrilling for scientists they if you want to hear something that a scientist usually says it's I don't know because that's basically the tool of Sciences is to take your ignorance and try and find out it's that simple the pleasure of finding things out as Richard Feynman called it now as humans we don't spend our time unless we are scientists 24 hours a day just finding things out we live we love we make mistakes we wonder why this happens to us in a meta physical emotional moral social sexual way we have all kinds of worries and fears and disturbing thoughts about life in the universe and science can't even begin to cover them and no scientist would claim that it does but that doesn't mean that Genesis is true that doesn't mean that Sunni Muslims are right to blow up Shiite Muslims it doesn't mean that that Hindus are right to blow up Muslims in India none of that follows from the basis that science doesn't know everything science doesn't know everything therefore I'm going to Ram my religion down your throat and tell these women what to wear in public and whether or not they can go to school how does that make sense let's go back to the more cerebral side of the argument that emerged earlier this year and it did go back to CS Lewis and the problem of pain and the question arose would you prefer to live in a world where an all-powerful God intervened in everything to stop pain and stop suffering because the CS Lewis argument is that if there is a God it wouldn't be an all-powerful God that intervened at every moment otherwise we'd have no free will yes that's the old I would absolutely the free will is usually given as but then let's conceive of a possibility that there is a God before universe was created who had the ability to build any kind of universe he wanted so it wouldn't pain or non pain wouldn't be an issue you might as well say well there's another universe that exists in which there's this thing called blim which makes your eyes boil and God has decided that you should have bloom and your eyes boil but if you pray it will go away well why why would you make blim why would you make pain it's not as if God not making pain there's universe without pain man sits there saying this God hasn't even given us pain so we have the option of not having it because we wouldn't know what pain was why would we conceive of it the Greeks quite rightly posited the idea of a Golden Age and they had a much better at apprehension of why the universe is the way it is wine the world where it is is that there was a golden age but our Christ the Greek Christ was the Titan Prometheus who loved man so much he wanted to give man divine spark so he took fire from heaven from Hephaestus his Forge and he gave it to man and Zeus was so furious he took prometheus changed him to the caucus mountains and because Prometheus was in a mortal a Titan he had his his liver torn out every single day was restored the next day toerner because he died he suffered for man and that was the Greeks idea that essentially if there is a God somehow they're angry that we've been given an equality to them we've been given their divine fire this year's controversy wasn't the first time you had a run-in with the religious if we could say this I mean a couple of years ago you found yourself having to ride a blog saying I am NOT an islamaphobe tell us why you wrote that I read it because I was afraid so it wasn't about Islamophobe it's that simple if I'm honest isn't it but what depends what you mean by phobe ferbots is fear in greek so i yet I'm afraid of not all it's because I'm not afraid of all Islamic people I'm a Christian fo I'm afraid of all kinds of people not automatically but I'm afraid of a certain kind of fundamentalist violent intolerance ignorance of afraid well the kind of the kind of intolerance you would say and you wrote another blog about this that would cause a fanatic to murder a cartoonist yes or a blogger in Bangladesh it's recently happened secular bloggers then and yeah I'm afraid of those things imbue who wouldn't be but of course I have no quarrel and I would hate to see an increase of any kind of intolerance or bigotry towards people going about their lives following their own devotional careers and their aims I mean you know the piety and belief of other people is not my business I'm not here to persuade people not to believe in God I'm absolutely not I happen not to and sometimes I'm asked to justify it as if it's a straw Denari thing not to believe in God so I do and sometimes I do so passionately but what I absolutely will not do is tell anybody to believe me then why should they they can listen to me if they want but if they want to believe in their God they want to Daniil at their altar and and bow in their direct in the direction of their God then they should have absolutely every right the only thing I have a quarrel with is if some elements of of that institutional religion or personal you know people have taken that written to do to the extent of performing violence and burning gay people and any of the other horrors that are taking place around the world last week on this program we convened a dialogue between the atheist Sam Harris and the reformed Islamists majid now was they both made the same point that the intellectual left is suppressed open debate that Islam it seems that you came to the same conclusion yes I don't like what's happened to the left I don't like the fact that the left has become it's become sort of so judgmental and so closed to reason and to innocence to liberal values and if I belong to any tradition it is to that started by perhaps Bertrand Russell that have a sort of liberal secular doubting but Russell's way ahead of anybody else in terms of rights for women and and so on but he was culturally conservative in the sense that he he believed in the value of education and reason open reason that is not questioned and I sometimes wonder that that some of the left are not becoming clerical in their attitudes let's move on a complete change of topics because you and fellow comedian Eliot Spencer got married this year so we can be sure that we're now in the 21st century but so surprisingly is the queen oh yes you heard about this well this was a friend of mine who swears to me that it's true he is extremely friendly with a chap who's and aquarii as the official word is like a courtier figure who works at Buckingham Palace and it's can't still be true of Australian legislation but it