The Vatican has issued a list of 7 new modern sins.
- polluting the environment
- dealing drugs
- excessive wealth
- pedophilia
- abortion
- embryonic stem cell research
- human cloning
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3517050.ece
My first thought was to question how much is the Catholic church worth?
Excessive wealth indeed. I guess Bill Gates is going to have to pony up
and buy a special exemption. | jwellsy wrote: |
The Vatican has issued a list of 7 new modern sins.
- polluting the environment |
Does that include excessive hot air and bull****?Dealing the opiate to the masses? | Quote: |
- excessive wealth |
ROFLMAOThere will be a long queue at the Priests confessional then | Quote: |
- abortion
- embryonic stem cell research
- human cloning
|
The last 3 are, of course, no surprise. What is surprising is that they feel the need to restate the church position on abortion - it has always been a sin for Catholics.
It is even more interesting that they don't put contraception on the list - contraception is a MORTAL sin for Catholics...I like the "excessive wealth"
If the catholic church thinks that excessive wealth doesn't apply to itself, then it leaves a lot of margin to everybody else!
Otherwise it is maybe a repentance: the usual "it's my fault..."
unvoluntary humor is always the best.
Ugh. Just ugh. Humans can't announce things as sins; and I doubt Gabriel visited the pope in his dreams telling him what to do. Excessive wealth a sin? No. Just...no. Normally I would collaborate and give some reasoning but that deserves just a hard, solid, No.
Pedophilia? And, um...the priests that were casting devils "out" of those children made this law? It looks to me like they've been putting a lot more into those kids than out. You know what I mean. Drip drip.
Polluting the environment has always been a sin, at least according to my faith. So has pedophilia. So has abortion (unless the mother faces health problems). So has dealing (well, doing) drugs. So has cloning.
I don't know what they're getting at. The Vatican's gone mad. Besides not killing people, they're like Taliban; politics over religion.
Sorry.
These people will be punished in the Hereafter.
how can there be "new sins" excessive wealth there isn't a thing wrong with that if you are helping people out.
who randomly thought up new sins anyways?
| HalfBloodPrince wrote: |
| Polluting the environment has always been a sin, at least according to my faith. So has pedophilia. So has abortion (unless the mother faces health problems). So has dealing (well, doing) drugs. So has cloning. |
So the Qur'an says "Thou shallt not clone people! It is a sin and the involved persons shallt thou punish. God is high and mighty."? Christianity doesn't seem alone to make up sins afterwards.
| Quote: |
| I don't know what they're getting at. The Vatican's gone mad. Besides not killing people, they're like Taliban; politics over religion. |
Making abortion a sin is political and not religious? | Srs2388 wrote: |
how can there be "new sins" excessive wealth there isn't a thing wrong with that if you are helping people out.
who randomly thought up new sins anyways? |
technically they aren't 'new' sins, just redefined. And it wouldn't be considered excessive wealth if you were helping people out with it.
The whole 'excessive' thing more like plays into greed, you could be a millionaire and give generously to helping others, and it wouldn't be excessive. On the other hand, you could have a lot less money, and being greedy, use it only for your self pleasures and the likes and it would be considered excessive. | Sephy22 wrote: |
technically they aren't 'new' sins, just redefined. And it wouldn't be considered excessive wealth if you were helping people out with it.
The whole 'excessive' thing more like plays into greed, you could be a millionaire and give generously to helping others, and it wouldn't be excessive. On the other hand, you could have a lot less money, and being greedy, use it only for your self pleasures and the likes and it would be considered excessive. |
So if you have $50 billion and you spend (say) $30 billion helping others and keep the other $20 billion then that is not excessive. If, on the other hand, you have $50,000 and you keep it all for yourself then that is excessive?
I don't see how this 'relative' sum adds up. | Bikerman wrote: |
| Sephy22 wrote: | technically they aren't 'new' sins, just redefined. And it wouldn't be considered excessive wealth if you were helping people out with it.
