Brian Cox (not the astronomer) is an actor who often plays brusque, rude, loud characters, and he’s usually, at least superficially, a bad guy. So of course he turns out to be an atheist in real life.
Now, he’s got some spicy words for the Bible and religion, which he ultimately calls “stupid”—mostly because of the “patriarchal” lens it puts on the world.
“We created that idea of God and we created it as a control issue,” he continued on the podcast. “It’s also a patriarchal issue. That’s how it started and it’s essentially patriarchal. We haven’t given enough scope to the matriarchy and I think we need to move matriarchically.”
“We have to go more towards a matriarchy because the mothering thing is the thing which is the real conditioning of our lives,” he explained. “Our fathers don’t condition us ‘cause they’re too bloody selfish, but our mothers have to because they have an umbilical [cord],” he said, adding that women’s “umbilical relationship” to the their children contrasts a father’s: “Men do not have that, they’re just sperm banks—moveable sperm banks that walk around and come and go.”
A “matriarchal” society makes a lot more sense, Cox said, but the “propaganda” in the Bible gets in society’s way of this world view. “It’s Adam and Eve,” he continued, “The propaganda goes right the way back—The Bible is one of the worst books ever, for me, from my point of view because it starts with the idea that Adam’s rib—that out of Adam’s rib, this woman was created. I don’t believe it… ‘cause they’re stupid.”
Instead of this patriarchal worldview taken from the bible, Cox said, society should “honor” women and “give them their place.”
He ultimately concludes that people “need” religion because “they need some kind of truth,” but “they don’t need to be told lies.” And The Bible is “not the truth,” he stressed.
That’s all a bit overly simplistic, but he was on a roll.
Maybe the other one, Professor Brian Cox, will get crankier as he gets older and less pretty and grows into his name?
I hear there’s a vacancy for a horseman. X-D
I think of him mostly as Agamemnon. (But he’s also played Churchill.) X-D
“I hear there’s a vacancy for a horseman.”
Oh please, no. All that “horsemen” BS did no favours to atheism and just gave the words of four men undue weight.
Meh. If we should have gods at all, I vote for Ganesha. And David Blaine, from the South Park episode about Blainism. .https://youtube.com/watch?v=nAarndPjoOs
He played Hannibal Lecktor (dunno why the spelling change) in a decent 1986 adaptation of Red Dragon.
Style and bearing much like Brendan Gleeson (who played Menelaus, younger brother of Cox’s Agamemnon, in Troy).
Of course, he’ll be cancelled for this.
One of the (many) reasons ‘Dogma’ is one of my all time favorite movies is Salma Hayek’s rant about how she wrote god as a woman, but her editors were all male, so, there you have it.
@ Rob Grigjanis, # 5: My favorite line in that movie was about God “dropping a church roof on 34 parishioners as they were groveling out a hymn to His Majesty.”
I lived in Ghana for a while and was hosted by an Ashanti chief who ascended through his aunt The lineage is matriarchal.
I asked why at some point and he said,
mothers baby, fathers maybe.The Pelasgian goddess identified as Cybelé presided over what seemed to have originally been a matriarchal society and prior to patriarchal follies.
I will never like Brian Cox more than in his role as Dr. Waldman in Long Kiss Goodnight:
https://youtu.be/aC6J0CesVT0?t=44
Good for him. One of my favorite actors and I like him even more now.
I like him as an actor, but get sick of hearing of his “anti-woke” rants which only show he often doesn’t really know what he’s talking about.