is true British legislation that if if an act is to be finally passed into law it must get what is known as the Royal Assent in other words she was signing a document that makes it law and so when the same-sex marriage law came that was passed by both houses of parliament in Britain and Commons and Lords it eventually went up to in 20 year 2014 summer at no summer yes summer 2014 oh he was too back in Palace and the Queen was in the wrong with the privy councillor had come for her to sign it and there were a couple of other Lords few pals she said well who thought 60 years ago there was just like pause or I thought oh my god what you're gonna say that such a bill could come to pass isn't he wonderful she was extremely the rainbow Queen yes very surprising when she's an heiress to crotches and she's met lots of fruity peculiar people in her life and any of them have been family friends although it must be said her grandfather was an absolute monster Joseph if there was a very famous scandal among some chuckled lord Beecham who was a very very senior member the House of Lords Libyan and liberal leader in the House of Lords which mattered then and he'd been having his way with various chauffeurs and footmen and things and it all got a bit too hot for him to handle his cousin that the Westminster maid who hated him handed him he ran for France so he wouldn't get arrested and have an Oscar Wilde situation and someone told King George the fifth about to be true and he said really I thought men like that shot themselves terrible I don't mean to laugh no I don't not really laughing that's an extraordinary English to say there wasn't a kind of universal joy in the gay community such as it is the news of your marriage is still some who say we fought for liberation to overthrow antiquated oppressive institutions like marriage now we're begging to join in I say to them I understand that well firstly I'd say of course that there is not a single gay person in religion who is forced to marry it's never never going to happen any more than that does to straight people and when I was young there was this my mother used to use the phrase because she read it in a magazine somewhere of the sort of hippie generation people could shacking up with each other she used to talk about and if he wanted to express a sort of anti bourgeois hippie-ish view as men and women men and women would live together without marrying and it was kind of Wow but slowly that either happened so it doesn't now I know plenty of straight couples who live together and haven't married and said to you who have married and it'll be the same with gay people but I understand that the the campaign for homosexual equality as it was originally called and then gay liberation and various other names it it took on a lot of the trappings of a political campaign that involved a very distinctive anti bulge wah anti patriarchal sort of attitudes along with feminism and various other things banned the bomb and a whole sort of there was a great sort of raft of issues that you could you could feel all somehow were opposed to the status quo and to the establishment and the fact that gay people have revealed to be some of them like myself to be shamelessly bourgeois and happily for the universities I apologize to those who thought that I've sold out but I'm afraid I never really bought in so as a change your life in in any respect or in most respects not in any I mean it has it illegal respect that I come come put my finger on exactly but I suppose it's something to do with wills and you know pretty ceasing and all other upsetting things but in terms of just emotionally so yes it does it does a wonderful feeling it's hard to explain I've had relations with people before that have lasted and time and felt that I've been with that person but there's something very special about well it's something very special but Elliott there's something very special about about the Act of Union being recognized by the state silly and yet has a definite different feel to it someone who's written and spoken extensively about deeply personal things from mental illness to your cocaine addiction one of the things perhaps I'm wrong in this but one of the things I think you haven't spoken a lot about is sex yeah is it is it a you shy to talk no good heavens I boy oh boy you and disgust you horrifically would talk about sex but my my first big talk about sex was an article I wrote which I did talk about I think in one of my autobiographies not I read for the Tattler magazine fella called Jonathan means a very fun writer himself was an assistant editor and he called me up I was about 24 some a couple years out of University and he said we're running a series of articles under the heading I don't dot and I've got this art critic says why he never goes on holiday this knowledge says why he'll never have pets this one why he doesn't drive is there anything you don't do because that's what it's about and I thought from it and I said well I don't do sex does that does that count 7 17 years I could hear his drool hitting the carpet yes please write that up so I wrote it is that true 17 years yeah a little bit that's right yeah again I voted unpleasant god I said what kind of God in creating human beings would then invite them to find delight in organs of the body that are parked exactly adjacent to or indeed share a function with the organs of excretion I said it's like like a Gestapo colonel taking his prison and throwing his luncheon assessment then go and eat there's your lunch and and it's so unkind and frankly all those damp tufted areas of the human body where there's strange odors how can anybody find them attractive and I wrote him I know about that in something what flick the switch there because obviously you came to know down casted areas of bodies and he seemed to have suggested a lyric here love flick the switch lifted the switch yeah I I think it was actually a number of things one of which is the mental health issue that we've you alluded to it had a rather big eruption in the mid 90s and it was after the dust had settled from this this particular episode and during which I got properly diagnosed as having bipolar disorder that I realized that all my life I had sort of tried to control my feelings and things and imagined everything should going to work and I worked at just astonishing rate and then I just thought well I'm fine you know and I found someone it just happened and that