» New and Improved: 14 Deadly Sins
Greed, envy, sloth (laziness), wrath (anger), pride, gluttony, lust; these were the seven deadly sins. Now the Vatican has added seven new sins to the list: being obscenely wealthy, causing social ills including polluting the environment, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia, causing social injustice, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments or allowing genetic manipulation.
Having too much money is always a bad thing (especially according to everyone who is actually poor) so not a real stretch there. “Causing social ills” is so ambiguous that it could be applied to anything from housing development to bullying kids on the playground… sheesh! Drug dealing is bad (and all pharmacists are now going to hell), but doesn’t that fall under causing social ills again?
Personally, I’m pro-choice on abortion; ask the unborn kid if he wants to die (I’m SOOOO going to get email for that one, but you have to admit it nicely takes religion out of the equation, doesn’t it?) Pedophilia is out (so now priests will have to play with themselves… ewww), but isn’t this just causing social ills again? “Causing social injustice” is another extension of “ills,” and how is that really any different? And finally, manipulating genetics and morally debatable experimentation are more social ills, right?
That leaves only obscene wealth, causing social ills, and abortion (by the way, I actually think the pro-whatever issue is a personal choice for everyone and every situation, so I harbor no ill feeling toward one view or the other). Instead of fourteen, I count only ten deadly sins, which balances ever so nicely with those Ten Commandments (by the way, “Thou shalt not kill” was mistranslated from “Thou shalt not murder,” which is radically different in context).
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I am blissfully happy to find you mentioning the fact that “Thou Shalt Not Kill” was a typo. I am not just a supporter of the death penalty, I’m a fan, and for those idiots who think it breaks a commandment, they should read a book now and then. The Old Testament is rife with God ordering people to kill, often right down to the chickens (I’m not clear on what the chickens ever did to deserve it, but hey - it’s not my bit to question, right? LOL). Murder is the crime. Just had to jump in and do a jig over having found someone else pointing this out.
Having said that, I’ll indulge myself further and explain one of my “dream jobs”. I wish I could have been the person whose job it was to stuff cotton up Ted Bundy before his ride in Old Sparky. Back in the day, they did that (the cotton) and it was stuffed in with something similar to a stick, I believe. Oh, yeah - that would have been fun. People always say, “You remember the killer’s name, not the victims’.” Well, I do know several victims’ names in the cases of serial murder I’ve studied, and I think if you are going to study the subject, for any reason, you should learn and remember some of the victims’ names as a social/personal duty.
Someone once took one look at my library (rife with true crime nasties and hefty tomes on WW2 dominating the horror/sci-fi/fantasy collection) and wondered aloud why I “like these sick people”. I don’t “like” them, I study them. Why? For book research, mostly, and a fascination with understanding why some folks turn evil and others don’t. If that smells like the answer a psychology student would give, okay, I admit to being a fan of that, too, if not an official student of it. I’m not sure if my answer reassured my friend or not - but that’s okay. I don’t apologize for the scythe hanging from the ceiling over my computer desk, either, or the resin skull sitting on the desk that possesses its own four feet to support it.
Besides, being “weird” is a hell of a lot better than the dire fate of being “normal”.