45 thoughts on “Sophisticated Signology”

        1. & there was a pot of gold!

          … but the pastor/ guru/ pope/ high heidjun took it for safe-keeping.

    1. More a general indifference to learning, paying attention, looking up stuff you don’t know, and other activities of a similarly intellectual nature.

  4. Who ever thought “leperchans” were school930. Or am I wrong in assuming they know grammar as well.

    1. Why do you say that with such assurance? I’m not doubting the truth of your assertion; rather, I’m wondering what the back story is that leads you to make it.

  9. I think it happens most often because the necessary letters get lost. It has been about a millennium since I put up a sign like this one and we always had to ‘creative’ making a needed letter out of what was available.

    1. Yes, in this case that might explain the missing U. Not so much though, when they reverse the order of the R and the E.

  10. Q:But how do you know Jesus is real?

    A:We have faith that He is real.

    Q:Isn’t faith simply belief without evidence?

    A:Yes. We don’t need evidence. We have our faith.

    Q:So how do you know leprechauns aren’t real?

    A:C’mon. We all know they’re not real.

    Q:But how do we know? Is it some kind of faith that leprechauns aren’t real?

    A:No, not really. We just know. Everybody knows they’re not real.

    Q:Do you realize how stupid you sound right now? You can’t have it both ways.

    A:That’s offensive. Can we please stick to the arguments?

    *Sigh*

    1. You probably know there is a website where you can make your own church signs… I ran across the site several years ago. I’m sure you could find it somehow.

  14. It’s not deliberate: they are inarticulate and ignorant. The worst part of it is that they are often PROUD of it, because it proves that they are not like the despised “elites”…

    2. Don’t be too serious about this one. I work in retail over the internet, and I see a gigantic percentage of people unable to write, spell, or even form complete sentences. It utterly surprises me every day; when I first started, I thought they were all some sort of joke and that they were doing it on purpose to be funny.
      I am a college grad and never really realized how many Americans cannot write well; I lived a sheltered life! So I don’t know if I’d blame this one on religious ignorance in this case.

      But we all agree, the whole thing is funny. Of course it’s only funny when you are one of those who knows how to spell it in the first place.

  15. Having seen the anti-intellectual stance of American Christianity, I would think that misspelling words is a virtue amongst their kind.

    A TRUE Christian ™ would have spelled the message as follows: Jayzes iz fur reelz lerperchans ar nut!!!!!!

    Please note the multiple exclamation points.

  17. Sophisticated Theology, Jerry.
    They can’t be sure there are no real leprechauns (why believe one absurdity and not the other?) but they can discredit the sound of the idea.
    Like that story of the old Southern senator campagning, as told by Alistair Cooke:

    He made the same little speech, an outrageous, scurrilous speech about his opponent, designed to impress the poor and the simple, and he delivered it absolutely deadpan.

    It ended:

    “I just hate to tell you this folks, but my opponent masticates his food, and worse, he has a sister up in New York who’s a thespian.”

    He won handsomely.

    1. It’s worse than that. Not only did his opponent matriculate with his sister at the same school but all of the so called teachers there registered pedagogues.

    2. The American comedian Norm Crosby took malapropism to new heights. He made his entertainment career on his brilliant abilities to mangle words. If you can find any clips on YouTube you won’t be disappointed. He is the Master of Malaprop in the entertainment world.

  18. I once saw a church sign that read: “Fish can’t walk – Jesus saves”. I thought about posting pictures of mudskippers but didn’t. At least they spelled everything correctly.

  19. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t remember seeing church signs like this when I was a kid. Saw plenty of church signs with messages on them, but making sure to remind people that Jesus was “real” (and leprechauns were not) isn’t something that would have ever been seen as a potential message on a sign.

    Maybe because, back then, equating Jesus with other things that everyone agreed were imaginary wasn’t an argument that was in the public consciousness at all. Only vocal atheists make arguments akin to this, and decades ago, atheist arguments weren’t really part of the public debate in America on these issues. Churches didn’t have to counter an argument that wasn’t being made by anyone with a platform.

    Every time I see a church sign trying to counter an atheist argument, it tells me that American churches now have to fight against something that in past decades they never perceived as a problem.

    A good sign, I think.

    1. Glad you brought that up. That’s actually what caught my eye at first; it’s almost defensive. I wonder if they’ll go the whole year contrasting Jesus with other mythological characters?

      1. Santa Claus. The Tooth Fairy. The Easter Bunny. The Great Pumpkin. Godzilla and Mothra.

        Any more?

      2. What I’d like to know is whether they’d consider making a similar message at Christmas time, outing Santa Claus : )

  20. Oooh, I’ll bet it was originally spelled correctly and then the leprechauns themselves changed it! They’re so meta.

  21. “They can never spell, can they?”

    Cognitive bias; fundamental attribution error.

  22. To really give the church folks problems, sneak up on the sign one night and add a few apostrophes.

  25. Reminds me of the great TV show Fawlty Towers. Each episode opened with a shot of the hotel sign, which was always wrong in some way due to missing letters or creative vandalism. I remember “Farty Towels”, “Flowery Twats” and “Watery Fowls”.

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