Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry

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Stephen Fry (1957–) is a British actor, comedian, director, and author who also happens to be a gay skeptical humanist^[1] atheist.^[2] Fry is well known for hosting the quiz show QI and starring in shows such as A Bit of Fry and Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster (not to mention the Blackadder series, all alongside friend and comedy partner Hugh Laurie), and has written several books and documentaries. He suffers from bipolar disorder and is the current President of the mental health charity Mind, which seeks to publicise mental health issues and to reduce the stigma associated with them.

Views[edit]

Religion[edit]

Fry is an atheist, and in an interview titled The Importance of Unbelief had this to say:

It’s interesting. Atheism comes into rather a bad press and I suppose I’d rather describe myself as a humanist[.] I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe there is a God. If I were to believe in a god l would believe in gods. I think monotheism is the really ghastly thing. That is the absolutely staggering to me misapprehension. I can perfectly see why anybody might imagine that each thing, each thing that grows, each phenomenon [that] accompanies us on our journey through life, the sky, the mountains, spirits of nature. I can imagine why man would wish to endow them with an inner something, an inner animus that they would call the god of that thing. I can see that. It’s a beautiful and charming way of looking at it and I can understand the Greek idea that there are these you know these principles of lightning or of war or of wisdom and to embody them, to personify them into a Athena or Ares or whichever god you want makes enormous sense, but to say that there is one only god who made it all and who is… Yeah, that is just… What? Why? Who said? Where? Come on.^[3]

He has criticized the Roman Catholic Church as doing more harm than good, referring to: the crusades, the Inquisition, covering up of child abuse, its claim that condoms do not prevent AIDS, executing witnesses that the earth revolves around the sun, being a century or three late to denouncing the transatlantic slave trade, its conspicuous absence from even local Italian politics as they ignored the Holocaust, raping and violating countrysides and even an entire continent, and not giving the rest of the earth any of their treasure back like most museums now do when under pressure to repatriate artifacts.^[4] And on top of that, they did it all while wearing even sillier hats than pirates: yo ho, yo ho, a papist's life for me. Fetch aft the rum sacramental wine, Darby.

Pseudoscience[edit]

He takes a dim view of pseudosciences such as homeopathy, alternative medicine, ESP, and astrology, and is a fan of James Randi.^[5] He once said, "if there’s a word that drives me mad it’s “energy” used in a nonsensical way—don’t get me started!"^[5]

Politics[edit]

Fry is a social democrat and liberal and has usually tended to vote for the Labour Party, though he's been critical of the Third Way. He also supported the alternative vote in the 2011 British alternative vote referendum.^[6][7]

He is a critic of political correctness and sided with Jordan Peterson on the issue, stating that political correctness doesn't work and calling Donald Trump and Brexit failures of the left rather than triumphs of the right.^[8]

Works[edit]

• Mythos (2017, ISBN 978-0718188726, Michael Joseph)
• Heroes (2018)

External links[edit]

• Official website
• Fry's Twitter page
• Stephen Fry, waxing eloquently on his religious beliefs

References[edit]