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Pat Condell

stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

Patrick Condell (born 23 November 1949) is a British stand up comedian, writer and secularist. He has incited controversy with outspoken monologues on various video websites denouncing notions of religion and political correctness, and defending atheism.

Religion disapproves of original thought the way Dracula disapproves of sunlight.

Quotes

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  • I don't respect your beliefs and I don't care if you're offended.
  • My name is Patrick, and I'm a biped carbon-based life form. In my spare time I enjoy walking upright and being warm-blooded, and I'm a Scorpio.* I live here … on planet Earth, a piece of rock orbiting a giant fireball in the middle of nowhere. I feel I belong here.
* I like to think I'm a Scorpio, though actually I'm on the cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius. However, I pledged my allegiance to Scorpio years ago, like you do when you live in a city with two football teams; you've got to pick one, and I picked Scorpio because it sounded better. In truth I have no idea what birth sign I am, and I don't care. But I do have a Scorpio t-shirt because I think it's important to have an identity, however false and pointless.

2000s

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  • I admire anyone who's genuinely trying to achieve spiritual enlightenment and live a peaceful life. But religious dogma is a barrier to that. The last thing a dogmatist wants is for anyone to be enlightened, any more than a pharmaceutical company wants anybody cured.
  • If you're looking at the Bible for a guide to living a compassionate, wise and humane life, well, frankly you've got more chance of finding a lap dancing club in Mecca or a virgin in a catholic orphanage.
Any religion that demands earthly vengeance and retribution for any reason is not really a religion at all, but an illness and should be treated as such.
  • It does seem quite ironic to me that the very people who have made no attempt to think for themselves, are always the most vocal in demanding respect for their "ideas". But some Muslims go further than this and claim that they're being victimized in British society. But I don't really believe that's true. I do think a lot of people are getting fed up of hearing about Muslims all the time, and wish that Muslims would just shut up and get on with their lives, instead of constantly belly-aching about nothing, but that's not the same as being victimized. But because we live in a liberal democracy and therefore have certain double standards to maintain, any criticism of Islam or of Muslims always draws the immediate accusation of Islamophobia, a dishonest word which seeks to portray legitimate comment as some kind of hate crime.
  • It seems to me that if God had intended for you to cover your face then, in His wisdom, He would have provided you with a flap of skin for the purpose.
    • "The trouble with Islam" (16 March 2007)
  • I don't want to be too hard on Islam here, for two reasons: firstly because I don't want to be murdered by some hysterical, self-righteous, carpet-chewing, book-burning muppet with shit for brains. And secondly, I do think we need to make allowances for Islam, because we have to remember Islam is quite a young religion. So, maybe right now it's just going through a difficult age, a little headstrong, full of itself, thinks it knows all the answers, but I'm sure it'll learn. I think years from now, a lot of intelligent Muslims will be looking back on all this Medievalism and Jihad nonsense with embarrassment and shame, like the Germans do with the Nazis, and maybe then we can all have a good laugh about it, but in the mean time I think that any religion that demands earthly vengeance and retribution for any reason is not really a religion at all, but an illness and should be treated as such.
    • "The trouble with Islam" (16 March 2007)
  • It's often said of Jesus that he could have saved himself, but he chose not to. And if you read the Gospels it's clear that he could have talked himself out of that crucifixion quite easily, but he was just too stubborn. The Romans didn't really want to kill him at all, but in the end they went along with it because he was being such a prick about it. The truth is he couldn't wait to get up on that cross. In fact, I think Christianity only exists because Jesus Christ just happened to be a masochist. I think he took one look at the hammer and nails and he couldn't believe his luck. He thought, "Well, in three days I'll be in Heaven, but until then I'm going to enjoy myself."
  • One person I do feel a little sorry for, though, is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important clergyman in Britain and he's only got two lousy palaces to live in. What sort of life is that for a man of God? I bet if Jesus came back, even he'd be embarrassed for him; I bet he wouldn't be able to look him in the eye.
  • Here in the UK, we've now got an evangelical television channel — it's the kind of thing that will be very familiar to everyone in the United States, especially if you've ever turned on your TV set on a Sunday morning, and seen one holy man after another, urging you to send money so that Jesus can buy a new Cadillac. Apparently, Jesus can't save the world until he's been properly kitted out with a million-dollar mansion, and a private jet — some small print in the Gospels that we must have missed.
  • Right now, especially in the Middle East, things are shaping up quite nicely to blow us all to kingdom come. Except no Kingdom is going to come because this is the Kingdom, it has already come and we are already living the dream. Religion knows this but it doesn't want us to know it because then it would no longer have any reason to exist. So instead, it seeks to position itself between us and our experience; a self-appointed filter, a parasite.
 
Well it's a gloomy, rainy old day to be here in London, but it could be worse; I could be in Saudi Arabia where men are men, and women are cattle.
  • But if I could make just one small positive suggestion. Everybody knows that Saudi Arabia is very rich in certain mineral deposits — notably of course, sand. Oh my goodness, it's got so much sand, it could export the stuff. Or, even better, it could import a load of water and cement, mix itself into a giant block of concrete, and do us all a huge favour.
  • What is the difference between a Doctor of Medicine and a Doctor of Theology? One prescribes drugs, while the other might as well be on drugs.
  • According to current birthrate projections, France will be a majority Muslim country anyway in about 50 years... I get a lot of e-mails from Americans who think that Europeans are spineless. And I think they're right.
  • I do feel somewhat guilty that I'm not more grateful to Jesus, but I just wish he had asked me before he went ahead with it [being crucified], because now I feel like I'm being billed for something I didn't order. Because that's the deal, isn't it? If you're a Christian, you're born already in debt to Jesus, and it's a debt you can only repay, in full, by dying. That's some deal you've got yourself into there; that's like being asked to pay off a mortgage for a house you already own.
  • Radical Islam has seen us for what we are: a soft touch. It sees that political correctness is like a drug that we just can't stop injecting, even though we know it's going to kill us. And they're taking full advantage of that, turning our sense of fairness against us, and making us despise ourselves for one of our best qualities. And any concession made will be seen as a sign of weakness to be exploited further, because there is no dialogue with radical Islam. It doesn't want to be agreed with, it wants to be obeyed. It thinks it has the God-given right, aptly enough, to make the rules, not just for Muslims, but for everyone, and some of us, frankly, think that's a little bit too much to ask.
 
