Cranmer is not sure what the BBC is up to with this absurd (?) analysis, but he can guess. The corporation produces a magazine called ‘Focus’ – ‘a magazine of science, technology and the future’. In latest edition (Feb 2010), there is an article on whether or not nature has ‘programmed’ mankind to be sinful.
The article is entitled 'Born to sin. Why nature wants you to be bad', and it examines parts of the brain that purport to wire people to commit the seven deadly sins. The article then asks which is the most sinful nation on earth and concludes it is the Australians.
Cranmer has never liked ‘Neighbours’, and (he must confess), finds Castlemaine XXXX, Crocodile Dundee, Kylie and Dame Edna all a little tiresome.
But he is baffled that the authors should conclude that Australia is ‘the most sinful nation’ on the planet when there are others who are waging civil war, murdering their own, letting millions starve, aborting their own children if they happen to be the wrong gender...
And the United Kingdom only comes sixth.Sixth!
Just above Sodom.
And, of course, the United States is right up the top for ‘gluttony’.
For each of the seven deadly sins the rankings are
Lust: 1st South Korea (UK is out of the top 10)
Gluttony: 1st USA (UK 5th)
Greed: 1st Mexico (UK 6th)
Sloth: 1st Iceland (UK is out of the top 10)
Wrath; 1st South Africa (UK 5th)
Envy: 1st Australia (UK 5th)
Pride: 1st Iceland (UK is out of the top 10)
The analysts then allocated 10 marks to the first, then 9 mark to the second and so on with no marks to any nation outside the top 10.
And so Australia comes top with 46 points, USA second with 32, Canada third with 24 with the UK sixth with 17 measly points. A bit of fun, perhaps.
Yet it is a little strange that taxpayers’ money is being used on this sort of quantitative (just) research which effectively says that sin is part of a perfectly natural national psyche and therefore quite beyond the control of a population and government: ie, God/‘nature’ has fore-ordained the United States to gluttonous excess.
There is no point resisting the will of God.
