The same pope who declared an influencer boy a saint?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/07/pope-leo-xiv-d...
Let's be honest, the entire concept depends on advertising like nothing else.
Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
171–180 of 473 posts
Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will surprise you but almost all religious people I talked to believe that.
There is no face. The depictions of God the Father are relatively new (in the history of the church; it's still Renaissance). Some people used to have problem with them (Jesus can be depicted, as he was a man, but can be Father?) but then it calmed down. If people think it's literally a face in the sky, they are probably mentally challenged.
I think it is a bit rude of you to call most religious people mentally challenged.
Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
The phrase “supernatural woowoo” is clearly against the guidelines I cited, as is age-old cynicism about the validity of religion or intellectual merits of anyone who believes in it. We're here for intellectual curiosity, not the same old predictable thing.
Thanks for clarifying. I can see the point. Would a phrasing like "The pope believes in and promotes supernatural claims that are not supported by evidence" work better? On reflection I would have preferred that too.
Sure, but it's not just the wording, it's the topic. The validity of belief in religion, and its bearing on the believer's authority about other matters, is just not a good topic to bring up after how we've seen the topic play out countless times on internet message boards over more than three decades. Everyone just says what they always believed about the topic, and nobody learns anything new.
Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
#174[flagged]
I agree. I personally listen to Sam Altman on these types of matters. He's someone with much more extensive qualifications than the pope! Edit: it looks like I was wrong about this and Sam Altman has no formal qualifications. I still think he has probably picked up a lot of life experience over the years.
It has to be ironic, right? Not sure what Sam Altman is qualified in apart from money making (which, of course, he's extraordinary excellent in).
Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
#175No priest will feed sufficient context about their community into the context window - even if they were skilled enough to do so, unless the model was locally hosted, doing so would be a violation of their vows of silence. Good homilies are written with the particular community in mind. If it were more effective to write a homily for a generic public, the Vatican would have started publishing standard homilies long a…
Well maybe they just need to start recording confessionals. Just imagine what Gemini 3.1 could do with 1M tokens of that stuff.
Gemini 3.1 – I don't remember that verse. Is that from the old testament?
Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
#176Tom Tugendhat had to stand up in the House of Commons and tell MPs not the use AI to write their speeches.
“I rise to speak. I rise to speak. I rise to speak. ChatGPT knows you’re there, but that is an Americanism that we don’t use, but still, keep using it, because it makes it clear that this place has become absurd.”
Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
#177The mind virus will not stop spreading, making corporations do your critical thinking is not a good path. People will become dependent on a subscription service for everyday life.
Yesterday I when I was googling something it hit me: I wouldn't know how to find anything without a search engine. We're already reliant on big tech regarding what information is presented to us and LLMs are just the next step in that direction.
Being older, I remember homework involving a trip to the library to look through lots of books for 1 tiny bit of information needed for the homework.
For IT-related info, dial-up was expensive, and finding things either involved altavista or Yahoo indexes. Computer magazines were also a great source of info, as were actual books.
The key difference from today is persistence, and attention span. Both of these are now in short supply.
Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
#178If they're struggling for ideas to put in homilies, they could always ask for some input from people that are one or both of (a) female or (b) married. Might get a fresh perspective ;)
Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do not have to pay anything.
Right, that's why they have massive churches adorned with gold and intricate sculptures. Just because it technically isn't required to pay does not mean that years of brainwashing won't condition you to give your money away. I've only been a few times, but seeing old people queue up to give a sizable part of their pension to the church just made me sad.
And your world view is very jaded and myopic if that is all you see. There are plenty (majority) where your anecdote is not true.
Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you live in a place with mandatory state supported church.
Anywhere other than Germany where than happens?
As I understand it, there are parts of France that spent time as parts of Germany and are still somewhat culturally German that do church tax in a similar way - much of what was Alsace-Lorraine (Elsaß-Lothringen).
To be clear: (almost) no one is forced to pay church tax in Germany - only members of the churches that have an agreement with the government to collect it on top of income tax have to pay it, and you can choose to leave those churches. For Protestants ("evangelisch"), that's usually not as big of a deal as it is for Catholics who still believe; there are plenty of non-church-tax-collecting Protestant churches around the country, including the one I'm a member of.
"Almost": there were many couples with very unequal incomes in which the non/lower-earner would stay in the church so that the family would still get the various services (baptisms, weddings, preferential admission to church-affiliated schools, etc) while the higher earner would "leave" (on paper), leaving the family paying far less in church tax. That loophole was closed - if the higher earner isn't a member of another church collecting church tax, they can be required to pay church tax to their spouse's church. I'm not sure this is still in effect, but it was for a while.