The whole 'excessive' thing more like plays into greed, you could be a millionaire and give generously to helping others, and it wouldn't be excessive. On the other hand, you could have a lot less money, and being greedy, use it only for your self pleasures and the likes and it would be considered excessive. |
So if you have $50 billion and you spend (say) $30 billion helping others and keep the other $20 billion then that is not excessive. If, on the other hand, you have $50,000 and you keep it all for yourself then that is excessive?
I don't see how this 'relative' sum adds up. |
Maybe.. I'm not one to be able to judge others, it's more dependent on the individual's motives and intellect. What I am saying is that yes, your example COULD be true. But not necessarily.
And when I say intellect, It's also dependent on what the person knows. Cause if we went into venial sin vs mortal sin, objectively, for example, an abortion, is a mortal sin. Yet subjectively it could only be a venial sin, meaning that if the person didn't know it was killing a life, that it was wrong to do etc., it wouldn't be as grave a sin for the person. but if they do know the facts, then it would be a grave sin.
hope I'm making sense, or at least getting my point across :/ | Sephy22 wrote: |
And when I say intellect, It's also dependent on what the person knows. Cause if we went into venial sin vs mortal sin, objectively, for example, an abortion, is a mortal sin. Yet subjectively it could only be a venial sin, meaning that if the person didn't know it was killing a life, that it was wrong to do etc., it wouldn't be as grave a sin for the person. but if they do know the facts, then it would be a grave sin.
hope I'm making sense, or at least getting my point across :/ |
Hmm..that's true for Catholic doctrine, I admit. Catholic dogma says that sins are only 'mortal' if there is full knowledge on behalf of the sinner.
It's difficult to make the argument that contraception can be anything other than a mortal sin though. If you didn't know why you were using contraception you simply wouldn't use it would you?
I suppose you could use the defence that you didn't know that your Church regarded contraception as a mortal sin, but again that is a hard defence to maintain, given that the Catholic position on this is well known and often repeated (not least by the Pontiff himself).
I also think that it is highly unlikely that a woman would have an abortion and not know that she was getting rid of a foetus. If we are talking about severe special needs then that might apply I guess.... | Bikerman wrote: |
Hmm..that's true for Catholic doctrine, I admit. Catholic dogma says that sins are only 'mortal' if there is full knowledge on behalf of the sinner.
It's difficult to make the argument that contraception can be anything other than a mortal sin though. If you didn't know why you were using contraception you simply wouldn't use it would you?
I suppose you could use the defence that you didn't know that your Church regarded contraception as a mortal sin, but again that is a hard defence to maintain, given that the Catholic position on this is well known and often repeated (not least by the Pontiff himself).
I also think that it is highly unlikely that a woman would have an abortion and not know that she was getting rid of a foetus. If we are talking about severe special needs then that might apply I guess.... |
there's a very fine line between it all, but I would agree that in almost all cases they would know what's going on.Polluting the environment - Nearly everyone is guilty of that to some degree. Especially if you count methane as a pollutant. Dumping toxic waste into rivers and the ocean I can understand being a sin, but this one is either going to be too specific or far too vague. Right now it looks like the later.
Dealing drugs - Chemists beware!
Excessive wealth and pedophilia - Maybe they should add hypocrisy to the list too? Especially coming from that pope.
Abortion - because a god that orders entire cities exterminated down to the last woman and child is pro-life.
Embryonic Stem Cell Research - Because conducting life-saving research from matter that was never going to be a living breathing human is the purest form of evil. Especially when stoning disobedient children to death is the right thing to do.
Human Cloning - Damn... I can actually see the logic to this one. Still, it's not like it's common practice. Or has even ever happened. At least the original seven sins had actually happened before.
