Well, therer is the LRA in the DR Congo that gets away with that stuff repeatedly, due to the civil war situation in that country, so, yes, perhaps someone has figured it out.
Myspace for sure. That’s the only explanation of the site layout and why people still use it.
You mean they’re NOT? I just saw the bonus plans for the bailout banks, maybe you could ask one of the corporate shmucks at B of A!
later, Tom.
Not a fiddle, a guitar. Mississippi, not Georgia. Robert Johnson, not Charlie Daniels or “Johnny”.
Yeah, well, that’s the thing. You have open your vein enough for a decent blood flow, but not so much that you end up in Hell before you’ve made your deal.
All joking aside, part of this post comes from my wondering if people like Robertson have given any thought to the implications. If it were as easy as some people think, or even possible, for that matter, things would be a whole lot weirder on Earth than they are already.
This is something that’s always bothered me about deals with the devil. What does the devil get out of the deal? Seems to me all he gets is a soul that he had a very slim chance of not getting in the natural course of things. Someone who is willing to make a deal with the devil is probably not a very good or pious person. Since the devil gets so little out of this deal, why would he be willing to make it?
No room for repentance at “the end.” You’re his, lock stock and barrel. Also, frankly, the Devil is a sucker for bargaining. I’ve even seen him try to haggle at yard sales. Of course, he was in the form of a cranky old lady. 
The whole repentance thing has always bothered me. The main reason I like Don Giovanni is that they are entreating him to repent and be saved as he’s being dragged into Hell at the end of the opera, but he keeps saying no.
In theory, I suppose a prior contract could possibly be used in an attempt to negate a deathbed conversion to “saved” status in some sort of hearing concerning final disposition of an alleged soul. I think Ol’ Scratch has a considerable advantage in such litigation. Where’s God gonna get a lawyer?
That’s not what happens in some versions of the story, though. In Goethe’s Faust, Faust gets saved at the end, as does Pan Twardowski (sort of) in the Polish version.
If you could repent of anything else, why not of having made a deal with the devil?
In Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, an angel encourages Faustus to do just that, after he made the deal with the devil.
I think saying, “I’ll make a deal and then repent later” negates the later repentance. Or at least makes it more difficult.
There’s actually a similar idea in the Talmud: “A person who says, ‘I will sin and be forgiven on Yom Kippur’, is not forgiven on Yom Kippur”.
Saying you’ll make a deal and then repent later isn’t the same thing as making the deal in good faith (so to speak) and later deciding that you really regret it and want to repent of it.
Guido da Montefeltro tried to do something and repent of it at the same time in Dante’s Inferno. Didn’t work. The Devil is too good a logician to fall for that one.
Should you ever try to break the contract, expect it to go to trial. However, there is precedent.
Scratch v. Stone, decided in favor of the defendant. This was later cited as the sole precedent for the later United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff 54 F.R.D. 282 (1971). Text of the case (PDF). It was ultimately thrown out on a technicality.
We read that case in my Civil Procedure class.
*
We note that the plaintiff has failed to include with his complaint
the required form of instructions for the United States
Marshal for directions as to service of process.*
To which I quipped, “All he had to do was tell a U.S. Marshall to go to Hell”.
I thought you were supposed to bring a black cat bone to the crossroads with you. I’ve been carrying this damn bone around for years. Have I been misinformed?
“You take your guitar and you go to where the road crosses that way, where a crossroads is. Get there, be sure to get there just a little 'fore 12 that night so you know you’ll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself. A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he’ll tune it. And then he’ll play a piece and hand it back to you.”
After that, you just fuckin’ rock n roll, man.
I’ve always wondered about this myself. Making a deal with the devil is more binding than murdering somebody as far as your mortal soul goes? Seems like a bit much. I’d always figured honest repentance was the cure for pretty much any sin, at least as far as Christianity goes. Sure, Satan’s probably got all the lawyers on his side but you’d think with a sympathetic Judge you might get off on a technicality.
Ask Pat Robertson. He knows all about it because he is the Devil.
One enters the legal profession in this country, there you are taught and tested on that nothing is right or wrong, to lie for money, and that it is all a game. Defense attorneys are those with the highest link to the devil, but so are their law school teachers and on down.
There is a secondary smaller market in making and dealing addictive drugs, and that includes legal ones.
People in these fields know they are doing evil and want to continue, which is a good definition of having a pact with the devil.
Let me assure you and silenus that as a public defender, I couldn’t be any happier with the deal Satan and I have struck, especially when I get to hear bullshit like this.
Endless riches, fame and fortune, all the glory and honor of an epic warrior king, that’s what I asked Him for, and that’s what He’s bestowed upon me.
Jimmy, Oh yes he will, agreed. But get back to me in 100 years on your opinion then, I have a feeling you will find it was not worth it. But you are sure in a pact, yes.
I’d find I could not do it now even for high pay because the thought of helping some molester or rapist go free who has a record ought to have some queasyness, since he might get your own kids or girl next, I always wondered how they deal with that knowledge that they helped create that next victim? (even if you don’t know them, but suppose you did? Would they ever be sorry they got him off? Or did law school have an answer for that too?)