The devil ’s in the detail

If you’ve ever seen the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, then you might remember the character Keyser Söze uttering the immortal words: ‘The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.’ And he’s not the first person to have pointed this out. In the 1836 book Quakerism Examined, John Wilkinson wrote: ‘One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist.’ What this means is that it’s pretty convenient for the Devil that people have ceased believing in him, because he can go about his evil ways unchallenged! But