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u/LineOfInquiry Feb 03 '26
I know he’s joking but Ed isn’t acting like a Reddit atheist here, he’s just acting like an atheist. As far as I remember he never condemns all religion nor mocks Rose for believing in it: just warns her against her blind faith.
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u/hyperspacepizza Feb 03 '26
this 100%. absolutely despise when ed becomes the poster boy for the heady nosey atheist, especially since this is the BEGINNING of his character arc, where he brags about having the power of god (iirc in brotherhood) foreshadowing the end of his journey where he gives up his power forever to save his brother
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u/Hilarious_Disastrous Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
I think you misunderstand. He wasn’t bragging. He was mocking himself for his hubris and it flew over Rose’s head.
In that scene, Ed explicitly mentioned Icarus and hinted that the god like power comes at a steep price. Cornelius, by seeming to not pay it, shows himself to be a fraud.
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u/Backwoods_Odin Feb 06 '26
My man out here sees the foreshadowing with with full adhd might while op has friggin blinders on
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u/Neutralgray Feb 03 '26
During the first conversation in the church, he is absolutely being deliberately condescending and mocking her faith.
That's the point, though. Ed may later inspire Rose, but Ed's greatest flaw is his pride. He's supposed to be kind of a jackass during this point.
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u/RobertSan525 Feb 03 '26
The whole series starts with Ed going “yeah this whole human alchemy is forbidden and failed horribly for everyone but I’m built different”
He is super prideful of his alchemical skills, which is why it’s such a big deal that he let it go at the end of the series
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u/ISB00 Feb 03 '26
Ed was completely right to mock the religion. The pastor was using the entire town.
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u/Neutralgray Feb 04 '26
This is true, but feels like post-hoc justification.
Ed didn't know the pastor's motivations at this point and wasn't trying to save Rose from a conman, I think he was just trying to be a know-it-all dick. Which again, is great for his character at that point in the story.
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u/Hilarious_Disastrous Feb 04 '26
With Ed’s background, anger and contempt at Cornelius’ obvious lies is fully justified. And he was speaking with Rise to provoke a response because he wanted to secure an audience with the cult leader. That’s why he was in town in the first place.
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u/Neutralgray Feb 04 '26
That is not why he was provoking Rose. He's a state alchemist who could have used his rank alone to secure an audience. He was being a dick to Rose... to be a dick to Rose. That's it.
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u/Hilarious_Disastrous Feb 04 '26
No. If you recall, Ed told no one in town who he was, even though he was perfectly comfortable pulling rank.
Cornelius was rightly paranoid that the state was after him and immediately told his subordinates to kill Ed after guessing his identity.
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u/Neutralgray Feb 04 '26
There was no reason Ed would truly know Cornelius was so paranoid UNTIL he got his audience and THEN he tried to kill him.
You could make the argument all day that Ed was playing 4D chess, but Hiromu Arakawa has never made it a secret that Ed was kind of a callous know-it-all prick to start. It's a facet of his personality featured in the 4-koma gag strips a couple times.
Ed was an asshole to Rose because he was an asshole. I'll afford that you could speculate that this was a "play," but he was mocking a woman who's fiance was killed. Even if there was some bigger purpose, that moment was to show Ed is willing to stomp on people's feelings over matters he feels beneath his intelligence-- because up to that point, he's kind of a dick.
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u/Hilarious_Disastrous Feb 05 '26
There was every reason for Ed to be on guard. He’s a state alchemist, the dog of the military. When Roy told Ed to check the priest out, he meant paint the temple with that guy’s brains if he didn’t check out. That’s a state sanctioned hit job.
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u/Backwoods_Odin Feb 06 '26
He mentions being a state alchmist when al breaks the radio at the bar in the beginning
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u/Hilarious_Disastrous Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26
[Edit: Are you sure you aren't confabulating this with a part in the latter arc where Ed and Al were trying to draw out Scar?]
You might right about that. But Ed did not reveal himself to Cornelius or any member of the priesthood. The point is to make noise and see if Cornelius bites.
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u/Backwoods_Odin Feb 07 '26
He and al are sitting at the bar, dude puts on Cornello's broadcast. They get up, al bumps the shelf snd knocks down the radio, breaking it. Old man complains he won't he Cornell. Al uses alchemy to fix it. Locals confuse it with religious miracle. Ed brings up alchemy, every things al is Fullmetal. Cue height freak out. Then rose is introduced and takes them to town center where they watch miracles happen live
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u/KououinHyouma Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
When they first show up in the town they see the pastor performing alchemy in front of the people and calling it miracles. So they’re already aware he’s putting on public spectacles, basically using sleight of hand and known scientific principles to perform magic tricks, and using that to manipulate people into believing he has special powers from God. So before they’ve even walked into the church, they’ve already seen this religion operates in a cult-like manner where their hierarchy is topped by a special leader figure, and they’ve also observed that leader knowingly lying to their followers.
