McGrath, you've missed a fifth way: when violence is the only way to get what you need. An addict needing the money for his fix may not enjoy robbing that grannny's handbag, but he'll do it bcos it's the only way he can get that money.

Greg, Cain and Abel is an interesting story bcos there are two levels, the practical and the religious.

At a practical level, let's remove all reference to God. Abel isn't getting a better quality of life bcos God's favouring him, it's bcos farming is a more reliable way of getting food than the hunter-gatherer mode. So Cain's hungry, and as a hunter-gatherer he's going to try and take food by force. This is your conflict between the two behaviour patterns.

There's also another level though. Assume that the Bible is literally correct. In that case, Abel is getting a better quality of life not because of his choice of lifestyle but bcos God is giving him all the favours, and God at the same time is crapping on Cain no matter how hard Cain tries to please him. The reason Cain kills Abel is then the same reason for the Watts riots - years of discrimination building up resentment, which eventually becomes intolerable.

Off-topic, but the story of Cain and Abel and the book of Job are two Bible stories which I find most scary, bcos they're saying explicitly that God is *not* good, is *not* fair and *will* use his powers to crap on you for no reason than he wants to, or perhaps has a little bet going with the Devil on the result. I'm not sure how committed Christians get around that. But that's off-topic, so anyway.

Graham.