I approve this message.
If you don’t teach your child to obey Jesus, the devil will teach them evolution, sexuality, psychology, witchcraft
The devil is a talented dude
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Spelled correctly, legible, no extra capitalization, but still dumb as shit.
Wow, just Wow!
The sign seems grammatical and conventionally spelled with a readable design, simple
and clear. Missing clarity and logic and the common sense of stunned ant, but not bad for an apparent fundie.One of these things is not like the others!
The devil’s been tutoring me on psychology and evolution–I think I’ve got sexuality down on my own, thanks–but he still hasn’t gotten around to teaching my witchcraft. I want to turn my enemies into newts, damnit.
Except for the witchcraft part, the devil sounds like he might be a good teacher. But he would probably be heavily into evolutionary psychology. I wonder what he charges for tuition – your SOUL [insert evil maniacal laugh].
Why isn’t she/it/they/he a good witchcraft instructor?
The devil is not only talented, but not in the least bloodthirsty like El Shaddai.
People are always arguing about how to fix the American education system. This guy raises the obvious solution: Why not ask Lucifer? Who better to enlighten our youth than the Light-bringer?
If it/he/she/they can cast a spell to ensure education is properly and adequately funded, you might be on to something here…
The devil teaches the dark arts of science AND magic. And adds sex into the mix too. If magic were only real the devil might be the best teacher ever. But as is, the devil sounds like a cult leader. Not cool, Satan. That is Jesus territory. And possibly Xenu.
I just thought of a cool con. I could make a sign like this but put right in the sign the web address for a gofundme campaign. I’d be willing to spit the proceeds with anyone who helps propagate my signage all over the internet!!
Any takers?
Iblis S. Baphomet, Ph.D
Professor of Materialistic Sciences and Sexual Studies
Styx Hall, Room 666
The Devil sounds like my kind of guy!
I’d expect the Devil to know everything about Evolution. He would be teaching graduate and post graduate level Evolution. There’d be a brief flurry of papers with him getting credit and then nothing. No more research. All that would be left would be to write the textbooks. Inspired, infallible and literal textbooks on Evolution. We might even get Abiogenesis sorted out since presumably, He was there, or knows someone who was.
They left out a lot. Probably because they themselves don’t know anything.
The devil will also teach them geology, paleontology, archaeology, history, cosmology, climatology, empathy, common sense, the Enlightenment, reasoning, logic, and a whole lot of other things.
As an added bonus, the devil will also get them a library card, a working internet connection, and worst of all….show them how to use Google and what Wikipedia is.
They may even learn how to visit…Freethoughtblogs!!!
Following this guy’s train of thought and in the absence of an actual Devil, it occurs to me that teachers are doing the Devil’s work.
Congratulations, PZ.
Jumpin’ Jeezus on a stick! That eedjit looks like me. I hope that living in Canada gives me enough geographical separation to avoid any identity confusion.
Its comforting to know that one of the Abrahamic deities isn’t against education.
Except for the “devil” part, I don’t have a problem with that sign. Of course I see teaching children things proven by evidence to be a good thing.
Hey, Buster, I’ve long argued that christinanity isn’t monotheistic, because Satan is a minor deity. I wonder what the eedjit holding the sign would say if that were put to him.
Actually, when you consider all the fucking angels the theologians acknowledge, fucking choirs of the buggers, christinanity is clearly polytheistic.
The Mellow Monkey@5,
Trouble is, that’s only temporary… they get better
raven@16,
Does the devil offer these courses for free & to everyone? If so, how do I sign up?
Now that’s going the extra mile!
I knew it: the Devil is a Liberal Arts prof.
Hey, I wasn’t taught to obey Jesus. Where are my witchcraft lessons? I have had 20 years of education and no witchcraft instruction. American education just sucks
I thought you could teach people about Mohammad for the same devil’s teaching protection. It works just as good, dang it. Why do Christians always think they are the only game in town, sheesh.
Not newts, nematodes. You gotta keep up with Satan’s program!
Nothing new about that sign.
Xianity has been at war with its true enemies, reality and reason, since the beginning.
Augustine called curiosity a disease.
“And the devil asked me to supper
He said, ‘Careful with the spoons’
And god said, ‘Oh, ignore him… I’ve got all your albums’
I said, ‘Yes, but who’s got all the tunes?'”