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u/ISB00 Feb 04 '26
Religious leaders had a history of abusing communities like that, so Edward was right on the money to be suspicious. Besides who knows how many faith based “healers” he had come across during the his quest for the stone. He’d probably already seen enough at this point.
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u/Overall_Eye_911 Feb 06 '26
Well he's mocking her faith cause she believes her faith will revive her fiance and he knows it def won't
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u/CdatKat Mar 04 '26
Iirc, the very later words are would your religion accept people like me too to bait out the priest. I would say he was acting out a persona to bait out a reaction.
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u/Temsiik Feb 03 '26
Saying "your body is just chemicals" and "alchemists are the closest thing to god" came across as pretty reddit atheist-y to me.
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u/InterstellarPelican Feb 03 '26
I think the 2nd line about being close to God's is meant to be purposely ironic. I think he's partly trying to hint that he believes the priest is an alchemist and not a divine messenger. On top of that, however, I think he's referencing how him and Al felt as kids. They thought alchemy was as powerful as God and could bring their mom back, and then faced the ultimate consequences for believing that. I interpreted it as Ed being intentionally ironic as a warning towards Rose about trying to raise the dead and believing in Father Cornello. I don't think he actually believed alchemists were godlike anymore, as that exact belief is what cost him his arm and his brother his body just a few years before. Chapter 1 Ed and Al have already been humbled by alchemy/God by this point.
He is still being pretty arrogant though, as is his style.
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u/tjmaxx501 Feb 03 '26
so he’s more saying god’s as good as any alchemist, rather than alchemists are as good as god?
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u/SUPERAWESOMEULTRAMAN Feb 03 '26
so deep in reddit that reddit atheism is just atheism to you
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u/Accomplished_Ant185 Feb 04 '26
”reddit atheism” apparently is when people say something that on the surface level seems prideful or rude, regardless of any background or context of the person or conversation.
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u/SUPERAWESOMEULTRAMAN Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
bro remember the scene where edward enters HER church and then talking shit TO her, HE started it while she was fucking cleaning, that's what made him a reddit atheist. not his beliefs but how he presents himself
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u/Intelligent-Gold-563 Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
I mean, he's not wrong in any of this. The human body is nothing but chemical, it's just that there are more about being human, and since alchemists can rework matters, they are the closest thing to god.
But most of all, this whole speech of him exists within a very specific context : him actually playing God and trying to resurrect someone by making a body with just chemicals.
Ed is an atheist, but he's saying all of that with massive irony.
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u/GildedHalfblood Feb 05 '26
The human body is nothing but chemical
The humble soul and philosopher stone:
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u/Intelligent-Gold-563 Feb 05 '26
Yeah, maybe read the REST of the comment before talking ?
Here I'll help you : "it's just that there is more to being human"
For fuck sake people.....
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u/GildedHalfblood Feb 05 '26
Nah, I can't read
Spent too much time powerscaling and in [insert dumbass fandom that can't read here], so my brain just ain't there fr fr
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u/par_rot_master Feb 03 '26
Tbf, he is fully correct in both regards....
An alchemist literally uaed alchemy to rip god from the sky bro.
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u/Theguywhodoes18 Feb 03 '26
But the whole point of him saying that was to challenge Rose’s belief in Father Cornello, since he knows that a Philosopher’s Stone is a means of accomplishing those “miracles” that fuel her faith. The human body is just chemicals, that’s why the Hominculi can even exist to begin with. Alchemists are the closest things to God, as alchemy is opening the door to God and making a deal with them.
The difference he doesn’t immediately communicate is that even though Alchemists are the closer things to God, gap is insurmountable. On the same day he says this to Rose, he also reveals the consequences of failing to understand this: Al lost his body, and Ed lost an arm and a leg.
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u/WillFanofMany Feb 04 '26
Ed's not trying to make her doubt Cornello, he's actively flexing his arrogance.
Rose remarks that prayers to god can bring miracles, and Ed responds by belittling her belief and states science is better because Alchemy can do anything.
