The Vatican Lauds Hackers

angry tapir writes "Internet hackers have acquired a dubious reputation for piracy, sabotage and the spilling of sensitive secrets, but an authoritative Vatican publication appears to rehabilitate them and traces parallels between hacker philosophy and the teachings of Christianity. The charitable view of hackers was expressed by the Jesuit priest Father Antonio Spadaro in an article for the fortnightly magazine Civilta Cattolica, the text of which is vetted by the Vatican Secretariat of State prior to publication. Hackers should not be confused with crackers, Spadaro wrote, citing a definition penned by technology writer Eric S. Raymond: "Hackers build things, crackers break them.""

Comments

Hackers=christians??

[Anonymous Coward]

Hackers are more like heretics. Trying to uncover the hidden truths. The church has a long history of trying to hide the truth.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[AvitarX]

FTFA:

For all the common ground between Christians and hackers over the concepts of sharing, creativity and idealism, Spadaro acknowledged there were problems of compatibility between the Catholic Church's hierarchical organization and its focus on a "revealed truth" and the hackers' rejection of authority and of any hierarchy of knowledge.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[grub]

Hackers are the altar boys. Crackers are the altar boys who sue.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[O('_')O_Bush]

The Church is a political institution, mostly unrelated with the teachings of Christianity. What the Church does has little influence on the religion or its values. It has influence on the culture of the people that it tries to influence, but not the religion itself. After all, it only represents one branch of hundreds, most of which disagree with what it (the Church) does.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[jythie]

That was my basic thought..... As the AvitarX points out this is kinda covered in the piece,.. but to describe this as 'a problem' is kinda like saying 'well, the sun would make a great vacation spot, but we acknowledge the problem of all that heat'. It is a pretty overriding 'problem'.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[GameboyRMH]

Plus hackers use the Internet, which encourages satanism!

Re:Hackers=christians??

[characterZer0]

The church has a long history of trying to hide the truth.

The Catholic Church as a religious organization has a long history of trying to find and understand the truth, theologically. The Catholic Church as a political organization, as with any political organization, has a long history of trying to hide the truth of the politics of the church. In these writings, the comparison is made to the former, not the latter.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[M. Baranczak]

You can go in the winter, when it's cooler.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[danguyf]

It's not "one branch", it's the trunk. Those "branches" didn't exist for the first millennium and a half of its existence; its existence and authority pre-date the Bible, the component parts of which it authored, preserved, evaluated, and the canon of which it certified. Trying to claim that the Church is a political institution that tries to influence a culture, and not the guiding force throughout time in exploring, refining, and teaching the religion itself is laughable.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[ableal]

"The truth will set you free", and all the historical universities the Church founded, would not convince you otherwise, I suppose. Oh, well. Can't have mere facts shaking beliefs. Carry on.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[Tom]

The Catholic Church as a religious organization has a long history of trying to find and understand the truth, theologically.

Which suffers from the presupposition that something like a theological truth exists in the first place. If it is all a made-up pile of crap, all that "truth-seeking" is simply mental masturbation.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[Chibi Merrow]

It's not "one branch", it's the trunk.

The Copts would disagree with you. As would several ethnic Christian groups in the far-East that were founded by Apostles other than Peter. Catholicism is as much a branch as they are.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[digitig]

The church has a long history of trying to hide the truth.

The Catholic Church as a religious organization has a long history of trying to find and understand the truth, theologically.

And scientifically, because they believe God to be revealed in creation. Even in the context of the Galileo trial the Roman Catholic Church said that if the science showed Galileo to be right then they would have to change their doctrines. Yes, there are metaphysical underlying what they do, but there are metaphysical assumptions underlying science too -- the positivists never succeeded in eliminating them, and Popper argued that it was impossible to do so.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[characterZer0]

People spend a lot of time thinking about the original meaning of other people's made-up piles of crap. You can get advanced degrees in art history and literature.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[danguyf]

An excellent point! I was unclear; I include all four of Christendom's Apostolic Sees when I say "the Church", not just Latin Rite Catholicism. The church in Alexandria brought the world Clement, Didymus, Origen, monasticism, lead the Council of Nicaea, and was basically instrumental in the early Church. I do not want to seem to diminish or dismiss it! I am just bugged when Protestants, or those influenced by the scandal of Protestantism, relegate the Apostolic Sees to being "just branches" on par with the divisions following the Protestant Reformation.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[iMadeGhostzilla]

This is well said. Some famous Christian philosophers like Thomas Aquinas had this hacker mentality, as did influential Buddhists (perhaps the prime example being the Buddha himself -- his work is seen as relentless pursuit to get around the percieved limitations of the mind; if that's not hacking, I don't know what is.)

