Just to say that I don’t agree that it’s always about misconceptions but more often about mistrust or not feeling accepted.
That said there have been signs of a more open environment and their ceremonial texts can often be an interesting read.
which means that computer technology since the 70s is really just "faster paper", faster by more then a single order of magnitue... but ultimately paper-equivalent to this day
maybe LLMs, once their computational characteristics are better understood, will finally move computing beyond paper so fast it can write on itself over 2,000,000,000 times per second
Huh... "paper" is just storage, the whole point of "computer technology" is to have a tool to do computation not just storage. So no, computers are not just faster paper.
George Lemaître was a Catholic Priest.
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-truth-about-giordano-bru...
I would argue people see Catholics for what they truly are, but if we accept your position then I would say you only have Catholics to blame.
> Catholicism is an institution implementing and developing a religious philosophy that has a profound love of humanity, creativity, and understanding.
This is remarkably naive.
Where is that love for women, or lgbtq? Or are they considered “other than” when regarding “humanity”.
Where is that love or creativity in an institution run by thoughts written over 2000 years ago?
> The inherent dignity of each human being and the fraternity that binds us together as members of the one human family must undergird the development of new technologies
Cool pope, where was that undergirding when protecting child rapists in your highest ranks?
But the Bible is clearer on this than all Christian orgs.
Life starts at first breath according to Genesis 2:7.
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.”
And numbers 5 that has a recipe for a potion that will allegedly identify an adulterous woman and cause her to abort.
“27And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people. 28And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed.“
As for drinking dirty water from the floor of the temple (literally, sweep up some dust and put it in a cup with water - not an abortifacient) - the trial is asking God to reveal the truth or falsity of the woman's claim that she is virtuous (much in the same way as asking someone to take an oath in court - the bad outcome in both cases is falling under the judgement of God and receiving in some measure justice for the offense of blaspheming by asking God to witness to your lie before men).
Pure comedy.
I’d like to know if anything else about Catholics and the Catholic church makes you sad? And what do you believe are “misconceptions”?
People talk about abortion, as they have (completely off topic) brought up in this thread. What they don’t mention is all the work Catholics do to help women who want to keep their babies, and are considering abortion out of desperation, do. There are groups of nuns who have literally devoted their entire lives to this cause. They’ve taken vows of poverty, and and live together in convents helping desperate, and often desperately poor, women who want to be mothers do so. Can you imagine this scenario? A woman who is considering killing her child because she can’t afford it? It is just beyond any other horror I can think of. And here’s these women saying “no you don’t have to. We’ll help. We’ll give you money, and support. Your kid, and you, are going to be okay.” How do people look at this and see evil? It’s ridiculous.
The Catholic church provides something like a quarter of the WORLDS medical care. They have thousands of clinics which are funded by the donations of people who love humanity.
People talk about sex abuse. It is just a complete demonstration of profound ignorance that the people saying this understand neither the statistical reality of what they’re talking about, or the *rage* that Catholics have towards people who would harm children.
Here’s this group of over a billion people, who for almost all of modern history have been devoting their lives go the advancement of humanity, and instead of recognizing this as something which highlights the beauty and grace of the human soul, people talk about absurd conspiracy theories.
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
Catholicism is also directly responsible for some of the worst travesties and genocidal acts in history, including the destruction of cultural relics, thousands of years of texts, the rape and murder of thousands of people, and the wanton killing of thousands of children, all in the name of a racial and religious superiority which claimed to “civilize” that which it ultimately destroyed.
It’s naive to just try to wash all that away, even though it’s painful to think about. A lot of those travesties were hundreds of years ago but a lot of the same blood wealth is still hoarded in the Vatican and material effects still linger on the often-still-existing annihilated peoples to this day.
It’s naive to clutch one’s pearls about misconceptions without learning about the history and context and consequences. This doesn’t mean the church is all bad all the time, but it certainly adds nuance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schoo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Landa?wprov=sfti1#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_missions_in_California...
A truly peaceful message that leads to these truly horrifying consequences is not able to recover legitimacy automatically.
Murder is the deliberate killing of an innocent person regardless of circumstances or perceived consequences. The Church has always condemned murder. Same for rape, theft, etc etc. So those arguing that Catholics qua Catholics, rather than human beings who happen to be Catholic, are responsible for these evil acts have a tough case to argue.
Edit: what's more, the atheist regimes of the 20th century shed orders of magnitude more blood than Catholics of the previous 19, and explicitly appealed to their ideology to justify their evil.
That was just people who happened to be atheists, communists, and socialists. It isn't inherit to the ideology like it is with Catholicism /s.
You will also have serious trouble showing me that the crimes of Catholics are not incidental to their ideology. On the contrary: Catholicism explicitly condemns murder, pillage, rape and all the rest of it, under any and all circumstances and for any and all motives.
I've heard thousands of people attack the Church for rape, murder, theft, etc; but the moment you ask them to demonstrate that Catholicism as such is the cause of such crimes, rather than people who happen to be Catholics, they have nothing to say. Which isn't surprising, because their position is hopeless.
> It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. Catholicism is an institution implementing and developing a religious philosophy that has a profound love of humanity, creativity, and understanding.
Just because the Pope released this statement doesn't change how the Catholic church got its reputation, both good and bad. The magnitude of history of the Catholic Church up to the present defines its reputation far more than a single statement about AI.
That said, it's good that they are adding their humanistic perspective to the debate. They are not the only ones saying these things - but their members, from developing country farmers to Supreme Court justices - need to be informed and aware since AI will probably affect everyone. I think it would be negligent if they didn't.
its not a misconception to focus on the totally cancellable, ostracizable, things that institution is known for
What are these misconceptions? Catholicism uses shame to induce conformity, has had numerous priests abuse children (and protecting the offenders), has a long history of violence against non-adherents, historically deeply homophobic, and so on. All of that is factual.