Stem cell research lol
It's not a sin to watch somebody die of a disease or disorder that can be fixed, but it's a sin to help them! And what exactly is not a sin about throwing away perfectly good stem cells? It's okay to throw them in a trash can, but it's not okay to reuse them in a way that could actually save a life or help someone live halfway normal. Good stuff 
Religion has ways of making my day even when it doesn't intend to. Technically, we all pollute the environment with CO2 by just breathing. I guess we all should be sentenced to death now.
| catscratches wrote: |
| Technically, we all pollute the environment with CO2 by just breathing. I guess we all should be sentenced to death now. |
Not really. Without us breathing CO2, no organism on this planet would exist. It's not really pollution. Not to mention our atmosphere is capable of handling set amounts of CO2. It's the over production of CO2, more than our atmosphere is capable of taking care of, that's the trouble. Understand what you're saying, but it's not true even from a real technical standpoint | liljp617 wrote: |
| catscratches wrote: | | Technically, we all pollute the environment with CO2 by just breathing. I guess we all should be sentenced to death now. |
Not really. Without us breathing CO2, no organism on this planet would exist. It's not really pollution. Not to mention our atmosphere is capable of handling set amounts of CO2. It's the over production of CO2, more than our atmosphere is capable of taking care of, that's the trouble. Understand what you're saying, but it's not true even from a real technical standpoint |
Hmm...I think we need to be careful here. The amount of CO2 that humans breathe out is not really an issue. The amount of carbon we contribute via breathing is part of a closed system. Plants take carbon from the atmosphere by photosynthesis. Animals then eat the plants and (some of) that carbon is given off in respiration. In simple terms the amount of carbon we exhale cannot be more than the amount of carbon we put into our bodies by eating plants (or by eating animals that eat plants, or animals that eat animals that eat plants...etc). This applies to all animals, not just humans. It's a question of basic physics and biology - there cannot be more animals than there are plants to eat. The amount of carbon is therefore stable when considered over the whole biosphere.
Of course the same argument can be applied to the burning of fossil fuels - it simply returns carbon to the atmosphere that was previously extracted by plants. The problem, however, is the timescale. We are quickly returning carbon to the atmosphere that was previously collected by plants over millions of years.This is rather amusing. Here we have this old guy imposing customs and thinking that he even has a clue wtf he's talking about. He's probably never stepped inside an embryonic research lab and doesn't even understand what goes on there, never been a women who's pregnant cuz she got raped, doesn't understand what human cloning is (hi. identical twins are clones of each other -- are they sinning???), is wealthy himself, pollutes the environment, etc.
He's either a hypocritical jerk or an ignorant prick. You choose.
| loryl wrote: |
| [the pope] doesn't understand what human cloning is |
| Quote: |
| (hi. identical twins are clones of each other -- are they sinning???), is wealthy himself, pollutes the environment, etc. |
Seems to me that you're the one that doesn't understand what human cloning is.
I'm against 99.99% of what the Vatican tries pulls off, but seriously.. | HalfBloodPrince wrote: |
Seems to me that you're the one that doesn't understand what human cloning is.
I'm against 99.99% of what the Vatican tries pulls off, but seriously.. |
Well identical twins are not clones, that is true. They are actually likely to me more similar than clones are, since cloning involved implanting a cell nucleus into a host egg and scientists cannot be totally sure what contribution the host egg makes...But to be a clone a (nearly) identical DNA structure is also required. Also, the clone has to come from the original. You could argue that with identical twins one of them splits from the original zygote, but then again your clone cannot be your brother or sister like an identical twin can.
| HalfBloodPrince wrote: |
| But to be a clone a (nearly) identical DNA structure is also required. Also, the clone has to come from the original. You could argue that with identical twins one of them splits from the original zygote, but then again your clone cannot be your brother or sister like an identical twin can. |
The terms 'brother' and 'sister' are man made labels which describe a perceived relationship. They are not scientific descriptions of anything.
If, for example, a man with existing children had a clone produced using his wife's egg and implanted into his wife, then would the resulting offspring be a sibling to the other children? Would it be his 'child'?I see the original seven weren't good enough.
Thank God for the Vatican, though, I wouldn't laugh nearly as much without them. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees the hypocrisy in the excessive wealth and pedophilia categories.
| The-Ron-Man wrote: |
| I see the original seven weren't good enough. |
Seven? Was it not ten?Easy to accept: pollution, drugs, excessive wealth, pedophilia...
BUT Abortion can't be a sin! Neighter Stem cell research or Cloning!
One can wonder what's in the head of the Vatican?
| jwellsy wrote: |
The Vatican has issued a list of 7 new modern sins.
