Interesting. Where would you put Eastern Orthodox Christianity? As it manifests in my country, it seems closer to literalism and fundamentalism than to any sort of theological sophistication. People's religious practices around holidays and such, especially in rural areas, get heavily mixed with magical and superstitious practices; old and sickly people form huge queues for the better part of a day, in hostile weather conditions, to worship and kiss encased saint corpses which they believe have magical healing properties; nothing "sells" a saint's biography better than miracles performed and extreme acts of abstinence. I've talked to people with a higher education that believed in literal ancient giants, because the Bible claimed they literally existed. People observe the trappings of spirituality more than spirituality itself, taking more care to, for instance, eat all-vegan during days of fasting, keep their heads covered even outside church (most women past the age of 65) and go to church every Sunday (and more often than that, in fact) than to refrain from lashing out in anger at others or to perform altruistic acts. And as far as church dogma goes, the ideal of the Eastern Orthodox Church seems to be to maintain its faithful in a Byzantine stasis; if it was right between 300-900 A.D., it's right now. Probably its most progressive act in recent times was to get itself official TV and radio posts (despite technology being the devil and all that), to propagate its message more effectively and to give religious people "holy" alternatives to watch/listen to.
I'm not too well-versed in the sociology of religion, just a casual observer of the craziness around me, but religion as it appears in my country seems positively medieval. The West seems to have it much better, even the backwater parts of America.
Sorry for the late answer. It is kinda weird. On the elite level, say, monks of old times, the Eastern Orthodox is the least-conventionally religious and most spiritual/esoteric form of mainstream Christianity, for example I have read somewhere the word they use for faith, pistei, is not simply belief, but more like a form of action. Yet, in practice, EO tends to be seriously weird.
My opinion is that EO was corrupted beyond recognition by heavily entanglement of particularly brutal forms of statism, tyrannical tzarism and so on, actually going back to Byza...
So I was reading the list of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins and I was impressed with the list (seeing how many of these sins are what ultimately bring down many major historical figures). I also recognize how many of these sins were responsible for some of my major setbacks in life, and am thinking of creative ways to reduce their effects (by putting value on things that don't involve any of those sins).
I'm curious: to what extent do the "seven deadly sins" cover the most common reasons why people engage in self-defeating behavior? Are there any major omissions in the list of "seven deadly sins"? If you were to make a list of "X deadly sins", which sins would you include?
As examples: should excessive guilt be counted as a sin? Should stupidity be counted as a sin? What about being excessively "autistic"?
Which of the "Seven deadly sins" do you think are most applicable to LessWrong posters? To what extent are they responsible for akrasia?