credo quia absurdum est Phrase
Meaning:
I believe it because it is absurd
Comment
A very common misquote of Tertullian's et mortuus est Dei Filius prorsus credibile quia ineptum est (and the Son of God is dead: in short, it is credible because it is unfitting), meaning that it is so absurd to say that God's son has died that it would have to be a matter of belief, rather than reason. The misquoted phrase, however, is commonly used to mock the dogmatic beliefs of the religious (see fideism). This phrase is commonly shortened to credo quia absurdum, and is also sometimes rendered credo quia impossibile est (I believe it because it is impossible) or, as Darwin used it in his autobiography, credo quia incredibile.
Word-for-word analysis:
A much more detailed analysis with detection of relationships or clauses can be found in our Sentence Analysis! Try it out!
More Information
Embed this entry on your siteVocabulary Groups:
Find more Latin words with our Advanced Search functionality.
"-" is the shortcut for "this form does not exist"
For Students
Most phrases were taken from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons License.