In fact it could be that in every field successful people have what we call here hacker mentality.

Re:Hackers=christians??

[Em Adespoton]

It should be noted that Jesus's rejection of authority and of any hierarchy of knowledge lines up quite nicely with the Hacker manifesto, with only minor differences (such as "there are many ways to do things, but only one which will get you where you want to go"). Christ was upset with the Pharisees because they didn't write clean (legal/social/religious) code. Despite what some in the Catholic church believe, Jesus did not assign all authority (and associated responsibility) in heaven and on earth solely to Peter (as the first "Pope").

Re:Hackers=christians??

[rgbatduke]

Are you referring to this:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1615bellarmine-letter.html

That isn't exactly saying that if he is right they would have to change their doctrine, it's more like saying "We're right no matter what, so even if you're right and we're wrong, we're still right." In fact, Galileo's greatest contribution to the church is that, by showing the Book of Genesis to be systematically false (and hence by implication casting doubt on the entire "infallible" Bible, written by the holy fathers and hence -- as Bellarmine's letter clearly states -- true ad litteram) he forced them to invent whole new fields of literary endeavor, particularly hermeneutics -- the art of inventing bullshit exegesis to try to make a passage that is perfectly contradicted by simple matters of fact and observation somehow less, um, contradictory.

As for the metaphysical assumptions underlying science -- you can't be serious, can you, trying to put science and religion on the same footing! The only possible excuse you might have for this is a profound ignorance of the mathematical and philosophical underpinnings of science. But I will reduce them to a sound bite for you. The fundamental premise of science is that it is best to believe the most that which you can doubt the least, given your experience and the evidence and the entire network of other strong evidence-based beliefs that we call "knowledge" when -- and get this, as it is the important part -- we try very hard to doubt!

Religion, exposed to this simple standard for knowledge that embraces both verification and falsification and the process of forming and asserting hypotheses and is little more than quantified common sense, withers instantly and dies. If Bellarmine had applied the Cox axioms to Galileo's result, instead of seeking to reinterpret the made-up nonsense in the Bible in some way that he could pretend that it is still true, he would have reduced his belief in its truth! But alas, he didn't try to doubt very hard, did he? Rather he was eager to hold on to his belief even though at that point he knew perfectly well that it was false!

Besides, Cardinal Saint Bellarmine, who prosecuted Galileo at his infamous trial, made his real position -- and that of the Church, quite clear with actions that speak far louder over the ages than these empty words. They threatened him with being burned alive to force him to recant and then they muzzled him under house arrest for the rest of his life rather than actually look for themselves at the motions of the planets and use their own reason to conclude that yes, the Bible is in fact wrong in many places. When presented with a stark choice -- truth or power -- Bellarmine chose power. The Catholic Church chose power. It chooses it today -- with a total accumulated wealth that makes it wealthier than all but the top 18 or so nations on Earth (all administered by a tiny group of non-elected officials) it is one of the most powerful and influential political organizations on the planet. People die every day in Africa because its leader has unilaterally decreed that they should.

Not that it did them any good, of course. Now everybody knows that the book of Genesis is false -- lies, myths, fables, stories without one single word of truth in it, not even particularly good poetry -- except of course the brainless fanatic orthodox Christians that persist even today in trying to pretend that flowering plants were created before the sun, that the moon glows with its own light, and that the Universe is some 7000 years old.

