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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.
... tell him he owes me a new irony meter.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
The reality is that I'm never letting my kid around any priest, or ever trusting the church again. That real enough?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Tell us, Papa Ratzi, how else would you describe someone who adtively protects, supports, defends and hides known repeat paedophiles, hmm?
That sounds exactly like someone who is indifferent toward real life.
So get off your high horse and join the real world.
And startby turning over those of your priests who are paedos to the lawful authorities and stop protecting, supporting, defending and hiding the paedos.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
OK, when you're done ripping on the pope, stop and consider his point of view and what he has to say. Whether you agree or disagree, his point deserves some honest thought and debate.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
In any age, there were those who blurred reality for oppressive means. Whether rewriting history to depict Native Americans submitting to colonists in a painting, to airbrushing out Stalin's opponents in photographs. Technology is a tool, and as moral beings we have the ability to do good or evil with it with it, including distorting reality.
I don't quite understand how anyone can stay a Christian after reading the Bible. It's badly written Jesus fan-fic, co-authored by Abraham Z. Brite and Moses Pacione. I'd call it slash-fic, except there isn't enough sex in it.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
So if I Tivo a soccer match and replay it, then the players have no free will? Essentially that is the Christian concept of God. He exists in the past, present and future and knows how everything will turn out.
Granted, I have a problem with free will but choose to believe in it because I was predestined to....
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Well considering that one would have to be fluent in Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew to read the "just one version" I think that you have to accept newer translations over time as the English language evolves, and as historians discover new idiosyncrasies in the ancient languages. You can argue that this is not all that's changed, but it doesn't preclude new versions from coming out for good reason.
Down with the machines
The difference is god would have created the football field, and the players, and could have created them in another configuration which would have led to another outcome which he would know beforehand.
Aside from everybody spotting the obvious irony here, I went to read the original article to see if I could get all contrarian and spot some useful insight. I find that whenever I hear a story of the form "Person X said something monumentally stupid", there's practically always something in either the subsequent or preceding sentence that provides context and makes it debatable or thought-provoking or even obvious. That doesn't necessarily apply to people who make a living saying monumentally stupid things, often for political gain, but people who actually think for a living (and I do include the Pope in that category) often think more subtly than single-sentence extracts from newspaper articles makes them out to be.
Except in this case, that's all there is. The article is 5 sentences long. It gives no context and only the barest hint of who the audience is. It doesn't link to the full text. As far as I can tell it's not the Montreal Gazette's fault; they ran the entire article as it came to the off the Agence France-Press wire service. I had a reasonably high impression of AFP; perhaps I need to reconsider that.
Maybe there will be a more useful article coming in the future, one that provides something more than an opportunity for something other than simply going "tsk tsk" at the Pope. But RTFA in this case isn't going to make you any smarter.
(Look, I'm not here to defend the Pope. Yes, I'm aware of all the terrible things the Church and he personally have done, and I think it needs to be prosecuted. But I want my opinions to come from actual crimes, not suspiciously short quotes.)
Scientist (well me, in any case) Says Religion Causes Confusion Between Reality and Fiction
It spills over into what people would do with a bible, though...if all creatures on this planet are god's children, why would we A. be the only ones given his word and B. the only ones given the ability to comprehend it? Standard "why is the universe so big if we're alone" and "if the universe isn't empty except for us, why don't we know of god's other children" type of questions apply as well.
The fact that there are different versions of the bible (again, external of "lost in translation" issues) understandable only by man should be proof enough for anyone that it is the word of man, not the word of god.
Living With a Nerd
... the real risk is simply human beings don't know how to think and most aren't intelligent enough to think. Most people would rather live illusions and lies. This is why religion is so pervasive, we are a species that loves our lies, technology or not. It takes real courage to pursue truth with eternal vigilance because it means your morality and feelings get over turned and you have to let real knowledge change you.
Most people do not want to do that.
I guess I didn't fill it out enough, sorry about that.
Again, assuming what religious christians say is true, god works through us. This would also mean he works through those soccer players. You only know what they did after they did it; god knew what they would do before they did not because he can "see or be" the future, but because he worked through them. This, effectively, makes all of us nothing but puppets on strings.
A puppeteer knows how they are going to make a puppet move before they do it. I'd argue that god does the same thing (based on christians' own words), thus negating the possibility of free will.
Living With a Nerd
No surprise that somebody who believes in virgin birth and a water-walking zombie riddle-speaking prophet God has difficulty distinguishing between reality and fiction. The real question is, does technology make it difficult for atheists to distinguish between reality and fiction?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The players have free will, but you aren't watching the players. You are watching images of the players on a screen: a recording. The recording and images definitely do not have free will.
Technoli
Imagine that, the slashdot crowd would rather take shots at religion than assess what the man is actually saying.
No where is he saying that technology is bad. No where is he saying that technology will be the doom of us all. No where is he saying repent ye sinners! He's saying be careful with your gadgets and how you let them augment your life. I believe Asimov had similar warnings.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Personally, I believe God is omnipresent, because I have not been witness to any divine interventions, nor seen tangible evidence of such an event.