– Robyn Hitchcock
Anyone else get the impression that this kind of fundie would think things like “evolution”, “witchcraft”, “psychology”, and “sexuality” are all basically synonyms?
All the words are spelled correctly. One can parse the grammar to determine what the sign holder is trying to say. No random capitalization. No over use of exclamation points. However, he can’t get number to agree…”child to obey…”, “devil…teach them…”. The first reference should be “children” or the second reference should be “him” (or “her” if one is trying to be clever), or “that child” (or a variant such as “your child”).
Satan is running a charter school?
whheydt @ 30, singular they has been used in English at least as far back as Chaucer in the fourteenth century.
Augustine said a lot of very creepy things.
This is one of his worst. It’s also completely wrong. The secrets of nature aren’t beyond our understanding and have proven to be quite useful. This is what we used to create our modern civilization.
A good teacher is one that does not fill the student mind with junk.
I went to catholic sunday school, so I was taught to obey Jesus, yet I did learn about evolution, psychology and sexuality and according to the people in charge of the sunday school, it was all perfectly normal.
No witchcraft, though, which is a damn shame: why can’t I use Jedi mind tricks and levitate stuff, huh?
So it turns out Eve done good, after all.
Sounds good to me, what are the tuitition fees?
The devil is cool. If I were religious, I’d be be a Satanist.
@The Mellow Monkey #32: We have recently decided to give up on our losing linguistic battles against stable singular and plural forms and instead are adopting plural forms universally. Our languages seem to us to be trending in these directions, with the droppings of singular “thou” to use plural “you” now almost universal and the increasing frequencies of the uses of “they” as singular. In our opinions, these have the added advantages of more accurately representing the facts that we are not discrete individuals at all but in facts are amalgamated biological constructs composed of millions (billions?) of semi-autonomous structures, many of which don’t even share “our” modal DNA sequences (mitochondria, gut bacteria, vaginal flora, haploid cells like gametes, mutated cells, erythrocytes that lack nuclei in mammals), and nearly all of which individually live and die without any inputs from or even recognitions of our ego structures. Frankly, we’re suspicious that singular and plural morphemes are not useful enough to ever justify having distinct linguistic forms and serve only to convolute the languages. Just try to tell us that the preceding paragraphs were not far easier to read and parse than they would have been had we not abandoned all singular forms and instead substituted the appropriate plural forms!
After those exercises, we are now truly curious whether we can continue only using plural nouns, pronouns, and verbal conjugations for the remainders of the days. There are many lots (cases in points) of idiomatic phrases that are essentialized in singular forms; these strike us as the most likely points of difficulty for these linguistic projects.
laurentweppe:
Because of your lack of faith, ironically enough.
Satan sounds like a pretty rational fellow. I’m sure this guy just means chemistry when he says witchcraft.
I was taught about witchcraft in an anthropology class. Professor Steiner would have been mildly amused to know she had some sort of relationship with the devil.
Knowing this sort, I’d believe he means doing multiplication in your head.
Sort of a renaissance fallen angel, that guy. (But how’d he even find time outside fiddle practice?)
The devil also gives guitar lessons to people who meet him at the crossroads at midnight. Or so I’ve heard.
Whilst true, that is not an answer to the question which was asked. The question was not about a “good teacher”, but about a “good witchcraft [teacher]”.
And please don’t say witchcraft is fictional, which is again true. The teacher is also fictional.
Geesh.
Yeah, well, in my experience, case in point being the guy with the sign, they only get better physically, the brain never recovers…
I see this kind of post and I am both happy and sad that I don’t live in the USA. I hardly ever run into people this blatantly stupid. OK, never.
It is said, “The Devil is in the Detail”.
Call 1-800 SATAN for your detailed instruction book on how to make baby Jesus cry, all day every day.
Thanks Satan!
I’d have never gotten into Hogwarts without you!
If I had kids why would I teach them to obey this Jesus guy? I’ve never seen him, never met anyone who’s seen him, and a lot of the teachings his fans follow seem pretty dodgy.
My objection to the sign is that the series has no end. It needs an “and” and a period.
