Trey Parker & Matt Stone On New Atheism: Don't Be Dicks

Trey Parker and Matt stone, creators of South Park and The Book of Mormon, think Richard Dawkins is a dick.

Dawkins, on 'South Park'

In an interview by AJ Jacobs in Esquire, the due discuss their equal-opportunity offender approach to their work. Since South Park first aired in 1997, Parker and Stone have skewered Islam, Christianity, Scientology, Mormonism, and dozens of other belief systems, political ideologies, and conspiracy theories. They have even skewered non-belief, specifically the so-called New Atheism of Richard Dawkins.

One of South Park's best episodes featured Dawkins as a substitute teacher who ends up having kinky sex with the boys' creationist teacher, Miss Garrison (formerly Mr. Garrison, pre-sex-change-operation). The show ended five hundred years in the future, when Dawkins-worshipping atheists are at war over whether their religion should be called the "United Atheist Alliance" or "Unified Atheist League."

Stone had this to say about Dawkins:

"He's such a dick," said Stone. "You read his book and you're like, 'Yeah, I agree with that. But it's the most dicky way to put it... I think the neoatheists have set atheism back a few decades. And I'm a self-described atheist."

It is apt that the two were interviewed by Jacobs. His very funny memoir, The Year of Living Biblically, takes religion head-on. There are plenty of laughs, and some have certainly been offended, but at the end of the day, Jacobs realizes that he is a 'reverent agnostic.' In a Q&A session, Jacobs stated, "Whether or not there's a God, I believe in the idea of sacredness—that rituals can be sacred, that the Sabbath can be sacred, and there's great importance to that. So I'm still agnostic, but a deeply different kind of agnostic."

Parker and Stone seem to share this reverence for religion, despite their own personal beliefs.

"I'm concerned about people being happy," said Stone. "With religion I was always like, Does it matter if it's true if it makes you happy?"

"As storytellers for fifteen years, we started looking at religions for their stories," Parker said.

Stone illustrated the idea with the Parable of the Hipster Coffee Guy. Recently, Stone was at a New York hotel that was trying very hard to be cool. It had stuffed animal heads on the walls and exposed brass pipes. "I don't know if Luddite is the right word, but it was back-to-basics. The guy making the coffee had a beard and tattoos. And I'm sitting there going, 'What the fuck. I'm too old for this. This is not my scene.' And then I drank the coffee, and I'm like, 'Holy shit. That's amazing.'

"And it made me think there's something about dressing up and playing the part. To me, that's religion. You can write down how to make the perfect cup of coffee. But to make it really good, you have to play something fictional, you have to dress up, you have to think, This is the most important thing."

Read the full interview at Esquire.