Why Is the Vatican at a Tech Conference? (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a BBC report: As Bishop Paul Tighe sat down for our interview, he joked that not only is he probably the only priest at South by Southwest, but also the only person with grey hair. His presence here marks the first time the Vatican has attended the South by Southwest Interactive conference, and their panel - titled Compassionate Disruption - is one of this year's most talked about events. "In a world where increasingly [we're] not invited to part of conversations, I think if people are interested in having us, we're delighted to be here. "I want to learn and get a feeling for what are the things that are driving a generation of people who are in many ways shaping the world as we know it. He glanced around the room. "Really deep down, I see a lot of people looking for some sort of connectivity." That's certainly true -- though I get the sense for delegates here that means good wi-fi, rather than a strong sense of faith. So Bishop Tighe's mission is to get this industry to find real value in both.

Comments

Because the tech industry is soulless

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to put it any other way. Kudos to the Vatican for making the attempt, but a lot of developers aren't Christian or interested in their message.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[Maritz]

Religion is a huge net negative for our species. So it's not so bad that a lot of developers aren't christian.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Religion is a huge net negative for our species.

I don't think that's a supportable opinion. If religions were not useful for propagating a people and culture into the future we wouldn't have so many religions that have endured for thousands of years. And areligious people tend to not have children, so their culture dies out. Religion must have been a net positive (even if locally negative for those who don't conform to the predominant religion) because otherwise, the areligious would have had an evolutionary advantage over the religious and would have dominated and killed them off millennia ago. Instead just the opposite happened.

Re: Because the tech industry is soulless

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you don't really have any proof of that, given that there has been religion around for this whole time. Perhaps we would be hundreds of years more advanced if we hadn't killed so many thinkers for postulating that the universe wasn't made by a magic man in the sky and earth wasn't at the centre.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[tehcyder]

I find it amusing that you are using Darwinian natural selection as a religious proof.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[Anonymous Coward]

God created Darwin too.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[Registered Coward v2]

Religion is a huge net negative for our species. So it's not so bad that a lot of developers aren't christian.

However, faith can be a big plus because it drives people to do things for altruistic reasons and to help others. The problem is taht religion often gets in teh way as people use it to control others rather than follow the precepts of their faith.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[theArtificial]

Western Society owes a lot to the Church. Science explains the how, religion is more about the why. Modern science, as in the scientific method, has its origins in the Church via Roger Bacon. Separation of Church and State is a Christian thing, as well as the whole scholastic and theology schools of thought enabled by the wildly popular University system.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And yet, http://www.vatican.va/ has to stay online somehow.....

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Religion (NOTE - not the belief in God) is all about control of women.

So, yeah there's solid evidence that religion has been a net loss for man in general.

How do you figure control of women is a net loss for man? You're begging the question here that control of women (or men) is bad for mankind. Can you support that?

Seems to me that left to their own devices men without women are dangerous. They don't care about the tribe because they have no genetic future without children, and they may even be hostile to the tribe because if they can overthrow the existing order they may have access to women. Left to their own devices, women don't care about any of this and will mate with the highest status men (pareto rule).

So I would say uncontrolled women leads to uncontrollable men which leads to violence, mistrust, and civilization collapse. Controlled women leads to controlled men whose otherwise destructive energies can be harnessed towards productive activity in support of the women, the tribe, and the children (their future).

Why do you think control of women is bad, and a net loss for man?

Re: Because the tech industry is soulless

[Marxist Hacker 42]

There has been areligion around the same amount of time, so why didn't you?

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yes, war is an evolutionary force.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Eh, I think religion is an evolved codification of naturally selected (i.e., productive) behavior. This is how you wind up with religious laws about not eating pork (parasites from less-clean animals) or having sex with women on their periods (infection). The behavior comes first, then the rules describing the generally most productive behavior.

At that point if you want to get into whether or not God actually exists and the religion is "true," then you'd go God creates system of life --> system determines productive behavior -> humans codify God's system of productive behavior into rules -> rules become religion inspired by God.

At the end of the day, if you're following a system of behavioral rules that result in generative, expansive behavior for your culture and people you win and the system propagates into the future. If you don't you die, and the world today is populated only with creatures whose ancestors successfully reproduced in an unbroken chain for over 3 billion years. Must have been doing something right.

Re: Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

And I'm saying that since that didn't happen in any major culture on the planet, it's unlikely to be true. If you consider each nation as an internal system religion beat areligion in every case, and the Catholic Church is still here after 2,000 years. Jews seem to be doing fine, the Muslims are still expanding like mad. On the other hand western Europe seems to have given up on Christianity and become areligious and they now have catastrophically low birth rates after only 50-80 years of secularization. Their people and culture will be replaced in the next hundred years by Muslims from the middle east and Africa. Whether Islam is true or not is irrelevant. It'll keep going for thousands of years while areligious communities can't survive a few generations. Something beats nothing every time.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[HeckRuler]

Whoa there dude. Practically everything in that paragraph has something wrong with it.

I don't think that's a supportable opinion.

Did you mean viable? Because plenty of people hold and support that position.

If religions were not useful for propagating a people and culture into the future we wouldn't have so many religions that have endured for thousands of years.

By that logic addictive substances wouldn't have endured for thousands of years and we wouldn't have so many. People have been using and abusing opium for a long time, but you have to do some pretty serious libertarian-grade mental gymnastics to say that opium dens are a net gain.

And areligious people tend to not have children, so their culture dies out.

So the Mormons and Muslims are going to inherit the world? I understand the concept of outbreeding the competition... but that doesn't seem like the best solution in today's modern world with the whole lack of resources thing and limited fossil fuel situation.

Indeed, having fewer kids seems to be the consensus among developed nations. Religion or no. I'd even go so far as to say that's the rational viewpoint. Especially when your retirement plans aren't "hope one of the children feed you".

Religion must have been a net positive (even if locally negative for those who don't conform to the predominant religion) because otherwise, the areligious would have had an evolutionary advantage over the religious and would have dominated and killed them off millennia ago. Instead just the opposite happened.

It's not a gene. It's not something you inherit from your parents. You could be talking about how much people appreciate Shakespeare. Do you think that gives people a evolutionary edge to out-compete the rest?

"The opposite happened"? Care to name an areligious group of people that were killed off by a religious group 1000+ years ago? PLENTY of examples of two religions making war upon each other, but I don't think that's helping your case.

Furthermore, if you're talking about evolutionary time-scales, and ideas rather than gene-pools, the decline of religious participation indicates that it might be on it's way out. But I doubt it will ever completely disappear.

You can certainly argue that religion was or is a net gain for society. And there are plenty of valid points to that effect. But all of these arguments are just plain bad.

Re: Because the tech industry is soulless

[Grishnakh]

If you consider each nation as an internal system religion beat areligion in every case, and the Catholic Church is still here after 2,000 years.

Religion beat areligion because religionists are violent and enforced their delusional views on everyone, with the penalty for nonconformance frequently being execution. The Catholic Church was a big instigator of this: they frequently burned people alive who didn't agree with their theology. Remember the Spanish Inquisition?

The religionists are also the instigators of many, many wars. In the past, it kinda worked out because humans didn't have that much destructive power. Nuclear weapons change that equation.