Being called closed-minded by religious people is a bit like being called yellow by a bunch of bananas.
  • On the other hand, and let's face it, there's always another hand, unless you're a Saudi Arabian shoplifter of course, hurt feelings can be quite traumatic. I've heard that it can take seconds, sometimes even minutes, to get over it.
  • So I really don't care what [God's] got to say about anything, and if he came clumping down from heaven right now in a big pair of hobnail boots, waving the book of Judges in my face, I'd simply tell him what I tell every other evangelising prick I meet: "No thanks. I'm not interested in your phony salvation. I'd prefer damnation. Now piss off, I've got some sinning to do."
  • We're talking about terrorism carried out in the name of Islam, by Muslims, and justified using their holy scripture. But apparently it's got nothing to do with Islam. Well, I'm sorry, but just because every Muslim doesn't support it doesn't mean it's not Islamic. People say you can't judge Islam by its followers, but that's like saying you can't judge a football team by its results. Islam is its followers. Because there's no central authority the Koran is open to interpretation by men, who, being human, will always interpret to suit their own cultural prejudices. So Islam is its followers. It's a representation of how they interpret their holy book. And therefore, the only way it can be judged is by their behaviour.
  • We need to stop pretending — because that's what we're doing: pretending — that all cultures are equal, when we can clearly see they're not. Islamic culture is not equal to Western culture; it encourages violence against women, against Jews and homosexuals. It sanctions polygamy and marrying old men to young children in a disgusting travesty of human relations. Anyone in the West advocating these values would very quickly find themselves in jail. It's not equal — it's inferior — and given Islam's openness about its totalitarian agenda, this is not something that should be encouraged in any way. It should be discouraged by firm legislation and by rigorous enforcement of the law. Remember, the law?
  • If we can't bring ourselves to say what's in our hearts when it truly matters, then we've already given up our freedom and with it the freedom of future generations, which is something that we've got no right to do. We didn't earn this freedom; it was handed to us on a plate by people who did earn it with their lives. We don't own it; we're custodians of it: it's not ours to give away.
    • "Appeasing Islam" (8 March 2008)
  • So, I hope the Hindus have it right, because if there's any justice in this world, you will be reincarnated as a female, homosexual Jew, and then you'll find out what a pain it is having to deal with violent, primitive dickheads like you.
  • But just because I believe that religion is a cynical perversion of the human spirit that exists purely for the benefit of the parasites we know as clergy, doesn't mean I'm not looking for answers to the big questions just like everybody else — you know, the questions that religion pretends it has answers to, because it knows that for some people, anyone answer is better than no answer at all. Questions like, Why are we here? Where did we come from? Where are we going?...Is there an afterlife, and if so, is it fully licensed for alcoholic drinks? That last bit may seem like a trivial concern to you, but not to me, because I live in a society where many people enjoy a social drink from time to time — not a huge amount, just enough to kill a horse. And in these enlightened days of the twenty-first century, when everyone's human rights and cultural identity are so very important, I don't see why I should have to abandon my culture, just because I'm dead. It's only the afterlife, not Saudi Arabia. Let's keep things in perspective. Of course in reality, we know that there will be beer in heaven, and lots of it, otherwise it wouldn't be heaven, would it? It's almost not even worth pointing that out, but I thought I would anyway, just in case someone wants to take the opportunity to be offended.
  • When it's claimed, as it was last week on British television, that Muslims in Britain are victims of British intolerance — yeah right, 1600 mosques worth of intolerance so far, and still building — I think the truth is that, if they are victims of anything, it's Muslim intolerance, because if you are an ordinary Muslim, then surely the last thing you need is a bunch of Islamists speaking for you, because everything they do and say reflects back on you. When they try to force unwanted Islamic values into our education system, for example, or when one of their representatives crudely insults this country by comparing it with Nazi Germany, that reflects on all Muslims, because these people speak for all Muslims. Don't they? No? Well maybe somebody should tell them that.
  • So, what do you think the British government did in the face of this open threat to public order? Go on, have a guess. That's right, they caved in like a bunch of spineless pussies! I couldn't have put it better myself.

  • It's at times like this, isn't it, when you realize just how much we need the United Nations — about as much as we need an ear infection...

    Freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of identity. This is my Holy Trinity, each one an intrinsic aspect of my god: Freedom, the Holiest of Holies. Yes it bloody well is. It is absolutely sacred and inviolable, beyond any negotiation or compromise, now and forever. Amen.

  • The whole point of female concealment in Islamic society is that men are not expected to take responsibility for their sexual urges, so any woman who is not covered up from head to toe is asking to be raped. The burka, therefore, legitimises rape. It apologises for rape. It justifies rape. Are you listening, feminists? And this makes it, in my opinion, as offensive a public statement as a Ku Klux Klan uniform or a Nazi swastika, and I think it should be treated with exactly the same revulsion and contempt.
  • You know, I found out recently that the word "heretic" comes from the Greek word "airetikós", meaning "able to choose" — which pretty much says it all, don't you think?
  • I don't think it's possible to be too aggressive in defending freedom of speech, which is ... much, much more sacred than any god, or prophet, or scripture, could or will ever be, from now until the end of time, or for eternity: whichever lasts longer.

