Ricky Gervais says he wasn't mocking Christians

During the Golden Globe Awards, host and professed atheist Ricky Gervais said, “Thanks to God for making me an atheist,” but in an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, he says he was not mocking Christians. 

Morgan began by pointing out to the British comedian and actor that millions of Americans are in fact Christian and it seemed obvious that he was poking fun at that particular religion. 

In response Gervais negated the assumption of offending American Christians, especially when he personally doesn’t find it offensive when people say “thank God” all the time.

Morgan continued on by rephrasing his question and Gervais, 49, said “no no, I’m not mocking them, people’s beliefs aren’t my concern at all, I certainly don’t differentiate religions either, I look at all religions the same, unlike religious people I look at all religions equally.”

They moved on to talk about Gervais’ childhood as a Christian. He spoke about how he stopped believing at age eight after growing up going to Sunday school. 

He came from a working class background where the social status doesn’t “hope that you become a lawyer or an international comedian, is that you don’t die in a barren fight…”

He continued on saying that people expect to overcome that foreseen situation by practicing good Christian values that preach immorality, but “they don’t have a monopoly on good his is my point, I’m not a Christian but I live my life in a good way”.

“Some people say who says what good is but you know what I say ‘I do’ I’m good to people because it’s the way I want to be treated and I don’t believe I’ll be rewarded in heaven, I will be rewarded now.”

The conversation moved on to the topic of life after dead. Morgan expressed his sentiment about how “the problem for atheist it must be doom and gloom when you get to like at 70 or 80, to think that’s it, that’s the end of everything, so you must fear death ten times more than Christians”.

He responded by saying “I can’t help what I believe anymore than you can, it’s up to you what you believe in. This thing about not believing in God, there are 2,780-odd gods, and if you’re a Christian you believe in one of them and you don't believe in all the others.”

The dispute was cut off after that remark by going to a commercial break and later on moving to a different subject matter.

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