Succession star Brian Cox has taken it upon himself to not only bash the Bible — calling it one of the “worst books ever” — but has also labeled Christians as “stupid” for believing in its teachings.
In an interview with The Starting Line Podcast, the actor agreed that religion holds humanity back “considerably,” arguing that “It’s belief systems which are outside ourselves.”
“We’re not dealing with who we are, we’re dealing well… if God says this and God does that, and you go, ‘Well, what is God?’ We created that idea of God and we’ve created it as a control issue, and it’s also a patriarchal issue,” Cox continued.
He added, “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 matriarchally. We have to go more towards the matriarchy because the mothering thing is the thing which is the real conditioning of our lives.”
“Our fathers don’t condition ourselves, they’re too bloody selfish,” Cox opined. “But our mothers have to because they have an umbilical… you know, that’s what the umbilical cord is about. Even though it’s cut away, there’s an umbilical relationship to your child. And women have that. Men do not have that. They’re just sperm banks; movable sperm banks.”
“How do we get to a more more patriarchal society?” the interviewer asked Cox, to which the actor responded, “Because we have to honor them and we have to give them their place, and we’re resistant to that because all our… you know, it’s Adam and Eve.”
“I mean, the propaganda goes right the way back… the Bible is one of the worst books ever. For me, from my point of view,” the Succession star declared, as he proceeded to elaborate, “Because 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 because they’re stupid enough.”
Agreeing with the interviewer, who brings up that people need to believe in the Bible, Cox explains, “They need it but they don’t need to be told lies. They need some kind of truth and that is not the truth. It is not the truth, it’s a mythology.”
Earlier in the interview Cox touched on the concept of God, asserting, “Look at Gaza, you look at what’s happening there, you look at the appalling thing that’s happening there and you know they’ll sort it out but it’s never going to go away because of belief systems.”
“Belief systems which don’t serve,” he continued. “They don’t serve equanimity — you know, Muslim, Jew — it’s all about this notion of God. The idea that there’s a God that takes care of us all. There’s no such thing. Doesn’t happen. That’s not what it’s about.”
“It’s about us, and we don’t examine ourselves nearly enough,” Cox argued. “We don’t look at who we are. We’re always looking outside of ourselves instead of looking inside ourselves.”
“With all those things that we’re dealing with every day and all those false gods that we create for ourselves and the notion of the word ‘God’ is a sort of… it’s a conceit that we don’t really acknowledge in the way that it should be acknowledged,” the actor would later opine.
Cox’s recent comments echo those he made in 2022 during an interview with The Guardian, wherein the actor declared, “I was brought up Catholic, but in the last few years have become quite atheist. Religion is confusing because we don’t acknowledge who we are as humans.”
“Religion is a cul-de-sac because it provides peace, yet we are still dangerously in jeopardy of destroying ourselves,” he added. “Religion is understandable, but we look to God, Muhammad or the pope, but we don’t look to ourselves.”
Cox would then elaborate, “Religion distracts us by saying: if we follow this path, we’ll get salvation. I think it’s a crock, quite frankly, and the older I get, the more of a crock I think it is.”