Devil  

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"The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist."[...] --Charles Baudelaire


"The Devil is part of our experience. Our generation has seen enough of it for the message to be taken extremely seriously. Evil, I contend, is not contingent, it not the absence, or deformation, or the subversion of virtue (or whatever else we may think of as its opposite), but a stubborn and unredeemable fact"--Leszek Kołakowski

The Devil's Bridge, St. Gotthard (1803-1804) by J. M. W. Turner
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The Devil's Bridge, St. Gotthard (1803-1804) by J. M. W. Turner

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The Devil is a title given to the supernatural entity, who, in Christianity, Islam, and other religions, is a powerful, evil entity and the tempter of humankind. In conservative Christianity, God and the Devil are usually portrayed as fighting over the souls of humans, with the Devil seeking to lure people away from God and into hell. The Devil commands a force of lesser evil spirits, commonly known as demons.

The Devil is commonly associated with heretics, infidels, and other unbelievers. The Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) does not assign this level of personification to a devil, but rather identifies all good and evil as originating in the will of God. In humour, concept of something as evil as Satan is often mocked.

This entity is commonly referred to by a variety of names, including Angra Mainyu, Satan, Asmodai, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Belial, or Iblis. Many other religions have a trickster or tempter figure that is similar to the Devil. Modern conceptions of the Devil include the concept that it symbolizes humans' own lower nature or sinfulness.

In painting


Namesakes

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Devil" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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