I am curious about the bit about teaching sexuality. That reads like the devil will teach your child to be either male or female, which sounds like a conservative’s goal.
I don’t like Jesus getting a capital letter on a proper name, while the devil doesn’t get respect.
[OT]
re Lucifer:
I feel sorry for Lucifer. Why is he always painted as a pure evil, lying, scumbag? I think he is just an angel that got a little uppity, and Gawd punished him by making him manage the punishment of all of humanity’s disobedients. It might be a job he really dislikes but Gawd forces him to doit, no resignation possible.
This attitude of mine is inspired by a synopsis of the upcoming PoliceProcedural TV series, Lucifer: where Lucifer abandons Hell, preferring to catch criminals in real life. This paints him as just a police guy putting crims in prison (for good reasons). Not tricking goodguys to get punished as crims; just doin his duty.
This poster reminds me of this Wonkette article featured on Skepchick’s Quickies the other day: Louisiana Senator is Not Cool With Scientists Murdering All the Creationists Dead. Specifically this senator asserts that it was “scientists” who believed the Earth was flat and burned people at the stake who questioned the belief.
I feel sorry for Lucifer. Why is he always painted as a pure evil, lying, scumbag?
Because he lost. Probably because yahweh is a humongous authoritarian monster, and lucifer got out-maneuvered, overpowered and out-marketed. Then history was rewritten to make it seem like the whole debacle was lucifer’s fault when, actually, it was probably yahweh that started it. I can imagine yahweh claimed that lucifer was building weapons of mass destruction, and led a successful war, had lucifer banished and punished and marginalized then declared victory and threatened any dissenters with horrible punishment. The only thing yahweh’s missing is killer drones. USA! USA!
PS – I have a useless psych degree. Am I satanic?
That might explain a lot, actually.
@Marcus 55/56
You know I’ve wondered this for a long, long time. Yahweh doesn’t ACT omnipotent or omniscient, and certainly not omnibenevolent. Omni-what-have-you beings, by definition, don’t have rivals, especially not rivals they seem to be utterly petrified of.
Your scenario makes a metric fuckload more sense than what we’re taught in Sunday school, for sure. I wonder sometimes if Lucifer was some kind of lieutenant in Yahweh’s army who tries to stage a coup when he realized ol’ Megidolaon had been wearing the divine boyshorts on the ineffable head for some eons now…
Marissa@#57 – Steve Brust wrote a book with that premise. Basically, yahweh became a control freak and lucifer, who was more liberal and pacifistic, was demonized (nyuk, nyuk) and eventually attacked by the forces of yahweh, then expelled from heaven and the whole incident was retconned. Brust’s take on it was pretty cool; basically yahweh was militarizing the angels who served as police – flaming swords and all that – your common-or-garden fascist god.
If you think about it, the ten commandments are mighty totalitarian. It’s yah’s weh or the high weh.
Maybe I’m missing some sarcasm from some of the other commenters here but, it seems that a lot of people are confusing Milton and Sunday school stories with what the bible actually says.
Honestly, I don’t know how to approach that sort of thing. Should we address what the evangelicals think their book says or should we address the text and point out to them that Lucifer was a reference to a Babylonian king and the war in Heaven hasn’t happened yet? It’s part of the Apocalypse, not Genesis. When that war happens, the leader of the opposition will be known as the Dragon, not Lucifer.
I think I spent more time trying to work out Tolkien’s mythology than the average Christian does with their own.
Also, re Marissa van Eck @57
The ancient Hebrews weren’t monotheists. They were henotheists. YHWH was just their tribal god that took on greater significance as time passed. He certainly wasn’t originally envisaged as omni-max. At least, that’s what I was taught.
True.
Most of what xians believe isn’t found in the bible. It’s stuff people have made up over the centuries.
Satan starts out in the OT as just another angel and god’s buddy. He is barely mentioned after Job. He does evolve though, ironic since fundies hate that word. He gets going in the NT along with that other innovation, hell. The NT devil and hell came from the Greeks who got it orginally from the Zoroastrians.
According to the bible, Satan isn’t in hell. He isn’t the ruler of hell either and never will be. He lives in Turkey at Perganum. Or did. The throne of Satan, which actually exists, is in the Berlin museum, having been carted there by recent archaeologists.