2010s

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  • There's an ideological fervor about this prosecution that's almost religious in its intensity, because let's be clear, this is a heresy trial by any other name. They can't refute Mr. Wilders' statements, so instead they've resorted to the kind of cheap legal stunt we'd expect from the likes of Mugabe to shut their opponent up. They've accused him of being divisive and inflammatory, and yes, sometimes the truth can be divisive and inflammatory if it has been suppressed for long enough and has become sufficiently taboo, as it clearly has in the Netherlands, because according to the prosecution it doesn't even matter that what he says is true; what matters is that it's illegal. Well, when the truth is against the law, then there's something seriously wrong with the law, because when the truth is no defence, there is no defence, and the law has no anchor, so it will drift wherever the wind of political expedience blows, and this week it blew straight into a crooked courtroom in Amsterdam, where justice will now be made to fight for its life, starved of the oxygen of truth that gives it life.
  • If the Catholic Church hadn't so consistently and virulently condemned the Jews for killing Jesus, there would have been no Holocaust. There would have been no reason for anyone to think about picking on Jews. And that means today there might be no Jewish state, and no Middle East conflict. That's quite a lot to have on your conscience, isn't it? How fortunate for the Catholic Church that it doesn't possess a conscience, but at least it gives ordinary Catholics an opportunity to feel guilty about something real for a change, if they feel so inclined, and to reflect on the reality that the Jews didn't kill Jesus at all. The Catholic Church killed Jesus, and has spent the last two thousand years dragging his entrails through the dirt. And if he came back tomorrow, he'd be the first to say so. You know it's true. We all do.
  • Any religion that endorses violence is incapable of delivering spiritual enlightenment — how obvious does that have to be? — and it has no right even to call itself a religion. Without the shield of religion to hide behind, Islam would be banned in the civilized world as a political ideology of hate — and we have no obligation to make allowances for it, any more than we do for Nazism. It's a bigger threat to our freedom than Nazism ever was. Yes, both are totalitarian, and both divide the world unnecessarily into us-and-them, the pure and the impure, and both make no secret of their desire to exterminate the Jews. But we were all more or less on the same side against the Nazis, whereas the Islamonazis have got plenty of friends among people in the West who ought to know better.
  • It's often claimed that many people in the West are converting to Islam, and it's true that some are, but it's also true that many Muslims in the West are leaving Islam, but you don't hear so much about them for obvious reasons. Some of them have been brave enough to make themselves known, and reach out to help other Muslims who want to escape the tyranny of their religion, and, like them, it's the religion I have a problem with, not the people. So no, I don't hate Muslims — thanks for asking — I wish them well. Even the fanatics who stand at the roadside with their dopey little banners and bulging eyeballs, calling for death to the West — I even wish those boneheads well, in that I wish them good mental health, if that isn't too wildly optimistic. And of course I know that there are lots of moderate, peaceful Muslims. Indeed, many of them are so moderate and peaceful, they're invisible and silent, and that is part of the problem. And just because there are lots of peaceful Muslims, it doesn't mean the religion itself is not an aggressive, fascist ideology that threatens all our freedoms, nor does it mean that western governments aren't falling over themselves to make excuses for it, pretending that Islam has nothing to do with the violence inspired and sanctioned by its scripture, and repeatedly carried out in its name.
  • Mark Twain said that faith is believing what you know ain't so. Well, political correctness is doing what you know ain't right. In every western country, Islamic extremists are allowed to exploit religious privilege for political ends by claiming to represent all Muslims, and the media always treat them as if they do. These groups give themselves official-sounding titles and talk a smooth line in community harmony, while doing all they can to prevent integration: to keep Muslims apart and ghettoised in a separate society, with a separate identity, separate rules and standards. In other words, they exist to cause division in society; to drive a wedge between communities that doesn't need to be there, any more than they need to exist as organisations.
  • People keep framing this as a religious freedom issue, but there's a difference between practising your religion — which everyone has the right to do — and rubbing your religion in people's faces as a triumphalist political statement, which is what's happening here.
  • Multiculturalism in Europe is dead in the water, as every recent election has shown. Even the politicians are admitting it now. Some people cling to the illusion of it still, the way the Soviets clung to the illusion of Communism, but it's over, and these show trials and violent street attacks are symptoms of its death throes. They're the desperate acts of desperate people who've totally lost their way. Criminalizing opinion is an open admission that lawmakers have lost control, and created a situation they can't handle. But that's what happens when the people are never asked for their opinion, and, when they give it, it's ignored.
  • I oppose Islam, for the simple reason that Islam opposes me and everything I believe in. I don't care how Muslims feel about that. I don't care how anyone feels about it, nor should I be required to. In my opinion, Islam's disgusting treatment of women is a crime against humanity, nothing less. It's a thousand percent wrong, there's no grey area, it's unconscionable and unforgivable, and it's poisoning the whole world. It's not different or relative, it's backward and uncivilised. There's no excuse for it, and no excuse for defending it.
    • "Free speech in Europe" (10 November 2010)
  • The Koran tells Muslims to hate Jews because they're Jews, not because of Palestine. It doesn't mention the Palestinians. And if Israel disappeared tomorrow, Jews in Sweden and all over Europe would still be harassed and abused by ignorant hate-filled Muslim immigrants for being Jews, and for no other reason. And then all you multicultural dhimmis-in-waiting would have to find another mealy-mouthed excuse to look the other way. Fortunately for Jews, they've had a lot of practice at taking abuse and they've got fairly broad shoulders, which, of course, they'll need to carry around all those Nobel Prizes. Statistically a Jew is thousands of times more likely than a Muslim to win a Nobel Prize, and there can be only one reason for that, can't there? That's right, Islamophobia. Clearly the Nobel committees have an irrational prejudice against religion-induced ignorance, and they're obviously in need of some urgent cultural awareness and sensitivity training.