Finally, as for areligious people not having any kids, China seems to contradict that assertion. They're becoming more dominant in the world every day, and they're not religious at all. They sure aren't in danger of being rendered irrelevant by Africa.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[ScienceofSpock]

Except that religion DOESN'T actually explain ANYTHING, least of all the "why". Religion puts forth ideas (often blatantly wrong), not supported by any kind of evidence, and then chastises/persecutes you when you question those ideas.

As for the Scientific Method coming from the church, that is a stretch at best. Francis Bacon formalized what we know as the Scientific Method, inspired by the work of Roger Bacon and others (Copernicus and Galileo). Just because Roger Bacon was a friar doesn't mean that the Scientific Method came from the church, and considering the treatment that Galileo received from the church over heliocentrism, claiming that the Scientific Method has it's origins in the church is intellectually dishonest.

Ideas about separation of church and state have been around since before Christianity, so saying that it is a Christian thing is just plain wrong. I'll give you the University system though.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

By that logic addictive substances wouldn't have endured for thousands of years and we wouldn't have so many. People have been using and abusing opium for a long time, but you have to do some pretty serious libertarian-grade mental gymnastics to say that opium dens are a net gain.

And you'll notice non-opium use is the vast majority, and opium use is the degenerate tiny minority. This supports my claim. The productive, generative culture (religion/non-opium abusing) vastly out competes the unproductive, degenerate culture (areligion/opium abusing).

So the Mormons [deseretnews.com] and Muslims [pewresearch.org] are going to inherit the world? I understand the concept of outbreeding the competition... but that doesn't seem like the best solution in today's modern world with the whole lack of resources thing and limited fossil fuel situation.

Indeed, having fewer kids seems to be the consensus among developed nations. [wikimedia.org] Religion or no. I'd even go so far as to say that's the rational viewpoint. Especially when your retirement plans aren't "hope one of the children feed you".

That's exactly my point. The areligious, secularized, developed nations are not reproducing, and their retirement plan ("hope the government feeds you") is so poor they're importing religious, breeding people (like Muslims into Europe) hoping they'll fund the government and feed them when they're old. They probably won't though...Muslims give subzero fucks about infidels, so if you're German, don't have kids, and are expecting that in 50 years Achmed is going to be taking care of you in the nursing home...oh boy. I do not see that working out well. Having your own kids take care of you is a much better survival system than hoping the government takes care of you.

Rationality is irrelevant. Humans are not rational, human behavior is not rational, evolution does not select for the rational (usually). What wins is what wins, and what's always won is unifying, productive, generative belief, and what's always lost is aimless isolation.

It's not a gene

It's a meme, which is the same basic idea. The genes which have survived 3+ billion years of evolution are the winning "net positive" genes. The memes which have survived for thousands of years are the winning "net positive" memes. Religion is still around, strong, and growing. Areligion never lasts long because as soon as a society adopts it they die or collapse in a few generations. See western europe.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Eh, I much prefer the Christian model, where men and women are societal partners. The men agree to labor for and protect the women, and the women agree to make the men sandwiches, raise their children and fondle their balls. Seems to work out well for everyone. I'd call that "good."

What's your definition of "good?"

Re: Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Religion beat areligion because religionists are violent and enforced their delusional views on everyone, with the penalty for nonconformance frequently being execution. The Catholic Church was a big instigator of this: they frequently burned people alive who didn't agree with their theology. Remember the Spanish Inquisition?

Remember Stalin? The religious at least have some internal nagging that makes them reluctant to employ violence in pursuit of their delusion views. The areligious have no such restraint.

It's not religion or areligion that makes humans violent. Humans are just violent, and trying to blame that on religion is a cop-out.

As for China, we'll see how long their current system lasts. Christianity is growing like wildfire there.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[Anonymous Coward]

Religion in general is highly beneficial.

Ritual does a lot to hold a community together from getting people drunk and knocked up at festivals (how you get more people) to preventing them from killing each-other over disagreements (keeps it a net-gain), a lot of social interaction works on all involved parties having a shared concept of: 'well, in this case you do X, then Y, then Z because that's just hot it is" rather than trying to invent say: an apology from whole cloth.

Additionally the benefits of teaching though parable are pretty easily identified (fewer people die of stovetop burn related infections in a world in which every child is told about the stove-goblins and why you don't touch the stove when it glows).

The main problem we're having in the US now is that Christianity has kind of gone to shit. It's too fragmented to really get benefit out of the ritual component, and it's so old and resistant to change that it enables the bigoted to justify their bigotry rather than applying the lesson that you were supposed to learn from the (when they were written) fairly progressive stories. Arguably this goes back our entire history as The Pilgrims were pretty much seeking the freedom to practice their horribly oppressive variant on Christianity.

And making matters worse (for Christianity) is that most people with enough sense to realize the problem would rather bail an jokingly call themselves "pastafarian" or "jedi" to refer to their somewhat ad-hoc modern religion based on modern media and trying to not be a huge douche to people, than try and fix Christianity.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Oh and as far as "do great in a Muslim society" goes, no, their polygamist system only works while they have enemies to send their aimless young men to be slaughtered by in search of that afterlife poon. I'd call it meta-stable. Once Islam conquers the world they'll all kill each other.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Which came first, governments or religions?

Re: Because the tech industry is soulless

[Type44Q]

"Soulless" trumps "downright-evil."

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[agm]

Agreed completely. The central message of Christianity (vicarious redemption, or "scapegoating") is deeply immoral. Teaching children that there is a hell is immoral. The Catholic church's mission is not compatible with compassion, it's the opposite.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[agm]

Believing you have a soul is not the same thing as having a soul. I go with the common sense approach of not believing until there's evidence. And on this there is none.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[reboot246]

There have been dozens of significant scientific discoveries made by priests, including your sacred "Big Bang Theory" by Father Georges Edouard Lemaitre.

The Vatican has an observatory in Arizona where the priests are also astrophysicists. I could go on and on, but you can look up all of this for yourself.

Religion is not afraid of science. Why is science so afraid of religion?

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[drinkypoo]

Religion must have been a net positive (even if locally negative for those who don't conform to the predominant religion) because otherwise, the areligious would have had an evolutionary advantage over the religious and would have dominated and killed them off millennia ago. Instead just the opposite happened.

Religion helps groups dominate other groups by force, by keeping up morale. But does it actually help a group? People were fucking (thus making babies) before they invented religion, and they became numerous to have enough free time to think up such ridiculous ideas. And now there is only one religion which is growing. It subjugates women, it is not in fact big on personal freedom of any kind, and yet it has become extremely unfashionable to speak against it in most of the developed world. I for one oppose all religion for a variety of reasons which are too typical and mundane to go into here, and which are besides the point at the moment.

The question is whether religion is a net positive. The answer has to be that it has uses, but that it is inferior to education. If you need people to plant grain at the intelligent time, and they refuse to listen to you simply because you know better than they do (fancy that) then dressing the information up in bullshit that makes it easier to swallow is a net positive. But what's even better than that is for those people to be convinced that they want to know what you know. Frankly, if people who can only be convinced by religious bullshit were to die out and leave everyone else behind, it seems like things would go a lot better.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[youngone]

The Catholic Church is not afraid of science, true enough, as you point out, they employ a bunch of scientists, and have done for a long time.

