Sin in America: Researchers attempt to find who's good and who's not

cns ^ | August 14, 2009 | Dennis Sadowski

[NYer]

Catholic Ping
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[GeronL]

whose definition of sin?

[svcw]

None are good but God.
We are all sinners.
Sin is what separates us from God.

[GOP Poet]

My experience is where there isn’t as much of one deadly sin, there is another. For instance. If there is a lack of lust, there is often a gluttony or greed etc. I have the ever shifting ones myself. Needless to say I spend a lot of time praying and working on daily, hourly discipline.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Sin in America: Researchers attempt to find who’s good and who’s not

Only two beings know the answer to that one: God and Santa Claus.

[HiTech RedNeck]

I would have gotten my greed index from the per capita distribution of civil court lawyers. (Lawyers whose sole practice is criminal law would not be counted.) Jesus said “the poor will always be with you” and it leans dangerously to socialism to measure greed by mere “income disparity.” It says nothing about the morality of, say, Bill Gates if he moves into a slum and tries to do it good but fails to make his neighbors into billionaires as well.

[Lou L]

-- Greed: comparing total per capita income with the number of people living in poverty per capita as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.

So if you have a higher income than those living around you, you're sinful? Does this "study" also consider charitable donations and volunteer time?

[HiTech RedNeck]

Santa Claus is in the naughty and nice business.

[NYer]

It’s in the article ...

[SpinnerWebb]

If there is a lack of lust, there is often a gluttony or greed etc. I have the ever shifting ones myself.

Honey, get off of me and go make me a sandwich.

[NYer]

Does this "study" also consider charitable donations and volunteer time?

The researchers themselves admit that ...

The trouble with such a study, Vought and his friends fear, is that it's much more subjective and a bit more difficult to quantify all the good being done in American society.

[lonestar]

Greed: comparing total per capita income with the number of people living in poverty per capita as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Lost me there.

[HiTech RedNeck]

It would also imply the only way to become non-sinful in such a situation would be to refuse or redistribute income until one is also living below the poverty line. If you help your poor neighbor learn to be self supporting, what happens to the sin index? If most are not yet self supporting, you’ve just made the neighborhood more sinful, not less.

[dangerdoc]

I wanted to see a map that could be compared with the red/blue map.

[Prokopton]

I have the ever shifting ones myself.

I believe in all vices in moderation. I don't want to overdue any but I don't want to skip any either.

[ansel12]

In what researcher Thomas Vought described as a not-too-serious study meant to garner attention at a convention of geographers in Las Vegas as much as to contribute to understanding the habits of people around the country, the foursome found that the South -- encompassing an arc from North Carolina through Louisiana -- was most prone to the traditional seven deadly sins.

If they don't separate the black statistics from the white then these things mean nothing.

Mississippi is 36% black, Louisiana is 32% black, Alabama is 29% black, Georgia 28%, South Carolina 29%.

[MNDude]

counting the number of welfare recipients might be a good way to show sloth.

showing how many referendums are passed to tax those wealthier than themselves would be a good way to show envy.

[scouse]

Santa Claus is in the naughty and nice business.

Agreed, but when is he coming to town?

[Pessimist]

They should have used the percent of vanity plates issues for the pride variable.