Monday, March 10, 2008

It's either the English language or my mortal soul

This could be many things, including bad translation or interpretation on the part of the BBC, but the Vatican has issued seven modern Mortal Sins to sit beside the traditional sins of lust, gluttony, avarice, envy, pride, sloth and wrath. You know, to bring matters of eternity bang up to date.

According to the BBC news article, these new sins are suitably vague tenets about inflicting harm on the environment, genetics and drug-trafficking and;

"Morally debatable experiments."

Eh? How can you possibly have a mortal sin, as it one that guarantees a one-way ticket to the land of red-hot pokers, with a phrase like morally debatable in it? We are truly done-for. Not just me, but everybody really. I've seen Internet messageboards, I'm not sure that there's anything which someone can't strike up a moral debate about. And since none of us have ever done exactly what we're doing under these exact circumstances before, I tend to regard life as experimental by its very nature.

Oh well, at least we won't get cold.

2 comments:

IrrationalPoint said...

Lol. Anyway, it seems to me that if something is morally debatable it isn't *necessarily* a sin. And if it's not morally debatable, then presumably it falls under the category of a pre-existing sin. Which leads us to the curious conclusion that it's a sin to do things that aren't necessarily sins.

Hmmm.

Anonymous said...

And at least you won't be alone. It sounds like we'll all be there to keep you company.

How can anything be sinful if it's also morally debatable? Oxymoronic, much?