There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”
Adorable, but wrong. If you know a thing is not true, then you do not believe it. This is a fact about the usage of the word “belief.” It is not possible to believe something that you regard as false or unknowable. That’s not how the word is used in English.
It is certainly possible to say what you know ain’t so. But we don’t call this “faith,” or “belief” – we call it “lying.”
