Stephen Fry stunned an Irish television presenter on with his blunt assessment on the nature of God.
The British TV presenter and avowed atheist was interviewed by Gay Byrne for Irish television channel RTE’s Sunday night programme, The Meaning of Life.
Byrne asked Fry: “Suppose it’s all true, and you walk up t the pearly gates and you are confronted by God. What will Stephen Fry say to Him, Her or It?”
In his reply, which an astonished Byrne ultimately described as “the longest answer to that question that I ever got in this entire series”, Fry unflinchingly denounces a “capricious, mean-minded, stupid God” and declares that if He did create this universe, He is a “maniac”.
“How dare you!” Fry imagines saying to the Almighty. “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.”
“Do you think you’re going to get in?” asks Byrne.
“No,” Fry responds. “But I wouldn’t want to. I wouldn’t want to get in on His terms. They’re wrong.”
“The moment you banish Him, your life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner and more worth living, in my opinion,” Fry goes on to say.
The YouTube clip of the segment, which was first posted on 28 January as a preview of Sunday night’s show, has already had over 3.5 million views.