  • Faith is the grip that clergy have over you. It's the invisible rope around your neck that pulls you along the road they want you to travel, for their benefit, not yours. It's a dead-end word. It's a word of bondage. It's a word that lets you believe what you've been told to believe, without feeling that you've been told what to believe, but you have, and you can stop pretending any time you like. It's not a virtue, that's the last thing it is. It's an abdication from reality. It's a dumb act of self-hypnosis. It's a cowardly cop-out. It's gullibility with a halo, and hiding behind it is like pretending to be an invalid.
    • "Your faith is a joke" (16 December 2010)
  • Religion disapproves of original thought the way Dracula disapproves of sunlight.
    • As quoted in Matt Hern, The Wit and Blasphemy of Atheists (2011), p. 86
  • The biggest hate crime against Muslims in America is the existence of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. If you're a Muslim American who wants to live in peace and freedom — and, presumably, that's why you're in America in the first place — these people are your worst enemy. They're parasites on your identity. They don't represent you — they claim ownership of you. Everything they do and say reflects back, badly, on you. Yet you are the only thing giving them a veneer of respectability. Without you, these fanatics would be standing on street corners shouting at people. They invoke the phony lie of Islamophobia in order to marginalize and ghettoize you and to make you feel like a victim, because their whole existence depends on you being a victim. They claim to challenge the stereotyping of Muslims — and how do they do it? By stereotyping Muslims as professional complainers and malcontents who always want special treatment; who can't take the slightest criticism; and who are aggressively litigious to the point of obsession. These people are the problem. They're not the solution.
  • When you allow millions of people to immigrate from places where they mutilate their daughters as a matter of course; where they kill them in a heartbeat over some twisted sense of honor; and where rape victims are treated as criminals; it doesn't take a genius to know that you're going to be importing these values and attitudes as well, wholesale, unless you take steps to prevent it. And that's something we've spectacularly failed to do in Europe. Indeed, we've encouraged it by fostering separatism and ghettoization in the guise of our old friend, Multiculturalism. And as a consequence, Islamic violence against women and girls is an ugly reality in Europe. And for anyone to use the law to try and suppress discussion of it is not enlightened or tolerant or liberal. It's shameful and stupid and cowardly and unforgivable.
  • There are millions of people on this planet who claim to have a personal relationship with somebody called Jesus. And each of those people, it seems, has a different Jesus in their imagination, which is where Jesus lives. A Jesus who shares all their particular values and prejudices. That's what he's there for, after all. It's how he earns his keep. So if, for example, you don't like homosexuals very much ,you can be pretty sure your Jesus won't like them very much either. It's really quite amazing. It's almost as if he can read your mind. But that's Jesus for you. There's nothing he can't do... except tolerate homosexuals, apparently. As for abortion, don't even get him started on that subject. He's got plenty to say about abortion, although none of it actually appears in the Gospels, but don't you worry about that. He's dead against it if you are. And this is the beauty of Jesus, the magic, the miracle of Jesus, is that each of us can create him in our own image, and he can be whoever we want him to be. He's as versatile as Mr Potato Head. As for the man who it may have all been based on, if he ever existed, he's long gone, like Abraham Lincoln's famous axethat had both its head and handle replaced several times,yet was still as good as new. I mention this because atheists also have their own version of Jesus. Jesus, whether we like it or not, is a part of our culture,so yes, I have my version of Jesus, even though I don't believe in God, and my Jesus despises Christianity as the greatest swindle ever perpetrated. Indeed, if my Jesus ever came face to face with a senior clergymanor a televangelist he'd be hard pressed not to slap him around the roomand kick him down a flight of stairs.
  • There's a common misconception among Christians that the purposeof their religion is to spread the message of Jesus. In fact, the purpose of Christianity is to suppress the message of Jesusand to swindle you out of the kingdom of heaven. Christianity is grounded in the notion that there's something fundamentally wrongwith being born a human being. Original sin. It's probably the most poisonousand self-destructive idea in human history, so naturally it has been enthusiastically embraced by clergy. Whereas Jesus seeks to empower you, clergy seek to weaken you,to make you feel small and helpless. They don't want you to consider the lilies of the field or to seek the kingdom of heaven withinbecause that's too much like the message of Jesus. They'd rather you focussed instead on the ludicrous celestial psycho dramaof God and Satan and angels and demons and hellfire, and to burden yourself with baseless guilt and morbid fear of eternal damnation. The depict this earthly life as a grubby thing to be transcendedbecause they want you disconnected from the planet that gives you life. To feel that you're apart from nature, not a part of nature, because they don't want you grounded in any way.
  • They want you rootless, uncertain, susceptible, while they hold out the promise of eternal salvation, access to the kingdom of heaven, no less, but only through them, as if they control the only bridge over the chasm of hellfireand there's a toll to pay (of course there is) and the church bells ring: "Kerching! Kerching! "They might as well be selling property on Jupiter, yet they're legally allowed to get away with this fraudand to pay no taxes on the proceeds. And that's why the Catholic Church today measures its wealth in tens of billions, and if you live to be a thousand you'll never meet a poor televangelist. Yet Jesus never asked anybody for money. Jesus never passed around a collection plateor got people to tithe part of their income to him. Everything he did, he did for free. He had lepers and cripples lining up around the block, and not one of them had medical insurance (can you believe the irresponsibility of those people?) but Jesus didn't care. He healed them anyway, absolutely free. And when I say free, I don't mean free in a toll-free prayer line kind of way either, as in: "Call now, free, and there'll be somebody there to pray with you,"and take your credit card number, so that by the time you hang up"you'll be committed to making a regular monthly payment"to somebody who flies around in a private jet. "Not that kind of free. In exploiting Jesus to swindle humanity,they've also managed to swindle Jesus,because they've stolen his name and his identityand turned it into a commercial trademark. If he ever comes back he should sue. Now Jesus is like Colonel Sanders - they're just using his picture. The difference is Colonel Sanders was bought out. Jesus has been sold out. And so have you if you're a Christian. You've been framed for something that you didn't do.