Other religions are terrified of science however, Islam being a good example. In the early Middle Ages Islam was the centre of scientific progress, but the religious elements suppressed science, based on the notion that the explanation that "God wills it" is enough. (This is probably simplistic, but is my rough understanding).

Islam is not the only anti-science religious group though, from the Scopes Monkey trial to attempts to teach Creationism in science classes in the US, various Protestant groups are obviously anti-science.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[drinkypoo]

How do you figure control of women is a net loss for man? You're begging the question here that control of women (or men) is bad for mankind. Can you support that?

If you value obedience most, then you might stand on one side of this argument. If you value something else, then you might stand somewhere else. Men subjugate women so that they can be assholes and still have women around. What if I told you that if you're not an asshole, women will just naturally want to be around? What if I went on to tell you that it actually feels better to be nice and to have other people be nice to you than it does to be an asshole to people and have them do things because they fear you?

uncontrolled women leads to uncontrollable men

But controlling women leads to unhappy women, which leads to men doing more to control them. It's a vicious cycle in which the women are suppressed into being less than they could be. I, for one, prefer to be around women who are being themselves. If no women that I find interesting want to be in my presence, then that's a sign that I need to change either my behavior or my expectations. It doesn't validate forcing women to do what I want.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[ScienceofSpock]

I never said priests/clergy didn't contribute to science, just that it was disingenuous to attribute things like the Scientific Method to the church. The Big Bang Theory isn't sacred, it just happens to be the theory that best fits our observations. If something came along tomorrow that fit BETTER, guess what would happen to the Big Bang Theory? Buh-bye!

Another thing about that: The Big Bang Theory (Any theory, really) isn't mine or "ours" (Hell, I'm not even a professional scientist). It belongs to the world and is currently our best explanation of the formation of the universe. Theories don't require blind faith. If someone doesn't believe in a theory, it doesn't make it any less true, only evidence can do that. Religion, on the other hand, does require faith. That's why nobody still practices Egyptian, Sumerian, Greek or any of the countless other dead religions that have existed through the years.

Your assertion that religion isn't afraid of science, hasn't always been the case, and in fact is only a very recent development out of need. Science has slowly been eroding god's domain over time, and so Christianity has had to adjust it's worldview to fit with society. Before that, when they actually had authority, the Christian church had a long history of persecuting, torturing and killing people who introduced ideas that were contrary to their all-knowing all-powerful scriptures. You have THAT kind of history with science, and then ask WHY science was afraid?

Christianity is LUCKY that the scientific community is rational and wouldn't think of treating Christians the same way that scientists have been treated at the hands of the Christian church, and would do well to remember that.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[jellomizer]

A lot of them are too. They are smart enough not to talk religion to people who are so hostile towards religions.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[gweihir]

If you are blind and completely ignorant of the history of religion, it may not be. Otherwise it is pretty much a proven fact.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Otherwise it is pretty much a proven fact.

Who proved this and how? It seems to me that history tells just the opposite story: areligious societies die or fall apart in just a few generations. Case in point, catastrophically low areligious western european birthrates.

Imagine we both founded colonies in America 400 years ago, and mine is a town of 200 Catholics and yours a town of 200 atheists. Fast forward 150 years after that. How's your town progressed, and how's mine progressed?

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

If you value obedience most, then you might stand on one side of this argument.

It has nothing to do with what I value. I'm just saying societies in which people don't control themselves (which is really the tyranny of ostracization from the culture) don't propagate into the future. I'm giving you an "is" and you're giving me an "ought," and those two domains do not overlap.

What if I told you that if you're not an asshole, women will just naturally want to be around?

What if I told you that's complete bullshit? Women love assholes. Rather, they love assholes who are nice to them.

In reality mating behavior follows a pareto rule, where the top 20% of men by sexual market value get 80% of the women. Being nice or being an asshole is pretty much irrelevant.

It doesn't validate forcing women to do what I want.

Who said anything about force? How about women who want to be wives, mothers, caregivers? A society that encourages women to want to do those sorts of things will be much more successful than a society that encourages them to do stupid things like work in the economy.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

The question is whether religion is a net positive. The answer has to be that it has uses, but that it is inferior to education.

Except religious communities continue to reproduce while areligious societies like western europe are undergoing demographic collapse.

Frankly, if people who can only be convinced by religious bullshit were to die out and leave everyone else behind, it seems like things would go a lot better.

Except that will literally not happen. The areligious will die out the religious will continue on. Ergo, religion is clearly superior to education.

And if by "education" you mean "science," then Hume already settled this. Science describes what is, religion describes how you ought to act, and Hume proved you can't derive an ought from an is. The educated will putz around "knowing" what is while the religious act how they ought and out-compete every time.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[theArtificial]

Religion puts forth ideas (often blatantly wrong), not supported by any kind of evidence, and then chastises/persecutes you when you question those ideas.

Science arose only in Christian Europe because only medieval Europeans believed that science was possible and desirable. And the basis of their belief was their image of God and his Creation (see Theology, and Scholastics.) Christian Theology was essential for the rise of science, just as non-Christian thologies had stifled the scientific enterprise everywhere else. Explained at the Lowell Lectures at Harvard by Alfred North Whitehead, co-author of Principia Mathematica, he explained:

The greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement [was] the inexpungeable belief .. that there was a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. How has this conviction been so vividly implanted in the European mind? .... It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of faith in rationality."

Rene Descartes justified his search for the "laws" of nature on the ground that such laws must exist because god is perfect and therefore "acts in a manner as constant and immutable as possible." That is, the universe functions according to rational rules of laws. Many early scientists felt morally obliged to pursue these secrets because god has given humans the power of reason it ought to be possible for us to discover the rules established by god.

In contrast, most religions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition do not posit creation at all. The universe is said to be ternal, without beginning or purpose, and never having been created, it had no creator. From this view, the universe is a supreme mystery, inconsistent, unpredictable and perhaps arbitrary. For those holding this view, the only paths to wisdom are meditation or inspiration - there being nothing to reason about. But if the universe was created in an accord with rational rules by a perfect, rational creator, then it ought to yield its secrets to reason and observation. Hence, the scientific truism that natur is a book meant to be read. Many of the Greeks considered the universe as eternal and uncreated - Aristotle condemned the idea "that the universe came into being at some point in time ... as unthinkable." Indeed none of the traditional Greek gods would have been capable of such a creation. But, worst of all, the Greeks insisted on turning the cosmos, and inanimate objects more generally, into living things. Consequently, they attributed many natural phenomena to motives, not to inanimate forces. Thus according to Aristotle, heavenly bodies moved in circles because of their affection for doing so, and objects fall to the ground "because of their innate love of for the centre of the world."

As for Islam. There is no suggestion in the Qur'an that Allah set his creation in motion and then let it run. Rather, it is assumed that he often intrudes into the world and changes things as it pleases him. Thus, through the centuries, many of the most influential Muslim scholars have held that all efforts to formulate natural laws are blasphemy in that they would seem to deny Allah's freedom to act. Thus did their images of God and the universe deflect scientific efforts in China, ancient Greece, and Islam.

It was only because Europeans believed in God as the Intelligent Designer of a rational universe that they pursued the secrets of creation. In the words of Johannes Kepler, "The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony imposed on it by God and which when he revealed to us in the language of mathematics."

