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Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

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Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, faith is the crux of Catholicism.

I assume this was intended as a joke, even if it is one that doesn’t land? Because it’s not clear what this could mean otherwise.

No, "faith" is actually an integral component of "the Christian faith".

Go read the first part of Acts 4, where a section closes with: "Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus." So...yes! We do believe in a God that can empower average people to speak in above-average ways.

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If we wanted to know what Claude thought, we’d ask him. You would be surprised how many people don't do this. It's very common for people to ask others questions that could be easily googled or clauded.

> It's very common for people to ask others questions that could be easily googled or clauded. I'll admit I do this, asking people questions that could be answered by Google, and sometimes even if I know the answer myself, sometimes to make conversation, sometimes because I want to hear the person's perspective on it. If I'd never ask questions I could find the answers to myself in some other way, I think I'd never a…

It's very boring. I've been carrying around a flip phone recently so I can ask people dumb questions again. No excuse to ask anyone for the time, though. I miss that.

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#253
There’s a Paul Theroux short story about a defrocked priest who makes a living writing sermons for other priests. They would mail their chosen topic or occasion and include the payment, and he’d send them a beautifully written sermon that’d make them popular in their parishes. Now AI is coming for the correspondent-priest’s job!

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amazes me that people think this version of events makes the Church sound better, when it makes it sound worse.

It is not about better or worse, it is about correcting myths created later on that were intended to paint the Church as epitome of backwardness. Galileo's affair wasn't about noble scientist going against stupid masses and oppressive institution designed to keep people in dark, while providing strong evidence for revolutionary theory, and being punished for his great genius. But it is often presented like this.

Agreed. I'd also say that I think our habit of canonizing whoever happens to be perceived as the 'good guy' in history, and demonizing the 'bad guy' tends to make history much more difficult to learn from, because the people involved go from being real humans to actors in a very artificial Hollywood style story of good vs evil.

The real story here is one that has played out endlessly in history in various contexts. And is a great example of why The Golden Rule is something valuable to abide, even if you're completely self centered. It also emphasizes that all people, even the Pope, are human - and subject to the same insecurities, pettiness, and other weaknesses as every other human. And more. It's a tale of humanity that has and will continue to repeat indefinitely.

But when you turn it into a story of good vs evil, you lose all of this and instead get a pointless attack on one institution, which is largely incidental to what happened. For instance you can see the Galileo story clearly in the tale of Billy Mitchell [1] who went from suggesting that air forces would dominate the future of warfare (back in 1919!) to getting court martialed and 'retired' for his way of trying to argue for such. His views would go on to be shown to be 100% correct in 1937, the first time a plane downed a capital naval ship. However, he died in 1936.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell#

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of a donation is that you don't have to give it. If you have to pay then it's either a purchase or a tax. But you know this of course.

I do know that, but I also know how donations can become an expectation. Also, it's worth noting in the context of this thread, that people can use AI inference for free on many services, with payment only need for higher usage, and even then, if you don't care about expectations or inconvenience, it's trivial to abuse the free tier.

There's over a thousand years of empirical evidence that a symbolic donation of a coin is accepted.

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's from the Orange Catholic Bible, I think.

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was raised Catholic and even though the last time I've been to a church could have been in 2019, I don't remember any priest who wouldn't just gloss over the religious content for the day (copied from an online source), itching to share his politics and the most recent ragebait he's got from Facebook at the end.

That's a bit harsh! I go to mass every Sunday (in France) and rarely have political stuff. When there, it's most often about abortion or euthanasia (of course in a pro-life (or anti-choice) direction, "you shall not kill") But dull, empty homilies are (alas) very frequent.

[dead]

Re: Pope tells priests to use their brains, not AI, to write homilies

#259
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that our very consciousness is supernatural?

Considered at length, and ultimately rejected due to lack of evidence.

absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
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