Comedian Ricky Gervais embarked on a controversial debate with Stephen Colbert and the results were enlightening.
Star of the brilliantly hilarious, The Office, Ricky somehow managed to get himself into a religious debate while making an appearance on The Late Show.
The conversation quickly swerved into religious territory after Stephen quizzed his guest on becoming a knight, according to Mashable.
Stephen casually introduced the hefty topic after claiming the comedian had said he was going to hell and was a self-proclaimed atheist.
He didn’t waste much time before offering out the chance to debate the subject and posed the pretty weighty question of ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’
A pretty baffled Ricky then replied with:
That makes no sense at all.
Stephen wouldn’t let him relent though as he said ‘They’re the two choices I’m giving you. I’m the host,’ before offering Ricky the chance to ‘concede.’
Not one to admit defeat, the actor quickly picked up speed in the heated argument and threw back an interesting question.
He asked:
Surely the answer is not why but how.
The host re-phrased his question to suit Ricky and the pair moved on to debating ‘how’ there comes to be anything. Sounds confusing right?
Ricky fought his corner by explaining he was a man of ‘science’ and ‘nature’ and he was an ‘agnostic atheist,’ before going into baffling detail about what atheism means.
He brilliantly summed up his beliefs in one line though, after flipping the question back to Stephen and asking how many deities the host believed in.
He said:
You deny one less god than I do.
You don’t believe in 2,999 gods — and I don’t believe in just one more.
He received a round of applause for his take on the subject, before Stephen directed it over to ‘gratitude’ and the feeling of being thankful for being alive.
The debate got heated again when the two discussed the ever-divisive theory of creation with the two going head-head with very opposing views.
It seems like Ricky won that one though, after he ended on a brilliant speech about religion vs science and was met with roaring applause from the audience.
The actor-comedian is extremely articulate, throwing back slick responses to Stephen’s open-ended questions and far from being dry, the video is well worth a watch.
Here’s the full version of the heated debate:
Regardless of your believes you have to hand it to Ricky, he makes a damn good point…
And he’s got some seriously good debating skills…
