Devil's Advocate

Someone who takes a position for the sake of argument without believing in that particular side of the argument. It can also mean one who presents a counter argument for a position they do believe in, to another debater.



During the canonization process of the Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith popularly known as the Devil's advocate as a canon lawyer appointed by Church authorities to argue against the canonization of a candidate. It was this person’s job to take a sceptical view of the candidate's character, to look for holes in the evidence, to argue that any miracles attributed to the candidate were fraudulent, and so on. The Devil's advocate opposed God's advocate (whose task was to make the argument in favour of canonization



Ex: You don’t really believe what your saying... your just playing devils advocate.



Spanish: abogado del diablo



German: des Teufels Advokat

