Seven Deadly Sins Quiz | Beyond School

Voluntary Meme: My Deadly “Sins” Revealed

I always tell people who tell me that I’m going to hell for being decidedly skeptical about myths from pre-scientific times that a) I’ve read the Bible in its entirety three times, and studied world religions and Church history enough to feel 99% certain the myths are simply myths (and that 1% of doubt is simple intellectual honesty, since I know there’s no absolute proof any god does not exist); and I tell them, b) “If Jesus knew me, he’d think I was a pretty okay guy, because I’m typically not an ass, try to help people, and agree with him that ‘the kingdom’ is already within us, if we’d just wake up to it (not a far cry from most religious messages, read metaphorically instead of literally).”

I’m pleased to announce that I was just told by the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz,

Your sin has been measured. Happily for you, your sin profile leaves room for forgiveness. Your full sinful breakdown below shows you the areas that you must improve, to save yourself from an eternity in hell.

In the spirit of spiritual transparency then, dear reader, I will now share with you a view into the window of my soul, and the degree to which each of the Seven Deadly Sins has possessed it:

Greed:	Low
Gluttony:	Low
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Low
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	Medium
Pride:	Very Low

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

A naturalist at heart, I’m actually proud that good old natural “lust” - what science and my old dog Fritz would understand as a healthy reproductive instinct, an innocent enough thing when the super-ego* is stronger - is my greatest “sin.” I’m pretty proud - oops! - of the rest of the results. I can forgive myself for them, since I’m human, animal, and naturally far from perfect. (In fact, if I recall correctly, “sin” is based on a Greek word for “missing the target” and thus making a mistake, being imperfect, which has nothing to do with “demons” or “ee-vil,” damnation or salvation, and everything to do with being simply human. In that respect, the results above actually get it pretty right. I do screw up sometimes.) [UPDATE: Be sure to check out Larissa’s corrective comment on the origins of the word “sin” for an even more interesting twist, and call for philological help from Biblical scholars on the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek story of the word ulitmately translated as¹ “sin.”)

Another “fluff and fun” voluntary meme for our idle summers in the devil’s workshop. If you play along, please drop us a line with your results.

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*Pre-emptive snarky-comment-prevention strike: I’m not a card-carrying Freudian. Just playing around. Call the super-ego “conscience,” “social decency,” or “humanism” instead, and I won’t protest.

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Written by Clay Burell

July 17th, 2008 at 4:13 am

Posted in fluff and fun, meme, religion, science

11 Responses to 'Voluntary Meme: My Deadly “Sins” Revealed'

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Somehow, there are no surprises here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arthuserea/2675236074/

[Reply]

Arthus Erea

17 Jul 08 at 4:40 am
@Arthus: An impeccable use of rhetorical understatement. Love it

[Reply]

Clay Burell

17 Jul 08 at 4:55 am
You know, you’re *never* going to get anywhere with greed and envy scores that low. Think of the Jonses! How will you emulate them without greed and envy to spur you!? For shame…
Winawers last blog post..Steven Page arrested.

[Reply]

Winawer

17 Jul 08 at 8:05 am
[...] Seven Deadly Sins… Following the advice of Clay Burell at the Beyond School blog, I took the Seven Deadly Sins quiz to see how my immortal soul is faring. Here’s the [...]

My Seven Deadly Sins… « Mild Opinons

17 Jul 08 at 8:12 am
@Winawer, I hope those appreciative of a good laugh check out your own sins post, as the closing line is a classic

[Reply]

Clay Burell

17 Jul 08 at 8:21 am
@Clay: hehe.

On another note, apture is really starting to annoy me. I can’t open links!

Even my usual command+click (to open in new tab) doesn’t work.

Arthus Ereas last blog post..McCain is an “illiterate”

[Reply]

Arthus Erea

17 Jul 08 at 8:47 am
@Arthus:

Thanks for the heads-up. I dinked around and discovered you can open links from Apture popups by clicking on the top title of the popup. Not the most intuitive thing in the world, so I’ll contact Apture and pass it along. Should be clearer, you’re right.

I can’t bring myself to disable Apture yet, b/c I love its potential. Let’s hope they fix that wrinkle.

[Reply]

Clay Burell

17 Jul 08 at 8:52 am
@ Clay
I’m surprised to see sloth up there. With you being such a prolific writer and so active on blogs i would have ruled that one out.

Charlie A. Roys last blog post..Finding Balance

[Reply]

Charlie A. Roy

17 Jul 08 at 9:12 am
Wow, when I took it, I was told I had a chance to change my ways to avoid hell.

But my wife just took it, and it told her that her “fate is sealed” - and then explained that her sloth, gluttony, and greed are what had damned her to eternal hell.

She says, “Just because you don’t like to exercise doesn’t mean you’re slothful; wanting a nicer house doesn’t make you mortally greedy; and okay, I like good food! I was honest. So honest people go to hell? That’s not fair.”

It’s just a silly game, but I like her points. (She does need to start exercising, though )

“Hmmm. I know, I know.”

[Reply]

Clay Burell

17 Jul 08 at 10:13 am
Hey Clay, I checked that etymology for ya (as a former Hellenist I feel compelled to check out what folks attribute to the Greeks…).

According to the OEd, at least: [OE. syn(n, for original *sunj{omac}, related to continental forms with extended stem, viz. OFris. sende, MDu. sonde (Du. zonde), OS. sundea, sundia, OHG. sunt(e)a, sund(e)a (G. sünde), ON. syn{edh}, synd (Icel., Norw., Sw., Da. synd). The stem may be related to that of L. sons, sont-is guilty. In OE. there are examples of the original general sense, ‘offence, wrong-doing, misdeed’.]

BTW, the Greek for “missing the mark” (and by extension failing at something, making an error of judgment, etc.) is (in transliteration) hamartano^ (here’s a fuller definition: http://tinyurl.com/5f32pw). The idea of sin in the sense you suggest may be from the Greeks. But the word itself isn’t.

Larissa

[Reply]

Larissa Parson

18 Jul 08 at 2:04 am
@Larissa,

Thanks for the fact check for this lazy bum .

I followed it, and here’s an intriguing thing (that sort of explains my “If I recall correctly” in the post - something felt off as I wrote that):

The word “hamartia” - loosely taught as “tragic flaw” when teaching drama - is a derivation of the word “hamartano” that you referenced. It’s translated as “sin” on the Perseus tool you linked to.

The word “sin” is Old English going back to earlier Germanic origins, if I get your OED clip right.

Since the Bible was translated from Hebrew and Aramaic ino Greek for wider readership - (Koine, right? It’s been 20 years since I’ve revisited this cool stuff) - I have to ask: were the early translators of the Bible into English using a Greek translation, which means they translated “harmartia” into “sin”?

Which means a descriptive word - Greek “harmartia” =”error” - becomes a metaphysically-charged word - “sin” - in the hands of the Renaissance translators into English. Turning Oedipus from a guy who just got unlucky due to fate’s cold indifference to our moral qualities, and/or his own human personality flaws, into….a damned sinner.

So weird, so fun, to think about all this stuff. Thanks for the assist. Would love some light shed on this one!

[Reply]

Clay Burell

18 Jul 08 at 7:47 am