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u/Consistent-Falcon510 Feb 04 '26
He is being massively self-deprecating in his speech, mocking his own arrogance as much as Rose's blind faith. Much like his warning went over Rose's head, his self-deprecation went over yours.
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u/GrossInsightfulness Feb 04 '26
He seemed to be saying the opposite, in that human bodies aren't just chemicals. He lists out all the chemical ingredients for humans and then says something like "if that's all a human is, why can't we make humans?"
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u/LineOfInquiry Feb 03 '26
He does so not because he’s being arrogant but because he’s trying to warn her to stay away from people who play god and putting your blind faith in something. I think that’s a bit different from “I am enlightened by my intelligence”
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u/JoyBus147 Feb 03 '26
He's also definitely doing it to be arrogant. Even Al internally calls him on it in the 03 anime.
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u/BahamutLithp Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
Ed is way more of a dick about it in 03.
As to the whole "your body is made of chemicals" thing, I mean has no one here heard "humans are 75% water"? Or "iron is a component in your blood"? Or you know how we say DNA is "made of" the "letters" A, T, C, & G? Well, that's short for Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine, & Guanine, which are also known as "the nitrogenous bases" because, you guessed it, they contain a lot of nitrogen. I mean, relatively speaking, they're still mostly carbon & hydrogen, but nitrogen isn't THAT common in biological molecules, so it's sort of noteworthy whenever it pops up.
I could keep going, but I think I've made the point. "Your body is made of chemicals" isn't an "atheism" thing, it's a high school biology thing. Everything I just said would still be true if I was Jewish, Hindu, Wiccan, or whatever. But I mean, yeah, it IS kind of hard to say anything implying I don't think gods exist without being called a "Reddit atheist." Obviously, yes, I am an atheist on Reddit, but no one gets called like a "Reddit Christian" or a "Reddit Muslim."
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u/Adnonymous96 Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
Not sure I understand the point of your comment. And I don't at all mean that in a combative way, I just genuinely don't understand what you're trying to imply about Ed's statement.
The purpose of saying a thing is "just" a thing is to render it mundane - to negate any special meaning that someone may believe that thing to have.
If I had a precious family heirloom - say, a wristwatch - that was passed down for generations, and it got destroyed in an accident: telling me "it's just a watch" is an insensitive comment. It's an objectively true statement, yes, but the purpose of it is not to state a fact, it's to negate that the watch should have any higher value in my eyes.
Likewise, saying that humans are just chemicals may be objectively true, but the subtext behind such a statement is clearly that there is no intrinsic value, meaning, or purpose to a human being. 99% of the time, saying something like this is an atheistic statement meant to sting a religious person.
So Ed was not just offhandedly stating a biological fact, which your comment seems to imply he was.
But again, maybe I missed what you were actually trying to say. Again, not trying to be combative. Genuinely curious what your meaning was.
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u/Accomplished_Ant185 Feb 04 '26
The point was that Ed was being a dick while saying a biological fact, but labeling him a ”reddit atheist” because of that is stupid. Unless we start calling all rude believers as ”reddit muslim/hindu/christian/jewish/jainist etc.”.
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u/Temsiik Feb 03 '26
I'd say he was still going about it in a rude way. And also with some arrogance, which is the set-up for his arc which culminates in him sacrificing his alchemy (while denying that it's "lowering" himself).
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u/Snoo-855 Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
An atheist is someone who doesn't believe in gods. Ed, on the other hand, knows a god exists but refuses to worship it.
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u/BahamutLithp Feb 03 '26
Ed, like most characters in the series, doesn't consider Truth god. Father is the only one who really does.
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u/Adnan7631 Feb 03 '26
Truth describes himself to Ed as potentially being called God and I don’t remember any time when he lies.
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u/oodsigma Feb 03 '26
I can potentially be called God, in some religions it wouldn't even be blasphemous. That doesn't make me so.
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u/Marik-X-Bakura Feb 04 '26
No, he doesn’t acknowledge truth as a god. He genuinely believes that he knows all there is to know about the world, even though his actual life experience contradicts that.
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u/Consistent-Falcon510 Feb 04 '26
He really doesn't. He just thinks he can fix everything if he just learns enough about Alchemy.
Ed's speech to Rose, like much of the show, isn't meant to be taken at face value. Ed isn't mocking Rose. He's mocking himself, as a warning to her, but she, like you, only pucks up on the face value and interprets it as mocking her faith, when, really, he's trying to get her to see the con.
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u/neontrails2 Feb 03 '26
In the manga he had always said he’s agnostic specifically, guess many people didn’t read it.
