The Guardian

London, February 8:

Stay in bed all day, gorge yourself on chocolate and lust as much as you want - it’s not going to land you in hell. Most people believe the seven deadly sins are out of date, and that traditional transgressions such as sloth, gluttony and lust should not stop you passing through the pearly gates into Heaven. Cruelty is considered the worst sin anyone can commit nowadays, followed by adultery, bigotry, dishonesty, hypocrisy and selfishness. Of the seven deadly sins enumerated in their present form by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, only greed is still viewed as a reliable passport to eternal damnation.

Anger is the traditional sin we commit most often, followed by pride, envy, gluttony, lust, sloth and greed. Not surprisingly, we rather enjoy lust and gluttony, but get the least pleasure from anger and envy, according to a survey of 1,001 adults for the BBC.

Nine per cent of respondents said they had never committed any of the seven deadly sins.

Roger Trigg, a professor of philosophy at Warwick University in central England, said the word sin could seem “terribly old fashioned and judgmental”. But he added that a close examination of the list of present-day vices suggested it was not so different to the seven deadly sins. “I wouldn’t say it was only a case of semantics because there may be a shift in moral perceptions, but very often people are complaining about the same things that the old words were trying to pick out,” he said.

But Ross Kelly, presenter of the BBC programme which commissioned the survey, believes there has been a genuine shift in attitudes towards sin.

“We’re less concerned with the seven deadly sins and more concerned with actions that hurt others,” he said. Father Alban McCoy, Catholic chaplain at Cambridge University, believes the seven deadly sins are still relevant to modern life. “Much about human nature changes, but much remains constant. The seven deadly sins ... are still a valid way of describing the deepest and most corrosive propensities that we share. If anything, they cash out in modern terms pretty easily. They manifest themselves in different ways in the present situation, but at root they are the same problems.” But the Rev Tim Silk, a Church of England minister in the Oxford diocese, said the list might benefit from an update.

“I think the seven deadly sins are a snapshot in time. They emanate from the way people responded to the culture they were in and probably do need to be rewritten. But whether we could ever find seven we all agree on is anyone’s guess.”