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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.
"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."
That's funny. It's arguable that the same could be said about the Bible. How many thousands of pages have been written about the workings of the Divine, or of the afterlife, when no one has truly seen either?
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Pretty sure people have been unable to discern the stories told in the bible from reality for quite some time.
I can't distinguish the pope from some loony old guy who keeps talking weird stuff
... 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.
Talk about confusion! Dinosaurs walking with people, Noah's Ark, a walk through Biblical History...I can't figure out WHO is telling the truth! http://creationmuseum.org/whats-here/exhibits/
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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.
The church is struggling for relevance in the modern world. This does not help.
Sounds to me like the Catholic Church wants to go back to the old days of an illiterate flock lead in a latin mass.
Because then people had a more "realistic" connection to things that were important like tithing or the consequences of no doing so.
I mean, the whole monotheism thing strongly suggests we ourselves are in a layer of simulation. So how real is virtual reality under those circumstances?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
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.
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
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.
... 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.
Pope Benedict XVI has warned that people are in danger of being unable to discern reality from fiction because of questioning blind faith. "Reconsideration of dogmas and the refusal to believe proposals without proof can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to damnation instead of salvation. The questioning individual can also become independent from the Bible, it can give birth to a virtual world, with various consequences -- above all the risk of indifference towards the Church," he said.
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.
So now I can't jerk off OR play video games? Damn dude, WTH am I supposed to do with my free time?
Is anyone else laughing about this coming from the bloody pope of all people?
iburnaga.blogspot.com
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!
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
But where would the church be without magic?
look at the rise of right wing blogs, and the people who would trust it more than they trust mass media
a media channel loses its credibility, its audience, and its advertisers when it lies. so it has to fact check. additionally, it must remain neutral and moderate, and not espouse an agenda, or it turns people off, which means less advertising revenue. moderation and neutrality is of paramount importance to mass media
when bush was in office the far left complained about the right wing mass media supporting the phony march of war on iraq, etc. well, there is no right wing mass media, and there is no left wing mass media, there is only mass media. the real problem is that the far right thinks it is liberal, and the far left think it is conservative, only because their own perspective is so far right (or left). move far right enough, and you can't tell the difference any more between moderate and lefty. move far left enough, and you can't tell the difference any more between moderate and right-wing
so now, with the internet, we see the rise of far right wing people and far left wing people walled off in their own media universe. their own little walled garden of self-reinforcing lies. obama is a "secret muslim". obama is not an american citizen. this is obviously insanity. but walled off on their own, in their own ideological echo chamber of lies, people begin to believe these obvious smears and lies rather than reality
so the pope is 100% correct: the internet has allowed reality and illusion to become inseparable for people. it takes energy to change your beliefs to align with reality. so why change your beliefs? just change your reality instead, by choosing your partisan blogs over mass media
there are a class of people now who distrust mass media, yet, exasperatingly, trust partisan blogs which lie all the time in support of an agenda, and openly do not care about the truth or fact checking or credibility, as long as they advance a cause
this is genuinely dangerous and scary. the internet is enabling the fractionating of society into walled fiefdoms of ideologues, and no real truth, or at least even common mythology. people pick and choose what they want to believe, regardless of reality. at least mass media made for a true commons of the people. now we only have open warfare amongst entrenched ideological gangs. and the internet makes that possible
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Does it react to bible as if it was real?
Of course it does, because it Israel.