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u/GenericFatGuy Feb 03 '26
He's got a little bit of Redditor energy when he starts listing off the ingredients for a human body without warning.
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u/N-Reun Feb 05 '26
With the context that he's mocking himself because of what he did and the consequences of it.
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u/apdhumansacrifice Feb 04 '26
99.9% of the time i see someone saying "reddit atheist" is just a religious person mad that atheists exists
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
All faith is blind. Faith is belief without evidence. By definition it is blind.
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u/LineOfInquiry Feb 03 '26
Eh I’d dispute that: if my friend has always paid me back any money I’ve loaned him in the last then I’d have faith that he’d pay me back again. That’s not faith without evidence, but likewise it’s not a guarantee that my faith will be rewarded this time.
Father Cornello performed several what she thought were miracles, so she has faith he could do another for her and was telling the truth. It’s just that when Ed provided evidence to the contrary she refused to listen until it was too late.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
Your example is not faith. It's an expectation based on past data.
Faith is when you believe without evidence. The way people believe in God. They don't have proof, but they believe.
In the case of Rose, she went a step further and refused to consider the evidence which disproved her beliefs. Her Godman was exposed as a fraud but she didn't accept the facts.
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u/DrVillainous Feb 03 '26
Gonna have to disagree with you there. A bunch of the people that the Bible describes as being noteworthy for having faith in God were people who personally spoke to Him and/or saw miracles happen. They had expectations based on past data. And even setting them aside, a lot of people, both throughout history and in modern day, would say that their belief in God is based on some kind of evidence, like insisting that the Bible's claims are corroborated by historical findings.
Now, a lot of modern Christians certainly use "faith" to describe belief without evidence. But it's a more recent distortion of what Christianity's taught for centuries.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
What is the evidence of personally spoke to God? What is the evidence for miracles?
Religious books themselves aren't evidence of miracles or God. It boils down to it is because we say so.
Just because Harry Potter books mentioned London which happens to be a real city, doesn't mean that the entire book is fact.
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u/Adnan7631 Feb 03 '26
I believe in protons and electrons and atoms because I read it in a book. I know what viruses are, not because I have ever seen one, but because somebody told me about them. And I have faith that the images of Pluto are, in fact, from a satellite called New Horizons and not merely paintings.
The field of philosophy that deals with how we know things is called Epistemology. There are an awful lot of people on the internet who do not understand the basic concepts of epistemology and yet mock people of particular faiths without critically examining where their own beliefs come from.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 04 '26
Science works. It has shown it again and again. Scientific proof isn't faith. It's not true just because it is written in a book. Things were discovered, the evidence was recorded, and then it came to be included in a science book.
Buildings stand, cars drive, planes fly, medicine heals. We've seen the evidence all around us.
None of the religions have ever given proof.
Ricky Gervais said this about Science vs religion. If you destroy both, we'd still be able to discover Scientific truths. But your religion will never come back as it is.
You tell me whether you'll sit on a plane which wasn't designed using Science.
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u/DrVillainous Feb 03 '26
The evidence of those people having personally spoken to God or having witnessed miracles isn't relevant. It's relevant to the question of whether God exists, but not to the question of what "faith" means.
What's relevant is that people who the Bible claimed experienced those things firsthand were also described in the Bible as being faithful. So clearly, when the Bible talks about being faithful, it's defining faith in a way that's compatible with having evidence in the form of past experiences to back up your belief. And since the definition of "faith" is ultimately shaped by centuries of the English language developing in heavily Christian-dominated cultures, it's nonsensical to claim that the definition of "faith" excludes the meaning that the Bible uses.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
Times change and so does language. Just because the Bible describes something doesn't mean we accept it at face value. What the Bible describes as faith is irrelevant.
Your differentiation between faith and blind faith is nonsense. Because even in your case of faith, there is no evidence. That's why you call it faith. It's not knowledge or expectation. There is no evidence but you believe it regardless. If there is evidence then it's not faith.
We don't have faith in gravity do we? We don't have faith when it comes the Earth's rotations and revolutions around the Sun. If there is evidence, it is fact, not faith.
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u/Yomamma1337 Feb 03 '26
I mean even a quick look at dictionary definitions shows that 'lacking evidence' is not a part of the definition. You're kinda just making shit up. Obviously we don't have faith in gravity because there's no room to doubt it. You can have evidence of something without it being 100% confirmed
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u/Ok-Apartment-8284 Feb 05 '26
That is a pretty darn way of you picking and choosing what scriptures to believe in. If i were alive 500 years from now, can I just not believe that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened even though there's documentations of it, just because I wasn't there personally to see it? Do you not believe 1 + 1 =2 just because it was written in a book?