- polluting the environment
- dealing drugs
- excessive wealth
- pedophilia
- abortion
- embryonic stem cell research
- human cloning
. |
Peace.
Personally, i think this speaks about how insecure the catholic church is. Redefining sins? Lol, isn't the 'old' list good enough? Or does the catholic church feel the need to be modern?
Their old list would be eternal if it is from God.
Does this mean that Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman are going to be doing a sequel?
| loyal wrote: |
Peace.
Personally, i think this speaks about how insecure the catholic church is. Redefining sins? Lol, isn't the 'old' list good enough? Or does the catholic church feel the need to be modern?
Their old list would be eternal if it is from God. |
So is stem-cell research a sin in Islam then? What about pollution? Excessive wealth? What is the Quranic support? Does the Quran say anything about stem cells? Do you take the position that the Quran is final and absolute, or do you believe that it needs interpreting in the light of new social and technological developments?Honestly, I thought that Catholic Church couldn't be more idiotic than it was...
I never liked them, I always knew they were greedy and had lust for power, but this is just ridiculous...
While 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th sin might seem reasonable, yet still it's a terrible idea to "update" this. What is this, Deadly sins v 1.5?
"Excessive wealth" - Damn greedy bastards, sorry for calling names, but this is outrageous, why people that have worked very hard to earn money, now are being called sinners? Isn't whole Vatican, Pope and Cardinals wealthy too?
"Embryonic stem cell research" and "Human cloning" - Church was always against technologicall progress, thank God noone gives a crap about what they think and still go on with the research. I'm not saying that all development is good, but some, that according to the church are bad, in a matter of fact, are not...
"Pedophilia" - First they should clean up their own mess before making it a sin.
What is happening to this world... 
| Bikerman wrote: |
| The-Ron-Man wrote: | | I see the original seven weren't good enough. |
Seven? Was it not ten? |
Seven deadly sins, ten commandments. ^_^;
| loyal wrote: |
| Their old list would be eternal if it is from God. |
It didn't. It was made up by the church early on to clarify their teachings on sin. No one claims it's biblical.
That's what the new list is for, too. It's to clarify new understanding of the old sins in our modern society. The old ones still stand, as always. But any good Christian should keep in mind that the stuff on this list is all sins, too, even if it's not immediately apparent.
Let's see if i can explain... take sloth as an example - one of the original seven. There is no reason that sloth would seem to be a sin on the surface. But if God gives you a gift - say the ability to sing well - you are offending God by brushing the gift aside and not using it. Thus, sloth is an insult to God, and so it's a sin. Putting it on the list reminds people of that. It wasn't a new sin when it was added to the list, it was an old one that people needed reminding about.
Same with accumulating excessive wealth. It's just greed all over again, but nowadays people work hard to be successful, and the concern in Rome is that they're focussed too much on it. And so, they added it to the list. It's not a "new" sin, it's just a reminder of a very old one.
--------------------------------------------
Anyway, i hate to burst everyone's bubble here, but i think that list of sins in the first post is wrong. Neither abortion nor paedophilia were on the list of new sins.
The actual list - according to the BBC - is:
- Environmental pollution
- Genetic manipulation
- Accumulating excessive wealth
- Inflicting poverty
- Drug trafficking and consumption
- Morally debatable experiments
- Violation of fundamental rights of human nature
Abortion and paedophilia were mentioned by the same guy, but in a press conference later, not during the actual seminar. They were also discussed in a different context, not as part of the seven.
This might get a chuckle out of some people. Mix and match your sins, and see what comes up. (It exchanges genetic manipulation for "expanding the gap between rich & poor", but i believe it is using the seven as listed at a press conference, not the ones that were listed at the actual seminar. Close enough, anyway).I lost the last bit of respect for the current pope when I heard about this. He has no authority to rewrite the sins and virtues of the bible. He should be pointing to scripture or at least stating that it's his opinion and not anything as official as a 'sin against god'. I'd like to see where he sites in the bible that god is against all embryonic research.
I farted on my leather and fur chair, does that mean I am going to hell?
Yes! That's the worst sin of them all!
| loyal wrote: |
Peace.
