While Hollywood actors have never been known for an overwhelming reverence toward (or even knowledge of) Scripture, some have had more choice words for the Word of God than others.
Emmy-winning character actor Brian Cox recently revealed that he has a chip on his shoulder the size of Manhattan regarding the Bible and God.
Appearing on “The Starting Line Podcast” on April 29, Cox — an atheist and socialist, according to Fox News — could barely contain his disdain for not just Scripture, but religion, and even men in general.
Cox began his diatribe in response to the question, “Do you think that religion holds us back?” answering, “Considerably, yes.”
An odd claim, considering that it was religion that preserved the works of the ancients like Aristotle and Homer during the Dark Ages, established the university system, the first hospitals and the scientific method, but Cox had more to say regarding this confident assertion.
According to Cox, religion’s “belief systems, which are outside ourselves, they’re not dealing with who we are, we’re dealing with, well if God says this, and God does that, and you go — well, what is God? We’ve created that idea of God.”
Again, an odd assertion, seeing that every society that has ever existed has had some inkling of the Almighty, however imperfectly.
Cox, however, wasn’t finished venting his spleen against religion.
Do you read the Bible regularly?
He claimed that “we’ve created it as a control issue, and it’s also a patriarchal issue.”
Pontificating on his ideas about patriarchy and matriarchy, he insisted, “We have to go more towards a matriarchy.” Cox then claimed that “our fathers don’t condition us — they’re too bloody selfish.”
Cox must have been dealing with some deep-seated daddy issues, because the millions of people throughout history blessed with great, or even just good, fathers would vehemently disagree.
Perhaps Cox himself had a very poor father.
Honestly, if true, then his issues with his own father have probably been a driving force of his hate toward God, since God is the ultimate father.
And most people cannot help but draw parallels between their own fathers and God.
Cox, though, had more vitriol to spew at men and God, claiming men are just “movable sperm banks,” and that, when tracking where the “patriarchal society” came from in the first place, “the Bible is one of the worst books ever.”
To his credit, Cox clarified that he thought the Bible was so terrible “for me — from my point of view,” because of what he termed “propaganda.”
“It starts with the idea that Adam’s rib, you know, that out of Adam’s rib, this woman was created, and they’ll believe it, ’cause they’re stupid.
“They don’t need to be told lies, right? You know, they need some kind of truth, and that is not the truth … it’s a mythology.”
From there, the conversation moved to Israel and the war with Hamas, with Cox implying, though not outright stating, that all this violence was due almost solely to religion, saying that it was “killing somebody in this needless pursuit of some kind of thing which doesn’t … serve us at all.”
How could someone so incredibly successful seem so bitter and miserable?
As OutKick’s story on Cox noted, it seemed as if Cox was trying to become the arrogant, pompous character he played on the show “Succession” by making caustic remarks that almost seem designed to make people dislike him.
Cox was as wildly off the mark with the role of religion in causing violence as he was with his assessment of fathers and God.
While there has been violence associated with religion, throughout history, the majority of violence has come from atheists or believers in false religions.
Hitler was no friend of religion, after all, seeing as he specifically targeted a religious group, the Jews, as well as Catholic priests and nuns.
And atheist Soviet Russia and communist China have killed even more people than even the Nazis did in the Holocaust.
Without Christianity and its revolutionary notion that every human is loved by God and thereby has inherent dignity, there can be no notion of an intrinsic value to human life.
And, when there is no intrinsic value to human life (as seen in one of the leaders of Hamas, who recently reacted almost with indifference upon hearing of the deaths of his children and grandchildren), things get real ugly, real fast.
It was a pity Cox apparently let his own demons blind himself to that essential truth.