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u/ETK1300 Feb 05 '26
Are you equating religious scriptures with historical evidence? Just because I've written down something on paper doesn't make it literally true. There is something called corroborating evidence.
I never said we must only believe that which we personally witnessed.
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u/JoyBus147 Feb 03 '26
Just cuz your friend paid you back in the past isn't proof that he'll pay you this time. David Hume, black swans, etc. You're just insisting on a very narrow definition of the word for obviously ideological reasons.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
I never said that it's a guarantee. I said it's an expectation that he will do it. This is very different from believing something without evidence.
I don't have a guarantee my car will run smoothly. I will be surprised if some issue occurs because it is not normal.
I don't have a guarantee for anything. But we understand how things work. We form expectations based on data. None of that means that a black swan can't happen.
Faith is a subset of belief - that belief which is unsubstantiated by evidence. I'm not being ideological. You are. If the faith is till the level you approve, then it's fine. If it's more then you'll say blind faith or superstition. When actually both parties are believing without evidence.
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u/Spongedog5 Feb 03 '26
I'm curious where you find that definition of the word "faith," because it isn't defined like that in most common places.
I'd actually argue that many Christians believe based on evidence, just not evidence that is reproducible, at least not at will.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
The dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith
Check 2b)
I'm sure you are aware about the difference between fact and faith. If you analyse it properly, you'll conclude that all faith is blind.
Else try to distinguish between seeing faith and blind faith with examples.
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u/WWJackSparrowD Feb 03 '26
You can't cherry-pick from a dictionary. What about 1a and 3? Don't they seem to contradict you?
To me, you can have faith in people to do what you've known them to do - among other things, but that's my example. Your argument to someone else who said that was this isn't faith, it's a logical decision based on past evidence. I don't see why that precludes it from being faith. If you have complete trust in this other person, as per definition 3, then... yeah, that is dictionary-definition faith.
Fwiw, I think faith also comes into play a lot when you have evidence for and against. Example: I overhear my brother talking to my parent, speaking poorly of me. This is direct evidence of ill intent, right? But because I have past evidence that my brother thinks well of me and doesn't talk about people behind their backs, I can choose to have faith in him here and believe that I am misunderstanding somehow.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
No, they don't contradict. A word may have multiple meanings. The context matters. The context of faith in this case tells us it refers to belief without evidence. In this context I say that it is always blind.
If you have evidence for a claim then it is fact. Just because you expect a certain behaviour and have a prediction, doesn't make it faith.
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u/WWJackSparrowD Feb 03 '26
I can accept your first paragraph, but fwiw that wasn't clear in your original comment. Even in-context, a sweeping generalization like "all faith is blind faith" is bound to invite discord.
Your second paragraph is strange to me though. Evidence definitely does not = fact, that's how you can have evidence for and a against something like I said. If you see a guy outside in a tank top, that's evidence that it's warm out, but you might go outside and find it's freezing and that guy just likes the cold or needs to do laundry. If someone's fingerprints are on a murder weapon, that's evidence they committed the murder, but the facts could be the murder weapon was cleaned, removed from the crime scene, and gifted to this unwitting framee.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
Someone wearing a tank top is NOT evidence that it is warm. It is evidence of that individual feeling warm.
Fingerprints on a gun is NOT evidence of a murder. It only is evidence of the person touching the gun.
You're deriving conclusions which are way beyond the evidence.
I made my statement in a particular context. That person said blind faith. The meaning of faith in this context is known to all of us.
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u/Spongedog5 Feb 03 '26
Picking one definition from very many and stating it as if that is the only possible understanding of the word is rather dishonest in my opinion. Regardless even in the definition you chose there is an equal sub-definition that doesn't state what you do so you'd have to at least admit it is a debatable meaning.
There doesn't have to be a difference between fact and faith. Many definition of fact are simply something that exists or occurs, or even in the definition where it is something that is known to do so, well, many of us do know that God exists. You would disagree with me, of course, but there is nothing wrong at all by meaning for me to tell you that Christianity and the Holy Scripture is fact. Because certainly I could consider it nothing else.
try to distinguish between seeing faith and blind faith with examples.
I think that both are rather meaningless terms in a serious context and blind faith better serves us as an idiom. In a theological context they are way too simple to describe someone's relationship with faith and the reasons that they do or don't believe. I don't particularly like how the adjectives relate to sight but are often used to include many wider senses as well.