As for the Scientific Method coming from

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[theArtificial]

I never said priests/clergy didn't contribute to science, just that it was disingenuous to attribute things like the Scientific Method to the church

Where did it originate, who taught it, where was it taught, and more importantly, why?

Your assertion that religion isn't afraid of science, hasn't always been the case, and in fact is only a very recent development out of need. Science has slowly been eroding god's domain over time,

Science is the result of people studying God's work, people like Einstein, ignorance of the origins of Western science such as the painting of Galileo as a heroic martyr to blind faith demonstrate that there are many old lies still being told throughout history. Just as a group of eighteenth-century philosophers invested the notion of the Dark Ages to discredit Christianity, they labeled their own era the Enlightenment on grounds that religious darkness had finally been dispelled by secular humanism. As Bertrand Russel (1872-1970) explained, the "Enlightenment was essentially a revaluation of independent intellectual activity, aimed quite literally at spreading light where hitherto darkness had prevailed." Thus did Voltaire, Rousseau, Lock, Hume, and others wrap themselves in the achievements of the "Scientific Revolution" as they celebrated the victory of secularism, eventuating in the Marquis Laplace's claim that God was now an unnecessary hypothesis. Of course, not one of these figures had played any part in the scientific enterprise.

Christianity is LUCKY that the scientific community is rational and wouldn't think of treating Christians the same way that scientists have been treated at the hands of the Christian church, and would do well to remember that.

Science isn't moral. Eugenics was extremely progressive and scientific at the turn of the last century, look at modern munitions like chemical and atomic weapons, hell look at what Nazi scientists and Imperial Japanese did. Were they not scientists? 20th Century Soviet Union - a bastion of Science since religion was under the boot, persecuted and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of clergy up to the 1960s, which was disregarded by the JFK administration as fascist lies, and killed millions of their own people. I'm sure it's a relief to all those who perished that it wasn't because of some sky wizard. For example many perceptions about the Inquisition are hilariously false, rivaling many people's understanding of the Old West seemingly full of gun fights making modern day Chicago look tame.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[Dog-Cow]

I find it amusing that you are so stupid that you didn't understand his statement in the slightest.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[Dog-Cow]

Wars are about resources or power. Everything else is just a cloak for one of those.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[gweihir]

Otherwise it is pretty much a proven fact.

Who proved this and how?

If you have to ask, then you have not nearly what it takes to understand the relevant facts. You are just regurgitating propaganda.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

It seems to me you can't answer the simple question. Are you sure it's not you regurgitating anti-religious propaganda? I think it is.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[gweihir]

"Simple question", my ass. I have seen people train for this type of "argument" (in a train, no less, but they were young and obviously recently indoctrinated). You are infected by a malicious meme of the religious type, and the pathogen defends itself against neutralization or removal. As a consequence, you cannot see reality anymore. There is no way to reach you until you fight it off, which is unlikely to happen.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Sigh. "No, you are the one who is the brainwashed." This is your argument. You don't have one. You just wildly claim things are "proven facts" with no proof or even a statement of fact.

Here's my proven fact: religious civilizations out-compete areligious civilizations on long time scales, as evidenced by almost every major civilization in existence today being religious, while the civilizations which have lost their religion shrink and their population is replaced by the still-breeding religious.

You: "Nuh uh you're wrong it's a proven fact I don't have to provide any evidence or give any argument you're brainwashed."

You're the one who can't put a coherent argument together. Sounds like brainwashing to me.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[drinkypoo]

How about women who want to be wives, mothers, caregivers? A society that encourages women to want to do those sorts of things

Okay, mister Sneaky Weasel. We're talking about control of women. This isn't about encouragement. This is about force. Try to stay on topic, or do you think you are? Because that would be sad.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

They fall into a spectrum.

Of course. I'm making extremely broad generalizations and then you're putting out exceptions (like priests and nuns, really?!) that prove my general rule.

No, it could happen. If the godless commies take over, they could purge the religious, and it would be the religious who die off. And a commie take over is totally within the realm of possibility. That's something both religious and non-religious agree on.

And then the godless commie society collapses after a few generations because it doesn't work. It does every single time. It's not a useful ideology. See Russia, with its shrinking population that's only starting to turn around now that the Russian Orthodox Church is gaining steam. We'll see what happens with China, but I only give them another 30 years.

Except few people practice ancient Egyptian religion. Or that of worshiping Zeus or any other pagan religions that have come and gone. Of the hundreds if not thousands or more religions that have ever existed, only a handful of them lasted thousands of years. This doesn't mean the few that survived are correct. This means that religion has a high failure rate in figuring out what you "ought" to do.

And they got replaced by other religions, not areligion. I never said any of these religions were correct, just that they're useful, and far more useful than nothing. Something beats nothing every time, but that doesn't mean that something is correct, perfect, absolutely true, or that there isn't a better something.

Furthermore, I thought religion isn't about matters of flesh, but deals with matters of the spirit and soul?

Yes, exactly. How you ought to act, not what is. Spirit and soul is behavior, flesh is just what is. And as Hume proved, you can't derive an ought from an is. This is why science is useless as a basis for ethics. The best you can do is use science to identify effective or ineffective plans for achieving your goals, but that just kicks the can to a non-scientific evaluation of whether your goals are "good" or not. And the vast majority of the practitioners of Sciencism I see don't even do that, as they tend to be anti-racists, anti-sexists, and pro-homosexuality despite the science supporting none of those positions. You can't get a more useless ideology than the worship of what is while being completely wrong about what is.

And I have no idea what you mean by your last paragraph. I'm not arguing for or against the existence of God or gods. I'm essentially making a fascist argument for religion: religion is effective, and certainly more effective than areligion. If areligion were effective western europe wouldn't be falling to Islam, but it is. Nobody jihads for science.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

What is control, though? Societal pressure, incentives, disincentives, threat of ostraciziation. These don't require guns. And force was rarely used or necessary. Society expected women to act one way and men another, and it pretty well worked out, and people were happy. Women too. You mentioned the happiness of women, and, well, surveys show women women were happier in the 1950s as housewives than they are in the 2010s in the workforce. It's almost like the vast majority of jobs fucking suck, and being at home baking cookies for lovable children is more rewarding than spending 8 hours a day in a cubicle at the call center. Huh.

And the people who are opposed to societal pressure towards traditional gender roles today don't seem to be interested in ending control. We see stories every week on Slashdot asking "how do we encourage more girls to get into coding and STEM?" That pressure is not an absence of control, it's just control directed away from productive and fulfilling activity in the home towards the stifling drudgery of the cube farm.

The culture that adopts the method of control that produces mothers and men with mates will thrive while the culture that adopts the method of control that produces office drones and bitter lonely men will die. But there is no society without controls. You don't think there is, do you? Because that would be sad.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I hardly consider Islam a religion, but even in Shariah Law, men are restricted, even if it is their victim is punished.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Yes you are. Very lefty-like of you. Leftists love to generalize. Makes it easier for them to dehumanize and push broad one-size-fits-all policies and (so called) solutions

I also eat, drink, and shit like a lefty. Do you do those things also?

So not so different from the majority of religions that have come and gone.