  • If Jesus really was crucified as per the Gospels,he didn't die for anybody's sins but his own. He died because he posed a threat to a group of people with strongly vested interests and very savage values. You may recall, he told the pharisees point blank where they could find the kingdom of heaven.Don't look here or there, he said, look within. But they didn't want to hear that any more than the modern pharisees want to hear it, because they knew very well what he meant, that the kingdom of heaven is a state of awareness in the here and nowthat doesn't require the stewardship of professional clergy, and that if we took his advice to seek it within, not only would we find it, we'd find the strength and the wisdomto put them and their whole bloodsucking fear mongering criminal racketpermanently out of business. And because they lived in the kind of brutal societywhere they could have him put to death for his words, that's exactly what they did, just as they would today in certain Muslim countries. But you don't have to feel guilty about it because you weren't there. You had no opportunity to influence events. You are entirely blameless. And the only guilt that you need to feelis maybe a little passing sheepish embarrassmentat ever having fallen for this insulting nonsense in the first place. Anyway, that's enough from me. I'm going back outside now to consider the lilies of the fieldand to plant a few potatoes in the good clean life-giving earth. Peace.
  • Apparently I am going to Hell for rejecting Jesus, among other things. [...] I don't reject Jesus. I reject religion. I'm happy to listen to Jesus all day long, as long as he keeps his mouth shut about religion. And specifically I reject Christianity, along with the clerical criminals who run Christianity, and the fake artificial Jesus they have invented for public consumption. The man known as St Paul (for reasons which I've never really understood) was the first one to push this supernatural nonsense about Jesus, but the early Church capitalised on it and exploited it enthusiastically. They needed Jesus to be a god so that they could use him to generate fear, which of course is the only level they know how to operate on, and also so that they could claim supernatural authority through him, which is the best kind of authority to have when you're bluffing.
  • As a mere man, Jesus was almost useless to them. All he could offer were words of compassion and wisdom, and what earthly good would they be to the men who run the Church? That would be like handing a slide rule to a monkey. So they needed to make him a god, but of course they already had a god, the same one they've got today, the fictional psychopath of the desert. So they had to find some way of conflating Jesus, author of the Sermon on the Mount, with this horrible monstrous entity of vengeance and death. Quite a theological challenge that was always going to take some specialist bullshitting, but they finally managed it in the fourth century when they solidified the idea of the Trinity, the three gods in one, or the three god trick, as I like to think of it, the classic Christian con - God the father, God the son, and God the holy spirit; although if you're like me you may prefer the atheist trinity; that's God the imposter, God the fraud, and God the wholly phoney. Wholly as in entirely, completely, absolutely, one hundred percent fake, false, and phoney baloney, not to put too fine a point on it.
  • The Trinity is an outrageous piece of semantic flummery designed to confuse, not enlighten. And it follows a basic rule in religion that, ideally, not only should the thing you believe be absolutely impossible, but any explanation of it should be impossible to understand. And the Trinity obliges handsomely on both counts, as these three entities - the father (God), the son (Jesus), and the holy spirit (your guess is as good as mine) become as one (miraculously, of course) while remaining separate, so that each is uniquely God, yet each is completely God. I know. You could listen to an explanation from now until next week and be none the wiser, which is, of course, the whole idea. We could argue about Jesus until we're blue in the face, about whether he existed and whether he was divine and all the rest of it, but some things are beyond dispute, and it is a matter of historical fact that the Trinity is pure invention by Christian clergy, so any Christian clergyman who tells you it's the truth is either ignorant of history or a goddamned liar. Which do you think it is? Yeah, me too. And this is what I reject. Not Jesus, but religion and the clerical criminals who run it. The people Jesus despised as much as I do. White sepulchres, he called them. Outwardly wholesome, inwardly rotten, and he was being way, way too kind in my opinion. And if I have to go to Hell for my opinion, and it seems that I do, then so be it. I can think of worse things.
  • In fact, since I said in a previous video that I'd rather go to Hell than be a Christian, I've been contacted by several people urging me to recant those foolish words and repent before it's too late. Hell is real, they tell me, Satan is real. And they say it with such conviction you just know they've got the information from some kind of infallible authority. Luckily, however, I'm quite looking forward to going to Hell. I've heard so much about the place it almost seems like a home away from home to me now. I understand it's likely to be warmer than I'm used to, which surprises me, as life is warm and death is cold, so, if anything, you would expect Hell to be on the chilly side, but apparently it isn't, according to those who know. I am very grateful that so many experts have testified to the definite existence of Hell for my benefit. It's a real weight off my mind. I was beginning to worry that the idea of Hell might be just a cynical ploy to intimidate weak-minded gullible people into submitting to religious fascism. How comforting to know that it's real, and that there really is everything to fear after death. Thank God for Satan. What would you Christians do without him? So before we denigrate poor old Satan too much, I know he's everybody's favourite bad guy and everything, the lord of misrule and all that, but the next time you're down on your knees praying like an idiot you might want to think about offering a prayer of thanks to the big guy downstairs, because without him in his essential role of universal bogeyman, none of this delusional nonsense of yours would even be possible. so, in that sense, Satan is your saviour, not Jesus. What can I say? Them's the breaks. Peace.
