Today’s Jesus and Mo, “wind2,” is an 8-year-old strip with new artwork. Despite the fervent attempts of Sophisticated Theologians™ to define faith otherwise, it always comes down to the definition given by philosopher Walter Kaufmann: “intense, usually confident, belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.” This is why, if you have evidence, you don’t speak of faith, and why scientists don’t say they “have faith in evolution”. Faith is not a virtue, but a character flaw.
Faith is belief in spite of a lack of evidence.
Gullibility is belief in spite of a lack of evidence.
The difference is whether you want it to sound good or bad.
Nice one!
Childhood religious indoctrination is the culprit in making adult brains that deny evidence and accept myths.
That’s a great cartoon. Finally some truth from the religious. Character flaw pretty well nails it too.
And howdy! Already added to Wikiquote, both at Dr. Coyne’s page, and on the page for faith.
Really gets to the point of the idiocy of religious faith.
It is amusing that Mo is sitting at the bar, presumably drinking “soft drinks” or water from a pint ale glass.
Very early on, it is established that Mo is a body double. Presumably, the body double isn’t actually a Muslim.
Excellent. The inability to admit mistakes is then mistaken for strength of character, persistence, loyalty, love, honor, or — bizarrely — humility.
“Oh, I would never be sure of anything which came out of little ol’ me and my own thinking — gosh, no. That’s why I’m so sure of God. I admit I’m totally unreliable — and then I depend on Him. Not me! See how it works?”
There’s another popular definition of ‘faith’ which emphasizes not confidence, but hope. Continuous hope, no matter what happens, that God exists, God has a plan, God loves you, etc. Faith can then also be
“intense, usually confident, desire to believe that something is true even though it seems to the believer themselves that it’s not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.”
The folks who use this one think it’s nothing like the first version because it’s got DOUBT instead of confidence. “No faith without doubt!” See how that’s not ‘confidence?’
But it’s the same process. When faced with the possibility of changing their minds because of their doubts — or increasing doubts — they dig in. They resist accepting a different conclusion as if wanting to believe is a product of strength of character, persistence, loyalty, love, honor … and especially humility.
Oh, but the religiously faithful are ever sooooo humble and very proud of their humility and capacity to believe sheer non-sense. I suppose that’s why they so fervidly hate atheists, especially those who keep pointing out the logical flaws in what they believe.
As in this (in)famous part of the Catholic funeral liturgy:
“sure and certain hope”–SMH
Isn’t there just a little bit of magic in that statement? Sounds a lot like science.
Albert Einstein had sure and certain hope that everything was relative.
Richard Feynman had sure and certain hope that his conception of QED was viable.
Charles Darwin had sure and certain hope that man’s ancestors were earlier apes.
Well, we often have idiosyncratic ways of interpreting words, and perhaps your sense is more common than mine.
To me, though, those particular words don’t sound like a construction most scientists would use. Maybe substitute “expectation” for “hope?” I still stumble over the conflating of certainty with hope, though.
“conflating of certainty with hope”
Mind bending.
I suppose, for many people, standing on the edge of Grandma’s grave, it sounds pretty good.
This one’s a keeper.
If faith is a virtue then so is denialism of reality.
And suffering is good. God likes it.
Faith also is never having to say you’re sorry – look at the centuries of abuse / violence victims and how only a tiny amount have ever been recognized, never mind anything else …
A simple and straightforward argument against faith. It’s funny how one cartoon can expertly refute the claims of entire books…like those of C.S. Lewis.
Th philosopher Henri Bergson wrote a book called “The Two Sources of Morality and Religion” in which he distinguishes between “Static/closed” morality and religion and “dynamic/open” morality and religion.
The latter type of religion has very little visibility these days.
The final panel would make a cracking good T-shirt.
Reminds me of that quote supposedly by Mark Twain: Faith is believing in something you know ain’t so.
Wonderful toon.
I doubt, however, that many religious would admit to those statements in panel 2.
C. S. Lewis argues somewhere (in a talk called something like “On Obstinacy in Belief”) that faith can be rational based on previous experience. For instance you have faith that your friend will make a difficult journey to be with you tonight, not because you have any present evidence for that proposition but because you know your friend from previous experience.
Of course this begs the question: do we, in fact, have any previous experience of God?
That seems to me to be mixing up faith with induction. When you take your knowledge of past empirical experiences and apply it to some unknown situation or future prediction, that’s generally considered induction, not faith. I don’t need faith to think the sun will rise tomorrow, or that commute traffic will be bad, or that a friend I know from past experience to be punctual will make a meeting on time. Sure, in each case I’m making a prediction of the future which I do not technically know will come to pass. But the basis of such beliefs isn’t faith, its induction.
Or abduction, or sometimes, deduction. (With moral certainty on the premisses.)