All I'm saying is the religious systems last longer. Some have lasted for thousands of years. No commie state is going to make it more than 3-4 generations, and the areligious western left will be gone soon, also.

Yet religious and non-religious alike fear the possibility that the NEXT commie regime would be 1984, where the boot will stomp on the face forever

If you're so sure communism will fail every time, then the level of fear of communism displayed by both religious and non-religious alike is irrational.

No, no one thinks the next commie regime will last forever, except retarded commies. People who want to avoid communism do so because they know it's doomed to failure. It's also a totalitarian hell while you're in it. Setting yourself on fire is guaranteed to fail if your goal is "keep living." Pretty miserable while you're dying from it, too. Is fear of setting yourself on fire irrational?

Second, science being useless for ethics does not automatically mean religion is somehow better. That is a false dilemma.

Wait, so you concede science is useless for ethics (which you absolutely should unless you can overturn Hume, in which case you should be world famous). So on the "usefulness for ethics" scale it scores a zero. Since religion is useful for ethics, then yes it's absolutely, undeniably better. The dullest knife in the world is more useful for slicing bread than a bowl of jell-o which cannot slice at all. Where is the false dilemma?

A great number of religious people are those things too. In fact, religious people love to take credit for those things. Abolition, civil rights, today's social justice movements

We've been over this before, and I already established why abolition was not at all anti-racist and the civil rights movement is complicated. However, you have this real bug up your ass to conflate SJWs and Christians, which makes no sense. If Christianity was SJW-y, then SJWs would be Christians, and they're not, and the Christians would be SJWs, and they're not. SJWs are pink-haired feminist landwhales screaming at "The Patriarchy," and The Patriarchy IS Christianity! They're completely anti-Christian. And the Christians can't stand them! Where on earth did you get this idea, and have you ever succeeded in convincing anyone else it's true?

Again, the few religions that managed to survive for thousands of years are the exceptions, not the rule. Religion has a very high failure rate, almost as high as that of the godless commies.

So, every commie system fails within 3-4 generations, but we have several major religions that have survived thousands of years (and are still going strong), and you're claiming that's equivalent? How can something that always fails after a relatively short time be as good as several things that have survived for orders of magnitude longer and not failed yet? Does not follow my friend. Does not follow.

I understand you don't like religion, or don't have one, or whatever, but you need to come to grips with the fact that non-religious societies don't last near as long as religious societies.

If your definition of being better or more useful is better than the commies, well... that's like saying you're smarter than a retard.

What does that say about the dying secular western world, that seems like it'll last about as long as the commies did? Equal to retards? I can agree with that.

"Nobody jihads for science?" That's a compliment.

It won't be considered a compliment in the history books the victorious Islamists write on the conquest of secular Europe.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

The industrial revolution turned women into factory drones? Huh.

Re: Because the tech industry is soulless

[Grishnakh]

Perhaps, but (moving the goalposts here) that's probably still rather different from the more-organized religions we have here in the US, with churches demanding 10% of your income and acting as a full-time social club. It's like people who maintain there's a difference between the terms "spiritual" and "religious". It's one thing to have some non-scientific beliefs about an afterlife or whatever, it's another thing to form these into an organized set of tenets and dogma, and create a big organization around them with a clear hierarchy. Some people having some vague beliefs and traditions aren't going to have the organizational ability to assert any force against other people or groups, or even to effectively lobby or petition the government for anything such as laws restricting the activities of everyone according to their beliefs; people in an actual organization are.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[HeckRuler]

Probably government. Apes have alpha males of the tribe. We don't know if they have religion.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[HeckRuler]

Yeah, but you get your genes from your parents. You get your memes from the Internet.

But in your worldview, whoever is on top has some sort of divine right simple because their numerical superiority shows that their way is best.

Which is why Mandarin is God's language, and the Han are his chosen people. They ought to be Christians (specifically catholic), work a factory job, and die of heart disease.

All minorities are "degenerate" and rationality is irrelevant because what wins is what wins. ...Jesus fucking christ I think you're a god-damned monster. The exact sort of hate-spewer that twists religions into a weapon against people and force a conformist fascist regime. My only consolation is that people like you are why developed nations are becoming less religious.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

Jesus fucking christ I think you're a god-damned monster.

That's not really an argument.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

You didn't specify women in the last post when talking about drones.

It was pretty heavily implied, though, when the entire point of my post was that women have been "freed" from their homes where they slaved for a loving family to become office drones in which they slave for a soulless corporation. It is not better. The TV shows you working women who are doctors and scientists and shit, but few women are doctors and scientists. Most of them are in shitty, boring, unrewarding office jobs. This is not better for anyone, and it certainly isn't "less controlling." Women bombarded with "grow up to be an office drone!" propaganda are just as much puppets of their culture as women bombarded with "grow up to be a mother!" propaganda. The difference is mothers propagate their culture and people into the future whereas office drones give their prime child bearing years to the corporation and their ovaries shrivel and die.

This is a change from the sexual revolution, not the industrial revolution. The men went into the factories, the women stayed home and took care of the babies.

Muslim women may be staying home and taking care of more kids, but the western working mom can just press a button and a drone wipes out half the village. If Hillary won, her button can turn large parts of the Middle East uninhabitable.

You're like the generals always prepared to fight the last war. The current and future front of the conflict of cultures is not with weapons in foreign countries but with wombs and welfare in our own countries. The problem is 15% of French teenagers are Muslim. 40% of Germans under 5 are from a "migrant background." Every "value" of the secular west pushes people away from families: women working during their prime childbearing years, easy divorce, fewer acceptable marriage partners due the advancement of women over men on the socioeconomic ladder (since women only marry across or up in status due to billions of years of the evolution of mate selection), overpopulation propaganda, divorce of sex from marriage, homosexuality, etc. On the other hand the values and explicit goals of the Muslims is move in, collect benefits, have kids, grow, expand, demand or take power, convert by word or sword.

Note I'm not advocating for or against anything here. I'm not saying "therefore women in the workforce and gays are bad and everyone should be forced to be Christians" or something. I'm saying that the clash of cultures has not ended and will never end because this is what cultures do: they collide, and the strongest cultures dominates the weakest culture. The useful features of the weak culture may survive as window dressing. But the secular western left acts like this is the end of history. Like we're playing Civilization and they've unlocked the final ideology on the tech tree "White Western Liberalism" and they're just waiting on everyone else to catch up. No. No.

And it's a real study in cognitive dissonance because the western secularists believe that if they invite in Muslims that the Muslims are going to, through osmosis or something, adopt their feminist/leftist values and decadent culture. But why would they? Westerners don't even like western culture, and cry about the soulless corporations and the crass materialism and the shit music and the shit movies. But Muslims like their culture. They like Islam. Why on earth would they give that up to join a culture that doesn't even like itself?

A secular culture that doesn't have explicit goals (like preservation, expansion, conquest) and values that provide perverse incentives against those things will never win against a culture that has explicit goals (Islam will conquer the world) and values that reinforce that goal (make babies, convert or kill infidels). It's bringing a spoon to a gun fight. And all the drones in the world won't help you because the Europeans are inviting them in and giving them free resources. They can't even tell the Muslim invaders "no, you can't come here" so they're sure as shit not going to start dropping bombs on them in their own welfare tenements. Your drones are useless against the power of belief.