  • They shouldn't need photographs to prove this guy is dead. They should have kept the body. They should have brought the son-of-a-bitch back to New York, pickled him in alcohol, and mounted him on top of the Ground Zero mosque with a pork chop in his mouth and a fireman's axe up his ass — or is that just me? Facing Mecca, of course, because we wouldn't want to be disrespectful.
  • The European Union is very popular with politicians, because it's very good to politicians. It was created for their benefit. It's not so good to voters, because it denies them a voice — another reason it's popular with politicians. These days, we in Europe no longer make most of our own laws. We have them handed down to us by people we haven't elected and can't remove. The people we do elect are powerless to change anything, even if they wanted to, and most of them don't want to, because they've got their snouts in the trough of a corrupt organisation whose accounts haven't been signed off for the last sixteen years.
  • The fact that a Jewish state needs to exist at all — and it does need to exist — is an indictment of all humanity, and especially the Catholic Church, whose centuries-long program of aggressive Jew hatred has been ingrained right into the European psyche so that it takes almost nothing to bring it out.
  • Anyone who criticisms Islam publicly can expect to be threatened with physical violence. If that's not terrorism, then what is it? In the world of the cultural terrorist, if you oppose the oppression of women and minorities, you're an enemy of religious freedom; if you despise violent superstition, you're a racist; and if you reject religious totalitarianism, you have a mental illness. Let me tell you something, when you get to the stage where anyone criticising your beliefs is automatically deemed to have a mental illness, that is a sure sign of mental illness.
  • There are many reasons why the religion of Islam impoverishes western society, but the main one, in my opinion, is that it degrades and debases women, except, of course, for left-wing women, who happily degrade and debase themselves defending Islam, like turkeys defending Christmas. A woman in Islam needs to be covered from head to toe because men are not expected to exhibit any kind of basic self-control. I get a lot of correspondence from angry Muslim males and I've lost count of the number of times I've been told that western women are asking to be raped because of the way they dress. No other religion teaches people to think like this. Recently here in Britain, we've had a rash of Muslim gangs pimping and raping young girls in northern England. I do mean Muslim gangs, and not Asians, as the media keep reporting. There are no Sikhs or Hindus involved in this, and to call them Asians to avoid naming the real problem is a slander on Hindus and Sikhs. These men do it because they regard non-Muslim women as subhuman trash. And this poison is coming directly from their religion, a religion whose values are dictated and imposed by some of the most narrow-minded, psychotic human beings on this planet. And, coming as I do from an Irish Catholic background, believe me, that's saying something.
  • Andy and his little gang of bearded apes have made it clear that they intend to patrol the streets of London enforcing Sharia and preventing people going about their lawful business. I'll be interested to see how that works out for them. I've known a few Eastenders in my time, and I can't think of anyone — with the possible exception of Geordies (that's people from Newcastle) — who are less likely to tolerate having their pint of beer, their betting shop and their song and dance interfered with by a bunch of puffed-up bearded blowfish in pyjamas. And that's just the women.
  • You probably know that this week Britain has been terrorized by an underclass of welfare-dependent, drug-addled criminal scum who have been allowed to run riot in the streets because the police haven't been allowed to do their job and protect the public. The media is full of speculation about why it happened and what is the root cause. Well, that's easy. The root cause is stupidity. A complete lack of imagination. A stunted, feral view of the world that amounts to self-inflicted moral and mental disablement. And it's the direct product of an entitlement culture that rewards idleness, encourages victimhood, and compensates criminals.
  • The European Union is not, in fact, a union at all, but a continent-wide political coup. What began as a common market has now metamorphosed by stealth into a supranational political dictatorship, a parasitical organism living on the backs of the European nation states, sucking their lifeblood and slowly killing them off; a bureaucratic tyranny that wants to "harmonize" out of existence the national identities that have made Europe a continent of genuine diversity and a cultural crucible whose values have shaped the entire western world. But they want to put a stop to all that in the European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and this is why European laws are never enacted in response to any kind of organic need in society, but as top-down directives intended to impose indiscriminate uniformity for its own sake.
  • I think religion is utter nonsense, and I claim the right to criticise, ridicule and insult it as much as I like, but not the right to stamp out harmless aspects of it; which is why I'm a secularist, and not a totalitarian. I have a copy of the Bible in my house because it's part of my cultural heritage, not because I think the Bible is true any more than I think Shakespeare's plays are true, but I wouldn't be without them either. I like churches, especially the sound of church bells, and I don't want to see them bulldozed, but I do want to see the power of the Church not only bulldozed, but ground into a fine dust and buried in the deepest part of the deepest ocean on the furthest planet it's possible to find. Religion needs to be kept in check when it tries to step on people or when it tries to elbow its way into their lives uninvited. The Nativity doesn't do this. It doesn't even come close. It's part and parcel of the Christmas furniture. It's part and parcel of the culture that I and most people in the western world were born and raised in, and it only excludes people who want to be excluded.
  • I used to be a lot more critical of Israel, and I used to believe there was a fairly simple two-state solution, because I used to believe the Arabs were acting in good faith. I still want to believe that, but the evidence tells me I'd be a fool to believe it, because I've seen that every concession Israel makes is met with more demands and more excuses not to negotiate. They could have had peace ten times over if they wanted it, but they don't want peace, they want victory, and they won't be happy until Israel is wiped from the map. A member of Fatah central committee said as much on television recently, but as he said, they keep that to themselves, and tell the rest of the world a different story.
 