that's what that's what allowed sex to take place but I I'm certainly during the period in which British politicians who were very that now people would say homophobic but I'd say very least not gay friendly was there was one I remember one parliamentarian who's always going on about what you mean you don't know what men do to each other didn't or the bits and pieces they they put inside and around next to each other and it's disgusting I mean that's not right and so I was asked to do a talk at the Parliament at in the Westminster Hall when a particular MP was bringing in an edge of equality legislation and and I I said I've just done some search of it on this thing called the Google with could google it just happened and I said and I looked up anal sex and the first 7,000 references were two men having anal sex with women now it may be that that's I'm not saying that it's 1 in 7,000 acts of anal sex are gay or straight but let's imagine it's 70% all acts of anal sex taking place in the world at any one time are between American what so if that's your objection then you must be objecting to heterosexual let's let's we're we're going to have to bring this to a conclusion at some point fairly so you always say in bed isn't it yes I guess it probably has steered as a matter of fact I talk about sex it was bring it to a conclusion is that what we say yeah absolutely the the whole cocaine thing yeah I just briefly like to touch on only because you've given a long list of palaces the House of Lords outs of Commons Buckingham Palace where you did cocaine it's a it's a it's an extensive list but I'm actually wondering more broadly whether that's the thing that kept you going through this incredibly productive period where you send me on television every five minutes well it is I'm not recommended it's and I regret it I really do regret it but I'm very conscious of having to sound like someone who is a kind of sorrowing apologetic figure too saying what a fool he's been which is a sort of boring thing to be and on the other hand suggesting that there's anything good to be had from from these narcotics which I don't believe so what I do say just to bring it back to mental health because it does matter to me this is I know it sounds like an excuse to say well I know i bipolar disorder so I took again and I drank a lot but just imagine for a moment that you do have a condition in which your moods can change without your ability than back in big ways you become hugely manic or you become terribly depressed and you don't know that you've got a disease you just feel either ridiculously energized or you feel appalling the alone that suicidal there is there are two things you can reach for in our world when you're not you know diagnosed and they are uppers and downers they're alcohol and they are they are cocaine speed whatever it might be things that you can control your mood with so this what's known it's self medication people go through is an attempt to try and control the weather in their own mind because they're yet been told that actually it's a disease and we may have some drugs that can help you that illegal and probably slightly less dangerous and less expensive but so you you become dependent or I became dependent on basically just taking these mixtures of drugs and keeping an an even keel but of course it's a it's a false it's a false control because each down when he is a bigger crash and then that results in a bigger up fun enough being a mania as well but it did mean I took a but I never took cope when I was working I mean I wouldn't do it on stage or in a television studio or anything like that it was always I used to call it to rather creepily pudding it was there was no thing to have you know what you call a sticky I guess at the end of a meal that I'm so glad it's over it was it was a ridiculous situation to be in and I've seen it done terrible harm doing terrible harm to people let me finally come to one of the mainstays of Australian television at the ABC for a very long time has been the Qi program you are leaving it much to the regret I imagine of legions of fans you're going to be replaced by a very funny woman yeah as it turns out but it must be like the end of a marriage or something like that it is it was a wrench to say goodbye but I done thirteen out of what will be at least twenty six because they're each directly to a letter in the alphabet and having got to em I thought well if I'm going to stop best stop now and I'm absolutely thrilled that sandy toxic is taking a look because I think she'll be super well has been a bit of an issue with Qi hasn't it gender yes in some people's eyes it's a very difficult one because Caitlin Moran is a superb writer and journalist who we've asked many times but she had she said you know publicly when writing an article about this issue and she said is I can't think of a single woman of self-respect who would accept going on such a program because it's so obvious they would be on as a token woman so if you've got that problem and I can see why she would say that if I were I wouldn't go on say oh they want a woman on do they and maybe that's Jenna this is the problem as we stop you know bulken izing the entire thing it's so difficult and if these people are counting s Nissa T's and gender then it's all frankly just such a bore and these are things to walk away and you are walking away and I have to ask one final question is the obvious one what next hmm well I have Donna just done this year documentary series in Central America and I think I'm putting to bed documentaries as well for a while and comes rating a bit on on some performing and I've written the series for TV that I'm going to be in I could tell you know more about it because it's delicate negotiation you have to kill me yes I would have to kill you and that would be a bad way to go at the end of an interview Stephen Fry we thank you very much it's wonderful to speak to you again and next time hopefully you will find out more about your projects and about God you

Channel: ABC News (Australia)

Views: 513,004

Keywords: Australia, Stephen Fry (Celebrity), God, Cocaine (Abused Substance), Sex (Quotation Subject), Sexual Intercourse (Literature Subject), Marriage (Quotation Subject), Atheism (Religion), marriage equality, gay marriage, gay rights, Homosexuality (Quotation Subject), QI

Id: zBy3hEpRNm8

Length: 27min 57sec (1677 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 04 2015