Any reasonable person capable of using Bayesian reasoning at all, when confronted with the irrefutable evidence that the fundamental book of four religions is false from beginning to end would doubt the rest of the unbelievable assertions made in the later text built upon

Apocalypse

[Talderas]

So the Vatican gets the difference between hacker and cracker before the general populace...

We have entered the beginning of the end.

Re:Apocalypse

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought "cracker" just meant "white person."

Re:Apocalypse

[TrentTheThief]

I'm amazed. Truly amazed. For a mainstream organization to define hacking and cracking in nice, black and white terms is somehow very satisfying.

It's been what, 2000 years or so, and they've finally done something okay. I honestly applaud their common sense on this.

Re:Apocalypse

[sznupi]

Catholicism itself is enough to talk about majority of Christians. Throw in Eastern Orthodox plus very large part of the rest... and those which you mention are a noise.

Re:Apocalypse

[sznupi]

religion is, you guessed it, the "cathedral" of top down closed ideas

Well, not really. Sure, many might claim that, their followers convinced in that... but there are crazy amounts of syncretism around.

When applying some rigor, it's not very clear if local flavors of Christianity are closer to Christianity from X century [1] or to pagan practices from the same time (in either case, vast majority of present "Christians" would be branded - and treated - as very strong heretics by "Christians" living just few short centuries ago)

1. The time of "National Baptism" myth from my place - while the Pagan Reaction from XI century is of course forgotten; when the Christian ruler had to escape, priests & churches were annihilated as readily as it was done few decades earlier to old temples & "holy" men, and the "order" was restored few years later thanks to warriors borrowed from the Holy Roman Emperor (but don't tell that to the true faithful, they often don't like Germans, they get confused...[2]). After a quick look at basic historical demographics, number of priests & parishes, and recorded sermons condemning widespread pagan practices from as late as XVII-XVIII century (recorded = widespread enough to be noticed by higher clergy in the cities), the official PR regarding Christianization starts to look even more suspect.

Looking at the present: only the absolute sketch of Abrahamic mythology followed; many local saints (or Marian devotion) are relatively direct continuations of pagan deities (heck, one mistreated physical puppet / doll was supposed to be Judas from some point); all Church celebrations dominated by ex-pagan customs (and some locally big ones aren't even particularly observed in other Catholic places - but similar celebrations were a hit of local paganism); churches, chapels or crosses being placed even now according to the old rules for "holy places"; Catholic sacred groves and springs (I kid you not); quite clearly praying to the dead, saints or statues (a lot of new opportunities lately;GTranslate works ok); still trying to hijack clearly very old celebrations (summer solstice, most notably... still; and failing for almost a millenium)

2. The 1410 Grunwald battle is even better - basically, "we" managed to beat knighthood from most of Christian Europe which was amassed under the banner of one Crusading Order... Largely thanks to one close alliance (which generally would last centuries afterwards; creating "Commonwealth") with heathen Lithuania; its Duke becoming our king some years before, after some formalities (baptism, etc.) relatively late in his life, 3 days later marrying the reigning 12-year old king (that was her title, to recognize her as an independent monarch). Even better: notable contribution to the victory came from our local Muslims! (Tatars)

But of course (still) cherishing such victory in one of greatest battles of Middle Ages doesn't quite fully register (except for "we were fighting and won with ze Germans, Germans are bad") and we're the "bulwark of Christianity"... well, held very dear by the Vatican (and no wonder, one of few remaining places in Europe with very strong Catholic majority, officially)

All of which is is by no means unique / there's no reason for it to be.

After all ...

[PPH]

... Jesus Christ hacked Christianity out of Judaism.

And Martin Luther wrote the open source version.

Re:After all ...

[digsbo]

This is funny, but at the same time you have to recognize it's a Jesuit writing it. Jesuits are very much the intellectual rebels of the Catholic Church. Still, I'm pleased to see that the Catholic Church is not virulently anti-Internet, as are many of the conservative Protestant churches in the USA today. It is odd to observe that in many ways the Catholic Church is more progressive than [some] of the Protestants today.

Re:After all ...

[chemicaldave]

The Romans did not approve of his breaking of DRM so they crucified him. This tradition has endured even today.

Re:After all ...

