Kansas State Geographers Map The Bible’s ‘Seven Deadly Sins’

A team of Geographers from Kansas State University plotted the 7 deadly sins on a map of the U.S. The darker the map area is, the more “sinful” it is.

Capital vices, cardinal sins, or more commonly, the seven deadly sins, have been discussed and debated since at least the 4th century, when Evagrius Ponticus, a Roman born monk who relished praise from his peers (vanity), and married women (lust), first wrote of the eight evil thoughts from which all sinful behavior was based.

These evil thoughts; gluttony, fornication, avarice, sorry, anger, discouragement, vainglory, and pride, were later revised in the 6th century by Pope Gregory I to constitute the seven deadly sins; Luxuria (Lust), Gula (Gluttony), Avaritia (Greed), Acedia (Sloth), Ira (Wrath), Invidia (Envy), and Superbia (Pride). From the 14th century onwards, the notoriety of the deadly sins in popular culture has grown, most notably in Dante Alighieri’s, 14th century masterpiece, the Divine Comedy. This obsession (gluttony) is seen today within the modern arts, music, television, film, comic books and most recently, video games. The authors of this mapping study, Stimers, M.J., R. Bergstrom, T. Vought, and M. Dulin., undertook the task of statistically representing the seven deadly sins throughout the U.S. and Nevada to determine what, if any, spatial coincidence occurred. Each of the deadly sins was given separate treatment based on sociologic and economic characteristics, while pride, the “greatest” and “root” of all sins, was determined to be the aggregation of each sin. This work represents one of two separate but related works that are meant to be enjoyed consecutively (gluttony).

And of course, the Internet wasn’t shy regarding the maps…

Resources

• Source Files
• ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ on Wikipedia

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