PS If the xian god is all powerful, demons, satan, and hell make no sense except as god’s creations doing his work. Which is why roughly half of all US xians don’t believe in Satan and hell.
Xianity is incoherent like it’s original source, the bible.
If that’s the approach you want, then I would point you to post 6, in which EvoMonkey clearly used ‘good teacher’ in the ‘not filling student minds with crap’ sense, to which you replied “Why isn’t she/it/they/he a good witchcraft instructor?” in post 7, a response that clearly does not have the same meaning in mind.
Highly trained Wiccan academics incoming, eh? Not the worst thing that could happen to society by a long shot.
Okay, the genderless personal pronoun is the plural used as the singular.
How did he become so PC? Did the devil teach him sexuality?
Actually, that is some damn good advice!
How exactly does one go about teaching sexuality? I feel I may have missed out on some very interesting lessons.
Also, people have pointed out that, unusually for a fundie, the sign appears to be clear and legible, grammatically correct, and devoid of extraneous punctuation. I should still point out that the syntax is terrible and it’s missing a full stop (or “period”, for our USAmerican commenters), so it’s not completely out of character. Unless of course he is purposefully implying that the list goes on to include other, equally nefarious teachings.
re Lucifer:
I once heard that Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan, etc. were all demonized versions of rival religion’s gods that JudChris retconned to be evil demons, attempting to encourage willing conversion to the _good_ religion of the _good_ god, to leave that evil god of theirs behind.
As I vaguely recall, Satan only shows up once, briefly, in the Bibble; to tempt Jesus while he hermitized in the desert for 40 days. The evil creature that got Eve in trouble (to eat that _fruit_, not an apple axually) was a SERPENT, not a snake, and was not named.
The nemesis of Job was not named; just a naysayer of some demonic sort, giving Gawd a ‘run for the money’ type challenge.
But I’m probly rong about all that, my mind just cant hold on to all that mumbojumbo…
Well, that’s a shocker. My mom taught me to. But since I was taught evolution at school, psychology in college, discovered sexuality on my own, and studied witchcraft from a scientific, and story-centered* perspective, I think there might be a flaw in his reasoning somewhere.
* Who said roleplaying games don’t teach you anything?
blf: The sign seems grammatical and conventionally spelled with a readable design, simple and clear. Missing clarity and logic and the common sense of stunned ant, but not bad for an apparent fundie.
“There’ll be the devil to pay.
And if you DO teach your kids to obey Jesus, they’ll end up studying all that stuff and more while they wait for Jesus to show up and give them orders. That’s kinda what happened to me and a lot of my friends anyway…
I am curious about the bit about teaching sexuality. That reads like the devil will teach your child to be either male or female, which sounds like a conservative’s goal.
In their eyes, sexuality is something that is taught. You’re only gay if, and because, someone convinced you that you are; and you’re only into things like BDSM if you see porn that tells you it’s fun.
@slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)):
That really only applies to Beelzebub. Lucifer comes from a verse in Isaiah (14:12), via the Latin translation. “Satan” means “accuser” or “adversary”, and shows up briefly in Zechariah 3, and 1 Chronicles 21, as well as more famously in Job 1 and 2.
Um. “Serpent” and “snake” are synonyms in English when referring to the animal; the former is from the Latin; the latter is Germanic. The Hebrew word used is “nachash”. You are correct that the snake is not named. Identifying the serpent with Satan/Lucifer/the devil derives from later exegesis.
It’s considered pretty traditional by now to refer to this particular adversary referred to in the text simply as “Satan”.
The verse that introduces him is somewhat ambiguous, in that it refers to the “sons of God”, and then adding that Satan was among them — it is not clear whether Satan is one of the “sons of God”, or a entity distinct from those sons.
Modern ideas about Satan owe more to John Milton than the Bible.
@ Owlmirror #72
That would appear to make sense if “Sons of God” referred to the Angels, of which Lucifer supposedly was one.
Job is one of the youngest books of the OT…
First: Pergamum.
Second: …Um. I live in Berlin. I visited the Pergamonmuseum just a few weeks ago. There’s a great big temple front and altar from Pergamum there, but no throne, and what exactly would a Hebrew angel do in a Greek city? What are you talking about???