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.

Comments

If you see the pope ...

[6031769]

... tell him he owes me a new irony meter.

Indifference towards real life?

[ColdGrits]

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.

This is just red meat for the /. crowd

[nysus]

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.

Re:This is just red meat for the /. crowd

[ceoyoyo]

Okay. His major purpose in life is to try to get as many people to believe the stuff written in his book of choice, including the magic parts, is the literal truth. As part of that, he has to convince them that the stuff written in everyone ELSE's book of choice is lies, at best misguided, but more likely evil. His organization, which derives it's take on reality from a book, has a long history of violently opposing stuff written in other books, or interpretations of stuff written in their own book they don't agree with, then eventually deciding, well, maybe it's true after all (or at least not burning at the stake worthy). You might even say that the bible has confused the church about reality.

Now he'd like us to believe that books (well, the right kind of books anyway) tell the truth and don't confuse us about reality, but that this newfangled electronic stuff does.

Hm.

Re:This is just red meat for the /. crowd

[Mongoose Disciple]

With respect to the specific issue of being able to tell fantasy from reality?

Absolutely.

Re:This is just red meat for the /. crowd

[MoonBuggy]

That may be true, but there are plenty of very good reasons to be mistrusting of Pope Benedict, religion notwithstanding. He's a powerful leader who pushes policies which cause significant harm to people's day to day lives (discouraging the use of condoms, shielding paedophiles from the accusations of their victims, perpetuating an intolerant attitude to homosexuality, and generally attempting to interfere with people who are attempting to privately live a happy life). More or less all of his public suggestions and ideas, regardless of the stated reasoning, would have the effect of increasing the power of his organisation were they carried out or taken literally.

Re:This is just red meat for the /. crowd

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Sounds like the Pope criticized places like Slashdot (amongst others), and Slashdot responded in kind by flaming the Pope's message and trolling it's own board with an inflammatory summary. In other words, par for the course on a typical /. day!

=)

I only worry about what 4chan's response to such comments might involve... /shudder.

Re:Hmm

[MyLongNickName]

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....

Re:Hmm

[omnichad]

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.

Scientist Says Religion Causes Confusion

[mrvan]

Scientist (well me, in any case) Says Religion Causes Confusion Between Reality and Fiction

Re:Hmm

[Pojut]

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.

I'm not surprised

[Locke2005]

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?

Re:Hmm

[Nursie]

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!

Re:Hmm

[somersault]

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.

Re:Wait...

[Gorkamecha]

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.

Re:Hmm

[mea37]

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.

Re:Guess he never saw the Creation museum...

[IICV]

You can logically prove that a soul doesn't physically exist in this world. However, the soul just so happens to be spiritual and cannot be represented by matter alone, therefore that conclusion is left up to whether or not you believe God exists (which the Catholic church does).

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.

Assume for a second that all life is sacred. Assume for a second that sex was never meant to just be a pleasureful act, and was meant to represent the love of God Himself by allowing us to spread that love another generation by "becoming one" in the act of sexual intercourse.

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.

As for the catholic church molestation issues, the Church itself says that if you have deep-rooted, perverted sexual tendencies, you should seek help with those before you become a priest. There are only a few bad eggs in a giant basket of them here, figuratively speaking. The underlying principles that molestation is a grave sexual offense and that it severely separates yourself from God are still true in the Church's eyes; if Pope Benedict XVI truly is covering up these instances without a good reason (which I'm not sure is possible to have), then maybe we just have a bad pope on our hands.

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.

tl;dr, It's their beliefs, not yours. Respect them for that please and stop claiming they're so backwards that they don't allow any fun. The problem isn't the church, it's you. Just because a church that you don't agree with and that you are not a part of doesn't approve of things that you want to fulfill your own selfish sexual desires, logically speaking, does NOT mean, in any way, that the Church is backwards; agree to disagree!

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