# Sloth not one of the original 7 Deadly Sins **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 31, 2012, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647 "2012-05-31T13:23:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/1 "2012-05-31T13:23:50Z")
According to this cite: [http://deadlysins.com/sins/history.html](http://deadlysins.com/sins/history.html), the Seven Deadly Sins at first included sadness, instead of sloth. When I told my husband (fellow Doper Andy L) about this, he said, “You mean sloth _worked its way up_ into the list?” 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![a35362](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@a35362](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/a35362)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/2 "2012-05-31T13:46:37Z")
It’s a sin to be sad? Does God think you’re being ungrateful? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/3 "2012-05-31T13:49:56Z")
I’ll bet Lust is sticking out her tongue at Sloth. Lasciviously. But it’ll take Sloth forever to notice. > [@](#): > > It’s a terrible bunch of Sins I have working for me. Must be the Wages ``` --- Peter Cooke as The Devil in *Bedazzled** ``` \*The _real_ one, from 1967 ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/4 "2012-05-31T14:06:43Z")
> [@a35362](#): > > It’s a sin to be sad? Does God think you’re being ungrateful? Pretty much. At least ostensibly. I’d bet that people mired in Melancholy (the usual designation I’ve seen) are hard for other people to deal with, which would be the main motivator for making those lists. Although seven was so popular that the number of the Deadly Sins was pretty much unavoidable, which sins made the list jostled around for decades, possibly centuries, before becoming standardized. I don’t know if the symetrically necessary Seven Virtues ever settled down. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/5 "2012-05-31T16:10:57Z")
> [@a35362](#): > > It’s a sin to be sad? In some philosophies, misery is the opposite of presence, and presence is seen as a divine state, or a sacrament, or “with god.” OK, that’s a bit of a stretch. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/6 "2012-05-31T17:45:48Z")
The ancient world didn’t have much sympathy for mental illness, and in a subsistence community a chemically depressed person is a real liability. Fortunately, in subsistence communities, chemical depression is vanishingly rare. I always assumed that the inertia depression causes is what caused melancholy to eventually give way to sloth in the list of sins; you can frown all you want but not pulling your own weight is what would really tick off the other farmers. ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/7 "2012-05-31T17:49:09Z")
According to Jimmy Buffett, the 8th Deadly Sin is [pizza.](http://www.lyricsfreak.com/j/jimmy+buffett/bank+of+bad+habits_20071833.html) ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/8 "2012-05-31T18:21:07Z")
Sloth love Chunk! ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2012, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/9 "2012-05-31T20:09:37Z")
Today we call it depression. ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/10 "2012-06-01T14:59:19Z")
When my English class read Marlowe’s version of _Faust_, the teacher said that Faust was damned because of “despair”, that is, he didn’t think that God could save him from the Devil after he sold his soul. Maybe that’s related to the “sadness” idea, somehow. ---
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/11 "2012-06-01T15:08:20Z")
> [@Sattua](#): > > The ancient world didn’t have much sympathy for mental illness, and in a subsistence community a chemically depressed person is a real liability. Fortunately, in subsistence communities, chemical depression is vanishingly rare. > > I always assumed that the inertia depression causes is what caused melancholy to eventually give way to sloth in the list of sins; you can frown all you want but not pulling your own weight is what would really tick off the other farmers. If it’s so rare, then why would it have been a sin at one point? And why is it that it’s so rare in those kinds of communities? ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/12 "2012-06-01T16:43:14Z")
I wonder if women suffered from postpartum sloth. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/13 "2012-06-01T18:51:39Z")
> [@a35362](#): > > It’s a sin to be sad? Does God think you’re being ungrateful? Sadness, which was often called despair, was viewed as the absence of hope. And as such, it was viewed as a denial of God because God was supposed to offer the hope of redemption to anyone anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2012, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/14 "2012-06-01T19:33:29Z")
Thank you ever so much once again Calvinist work ethic, for teaching us that it’s fine to be miserable as long as you keep bending to the yoke. ---
**Author:** ![Lissla\_Lissar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lissla\_Lissar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissla_Lissar)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2012, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sloth-not-one-of-the-original-7-deadly-sins/623647/15 "2012-06-02T01:31:26Z")
The Seven Deadly Sins aren’t Calvinist, they’re Catholic. Calvinists don’t buy that sins aren’t equal. The virtue corresponding to sloth (its opposite) is leisure, which I think is interesting. Sloth and acedia are more like depression than like relaxation or laziness.