The Acid House 1997 - Atahualpa - Rumpole of the Bailey TV - The Judge 2014 - The People vs Larry Flint 1996 - Depeche Mode - The Theory of Everything 2014 - Robert Tressell - Salman Rushdie - Morgan Freeman TV - Philip Edwards - Spitting Image TV - House of Cards US 2013-2018 - Paul Davies - Lilyhammer 2013 - Gomorrah TV - Proving God TV - Mark Twain - Boys from the Blackstuff TV - America: Faith on the Front Line TV -
I’m getting a wee bit fed up with all this self-justification ... I made you cunts in my own image ... That cunt Nietzsche was wide of the mark when he said I was dead. I’m not dead. I just didn’t give a fuck. The Acid House 1997 starring Maurice Roeves & Stephen McCole & Garry Sweeney & Jenny McCrindle & Simon Weir & Iain Andrew & Kevin McKidd & Michelle Gomez & Tam Dean Burn & Ewen Bremner & Martin Clunes & Jemma Redgrave et al, director Paul McGuigan
God – the cunt’s gonna turn us into an insect. ibid. Bob
Your emperor may be a great prince; I do not doubt it, seeing that he has sent his subjects so far across the waters; and I am willing to treat him as a brother. As for your pope of whom you speak, he must be mad to speak of giving away countries that do not belong to him. As for my faith, I will not change it. Your own God, as you tell me, was put to death by the very men He created. But my God still looks down on His children. Atahualpa, Inca Chief, on hearing Pope Alexander VI declaring Peru a possession of Spain
What puzzles the ordinary fellow is, If God is all wise and perfectly good, then why on Earth did he put Evil in the world? Rumpole of the Bailey s2e1: Rumpole and the Man of God, defendant, ITV 1979
You’re asking me if I believe in God? I’m seventy-two with Stage Four cancer – what choice do I have? The Judge 2014 starring Robert Downey junior & Robert Duvall & Vera Farmiga & Vincent D’Onofrio & Jeremy Strong & Billy Bob Thornton & Sarah Lancaster & David Krumholtz & Emma Tremblay et al, director David Dobkin, father to son
God is working through me. Don’t you see that? The People vs Larry Flint 1996 starring Woody Harrelson & Courtney Love & Cody Block & Edward Norton & Richard Paul & James Cromwell & Donna Hanover & Crispin Glover & Vincent Schiavelli & Brett Harrelson & Ryan Post et al, director Milos Forman
Girl of sixteen
Whole life ahead of her
Slashed her wrists
Bored with life
Didn’t succeed
Thank the Lord
For small mercies
Fighting back the tears
Mother reads the note again
Sixteen candles burn in her mind
She takes the blame
It’s always the same
She goes down on her knees
And prays
[Chorus x 2]
I don’t want to start
Any blasphemous rumours
But I think that God’s
Got a sick sense of humour
And when I die
I expect to find Him laughing. Depeche Mode, Blasphemous Rumours
‘I had a slight problem with the whole celestial dictator premise.’ The Theory of Everything 2014 starring Eddie Redmayne & Felicity Jones & Charlie Cox & Emily Watson & Simon McBurney & David Thewlis & Maxine Peake & Harry Lloyd & Charlotte Hope et al, director James Marsh, Hawking to bird
But supposing that bodily death was not the end. Suppose there was some kind of a God? If there were, it wasn’t unreasonable to think that the Being who was capable of creating such a world as this and who seemed so callously indifferent to the unhappiness of His creatures, would also be capable of devising and creating the other Hell that most people believed in. Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable. Salman Rushdie, Satanic Verses
9The critical element in this tragic structure is the notion that God is neither absent nor obviously present. If God is dead, or if God is clearly known, the tragedy (Goldman says) cannot exist. The special irony of the tragic hero’s position is that the difficulty of trying to live out what God wants is compounded by the difficulty of knowing what God wants, or even whether He exists. Philip Edwards, Tragic Balance in Hamlet
Planet Earth was designed and manufactured by a Mr God. Now Mr God is a hard man to track down. He gives his address as everywhere and nowhere, omnipresent in space and time, although we discovered he actually operates out of this lock-up in Croydon. Spitting Image s8e6, That’s Life mock, ITV 1986
I hate you, God! I hate you! House of Cards US s1e3: Chapter 3, Frank’s sermon, Netflix 2013
God’s oneness is cruelty. ibid.
I belong to the group of scientists who do not subscribe to the conventional religion but nevertheless deny that the universe is a purposeless accident. Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact. There must, it seems to me, be a deeper level of explanation. Whether one wishes to call that deeper level God is a matter of taste and definition. Furthermore, I have come to the point of view that mind – i.e. conscious awareness of the world – is not a meaningless and incidental quirk of nature, but an absolutely fundamental facet of reality. That is not to say that we are the purpose for which the universe exists. Far from it. I do, however, believe that we human beings are built into the scheme of things in a very basic way. Paul Davies, The Mind of God p16, 1992
My God is a proud Catholic god – he looks down on skateboards and gay headwear. Lilyhammer s2e1: Millwall, Brick Frank to hipster priest
The Almighty tests our faith through pain. That’s right, God is love. Gomorrah s4e5: Episodio V, Donna Benedetta to Patrizia
Science, religion: at war for thousands of years. And yet today it may be the merging of faith and technology that brings us closer together to solving Life’s greatest mystery. Proving God, History 2020
‘As Science has got better and better, God has had less to do.’ ibid.
For centuries the Catholic Church waged war on Science believing its very existence could undermine the most sacred tenets of faith … Today there are signs of radical change. ibid.
It’s known as the Theory of the Fine-Tuned Universe: it holds that the exact conditions that hold for the creation of life are so precise that they could not randomly have appeared. ibid.
Archaeologists and relic hunters are also looking for tangible evidence of God on Earth. ibid.
In 960 B.C. the Ark was placed inside the first Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. This account in the Book of Kings is the last time the Ark is mentioned in the Bible. ibid.
Thank you, almighty God. Thank you. You work in mysterious ways all right. And none of them are worth a wank. Boys from the Blackstuff: Shop Thy Neighbour ***** Chrissie, BBC 1982
A powerful minority is on the rise with a particular vision of America. It’s one of the oldest and influential currents in US politics. But in a country deeply divided the Christian right has found a new voice. It claims Christianity is under attack and that God belongs in government. America: Faith on the Front Line, BBC 2022
Known to many as Christian nationalism. And the far right is taking it to the extreme. ibid.
‘We are the Christian Taliban. This is the era of Christian nationalism.’ ibid.