Re:Because the tech industry is soulless

[meta-monkey]

The entire point of my post was that history disagrees with your assertion. It IS better, as the West triumphed over the Muslims and pretty much every other culture who did not turn their women into office drones.

And I'm saying the office drone phenomenon is new. It's basically the last ~30 years. History agrees with me because the west was doing gender roles (i.e., the evil "control of women") right, has changed to not doing them correctly, and now birth rates are in the toilet and 75% of men 18-35 are not married. This is not good and will not be sustained. And this is far more than just "the regressive left." 75% of young men are not regressive leftists.

And yet, the Muslims have failed to succeed for 1500 years of basically the same strategy.

And during that time the west was populated by religious people. And the muslims are succeeding now, against people who have lost their faith. The west is shrinking and Islam is expanding, and expanding into the west. Fewer kids to factory workers than farm workers isn't so bad when you aren't replacing those kids with foreigners who hold values opposite those of your culture. In past immigration waves the US brought in people who were of similar stock to the pre-existing population, and then beat the shit out of them until they stopped acting like Poles or Irishmen or whatever and started acting American. Now we bring in Mulsims and beat the shit out of any American who dares to criticize the Muslims.

You're confusing secularists with regressive leftists. The rest of your comments against "secularism" is simply barking up the wrong tree.

Secularists don't really care about pushing people towards or away families. As above, secularists care about freedom.

No, regressive leftists are a subset of secularists. Regressive leftists are pushing people away from families, and secularists are at best indifferent to this and at worst frequent opponents of traditionalists who are pushing people towards families. So your secularists are opposing the people who are pro-family and not against the people who are anti-family. That does not win against the explicitly pro-babies pro-conquest Islamic hordes, so my point stands.

What do you think Europe (particularly western Europe) will look like in 100 years?

like your dogmatic hatred of secularism...

I wouldn't call my hatred of secularism dogmatic, but pragmatic. I look at history, I look at current trends, and I do not ever, anywhere, see secular societies in the long run winning over religious societies. Every secular system dies after just a few generations while religious systems thrive for thousands of years.

really, you too are one of those "westerners who hate western culture"

I hate what it's become, yes. But I hate what it'll become next even more.

What a dumb submission.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Catholic Church is a huge global organization with millions of 'employees' and 'customers'. Like any similarly large multinational organization, be it a corporation or an aide group or a supranational governmental body, it will have significant information technology needs. Of course they'll have an interest in technology and tech conferences.

Re:What a dumb submission.

[gweihir]

While I do not like them very much on general principles, that is certainly a valid fact.

Is it a tech conference?

[chispito]

I thought it was more of an arts/entertainment conference. The Wikipedia page says it focuses on "music, film, and interactive."

Or am I the only one that wouldn't call that a tech conference?

Information about talk itself

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Speaking of whoring karma for the afterlife, here's the talk itself (missing from the reliably crappy article summary):

http://schedule.sxsw.com/2017/events/PP67508

When your community numbers over 1.2 billion people and you’ve been in operation for over 2,000 years, there’s a lot to consider when it comes to integrating new media and technology. The Vatican's iterative engagement of the "Digital Continent" stands in contrast to the velocity of mainstream technology adoption. Yet its unique approach to Twitter, Instagram and digital video have helped make the Pope the most influential world leader online.

This first-of-its kind SXSW discussion will shed light on how the world's oldest and largest community is adapting to and leveraging new media to encourage a new form of disruption: one guided by understanding, empathy and compassion.

MAR 12, 2017 | 12:30PM – 1:30PM
Primary Access: Interactive Badge, Platinum Badge
Secondary Access: Film Badge, Music Badge
Format: Panel
Event Type: Sessions
Track: Brands & Marketing
Level: Advanced

Re:Information about talk itself

[dunkelfalke]

Not quite for over 2000 years. It is nitpicking, before the Council of Jerusalem (circa 50 CE) Christianity was just one of many Judaism sects, and the Roman Catholic church actually came into existence in its current sense of the term after the East - West schism in 1054 CE.

Re:Information about talk itself

[lucm]

and you've been in operation for over 2,000 years,

Someone's grasp of history seems a bit shaky there - I'm not sure that the Catholic church was in operation at [the time of]* the [supposed]* birth of Jesus.

* delete according to religious viewpoint

No the first Pope was Peter, who met Jesus in his late 20s.

Re:Information about talk itself

[WallyL]

Yeah, they forked Christianity when design decisions for contributions and governance became too hotly contested. See http://christianfaith.com/reso.... Beware, Linux users!

Proselytizing

[sjbe]

"I want to learn and get a feeling for what are the things that are driving a generation of people who are in many ways shaping the world as we know it. He glanced around the room. "Really deep down, I see a lot of people looking for some sort of connectivity." That's certainly true -- though I get the sense for delegates here that means good wi-fi, rather than a strong sense of faith. So Bishop Tighe's mission is to get this industry to find real value in both.

Translation: He's proselytizing or laying the groundwork to do so.

Re:Proselytizing

[lucasnate1]

Are they? Look at how many adults fawned over communism/absolute-capitalism/nazism/whatever, how many believe right now that their state is "the good side", etc etc.

Re:Proselytizing

[Registered Coward v2]

He's going to realise why religions prefer access to children. Adults are a damn sight harder to bullshit.

It isn't the kids that donate millions to various religious groups or pay for mega churches.

Re:Proselytizing

[Jamu]

Nope, it's the adults that accepted all the bull. they were fed as children.

Re:Proselytizing

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The groundwork is already laid:http://www.vatican.va/. He's just looking to make it better.

Re:Proselytizing

[Grishnakh]

Not exactly, only partially. Those mega churches didn't exist a couple decades or so ago. Huge numbers of born-again/evangelical (esp. mega-church-going) Christians were not raised that way at all, they were raised in more traditional, "mainline" protestant sects or as Catholics. In fact, in Latin America from what I've read, there's a huge number of people converting from Catholicism to Evangelicalism. And today's "Prosperity Doctrine" is entirely new; it didn't exist a few decades ago.

So you can make the case that these people were all brainwashed into religion from an early age, and then have merely changed to a different (and usually more extreme I believe) flavor of it in adulthood, but many/most of them weren't fed this particular kind of bull as children.

Re:Proselytizing

[gweihir]

Tried and true tactics. Works for quasi-religions too, for example, look at the youth organizations of the 3rd Reich, the USSR, Eastern Germany, North Korea and so on. Get them early and they may may even rat out their own parents, because children are generally about as stupid as adults, but lack the life experience that could have taught them something about things that sound to good to be true.

Re:Proselytizing

[Jamu]

Same shit, different shade.

Re:Proselytizing

[Grishnakh]

Maybe, but I would argue that Catholicism is like very loose brown shit, whereas today's mega-church Prosperity doctrine sects are like dark black shit (the kind indicating bleeding in your GI tract and requiring prompt medical attention).

Re:Proselytizing

[Dog-Cow]

Fake News. You lose.

a more pragmatic reason this is happening

[nimbius]

This first-of-its kind SXSW discussion will shed light on how the world's oldest and largest community is adapting to and leveraging new media to encourage a new form of disruption: one guided by understanding, empathy and compassion.

or...more realistically, this was shoehorned in at the behest of an investor, program director, or local community/government representative because Jesus saves and this is Texas.