One guy said, "I'm from Saudi Arabia and I'm proud of my country." Well, good for you, but forgive me for asking why. If you live in Saudi Arabia, what on Earth have you got to be proud of? If you couldn't dig money straight out of the ground, you'd all be starving. The only thing your country has to offer the world is oil. Well, it's not the only thing, but we don't need any sand, and we're all up to here with Jihad, thanks very much.
  • One guy said, "I'm from Saudi Arabia and I'm proud of my country." Well, good for you, but forgive me for asking why. If you live in Saudi Arabia, what on Earth have you got to be proud of? If you couldn't dig money straight out of the ground, you'd all be starving. The only thing your country has to offer the world is oil. Well, it's not the only thing, but we don't need any sand, and we're all up to here with Jihad, thanks very much.
  • Free speech means being able to express an honest opinion—in case you didn't know—and my honest opinion is that Wahhabi Islam is such an obvious mental affliction, that science ought to be looking for a cure. It's a truly horrible, heartless and cruel ideology that despises human kind, especially the female half, and I believe its presence on this planet is a stain on all humanity; and when it finally passes, as one day it surely must, because nothing that unnatural and inhuman could possibly last forever, its memory will linger like a bad smell, as a warning for generations to come; like a ghostly gibbet by the roadside of history, a bony finger of death, beckoning us back to a more brutal and primitive past. It'll serve as a grim reminder of what happens to human beings when religion is allowed to go too far.
  • Once again we see Islam self-detonate (if you'll pardon the expression) and show once again why it's about as welcome on this planet as an asteroid. Once again we see thousands of Islamic nutcases take time out from beating up their wives to show their sensitive side. How? By smashing up the towns they live in, egged on by clerical ignoramuses whose motives are even lower than the literacy level of their followers. And once again we in the civilised world are being urged to censor ourselves out of respect for a religion that violates the human rights of half the people on the planet and that doubles as a political ideology indistinguishable from Nazism. It would be funny if it wasn't so obscene.
  • To call these riots infantile and imbecilic is to give them a dignity they don't deserve. They can only be described as Islamic. Let me get this straight. We're supposed to show tolerance and respect for a religion that doesn't know the meaning of either word and goes out of its way to prove it every day? We're supposed to amend our values to accommodate a religion that accommodates nothing and nobody? Dream on, people. It's not going to happen, because with Islam it's always a one way street. We've learned that lesson the hard way. We can't afford any more tolerance and respect. We've been sucked dry. And we've become weary of manufactured Islamic grievance. It's such a bore that now when we hear some bearded buffoon or some bag-headed bimbo telling us how offended they are we can't even be bothered to laugh any more.
  • They say great minds think alike. That's also true of tiny minds, and it's especially true of closed ones. I'm always impressed by students who know so much about the world they feel no need to listen to anyone else's opinions, aren't you? Especially when they feel compelled to actively shout them down. That's confidence for you. ... Anyone who's unwilling to hear an opposing opinion has no business attending a university, unless they're planning to graduate with honors in bigotry. And they have no business teaching at one either. There's nothing liberal, intelligent, enlightened, civilized or progressive about shutting somebody up because you don't want other people to hear their opinions. Who are you to decide who should and shouldn't be heard? Who made you emperor? It's not only an incitement to public disorder, it's a form of assault and a violation of the civil rights of everyone around you.
  • The free exchange of opinion and information is the very lifeblood of the society to which you owe everything you have. It's the oxygen that gives us clarity and strength. Restricting it is like closing down synapses in the collective brain. It's an act of sabotage and nobody has the right to do it any more than they have the right to arbitrarily ration water or air. No judge, no politician, no police officer and certainly no braying mob of sanctimonious, privileged, middle-class, left-wing, students who think they know best for everyone.
  • Surely the most comically deluded people on this planet, outside creationists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Scientologists, are idealistic left-wing gay people who think they share a common cause with Muslims as two oppressed minorities, when opinion polls tell us that most Muslims are disgusted by homosexuality and think it's completely unacceptable. Among U.K. Muslims, disapproval is 100%. Admittedly, that's from a sample of only 500 people, who all happened to agree unanimously, but that's hardly representative. After all, not all Muslims were included, so we can't reasonably extrapolate anything from it without being racist. That's a relief. I thought we might have to face an unpleasant truth there for a second, didn't you?
  • I think we've turned into a society of craven cowards. I hope that doesn't offend. Actually, I hope it does offend … because, you see, I can still remember the shock of the Rushdie Affair 25 years ago. The very idea that anybody could be killed for writing a book was surreal and horrific. Now we take it for granted that if you say the wrong thing about the religion of peace you'll get death threats and you might actually be killed, so you keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you. All for the sake of tolerance and diversity, of course.