[drb226]

And Martin Luther wrote the open source version.

More like Tyndale reverse engineered it from assembly (Latin) and open sourced it.

Re:Not cool anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just thinking that hacking is one of the few topics the church can comment on without egg or bodily fluids on their face.

Science.. no
Pedos.. no
History.. no
Morality.. no
Sex... no

Interesting

[bigsexyjoe]

Well the Catholic Church is a large organization and it is good to remember that there is a plurality of opinions in it, even among it's leaders. It isn't just a cabal of child molesters. The Catholic Church has in the past condemned both capitalism and communism in their extreme forms.

Eh...

[Lose]

FTFA

"To create the biggest collaborative encyclopedia of Internet it is estimated that it took around 100 million hours of intellectual work, which is the equivalent of the time the citizens of the United States spend watching advertising on TV in a single weekend," Spadaro wrote.

Dude, what?

Re:Eh...

[Alsee]

100 million hours of intellectual work, which is the equivalent of the time the citizens of the United States spend watching advertising on TV in a single weekend,"

The math works out to about ten minutes per person per day. Considering that a typical one-hour show has about twenty minutes of commercials, the 100 million hour figure is probably about right.

-

Re:Therefore Julian Assange +1, Seditious

[MyLongNickName]

Almost as weak as my spelling of "weak".

Aren't Hackers Terrorists?

[Anonymous Coward]

This must mean the Vatican now prefers bazaars over cathedrals.

Re:Not cool anymore

[Locke2005]

What, the church can't comment on pedophilia? They certainly have enough experience with the subject to be able to have an informed opinion on the matter. Science... no, not so much.

Re:So who wants to join?

[Alsee]

Church of Jesus Christ, Computer Programmer. Free kool-aid and cookies this Sunday.

Shouldn't that be Mountain Dew and Pizza?

-

Re:So who wants to join?

[YodasEvilTwin]

DON'T DRINK THE KOOL-AID

Re:Captain Obvious.

[nedlohs]

So you've been trying to clarify the difference but you insult people who clarify the difference.

Putting the cart before the horse

[jenningsthecat]

From TFA: "Under fire are control, competition, property. It's a vision that is ... of a clear theological origin"

I guess it never occurred to Spadaro that putting control, competition, and property "under fire" might have had something to do with the origins of theology, rather than the other way around.

Re:Not cool anymore

[peragrin]

That's the point the church's comments on Pedophila would be dishonest at best with how they actually treat those who commit those crimes.

The only reason it has gotten as big as it has is because of standard church policy to assume that ALL men of god are above the law of men.

If the church didn't try to hide it but instead ostracized the priests involved at the time no one would say a thing. It is currently called the striesland effect. Trying to hide the truth unveils more of it.

"finally done something okay"

[sznupi]

Vatican is ridiculous in many ways (standing by BS mythologies not even being the worst), but they (well, their direct subordinates mostly) ultimately cherished and immensely contributed to progress - even if with some notable hiccups now and then... The myth about Dark Ages which "stole" from us a millennium of progress is just that, a myth (created by next epoch); at the least they also brought new types of societies (towards ours) and relative stabilization.

Copernicus was also a Catholic priest. Georges Lemaître likewise (sure, Big Bang is convenient if one also dedicated his life to Abrahamic mythology, but...). Or Mendel, a Catholic monk... speaking of biological sciences, evolution and Vatican (emphasis mine):

How do the conclusions reached by the various scientific disciplines coincide with those contained in the message of revelation? And if, at first sight, there are apparent contradictions, in what direction do we look for their solution? We know, in fact, that truth cannot contradict truth
...
the need of a rigorous hermeneutic for the correct interpretation of the inspired word. It is necessary to determine the proper sense of Scripture, while avoiding any unwarranted interpretations that make it say what it does not intend to say. In order to delineate the field of their own study, the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural sciences
...
new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory.

The "technology writer" (hah!) responds

[ESR]

Since he quoted me, I have replied to the report on Spadaro's article at Imprimatur me!

Re:Just a thought.

[Hatta]

It's sad that when someone mentions anything to do with the Catholic church, the first thoughts are not related to how much it has helped people.

