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Does this mean that in the eyes of this Pope or this church, natural born biological humans will always be closer to God or have a higher degree of sanctity than artificial intelligence, any form of technological machine, and presumably artificial "life"?
Artificial intelligence has no degree of sanctity at all, because it is dead matter. You have already been confused.
Ultimately it comes down to the question of whether machines, regardless of how smart they can be made to appear, even if they pass the Turing test with flying colors, are imbued with a soul.
In the episode, the Enterprise JAG officer, questions whether we humans "have souls."
C.S. Lewis felt that our souls transcend time/are immortal, whereas our bodies are temporal (https://checkyourfact.com/2019/09/18/fact-check-cs-lewis-sou...).
What we call "AI", is created in our image, e.g. training the model defines its range/category of responses.
We humans, if you'll believe it, are created in our Creator's image. By Creator, I do not mean our parents here.
FFT - what do you believe?
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You don't have to read it. What was flagged about "the modern Nazi problem", whatever that even means?
'Miserable self-loathing poser': NeuroVigil CEO's open letter on ex-friend Musk
https://bsky.app/profile/brainking.bsky.social/post/3lgsco7c...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42874207
Coalition of Jewish groups say they're leaving X over Musk's behavior
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/28/jewish-groups-leaving-x-mus...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42855399
Trump to sign order opening detention camp at Guantanamo Bay for 30k migrants
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42871252
Trump to cancel student visas of pro-Palestinian protesters
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-cancel...
I have a hard time wrapping my head around exactly what it is that Christians believe about immortality. So the soul lives on forever, but without the reasoning and intellectual capabilities granted by the corporeal form? It's hard for me to imagine what that would be like. Just a beatific, glowing consciousness basking in God's light for all eternity, with no thoughts or conceptions or knowledge or memory or reasoning?
That sounds like a pretty limited vision of immortality. I wonder if the average Catholic gives this much thought.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they’re largely based on fairy tales and fear and shame I can just as simply say that atheism is based on ego worship, narcissism, and hyper-individuality. That is to say, you dressing your conclusion as an axiom. We're better off without atheistic delusions.
Athiesm is actually just as dogmatic and unfalsifiable as Theism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How could they know? I can’t speak for any religious leader but in terms of Catholic leadership: because in many matters God spoke through the Prophets and then He came down and told us directly which is preserved in Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition (2 Thessalonians 2:15-17), and the Holy Spirit guides the Church (John 14:26) and does so through the prime ministerial office of the Pope the successor of Peter (Ma…
Books are written by people. It’s humans all the way down.
You and the Catholic Church are operating under completely different axioms, so there's no point in responding to someone's explanation of Catholic axioms by just repeating your own axioms more forcefully.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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And here we stand intellectually as humans, scattered across the wide plain of our accumulated knowledge. On that plain we can see peaks with higher plateaus representing areas as yet unexplored or with areas where our current understanding cannot properly define the conditions that exist on those plateaus.
As humans we are curious, seeking truth about the world around us. We attempt to understand the things we see and experience because ultimately, those are the things that we know best. Within any discipline of human study there are plateaus which represent situations that we have not yet experienced or studied well enough to become certain of the answers to the questions that lead to that information plateau where our actual knowledge is sparsely distributed today and therefore we have no idea how to truthfully answer the original question.
With many plateaus around us on this plain we seek enough information through our curiosity that we can connect the plateaus to each other since we know that everything is connected physically, and mathematically. As we study, test, and document our processes we add information to each plateau until we solve a problem. The solution to a problem is a new peak and the tested hypotheses that led us to that peak allow us to make the connections between peaks that create new knowledge plateaus where humanity has fewer real existential questions that still have no provable answers. As we reach each new peak we raise the plateau of knowledge upon which we all stand and that new plateau has fewer challenging areas to explore but at the same time we have a huge base of human knowledge and experience upon which to explore the final plateau rising from the plain.
Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Where did we come from? Is there a God? What happens to our spirits, our imaginations, and our energy when the clock runs out on our individual existence?
Answers to these and other currently unprovable questions will be found on that last, highest plateau after all other questions have been answered and have filled in the knowledge gaps between peaks where individual truths have been documented.