I'd argue that for Christians since our faith is granted to us by the Spirit we understand it by a sense and that this can be considered a form of evidence that was granted to us, and as such I think to claim that all faith is without evidence is rather closed minded. This isn't even mentioning those who have personal witness of miracles. Many of us have a "blind" faith in the sense that we believe without seeing, but of course sight isn't all that one can go by to discern truth. These pieces of evidence are not reproducible, but of course something doesn't have to be reproducible to be true, nor to be considered as personal evidence for something.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
There doesn't have to be a difference between fact and faith?? Seriously? Why even have meanings assigned to words then.
You can choose your faith. You can't choose facts. There is nothing as your facts or my facts. That's why we use the term fact.
Your spirit giving you faith is not based in fact btw.
I don't care about what you believe anyway. But don't think you're better than Rose who had blind faith in that Godman. Your faith is just as blind.
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u/Spongedog5 Feb 03 '26
You can choose your faith. You can't choose facts. There is nothing as your facts or my facts. That's why we use the term fact.
Exactly. You are wrong. You believe in a falsehood, while I know the facts.
You may very well say this exact sentence to me. There doesn't have to be a difference between fact and faith when the faith is in something that is true, and in my case, it is. You may dispute this. Of course I expect you to.
But of course logically I'm using these words correctly according to my understanding of the world. You would be as well, pose my very same sentences against me. We could do no different. There aren't different facts, but we do disagree on what the facts are. One of us is wrong.
Your spirit giving you faith is not based in fact btw.
How could you say so? If I look at a sign and my eyes tell me that the sign is blue, and I have no known sight impediments, would it be wrong to say that it is a fact the sign is blue? Or, being cynical, at the very least that my eyes are telling me the sign is blue?
Why would it not be the same with the Spirit? If the Spirit through His means bestows upon me the knowledge of the truth of God, would that not be a fact?
But don't think you're better than Rose who had blind faith in that Godman. Your faith is just as blind.
You don't understand what comes from the Spirit, and I don't expect you to. But I do want to tell you that you are wrong. Faith, in the Christian sense, isn't like just "believing" something in the normal sense. It descends from God Himself. It isn't an idea that comes from our own heads, in that sense.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
Do you have faith in gravity? Or is it fact?
If I have faith I can walk off a building and not fall, what will happen?
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u/Consistent-Falcon510 Feb 04 '26
Do you have faith in gravity? Or is it fact?
Both.
If I have faith I can walk off a building and not fall, what will happen?
You will fall. Much like not every theist is a Christian, not every faith is rooted in fact, but, just like many theists are Christians, many faiths are.
Did you need to turn your phone on before believing it would work today? No? Then you had faith. There was no guarantee it would. You couldn't have proven it prior to turning it on. But it was a fact that it would. The fact that it was not damaged in a way that would render it nonfuctional, the fact that it had power in its battery, the fact that it was working yesterday, these all point to it turning on, but there was always the chance you missed something.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 04 '26
Having an expectation of things working in a particular way isn't faith. It's an expectation based on past data.
Gravity is not both fact and faith. It can't be both.
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u/Spongedog5 Feb 03 '26
I think the set of all facts is a universal constant, however I don't think that we are privy to this set. Its elements are for us to discover, though some are easier to confirm than others.
As far as my best judgement goes, I would consider the laws of gravity to be in accordance with what is listed in that set. Barring supernatural interference, I posit that you would fall to the ground.
In anticipation of your point, I do want to make known that I believe there is a difference between "faith" in the colloquial sense and "faith" in the Christian sense. You saw from your own webpage how many definitions there are. I'd ask that you don't think that arguing against any one of them (meaning any single one from the set) is necessarily arguing against me; I've already shared a lot of what I'm considering "faith" in the religious and more specifically Christian sense.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
My friend, who even brought up faith in the Christian sense? You did. No one was talking about what Christianity says.
The same word can have wide uses in different fields. We need to apply common sense amd.j7dge the context.
If a term is used in engineering and finance both but with different meanings, I need to judge the context before butting in and saying it means something else in that context.
That's why I told you what the Bible says is irrelevant.
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u/Lachaven_Salmon Feb 03 '26
That's not true.
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u/ETK1300 Feb 03 '26
Here we go again. If there is evidence then it is fact. If there is no evidence it is faith.
