Why Is the Vatican at a Tech Conference? (bbc.com) 181
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.
Because the tech industry is soulless (Score:2, Funny)
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.
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And yet, http://www.vatican.va/ [vatican.va] has to stay online somehow.....
Re: Because the tech industry is soulless (Score:2)
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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 do
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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 Sc
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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 relig
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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 wor
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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
Really? Galileo? (Score:2)
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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 justifie
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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 determine
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I find it amusing that you are so stupid that you didn't understand his statement in the slightest.
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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 [deseretnews.com] and Muslims [pewresearch.org] are going to inherit the world? I und
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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) hopi
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Which came first, governments or religions?
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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
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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 "know
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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.
An
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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 you
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If you are blind and completely ignorant of the history of religion, it may not be. Otherwise it is pretty much a proven fact.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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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 u
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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The industrial revolution turned women into factory drones? Huh.
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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?"
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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.
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I hardly consider Islam a religion, but even in Shariah Law, men are restricted, even if it is their victim is punished.
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There has been areligion around the same amount of time, so why didn't you?
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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. Th
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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 instiga
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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.
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Yes, war is an evolutionary force.
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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.
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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.
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A lot of them are too. They are smart enough not to talk religion to people who are so hostile towards religions.
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Wars are about resources or power. Everything else is just a cloak for one of those.
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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.
What a dumb submission. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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While I do not like them very much on general principles, that is certainly a valid fact.
Is it a tech conference? (Score:5, Informative)
Or am I the only one that wouldn't call that a tech conference?
Information about talk itself (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Yeah, they forked Christianity when design decisions for contributions and governance became too hotly contested. See http://christianfaith.com/reso... [christianfaith.com]. Beware, Linux users!
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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.
Proselytizing (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
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The groundwork is already laid:http://www.vatican.va/ [vatican.va]. He's just looking to make it better.
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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.
Converting adults (Score:2, Insightful)
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 anyt
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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.
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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
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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).
Kids grow up (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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Fake News. You lose.
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Re:a more pragmatic reason this is happening (Score:4, Informative)
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Try going to Louisiana.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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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
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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.
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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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Ritual and routine aren't big in tech circles.
Huh?
Could use a little more religious influence (Score:5, Interesting)
So maybe having a member of the congregation in the corner will subtly influence people in good ways
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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 visibili
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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.
This is not unusual (Score:5, Informative)
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... (Score:3, Insightful)
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."
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>> 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 con
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If I had mod points, and didn't want to comment in this thread- the above should be +10 insightful
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His predecessor helped pedophile priests avoid prosecution. You support this?
Because it thinks it has moral authority. (Score:2)
Reminder of Origin (Score:5, Informative)
Bzzzzt. Wrong answer (Score:2)
I don't think you know what a Catholicism is then.
fairy tales (Score:2)
Because both them and many of the companies involved are basing their existence on fairy tales?
Seems obvious. (Score:3)
Because they Vatican. ;)
Vatican runs GNU/Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
The Vatican uses GNU/Linux both for their library servers [vatlib.it],
as well as some info terminals [imgur.com].
“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.”
Why Is The Vatican At A Tech Conference (Score:2)
Was Robert Langdon there?
I think I saw that movie...
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It's right in the summary! (Score:2)
...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.
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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.
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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.
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Christian bashing is fine, Islam bashing is hate.
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"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."
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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.
Re:Vatican denies evolution while undergoing it (Score:5, Informative)
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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
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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 leavi