QFry

For a short time a theist but more an atheist, Stephen Fry is interesting for many reasons. Intelligent, witty, vulnerable and an all-round good egg, in Celebrity Land he’s one of those people who pop up everywhere.

Actor, performer, compere, author. Director, composer, biographer. Stage, screen, television, radio and the written word. Just take a look at his IMDB or Wikipedia entry to see all the things he’s been in, all the things he’s been involved with.

Whether it’s the Cambridge Footlights Revue or Peter’s Friends, Absolute Power or Stormbreaker, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Bright Young Things, The Young Ones or Gormenghast, Tales of the Riverbank or Jeeves and Wooster, Fry and Laurie or Kingdom, Doctor Who or Qi, he never fails to entertain.

Fry has often commented on belief and, in 2006, with Christopher Hitchens, he took part in the Blasphemy Debate at the Guardian Hay Festival.

His standpoint is well summed up in this article in the Observer, where Fry is quoted thus:

I've always believed that everything that is said from authority is either the authority of one's own heart, one's own brain, one's own reading, one's own trust, but not the authority of someone who claims it because they're speaking for God and they know the truth because it's written in a book. That, essentially, is where I come from. In a sense, tolerance is my religion. Reason is my religion.