Hey, that's the same reason I believe god is omni-absent!
So if I Tivo a soccer match and replay it, then the players have no free will?
Definitely. No matter how many times you play it, they will always do the same thing. What's your argument here? If god controls and knows everything, then anything he changes, he knows the outcome of it, and even if he only sets the initial parameters (though the bible says he does much more than that), he is still knows the outcomes of any changes he makes. He set exactly the ratio of people that would go to heaven/hell, if you believe such things. He created billions of lives that were already condemned. To me that seems a little sick an unecessary.
which is totally what she said
Obviously that is true of any ordinary book, but the point here is that it refutes the Bible as the supposed "One True Word of God".
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The difference is -- the Bible mandates focus on how you live life. In context of the quote technology sometimes drives one to focus on an imaginary world, landscape, or interaction. References to these are MMORPG's, video games in general, and blogs such as slashdot. How many people know what their karma is on slashdot, or post to a blog everyday and neglect keeping communication open with their extended family. I think the statement the Pope made was actually insightful and a warning given without prejudice. It warns one to be mindful of using technology without being disconnected from the world.
Ignoring the additional action then, I'd argue that knowledge alone of our actions before we do them would constitute an implication or illusion of free will, not actual free will.
Complete knowledge of our actions would mean nothing we do could change the outcome, because every adjustment we eventually make would have already been known of. This directly contradicts the definition of free will.
This brings the conversation to the illusion of free will vs actual free will, for whatever that's worth.
Living With a Nerd
You're not supposed to have free time - Any time that you're not working in the fields for your King/Leader/Authority figure you should be spending in contemplation on how awful a person you are, and begging for forgiveness for that. At least that's my understanding of the situation.
Ah, well, there's a potential point of contention. Most Christian (and even Jewish) theologians would say that the universe wasn't created for man, but that the universe (and man) was created simply for God's glory. Simply stated: the universe isn't really about humanity at all, it's all about God.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
It's rather evident you didn't read the old version either, if you think it was Moses who was asked to sacrifice his son.
If there is an omniscient god, then it can see all possible futures.
If this god is also omnipotent, then he can cause any possible future to take place, simply by using it's powers to make all other futures impossible.
If god could see the future, but be unable to change it then god could only be described as powerless.
... did the joke work, despite errors in details? Then, are the details important?
So let me get this straight: the soul has no observable effect on the universe, yet it exists anyway? Could you clarify what leads you to believe this hypothesis? Or maybe I'm misinterpreting you somehow.
So what you're saying is, basically, "assume that I'm right"?
How about this: I don't accept your assumptions. I reject them, because they assume facts simply do not exist. You leave the quality "sacred" undefined; you'll have to give a definition if you want me to accept that life is sacred. The entity you term "God" is not in evidence, as there is exactly zero evidence for such a creature - and, lest I start sounding like a broken record, it is also undefined. The existence of meaning behind the existence of an action is not in evidence; you'll have to provide a plausible hypothesis for why such a thing would exist, which I think will be tricky given that there is no evidence for the existence of a God Who "meant" for sex to mean anything.
Basically, your argument boils down to "assuming I'm right, I'm right". Sorry, but for matters of public policy (which covers things like sexual education and the promotion of contraceptives and prophylactics) that just doesn't cut it.
The evidence that Ratzinger did in fact cover up the instances of child molestation is effectively incontrovertible. The evidence that the Catholic Church has a history of covering these things up is also incontrovertible; just look at the recent furor in Ireland, or look at the history of a potential Australian saint (hint: she was temporarily excommunicated because she went public with the fact that a priest was abusing children).
Sorry, but it looks like the rot in the Catholic Church goes back centuries - and that's not even accounting for the hypocrisy inherent in preaching tithes but living in a gilded castle.
No, that's not the way it works. When you are wrong on matters of fact, and your wrongness on matters of fact leads you to encourage bad public policy, you should be opposed. Your beliefs matter very much when they mean the people my children end up having sex with don't know wha
On the contrary, most modern "technologies and the progress" (whatever this might mean to him) have a strong technological (and logical) foundation, explanation, and their existence (virtual or real) can be verified, proven explained and reproduced. Given, that you care to get the details.
A lot of things in religions writings are not possible to prove, their existence is "anecdotal" at best. And if you care about the details and try to prove any of them, well, then there you go down the rabbit-hole.
Evolution and global warming is a hoax anyway.
My take on this? Well, buddhism does not encourage greed, never started a holy war and accepts the existence of a ghost (gods) world without caring too much about it. Builds on the promise of a good afterlife without threatening with endless horror, not forcing anyone to do anything really. It is self centered in a way without hurting community... It teaches you not to kill things (others or living creatures) too. It is a view of a thinker, a clever one, maybe more than one.
Then again, just a few thoughts, it is not my intention to offend anyone religious ....