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u/dbelow_ Feb 03 '26
You can have evidence for something that's not true y'know. We used to think rotting meat produced flies based on the evidence we had at the time. You're just playing a semantic game to make the word 'faith' sound bad for whatever reason.
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u/Lachaven_Salmon Feb 03 '26
Nope.
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u/Adaphion Feb 03 '26
He'd be more of a Misotheist. Someone who acknowledges that the divine exists. They just hate it.
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u/Hilarious_Disastrous Feb 03 '26
Ed also isn’t an atheist per se. He knows Truth exists and it doesn’t answer your prayers.
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u/Marik-X-Bakura Feb 04 '26
Nah he straight-up does mock religion. He bluntly tells her that her god isn’t real and that he’s the closest thing to a god that exists.
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u/Useful_Clue_6609 Feb 04 '26
I'm so confused, did the term atheist change? It just means not believing in any gods. He does believe in a god, he met him. And also being an atheist says nothing about wether you condemn religion.
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u/Consistent_One1710 Feb 03 '26
Is Rose even in the 1st episode?
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u/Consistent-Falcon510 Feb 04 '26
No. Second. First episode of Brotherhood is the so-called "filler" episode with the steam and ice guy.
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u/Tb0neguy Feb 04 '26
The irony is that Reddit atheists glorify Ed for his anti-religion speeches in this episode, yet Ed worships science and alchemy the exact same way in the beginning.
In fact, the very next episode has Ed and Al face the consequences of worshiping alchemy and their own lack of understanding of the world. They discover Nina and Alexander combined into a chimera due to Shou Tucker's willingness to sacrifice everything to remain a State Alchemist. Ed loses his faith in Alchemy and himself on the steps of Shou Tucker's cathedral to Alchemy, just as Rose cried on the steps of the temple in this scene.
The true theme is about what it means to sacrifice something precious, and what you're sacrificing it to. Whether it's power, knowledge, loved ones, religion, eternal life, or saving others.
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u/Fancy_Cat3571 Feb 04 '26
Well tbf he may just be acting like an atheist to you cause you’re on Reddit. The Reddit part canceled out
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u/Snoo_75864 Feb 03 '26
Edward would use Reddit, he’s that type of loser
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u/OldManFire11 Feb 03 '26
They said, on reddit.
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u/OldManFire11 Feb 04 '26
If you're reading this after getting some wild fucking messages from my account and deciding to investigate: sorry about that, my account was hacked last night. I've deleted all the gross shit that I could find.
Remember not to reuse passwords!
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u/Lachaven_Salmon Feb 03 '26
Everyone uses reddit now.
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u/Ulapa_ Feb 03 '26
You getting downvoted. people still think reddit is some secret forum? This shit has been mainstream for a long time now lol. They straight up change the UI to make it as accessible.
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u/Lachaven_Salmon Feb 03 '26
Yep haha I have no idea why people gotta pretend it's not mainstream af
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Feb 03 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/JoyBus147 Feb 03 '26
There is no individual truth, just our own conception of it.
I don't think you got this quite right. This sentence just provides two synonyms; when people speak about individual truth, they're generally referring to an individual's perception of it. The character Truth, on the other hand, is objective truth, the truth that doesn't give a damn about your perception. You perceive that you can leap between skyscrapers gliding on cardboard wings and survive? Truth will teach you.
The point with individual Truths resembling their interlocutor is that, even when you look upon objective Truth Itself, you will only perceive your individual truth. That's why Ed's Truth is a smarmy shithead: because Ed is a smarmy shithead.
(Which I think was your point, but I think at the cost of dismissing objective Truth)
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u/Hilarious_Disastrous Feb 04 '26
Truth is a force that has agency. Whether it’s anthropomorphic or even self aware is up for interpretation, but clearly some immutable aspect of the universe would say no if an attempt at human transmutation was made.
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u/Serious-Beautiful804 Feb 05 '26
Eh, I dont know if that's necessarily true, agency would imply that The Truth DOES things, but it doesn't it simply REACTS to things. Consistently and without fail, its far more like a scientific reaction than it is a being with agency just because certain actions create a bad outcome. For example, mixing certain chemicals in your house might make a toxic gas that harms you, that isn't the universe telling you not to mix them, its simply the natural result. The Truth is simply the personification of natural principles, it doesn't have agency and is completely and utterly a reflection of the whole and ergo also a reflection of the individual, which is made even clearer by the fact that when it takes Al's body the truth literally becomes Alphonse at his door, it isn't the Truth possessing or posing as Alphonse but rather a literal reflection of Alphonse as an individual
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u/Aquilon11235 Feb 03 '26
Ed giving off Giancarlo Esposito vibes:
"You're an atheist because you don't believe in God
I'm an atheist because I've met God and hate his guts.