Personally, i think this speaks about how insecure the catholic church is. Redefining sins? Lol, isn't the 'old' list good enough? Or does the catholic church feel the need to be modern?
Their old list would be eternal if it is from God. |
Actually I would prefer they redefine themselves and stop living in the time of the Crusades...(I would rather it disappeared entirely, but that's just a dream). | Bikerman wrote: |
| loyal wrote: | Peace.
Personally, i think this speaks about how insecure the catholic church is. Redefining sins? Lol, isn't the 'old' list good enough? Or does the catholic church feel the need to be modern?
Their old list would be eternal if it is from God. |
So is stem-cell research a sin in Islam then? What about pollution? Excessive wealth? What is the Quranic support? Does the Quran say anything about stem cells? Do you take the position that the Quran is final and absolute, or do you believe that it needs interpreting in the light of new social and technological developments? |
I meant that the catholic church should not be remaking their entire list of sins completely. They should be defining whether modern day things are a sin according to that original list. By remaking the list and using modern day things, it suggests possible insecurity, because they are trying to be "hip". It reminds of that dreadful translation of the Bible called 'the message'.
Muslims might reapply the list of sins to modern day things, but they don't remake their list of sins. Hence, Muslims can determine whether pollution and other things are wrong, by judging them against the criteria or comparing them against other sins. Pollution is a sin, because the Qur'an forbids the corruption of the earth. Excessive wealth...basically, a person is allowed to be rich, but he/she shouldn't be stingy, and should give more to charity. Stem cell research http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar/FatwaE/FatwaE&cid=1119503545118
I take the position, as all Muslims do, that the Qur'ans word is final. However, just because something may be forbidden to me, say alcohol, it doesn't mean that it is forbidden to me in every circumstance.
Islam allows me to drink alcohol under real threat of death or torture.
Things can be reinterpreted, but not so much so that they loose their original meaning, deviate from the teachings of Islam, or are completely changed.
Peace. | loyal wrote: |
| I meant that the catholic church should not be remaking their entire list of sins completely. |
This seems to be an item of confusion that is driving everyone crazy.
Let me try to clear this up as much as i can.
The Catholic Church does not make up sins. The sins are all in the Bible (which they believe is based on the original teaching of their god). They don't add new ones, and they don't take away old ones¹ - either action would be heretical.
The original seven deadly sins was a list put together in the middle ages (or possibly slightly before, maybe in the latter days of the Roman Empire). They were not new sins. It was just a list of what the Catholic church saw as the causes of the sins listed in the Bible. No one said that list overruled what was in the Bible. The only reason it was made was to help people understand sin in a simple way - instead of memorizing the hundreds of sins explicitly listed², all you had to do was remember the seven basic causes of all of those hundreds of sins. That's it. That's all. They weren't rewriting the Bible, they weren't overruling the word of God, they were just trying to make sin easy to understand.
The new deadly sins do not overrule the old deadly sins, and they don't overrule the Bible. They were sins before the Vatican made the list, and they would have been sins if they hadn't made the list at all. They all follow from Biblical commandment in one form or another.³ All the Vatican has done is made a list of things that were already sins - as any (Catholic) student of the Bible knew - but that most people did not realize were sins. That's it. That's all. They weren't making new sins, they weren't erasing the old, and they weren't rewriting the Bible, they were just trying to make clear some tricky things the Bible teaches.
Is everyone clear on this now?
― The Bible's rules are still the ultimate authority (as far as Catholicism goes).
― The old seven deadly sins still apply.
― The "new" deadly sins are not new sins. They've always been sins. Most people didn't know, so the Vatican made it clear.
In the end, the announcement was just to remind Catholics about sins that they may have either forgotten about, or didn't know about to begin with. They didn't make up anything new, they just gave a new perspective on the same old shit. It would be the exact same thing as an imam reminding about how, say, genetic manipulation is a sin according to the Qur'an - the imam would not be making anything up, he would simply be reminding people that what the Qur'an says applies to everything, and giving a modern-day example of what he means. That's all.
1. ― At least, that is what they claim. You can take that with a grain of salt.
2. ― Some estimate the number at over 650.