Re:a more pragmatic reason this is happening

[Maritz]

I didn't think catholicism was popular in the south. Not psychotic or literal enough.

Re:a more pragmatic reason this is happening

[Nidi62]

This first-of-its kind SXSW discussion will shed light on how the world's oldest and largest community is adapting to and leveraging new media to encourage a new form of disruption: one guided by understanding, empathy and compassion.

or...more realistically, this was shoehorned in at the behest of an investor, program director, or local community/government representative because Jesus saves and this is Texas.

Isn't SXSW in Austin, which is basically the southernmost neighborhood of San Francisco? Not exactly a bastion of the Bible Belt.

Besides, over 64% of Texans are evangelical protestant while on 21% are Catholic (most likely Latinos). The Vatican doesn't have a whole lot of pull. I see this more and another factor of the modernization to Catholicism that Francis is pushing right now. While Carlin's priest in Dogma was obvious satire, he is correct in that the Church is looking to modernize as a lot of it is out of date and out of touch. A softened stance on divorce for church members, increasing acceptance of LGBT, open musings on allowing married men into the priesthood, Francis washing the feet of Muslim refugees, and now this. Religions have to change (at least in terms of how it operates, but also occasionally in ancillary beliefs as well) in order to remain relevant, or they die. There's nothing wrong with modernization.

Re:a more pragmatic reason this is happening

[Major Blud]

Try going to Louisiana.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:a more pragmatic reason this is happening

[drinkypoo]

There's nothing wrong with modernization.

Indeed, modernization is the only thing that might make the Catholic church acceptable. But aren't they by definition kind of the opposite of modernity? If they actually do accept LGBT, support equality for women and so on, are they still even the same church? Or are they just ordinary Christians plus dresses and funny hats?

And wouldn't it be modern of them to stop relocating child molesters? There's not much tolerance of child abuse around most of the world in the modern age.

Re:a more pragmatic reason this is happening

[Dog-Cow]

There's not much tolerance of child abuse around most of the world in the modern age.

You have a definition of most of the world that leaves out around 80% of it. Typical, stupid Western ass-shit who thinks the US and maybe Europe are somehow "most of the world".

Reaching out to Change Makers

[krisbrowne42]

For anyone who's been paying attention, the new pope has been working hard to put the service and social commitments back to the front of the Church's mission... Reaching out to people who can and do make disruptive waves can mean a lot. There's so many cases where an app with the right niche in mind has revolutionized life for remote communities, and so many places where even small incremental changes can mean life or death for people...

They have a lot of skepticism to overcome, but I would like to believe they're trying to help the right people reach the right needs.

Re:Reaching out to Change Makers

[Dog-Cow]

Ritual and routine aren't big in tech circles.

Huh?

Re:How come there are Jesus games?

[meta-monkey]

TBH, a game based on a literal interpretation of Revelation would be cool as hell with the rivers of blood and screams of the damned and everything.

Re:So they can hide their pedos better

[Anonymous Coward]

"Age of consent in Vatican city was recently raised, to fourteen. Only priests live in Vatican City."

Which is probably why they didn't bother updating it until 2013. According to Wikipedia: "When the Vatican City was first formed, it adopted the then-Italian age of consent of 12 as per the Lateran Treaty of 1929. Until July 2013 it had the lowest age of consent in Europe, but after that month, when the Pope made his decree, it became the highest."

Could use a little more religious influence

[jediborg]

In the tech area, I get the feeling that a LOT of computer scientists and engineers don't contemplate the moral implications of the software/hardware they are designing. Weather its GPS apps designed so badly using them while driving would definitely cause a crash, programmers working on data mining analytics for credit card companies, or smarter and smarter cars that are increasingly insecure and easy to hack, I think more thought about consequences needs to be done by the people making this software/hardware and not just pushing moral authority/decisions on middle or upper management. I'm not saying I want these designers to convert to a particular religion, studies show that just talking about the ten commandments can effect peoples decision making minutes later.

So maybe having a member of the congregation in the corner will subtly influence people in good ways

Re:Could use a little more religious influence

[Grishnakh]

I think more thought about consequences needs to be done by the people making this software/hardware and not just pushing moral authority/decisions on middle or upper management

The people making this stuff don't have that authority. They're nothing more than hired guns. If they don't do the job the way management wants, someone else will. That doesn't quite excuse them in extreme cases, but most of the things you complain about are things that low-level engineers have no control over or even any visibility into; they have to be part of the requirements, and that's something that only management has real control over.

The things you complain about are products of hierarchical organizations. The only power people at the bottom have is to leave, and generally that only happens when the wrongdoing is blatant or illegal. Making something less secure against hacking than someone thinks it should be really doesn't qualify here. If you want things done better, you either need to do a better job as a consumer, or you need to advocate for governmental policies to effect change.

Re:Could use a little more religious influence

[jediborg]

I understand where you are coming from, but to say that engineers have NO authority/control/ or influence over some of these decisions i feel is a falsehood.

Once I was asked to apply DRM to the CD Distribution of a video game I was working on. I refused to complete the assigned task, and even said something to the effect of "Get Some other immoral engineer to do it, because i won't apply DRM to our product on ethical grounds" Eventually my Tech Director called me into a room with the Director and President of the company and asked why I "Refused to follow simple instructions to complete this task". I calmly explained to everyone in the room that I objected to it on personal, moral and ethical grounds. I explained why DRM makes our product inferior, and also mentioned that there was backlash against DRM in the gaming community and that adding the DRM to our product could hurt sales, technical performance of the game, or both.

The president was shocked, had obviously not hear these arguments before. Exclaimed that if EA was doing it and earning the IRE of consumers, then we shouldn't. That game ended up shipping without DRM

This is not unusual

[dlleigh]

It's not unusual for large religious organizations to send representatives to tech conferences. As other have mentioned, they have technology needs too.

I remember having a nice chat with a priest from the Vatican Observatory when we attended an astronomy conference, At a conference on human-computer interaction, I spoke with a gentleman from the Mormon church's genealogy arm.

These were actual technology conferences with peer-reviewed publications, unlike the more arts and entertainment focused SXSW.

Catholic Church and media...

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

Sorta off topic, but sorta related...

I see a lot of people on the left angry about accusations of fake news directed at the media, but the Pope is a good example of that.

As a victim.

I am a Protestant and don't have heaping doses of respect for this Pope (his predecessor was significantly better IMO), but come on. The media frequently deliberately misquotes this Pope to make him sound like the Pope they want him to be.

We're entering a point where the state will have to start prosecuting the media directly for the content of their speech because they are damn near demanding a right to do stuff like this:

Headline: Mr. Smith and so hates $GROUP
His quote: I can see why some might want to harm them, but I don't believe in killing them.
Their summary: Mr. Smith said "[I]... believe in killing them."

Re:Catholic Church and media...

[JustNiz]

>> We're entering a point where the state will have to start prosecuting the media directly for the content of their speech

Since the media continually demonstrate their utter incompetence at professional reporting and self-regulation, I totally agree. However any legislation needs to be designed/applied VERY carefully.
We need accurate reporting but we also need to eliminate any chance of the media becoming just another pro-government propaganda mouthpiece, otherwise then what we have is a totally conformist media that looks like N Korea's.