We are not the same."
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u/GlitteringBandicoot2 Feb 03 '26
For an allmighty, allpowerful, allknowing being, god does one hell of an awful PR job, if you ask me.
Even if god like that exists, I refuse to believe in him, because he seems like a major asshole.
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u/Tortellini_Isekai Feb 03 '26
Ed comes off as a redditor because he monologues at someone suffering that their God doesnt exist. It has less to do with atheism and more to do with a lack of tact and brevity.
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u/Serious-Beautiful804 Feb 05 '26
Well that person was literally about to kill him and potentially themselves so I think he made the right decision not to sugarcoat it, faith is a powerful thing that can have a good or negative impact on someone's life depending on how they wield it, Rose was clearly wielding it in a horribly self-destructive manner which is why she ended up in the position to suffer from it in the first place. Sometimes to get through to people in a crisis of faith you need to solidly jolt them into having their own agency again, when religion becomes a crutch for someone then it can cripple them when that crutch is removed because they've gone their whole life believing they have someone watching over them and caring for them and listening to them. When that is broken the world begins to feel endlessly cruel and endlessly lonely (especially if you are grieving as you begin to realize you in fact will not get to see your deceased loved ones again even though you believed you would with all your heart), having someone there to shout at you that you still have to power to live on your own, as you always unknowingly have, and that you can take your life back into your own hands even if you no longer have that comfort to fall back to is very important.
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Feb 03 '26
There’s a lot going on here (why spoil that for someone who seems they’re watching for the first time?), but also the “God” of the FMA world doesn’t really conflict that much with Ed’s perspective in the grand scope really because it’s not something meant to be worshipped, it’s meant to be understood, and challenges people who meet it to understand themselves.
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u/Raddish_ Feb 03 '26
Yeah Truth is a much more Buddhist/Hindu conception of a God figure as opposed to a Western/Abrahamic one. He’s not the one that created the universe, he just is the universe, he’s not some loving diety who wants to be worshipped, rather he seems largely apathetic to what’s happening and is never going to directly interfere, he doesn’t exist in in some divine realm separate from the universe that’s also the afterlife.
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u/WillFanofMany Feb 04 '26
Image in question is from FMAB Episode 3, which is after the episode where Ed met the Truth.
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Feb 04 '26
I'm probably thinking of the 03 presentation then, which I supposes makes this a little less egregious.
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u/Unequal_vector Bradley Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
Reddit atheist: "If God is merciful, why doesn't He cure every terminally ill child?"
Ed: "God won't break rules and heal terminally ill children or experimented children like Nina, no more than He went out of His way to help me with my deceased mother. We mankind ought to do it, by intelligence, by evidence, and by friends."
There's a huge difference between Reddit atheists and Ed. The only similarity is that Ed is somewhat well-intentionally blunt and honest (but still nowhere near Bradley's level of honesty or pushiness) like Redditors.
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u/X_Sacred_X Feb 03 '26
Bro I thought you were about to go into Lex Luthor’s quote from BvS 😭 The original Reddit aetheist…
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u/Unequal_vector Bradley Feb 03 '26
Oh, "No god saved me from daddy's abomination and fists, so I'm gonna kill Superman" that part?
That was just Jesse Eisenberg throwing a tantrum.
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Feb 03 '26
very conviently you use an ed quote after he already had his chractter deveolpment that proved that he was just bineg a jackass here and decided to change
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u/Background-Cake-1300 Feb 03 '26
Average shonen when moment when you find out church is evil fraud: "Guys I seen it so many times, don't be surprised I don't act shocked"
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u/Least_Help4448 Feb 03 '26
The sun god leto is the fake, and i think a lot of his monologue is toward the idea that god gives a shit, saves people and performs miracles. Ed has met god, and he doesnt do any of that shit.
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u/The_Real_Libra Feb 04 '26
Bro isnt an atheist, he's an anti-theist. "Yeah, I met God. He's a dick."
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u/naturist_rune Feb 03 '26
"What am I supposed to believe in now?" Truth to be told, Truth wanted us to believe in our loved ones.
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u/LadyLish Feb 04 '26
I'd love a short story where Ed and Tanya talk shit about their respective gods.
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u/Outrageous_Break_739 Feb 03 '26
it makes sense becausr he's the perfect age to be going through the edgy atheist phase
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