Overwhelmed by a sense of our insignificance

(Jesus & Mo)

The artist notes that "This week’s strip was inspired by the Pope, who nearly got it right, before hoisting his cassock and running away in terror."

Yup. To quote the pope: "If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature." And that's just too scary for him.

Since he desperately wants to believe otherwise, he posits a magic man who created human beings for a reason. Yeah, there's absolutely no evidence of that, and the Pope certainly has no problem dismissing all other religions, which also have no good evidence backing them up.

Indeed, there is good evidence that we weren't created deliberately by a benevolent deity. If you look at our anatomy, we've got many features that aren't optimal, features that no "creator" worth his salt would ever deliberately design, features that only make sense in the light of unguided evolution.

But none of that matters to most believers, next to the desperate wish to believe it true. Indeed, it must be particularly intense among the celibate old men who run the Vatican, people who've given up their entire lives to support a lie. How much must those people desperately want it to be true?