  • Why am I anti-Islam? Well, for the simple reason that Islam is anti-me, and it's anti every fundamental value I hold...

    People say, "Well, you only focus on the bad things about Islam", and yes, I have to admit that if you ignore the bad things — the aggressive separatism, supremacism, and social intolerance, the relentless special pleading and phony grievance mongering, the psychopathic level of misogyny, the honor killing and genital mutilation (sanctioned by the Prophet, incidentally), the rabid gay and Jew hatred, the intimidation and censorship, and the constantly present threat of violence over social issues — well, there isn't much wrong with Islam, it's perfectly kosher (if you'll pardon the expression). The trouble is, when you take these things away, there's nothing left.

 
Far-left thugs who feel entitled not only to smash the opinions of those they disagree with but to smash their skulls for holding those opinions, all in the name of tolerance.
  • Here in Europe we're very big on human rights, unless somebody claims the fundamental human right of free expression, and then we have a problem. Recently a Swedish politician was convicted of hate speech for correctly connecting mass Islamic immigration with the high level of rape in Sweden. ... Mass Islamic immigration has turned Sweden from one of the world's safest countries for women into the rape capital of Europe. ... Everybody in Sweden knows this is happening, but they pretend it isn't because they're so terrified of being called "Islamophobes" and racists, and with good reason. We've seen what happens to people in Sweden who won't embrace the official multiculti lie. They can expect to have their identities hacked, and to be publicly fingered for reprisals, which could mean being socially ostracised, losing their job, or being physically attacked by far-left thugs who feel entitled not only to smash the opinions of those they disagree with but to smash their skulls for holding those opinions, all in the name of tolerance, of course.
  • When people are afraid of the truth they've got nowhere to turn. All they have at their disposal is censorship and denial. And Swedish politicians are so deep in denial you can only feel pity for them, because you know that in some dark chamber of their subconscious these wretched people know what a terrible thing they're doing, and they know that history is going to revile them and their entire generation for it. But they just can't face up to it. Psychologically, they are simply not big enough as people to acknowledge, let alone confront, the enormity of their mistake. They've backed themselves into an ideological corner where their only option now is to double down on the insanity and brazen it out until the bitter end, while criminalising anyone who draws attention to it. Whatever social upheaval it may cause, and whatever the cost to Sweden's women, mass Islamic immigration must continue. Any restriction would be an admission that there's a problem, and that would fatally undermine everything they're so desperately pretending to believe in... If you say there's a problem, you'll be treated as a criminal – which means that there are now two problems. One: the Swedish people have an aggressive social cancer growing in their midst; and two: they're not allowed to talk about it.
  • Swedish politicians are not right about much, but you get the impression they think they're setting the example to the rest of us. And they are right about that. Their recent bizarre decision to recognize 'Palestine' – a country that doesn't exist – is somewhat poignant: as the way things are going Sweden itself won't exist much longer. Seems like every piece of news that comes out of that country is more disturbing than the last. But, then, they have been committing cultural suicide so enthusiastically for so long there is now almost a sense that a tipping point is being reached and that, for the rest of us, it's really just a matter of watching the grim process unfold as we thank our lucky stars we don't live there... In Sweden today, democracy is a threat that must be neutralised, just as free speech is a threat that must be criminalised. Like the old Soviet Union, they can't afford to allow either because they're attempting to create an artificial society from a blueprint that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And they've given it an almost theological significance so that a dogma has been established, and this has led, inevitably, to heresy becoming a problem. So now anyone in Sweden who expresses the wrong opinion about Muslim immigration is liable to be arrested, that's if the police are not too busy running away from violent Muslims.
  • When will Sweden be full of Muslims? The short answer is never. They've talked themselves into such a tight corner, and so demonised anyone who questions mass immigration that they could no sooner put a limit on it now than they could click their heels and give a Nazi salute. It's out of the question. So on and on it will go, forever. A hundred thousand or more a year, every year, year after year. It will never stop. Not even when there's a mosque on every street corner blaring the call to prayer five times a day through loudspeakers into your face. That's what's coming, Sweden, and nobody deserves it more than you. Oh yes, you're a real shining "progressive" beacon, all right, a real example to us all – like the guy who dives head first into a thimble of water is an example to us all. ... You deserve to see your culture destroyed. You're clearly not worthy of it. You deserve what's coming, but your children and grandchildren don't, and they're the ones who will pay the price for your irresponsible stupidity and cowardice. They will curse your memory for what you've done to them, especially the female ones, you nation of traitors, you society of lemmings, you ship of fools.
  • Jews abused and attacked on the streets of European cities... Muslim mobs attacking synagogues... Nobody gives a damn about Jews and they never have, which is why the Holocaust was allowed to happen in the first place.
  • if a Swedish news editor was ever gang raped by Muslim immigrants it would be hard not to laugh.
  • “Transgender” is a fashionable mental disorder being presented to kids as a legitimate medical condition. Shameful.
  • The @guardian thinks it’s OK to facilitate an illegal invasion of Europe by hordes of violent fighting age third world savages. Every one of those NGO boats should be at the bottom of the Mediterranean.

2020s

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  • Black privilege means that you get to take the knee, raise a fist, and smear millions of decent English people as racists.
  • Western civilisation was not built on slavery. It was built on free thought, ingenuity, and enterprise. Our society was the first to outlaw slavery. Two centuries later we have nothing to apologise for, and we don’t need to compensate anybody for anything.

Quotes about Condell

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Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour.
~ Richard Dawkins
  • Aside from the bullish, gross themes of Pat Condell's content, the way he delivers it is unnerving in the extreme. He sits expressionless in front of the camera and reads aloud his various pseudo-intellectual musings on religion and social culture. … He leers at you with his horrid, dead eyes, an icy, cold blue resting beneath two light-brown brows. White cropped hair, a marked, red and white face, an English flag of a man, fluttering gently in the breeze of his own bullshit. Watching him is like being trapped inside a frustrated old man's head, an old man with delusions of his own intelligence and a petty ignorance of the world surrounding him. You can feel the warm breath, made stale from the avalanche of pernicious tripe that tickles his tongue on the way out, lapping at your face. His mouth quivers with disdain. …I'm yet to find a video of his in which he doesn't resort to insulting "progressives" and making puerile, blanket statements about things he professes to know about, but actually doesn't.
  • Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he's on our side.
    • Richard Dawkins, in promotional statement for his "Pat Condell Anthology" DVD (2008)
  • Brash. Uncompromising. Brilliant. Hilarious. Pat Condell has found a simple formula for success: stating the obvious without restraining himself with the conventions of unwarranted piety. Pat flenses sacred cows, and after slicing away the fat and gristle of tired apologetics and mindless tradition, he exposes the hollow carcass of a culture's hypocrisy... and we laugh.
    • PZ Myers, as quoted in promotional statement for the "Pat Condell Anthology" DVD (2008)
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