I agree that it is sad, but it is also accurate. It's also not the fault of techies, but the fault of the Catholic church for engaging in bad behavior. How many people have AIDS today because the Catholic church lied to them about contraception? How many children are going hungry because their parents can't feed 8 kids? How many people live with unnecessary guilt due to psychological abuse heaped on them by nuns?

Are you really going to blame the "techies" for all this?

The Catholic church is one of the most scientific religions out there.
The idea that faith and reason both are needed is one of it's fundamental tenets.

The most scientific religion is like the most delicious turd. It's still shit. Giving lip service to science doesn't absolve them for dealing in falsehoods and profiting off of peoples insecurities.

Re:that made my day

[Tom]

I bet you'd find more child molesters among hackers than among priests. Just sayin'.

I doubt that, but even if it were true, you forget that priests have laid claim to the moral high ground and hackers have not. In fact, "hacker" and "pedophile" doesn't necessarily collide. One is disgusting, and it diminishes your worth as a human being, but not necessarily your capabilities or claims as a hacker. For a priest, preaching about the love of god, and teaching people how to behave and claiming that you know what is right and wrong and then raping a child does very much collide.

Or, in semantic terms, one set of attributes is within the same realm, the other is not.

Also, it takes a great deal of faith to be atheist. After all, there is no evidence that god doesn't exist. Agnostics FTW.

There is no faith in being an atheist. I do not "believe" in the non-existence of god in any sense that compares to religious faith. A-theism defines itself through the absence of a belief, not through having exchanged one god for another, or a concept.
Depending on how strictly you define agnosticism, I may be an agnostic, because my view is "there is no god, that is something I am as certain about as I can reasonably be" which means there is, as with all things, a tiny, tiny, inconsequential off-chance that I'm wrong. Of roughly the same probability that gravity doesn't really exist or I'm a brain in a jar somewhere and all the world is fed into my nerves by a simulation program.

Re:We have nothing to fear

[Tom]

True religion has absolutely nothing to fear from people who question things. Go ahead and wonder how Jesus did what he did, and try to imagine how you could copy it. Jesus' signs and works were given precisely so you would believe that he was really, truly God's son, because no one else could have done what he did.

Unfortunately to that POV, the reports in the bible have been extensively researched by many factions. And any of them who are not religiously motivated come to roughly the same conclusion: It's a badly cobbled together mixture of folk lores.
Even the historic facts don't check out. Now tell me why I should "believe" in some miracle described in some book that can't even get birth and death dates of important historical people right?

You figure out how to do any of those, you let me know how that works out.

That was easy, I thought you'd come up with something challenging.

First, dump the presupposition that these things were magically accomplished, or miracles, because you can't claim them as evidence if your chain of reasoning starts out with what you want to prove, right?

So what I need to do is recreate that which reportedly happened, i.e. do something that will be reported in the same way. Or rather, would be if it were 2000 years ago and not today. I'm sure a single mobile phone with video recording back then and we wouldn't have a christian religion.

When you put it this way, any halfway competent stage magician can easily duplicate these feats and more.

"Wait!" I hear you say. "he didn't do any tricks, it was all real!" - but now you're back at step one, you are already assuming that which you want to prove.

Re:Just a thought.

[ConceptJunkie]

fact that science seems to have thrived much better under other religions than christianity

Yes, let's talk about that. Science flourished very well in the Middle East for a couple centuries and then pretty much stopped by the 13th century or so. Meanwhile, the place where most scientific and cultural progress was made for most of the last 2000 years was Christian Europe. The first universities? Christian Europe. The first hospitals? Christian Europe. The preservation and propagation of Hellenistic philosophy? Christian Europe. The Scientific Method? Christian Europe. The Industrial Revolution? Christian Europe and Christian America (having its roots going back all the way to 16th and 17th century monasteries).

Yes, other parts of the world were more advanced at some times, mostly more than 1000 years ago, and nowadays there are many parts of the world that are not predominantly Christian that have caught up in terms up degree of continuing progress, but the most consistent and rapid progress have almost always been made in places that were predominantly Christian.