Trey Parker and Matt Stone Wrote This Theological ‘South Park’ Episode After Realizing That Everyone Thought They Were Atheists

Contrary to what some South Park fans may believe, series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are not a couple of anti-religion atheists – they don’t even smash their enemies’ skulls on their tummies.

Back in the mid-to-late 2000s, a class of public intellectuals whose brands revolved around their condescending, dismissive approach to “disproving” the fundamental assumptions behind major world religions sent the emerging online atheist community into fanatical fervor. As anyone who was on the internet during the dawn of Reddit knows well, figures like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris were, ironically, the Gods of a new kind of snarky adolescent atheist – as were Parker and Stone, to the South Park creators' surprise.

South Park parodied the rise of the proselytizing atheist douche in the Season 10 episode “Go God Go,” in which Cartman accidentally transports himself to the 26th century when warring factions of fundamentalist atheists inspired by the teachings of Dawkins control the world.

The following year, in 2007, Parker and Stone spoke to prominent atheist Penn Jillette about “Go God Go” at the skeptics’ convention The Amazing Meeting 5. During the talk, Parker and Stone surprised their audience by explaining that, despite their constant mockery of every organized religion in existence, they don’t consider themselves to be atheists – in fact, they only ever decided to skewer the areligious community when such skeptics tried to claim them.

In “Go God Go,” which premiered 18 days before the release of the Nintendo Wii, Cartman cryogenically freezes himself in order to skip the unbearable wait for the launch of the new game console, accidentally sending himself to the year 2546. Back in the present day, Ms. Garrison begins a torrid romance with Dawkins, urging him to be even more ruthless in his condescension to the religious masses. 

Five centuries later, Cartman finds that Dawkins' teachings have taken over the world, and three fanatical atheists factions now war with each other over their scientific zealotry.

During the Q&A portion of Parker and Stone's appearance at The Amazing Meeting 5, one audience member pointed out that Parker and Stone's depiction of Dawkins in “Go God Go” was especially ruthless, prompting Stone to quip to the convention, “We knew this would come up here.”

“We weren't going to pull punches on Richard Dawkins after all the stuff that we've done,” Stone said of South Park's equal-opportunity attack on all religious or non-religious beliefs, “We wanted to do a show on atheism, because it seemed to be this kind of, like, subject du jour with all the new books that have come out.” Dawkins dropped his controversial best-seller The God Delusion just weeks before the airing of “Go God Go.”

Stone continued, "It also happened that, this summer … we learned learned some things, and we were surprised to find out that there was a common perception that we were atheists, that Trey and I were avowed atheists, and we were asked in this interview if we were avowed atheists, and we said, ‘No!’

According to Parker and Stone, Jillette himself reached out to them following the interview and challenged them to define their feelings on faith. “A lot of the show comes from our life, and this was just something that was happening with us, where, for the first time, we were like, ‘Oh yeah, am I an atheist? No.'" Stone explained, “We make fun of religion and we have fun with all of its icons and all of its myths and stuff, but I'm also fascinated with it, and I think Trey is too, and there's a lot of good stuff there, as far as storytelling (goes).”

Stone concluded of his thoughts on religion, “It's part of America, so, like, if you want to do a comedy show about America, you can't not do it about religion.” Stone then added of his primary parody target in “Go God Go,” “My personal view of Richard Dawkins is that he's the smartest dumbest person in the world.”

While the Amazing Meeting 5 crowd seemed to struggle with Parker and Stone's answers about their thoughts on existential questions, Parker and Stone would make their feelings on the profound perfectly clear in 2011 with “The Poor Kid”: