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Pope Says Technology Causes Confusion Between Reality and Fiction
Pope Benedict XVI has warned that people are in danger of being unable to discern reality from fiction because of new technologies, and not old books. "New technologies and the progress they bring can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to confusion between reality and virtual reality. The image can also become independent from reality, it can give birth to a virtual world, with various consequences -- above all the risk of indifference towards real life," he said.
To a greater or lesser degree, the Pope might have a point. If we take his broad argument and narrow it down to some information of the internet, he very well be on to something. One problem with information on the Internet is that it's accuracy can be dubious at best. A person could post a bald-faced lie and pass it off as truth. Technology can make it easier to use propaganda that is founded on a lie to gain popularity for a politican. On the other hand, the same can be done with printed material - technology only makes it more economic and faster.
It could be said to come down to the question of if the universe is deterministic.
If you somehow saved a copy of the universe and played it a second time if it would turn out the same like a finite state machine or if it would turn out differently.
from the inside there's little difference, you have as much or as little "free will" (as fuzzy a term as that is) either way.
The actual article seems like a troll as it only reports a couple of snipits. Here's a better one with the full quote I found via google. The Pope was actually talking about the way modern media reports the news.
Today, for example, the world of appearances has an increasing weight with the development of new technologies; but if on the one hand this has doubtless positive aspects, on the other, the image can also become detached from reality , it can give life to a virtual world, with diverse consequences, the first of which is the risk of indifference to the truth. In fact, new technologies, together with the progress that they bring, can result in what is true and what is false becoming interchangeable, it can lead to confusing the real with the virtual. In addition, reporting of an event, happy or sad, can be consumed as entertainment and not as an occasion for reflection. The search for ways to authentically promote man then disappears into the background, because the event is presented primarily to arouse emotions. These issues are alarm bells: an invitation to consider the danger that the virtual distances us from reality and does not stimulate the pursuit of what is true, the truth.
Just so you know, the Catholic church welcomes scientific explanations for the origin of mankind besides "Creation Science", including the theory of Evolution, so long as that science is used in a non-misleading way (for example, Evolution is fine so long as you recognize that there was a God that started it in the first place, but superstitious "mind science" like New Age theories are obviously false, assuming that you believe all of the other Catholic doctrines). You're thinking of fundamentalist, Protestant churches and denominations which take a rather extreme biblical literacy approach (which the Catholic Church hasn't had for well over a thousand years).
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
I think the argument that Pojust was trying to put forward goes something along the lines of this:
Axiom 1: Assume an all-knowing God. (All knowing implies knowledge of that which has not yet come to pass).
Axiom 2: Assume a God that is always right. (Follows somewhat from Axiom 1).
Axiom 3: Define "free-will" as the ability to make an independent choice.
Question 1: Can free-will exist?
Suppose an individual is presented with the choice between X and Y. If God is all knowing, then God will know that the individual will 'choose' X. If God always knows this, and God must be, and is always right, then the individual must choose X. If the individual chooses Y, then God was wrong, and, therefore, God did not know the outcome. Thus, the individual must always choose X, and, therefore, there is no choice being made at all. For there to be an all-knowing God, all choices must be predetermined, and no choices actually exist.
Now, personally, I have seen folks try to route around this logic by saying, "Well God actually knows all-possible outcomes. That's what all-knowing means."
This is logically inconsistent. If God knows all-possible outcomes, but does not know the outcome that will actually be chosen, then God is not all-knowing. God simply knows all possible permutations of reality, not which permutation will actually occur. If God knows all possible outcomes, and knows which outcome of any given choice will follow a decision, then we fall back to the original logical demonstration that free will cannot exist in a reality with an all-knowing being. It is merely an illusion hosted by lesser beings.
Now, mind you, this is not necessarily an argument that there is no God or anything like that. It is merely an argument that a reality in which there is an all-knowing being as well as individual free will is a logically inconsistent reality. Now, whether or not reality is logically consistent, or, for that matter, an all-knowing being would have to be logically consistent is an entirely different argument. This argument merely holds that, in a logically consistent reality, free-will and an all-knowing being are logically inconsistent.
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