Re:Catholic Church and media...

[Marxist Hacker 42]

If I had mod points, and didn't want to comment in this thread- the above should be +10 insightful

Re:Catholic Church and media...

[Grishnakh]

His predecessor helped pedophile priests avoid prosecution. You support this?

Converting adults

[sjbe]

He's going to realise why religions prefer access to children. Adults are a damn sight harder to bullshit.

Adults may be harder but not by a lot. One merely has to look at the number of born again christians to realize how susceptible adults are to religious bullshit. People desperately want to feel a sense of belonging to a community and to not have to say "I don't know". Churches (read cults) are really good at providing that and helping them feel good about it. The fact that it is based on a story that is objectively nonsense and made up doesn't seem to matter to a great many people. They'll believe anything you tell them as long as they get that good feeling. It's not so different from getting a high from drugs. Missionaries exist because they are effective. They don't have to convince everyone of their bullshit to be a success. They just have to grow the numbers of the faithful.

Because it thinks it has moral authority.

[Going_Digital]

Despite evidence to the contrary the Catholic church holds on to the notion that Christianity (well their version of Christianity) is the exclusive keeper of morality. They think that only by believing in their particular belief system can a person have moral values. They are there as they are concerned about technologies such as AI lack moral and ethical standards according to the Catholic belief system.

Re:Vatican denies evolution while undergoing it

[bsolar]

Vatican does *not* deny evolution: it actually stated it doesn't conflict with chatolic faith in 1950 and accepted it as "more than hypothesis" in 1996.

Re:Vatican denies evolution while undergoing it

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats, you know nothing about Catholicism except third-party rumors you read in a shoddy newspaper. The Vatican has funded astronomers, chemists, biologists, etc. for centuries. The Catholic Church was one of the first public institutions in England to accept evolution at a time when the Anglican Church were anathamatizing people for it.

There's also no such thing as a "Secret Vatican Library". What, you say, but there's a Wikipedia article about it! Yeah, that's because "Secret" is a shoddy translation of a word that means "Private". Read the article. Thousands of people are allowed to come in and do research every year.

Reminder of Origin

[cwarrior]

Slashdot was founded by students at a Christian college on a Christian college campus ... Hope College in Holland, MI.

Re:Vatican denies evolution while undergoing it

[bsolar]

Post doesn't assert that the Vatican denies evolution. Post doesn't even mention evolution.

The post's *content* might not, but the post's *title* surely does.

Post asserts that Vatican is under threat from knowledge. Something you've just illustrated with your reference to the theory of evolution. At least I guess it's a reference to the theory, rather than the facts of evolution.

That's absolutely *not* the case: the Vatican's position is that science and the scientific method are absolutely valid and compatible with faith since it consider science and faith to pertain inherently different domains. Actually it consider scientific discoveries to be an important challenge to the faith and humanity to better understand itself.

The "threat" to the Vatican is not from knowledge, it's from not understanding social changes until it's too disconnected from the people it preaches to. It's a danger well known to an organization thousands years old which might be conservative, but in context it *did* change a great deal to adapt to completely different societies since its inception. Technology is definitely a player in such changes, which is why the Vatican wants to study them.

fairy tales

[mattack2]

Because both them and many of the companies involved are basing their existence on fairy tales?

Seems obvious.

[Gravis Zero]

Because they Vatican. ;)

Bzzzzt. Wrong answer

[gosand]

I don't think you know what a Catholicism is then.

Re:Bzzzzt. Wrong answer

[cwarrior]

There wasn't a question, so it's not a wrong answer. It's a relevant statement of fact in response to comments referring to Christianity or religion in general. The point remains that people of faith are involved in the tech industry, and everyone reading this statement benefits from this (i.e., slashdot wouldn't be here without people of faith).

Vatican runs GNU/Linux

[xororand]

The Vatican uses GNU/Linux both for their library servers,
as well as some info terminals.

“The philosophy of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is based on cooperation, common good and mutual benefit, and is in many ways consistent with the Catholic Church’s preferential option for the poor.”

Kids grow up

[sjbe]

It isn't the kids that donate millions to various religious groups or pay for mega churches.

Kids grow up and it's easier to brainwash them if you've already gotten to their parents. Organized religions know how to play the long game.

Re:How come there are Jesus games?

[Grishnakh]

They should make video games of certain parts of the Bible. How about a game where you get to invade some other tribe's territory so you can take it for your own, and God tells you to murder everyone in the tribe except for any desirable women who you then get to take into slavery?

It's too bad the Christian media companies haven't made any movies about these parts of the Bible.

Re:Vatican denies evolution while undergoing it

[Grishnakh]

The bottom line is that people are leaving the catholic church in droves as they realise there's less and less credibility and need to explain things with "magic"

I'm sorry to say this is wrong. Lots of (maybe even most of) the people leaving the Catholic Church in droves are converting to other sects of Christianity, ones which are arguably even worse (Prosperity-doctrine megachurches for instance, and other forms of evangelicalism).

I'm not sure of the numbers, however; there's probably lots that are leaving religion altogether, but I would suspect most of those are young people (like me when I was in college and gave up on Catholicism), and that most over-30 adults leaving the Catholic church are simply going to other sects.

Because the Pope is a "White Hat"

[TheOuterLinux]

(Drums) Ba dum cheh...

Really? Galileo?

[NotSoHeavyD3]

I mean the guy who got in trouble because after his college buddy, Pope Urban VIII, asked him to publish the heliocentric hypothesis he did so in Italian with a dig in his treatise about the omnipotence of god.(Which is what actually got him in trouble.) I could point out that the 2 leading theories that they were considering, Tychonic and Copernican, are mathematically equivalent and make the same predictions. I could also point out that he had no actual evidence that the Earth moved, he tried to demonstrate that it moved with his tide theory but the problem that people at the time pointed out was that his theory got every fact about tides wrong except that there are tides. (It predicts that there's 1 tide a day, it's at noon, and it's always the same height. All of which are wrong.) The Catholic church are a bunch of control freaks but that whole anti-science thing is a myth.

Re:So they can hide their pedos better

[HornWumpus]

Nobody expects the spanish inquisition. But we should have. Posting facts is clearly trolling.

In further consideration; my original post was slightly wrong. There are penguins that live in Vatican City as well as priests.

Why Is The Vatican At A Tech Conference

[cstacy]

Was Robert Langdon there?

I think I saw that movie...

Re:Why Is The Vatican At A Tech Conference

[OhSoLaMeow]

God only knows.

It's right in the summary!

[JThundley]

...not only is he probably the only priest at South by Southwest, but also the only person with grey hair.

He's there looking for some fresh meat. Hide yo keeds, hide yo wife.

Has the church quit lying about condoms?

[jcr]

When they stop trying to get people killed by fighting against a simple and cheap preventative measure that can save thousands of people from AIDS, then I might start listening to them when they blather about moral issues.

-jcr

Re:So they can hide their pedos better

[lucm]

Christian bashing is fine, Islam bashing is hate.

Re:Wrong

[Marxist Hacker 42]

More a point about how religious morality and business ethics are both about arbitrary rules to base a civilization on. Some of which work better than others, and natural selection takes care of the rest.