3. ― More precisely, if you interpret the Bible in the Catholic way, you get those sins automatically. | Indi wrote: |
Is everyone clear on this now?
― The Bible's rules are still the ultimate authority (as far as Catholicism goes).
― The old seven deadly sins still apply.
― The "new" deadly sins are not new sins. They've always been sins. Most people didn't know, so the Vatican made it clear.
|
Yes sorry indi 
HalfBloodPrince: Identical twins ARE clones of each other. It's a fact people often overlook because they go by the media-hyped definition of a clone and not the technical definition. Go look up what clones are and how identical twins are formed (from a scientific, not a religious, source, mind you). Kthx.
| loryl wrote: |
| HalfBloodPrince: Identical twins ARE clones of each other. It's a fact people often overlook because they go by the media-hyped definition of a clone and not the technical definition. Go look up what clones are and how identical twins are formed (from a scientific, not a religious, source, mind you). Kthx. |
Err...no they are not. A clone, in biology, is an organism whose genetic information is identical to the 'mother' or 'originating' organism. Identical twins are NOT clones, since they are genetically identical to each other but not to a 'mother' organism.The term 'mother' is a social construct. Identical twins arise from complete mitotic splitting of the original embryo (the 'mother', if you will). Current literature indicates that identical twins ARE clones of each other.
| Quote: |
| genetically identical twins are clones who happened to have received exactly the same set of genetic instructions from two donor individuals, a mother and a father. |
From: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fcgi?rid=hmg.section.2772
It is often the stance of the public and those who are opposed to cloning to conveniently declare that identical twins are NOT clones. However, in order to have an scientific understanding of cloning and to debate intelligently the ethics of the topic, you cannot ignore the fact that identical twins ARE clones. They may not be artificial clones, but they're clones nevertheless.
| Quote: |
| Any discussion on the ethics of human cloning cannot ignore the fact that humans produce natural clones fairly frequently: namely, monozygotic twins who both stem from the same fertilized cell. After the zygote's first cell division, its daughter cells do not remain connected to each other, as is normally the case, but separate. If both cells are able to nidate in the uterus and continue their genetically determined development, the result is two genetically identical human individuals. |
From: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1456885 | loryl wrote: |
| It is often the stance of the public and those who are opposed to cloning to conveniently declare that identical twins are NOT clones. However, in order to have an scientific understanding of cloning and to debate intelligently the ethics of the topic, you cannot ignore the fact that identical twins ARE clones. They may not be artificial clones, but they're clones nevertheless. |
I do not ignore it - I simply want to draw a distinction between twins and clones. It is mostly a matter of semantics For example, the BMA definition of a clone is: | Quote: |
| any organism whose genetic information is identical to that of a "mother organism" from which it was created. |
Another looser definition would be "A clone is a group of cells derived from a single ancestral cell."
Arguing that the original embryo is the mother organism means that identical twins are clones of a now non existent entity - not each other. We can say, yes, I agree, that twins are clones, but not that they are clones of each other (or clones of anything extant, come to that). This is one semantic problem. I should have made this objection clearer above - my choice of words was bad, for which I apologise.
The other semantic issue is that twins are actually 'super clones' when compared to existing cloning techniques. They share more than an artificial clone does - in fact they share 3 additional factors, apart from base DNA. They share mitochondrial DNA, a womb, and time/culture. Calling twins 'clones' is therefore accurate but diminishes the similarity of twins.
I do, by the way, have a reasonably scientific understanding of cloning (although I am not a geneticist, true), and I am perfectly able to debate the ethics of the topic. I am perfectly comfortable with non-human cloning and since human cloning has been outlawed by most governments and medical bodies then I am not alarmed by the frequently deployed 'straw man' arguments that appear in the media.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/05315131/2003/00001239/00000000/art00219
http://nitro.biosci.arizona.edu/zbook/volume_1/chapters/vol1_19.htmlIt really, really pisses me off that people assume all priests rape little boys. Seriously, grow the f*ck up.
The Catholic Church will die soon enough anyways.
People assume that? Well... no people I know at least... I've never heard that that should be a common prejuidice about priests...