One thing that we don't know now is whether, once we reach the point where our research places us humans on the slopes up to that last plateau is just how wide that plateau will be and how persistent. The dimensions of the last plateau on that last broad plain are effectively defined by the uncertainty in the assumptions we can make from all our accumulated experiences. We can't know today whether as humans we will ever be able to decrease the dimensions of that plateau so that all questions we could ever have will have clearly defined answers supported by the accumulated knowledge of thousands of generations of curious human researchers.
We can hope that our curiosity will one day allow us to collapse that plateau to a peak where we suddenly know everything about everything all at once and knowing it all just seems natural. Perhaps this is our ultimate reward. Or perhaps in finally reaching this peak we initiate contact with the ultimate level of wisdom and in the process we prick our finger on the infinitely sharp point of wisdom and the blood flows out over humanity, waiting patiently on the plain for the real truths, drowning our brothers and sisters in the knowledge that we were never intended to have.
Curiosity is a human condition, also shared with other animals. Just as humans can bait traps to capture curious animals, our own curiosity could lead us to be captured by false peaks as we seek to understand and control everything around us.
EDIT: There’s another situation that we should consider. Consider the section 21 [0] in this Papal Note under Relationship with the Truth. The concluding section builds the case that humans are driven to understand the truth about things and “it is as if reason were overwhelmed to see that it can always go beyond what it has already achieved.”
Considering this section it appears that as humans, we are driven to know the truth. If our journey to understanding everything were to eventually give us ultimate wisdom, the power that would come from that would be immense, rivaling God’s own power. Therefore it seems likely to me that God, in his eternal wisdom, allows us to understand ever more about ourselves and our world but that there will be peaks that we reach – truths that we discover – that will result in the knowledge plain upon which we build our existence suddenly having more plateaus than before as the new truth reveals or suggests uncertainty in some of the assumptions that we had codified and considered well-understood truths.
God effectively moves the goalposts as we learn so that the fires that drive us to know ever more about everything around us are never quenched by the ultimate wisdom that would come from having answered all of our existential questions.
[0] >Relationship with the Truth 21. Human intelligence is ultimately “God’s gift fashioned for the assimilation of truth.”[34]In the dual sense of intellectus-ratio, it enables the person to explore realities that surpass mere sensory experience or utility, since “the desire for truth is part of human nature itself. It is an innate property of human reason to ask why things are as they are.”[35] Moving beyond the limits of empirical data, human intelligence can “with genuine certitude attain to reality itself as knowable.”[36] While reality remains only partially known, the desire for truth “spurs reason always to go further; indeed, it is as if reason were overwhelmed to see that it can always go beyond what it has already achieved.”[37] Although Truth in itself transcends the boundaries of human intelligence, it irresistibly attracts it.[38] Drawn by this attraction, the human person is led to seek “truths of a higher order.”[39]
Does this mean that in the eyes of this Pope or this church, natural born biological humans will always be closer to God or have a higher degree of sanctity than artificial intelligence, any form of technological machine, and presumably artificial "life"?
Of course, humans were created in the image of God, according to Christianity. Secular society is overwhelmingly confused on how it will treat robots. Christianity has none of that confusion.
> the entire human person is simultaneously both material and spiritual... the human person transcends the material world through the soul... the human spirit does not exercise its normal mode of knowledge without the body I have a hard time wrapping my head around exactly what it is that Christians believe about immortality. So the soul lives on forever, but without the reasoning and intellectual capabilities grante…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However, it is not AI that is ultimately deified and worshipped, but humanity itself---which, in this way, becomes enslaved to its own work. Doesn't that describe all religion? I mean, you're telling me that the infinite creator of the universe cares about the prayers, the suffering, the aspirations, and the sexual habits of a bunch of finite beings? The hubris! It seems obvious to me that the gods of all religions…
> It seems obvious to me that the gods of all religions are designed by human minds to be receptive to human interests, otherwise nobody would bother worshipping them Nah that's just what atheists convince themselves. There's nothing obviously nor truthful about this conclusion or the line of reasoning behind it. All arguments for and against the existence of God are inherently unfalsifiable, but that doesn't mean at…
I'm guessing you're one of those people who thinks atheism means a belief in the absence of a god, rather than its actual meaning, which is an absence of a belief in a god.