Edit: Oh! And now I remember, they killed and buried hundreds of children in Canada at their "schools" for indigenous people. Graves unmarked, families never knew what happened to the kids. But it's OK! Pope here said sorry, sort of, after being pressured, for decades. Also they found graves. Canadian govt. couldn't give a rats ass because the church is as powerful as governments.
But remember! We love all of God's children.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."
"Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."
It certainly isn't physically impossible, but I acknowledge that it may be metaphysically impossible.
Unfortunately, there are parts of the country where this type of racism is acceptable and even common. There as similar attitudes towards Catholics, due to America's history as a predominately protestant country. The formula is the same both way - pick a heinous crime from a few members, blame it on the group as a whole, and feel smug about yourself.
As someone who left Catholicism for Wicca and then eventually gave up on religion in general, I think it's valid to point out that these flaws are not unique to Catholicism.
I would say that in pointing at all those things it has done wrong, you are implicitly saying that that these traits are unusual — but we're all a bunch of monkeys, it's really hard to get us to be nice to each other, and it's really easy for Machiavellian sadists to rise to power in every institution.
In what way? Does pointing it out change the facts? Why can't we have a discussion about how Catholicism is objectively hypocritical and not have to discuss all of the other things that are wrong in the world?
You're welcome to point out the flaws and hypocrisies all you like, though I know from my experience as an angry bisexual Wiccan teenager that had to go to a Catholic school and study the bible as part of my education, that it does little good unless you have the goal of looking pompous — especially when the very line you were quoting was
> It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics.
rather than
> It makes me immensely sad that people don't realise Catholics are uniquely perfect.
The former does not imply perfection, nor even an absence of hypocrisy.
Correct. Organizations besides the Catholic church also get criticized for that kind of behaviour. (To various degrees, due to public awareness, religious or media or political or national or personal bias, or the fact that nobody outside the West Nowhere Parish in Nowhere cares about a regional, 800-member church scandal.)
The Catholic church is a big organization. As in any big organization, there are aspects of it that are good, aspects of it that are OK, and aspects of it that are utterly, irredeemably rotten. And it's up to the church to figure out how to navigate that complexity.
Given how hard it's been fighting accountability in this space, even very recently, I can't say they are doing a great job of navigating it, but that's just my opinion.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/may-web-only/south...
Do people really have this much cognitive dissonance that they lose the ability to think? Like how much delusion do you have to be under to even say the above and think it makes it better for Catholics.
Even one priest raping a child under the protection of the church is entirely unacceptable.
Nobody does this with public schools. If people always brought up the abuse and cover ups by teachers and unions regardless of the topic they would be down voted and told it is not relevant to the topic.
If people actually cared about making abuse and coverups known they would bring it up every thread schools are brought up. Instead they only do it with the Church. It is almost as if they just want to attack the Church and ignore it in their own preferred abusive institutions.
I still don't get what the problem is. What does the asymmetric treatment between schools and church abuse have to do with the facts?
> If people actually cared about making abuse and coverups known they would bring it up every thread schools are brought up.
So you are saying I don't actually care about the abuse coverups? You think I have another agenda? You have a sick mind.
> It is almost as if they just want to attack the Church and ignore it in their own preferred abusive institutions.
It's not that, at all. Shame on you for trying to reframe it as such.
Nothing.
>So you are saying I don't actually care about the abuse coverups? You think I have another agenda? You have a sick mind
I don't know what you believe. I think if somebody is willing to randomly (completely unrelated to to the topic) bring up abuse by the Church in every thread, but is not willing to do the same thing for schools it shows they have a bias.
I have no issue accepting that abuse has happened in the Church and it is despicable. My issue is nobody seems to care about the much larger abuse problem in schools.
>It's not that, at all. Shame on you for trying to reframe it as such.
Please explain the asymmetric treatment if it is not because people on HN in general don't like the Church, while they do like public schools.
> Please explain the asymmetric treatment if it is not because people on HN in general don't like the Church, while they do like public schools.
When you find a post on HN that talks about public schools maybe this topic will open up there too, and you can have your day there.
> people on HN in general don't like the Church
I don't like psychopaths either, and for good reason. I don't like the Church because of what it has enabled, the lies, the hypocrisy, and so on. You are trying to frame it as HN folks have a hard on for going after the church for no good reason. Well, lots of reasons have been listed once the OP basically said "there is no good reason to object to the church, it's all misconceptions. Lol.
> My issue is nobody seems to care about the much larger abuse problem in schools.
This isn't true. You just happened to come to a comment section that is talking specifically about the church and you are mad because it's not talking about what you want to talk about. Why not go post a tech story about schools, and then find someone challenging misconceptions about schools.
These comments aren't trying to nefariously undermine the problem in schools, that's just you being frustrated, or whatever is motivating you to get mad.
In the case of Australia which had a five year long Royal Commission into Institutional Sexual Abuse of children that took in tens of thousands of interviews across schools and all religuous institutions the final report included:
Many children have been sexually abused in religious institutions in Australia.
Based on the information before us, the greatest number of alleged perpetrators and abused children were in Catholic institutions.
In many religious institutions, the power afforded to people in religious ministry and the misplaced trust of parents combined with aspects of the institutional culture, practices and attitudes to create risks for children.
Alleged perpetrators often continued to have access to children even when religious leaders knew they posed a danger.
We heard that alleged perpetrators were often transferred to other locations but they were rarely reported to police.
The Catholic Institutions in Australia with the worst behaviour were the Christian Brothers who operate globally and there was no evidence seen that as an international group dealing with the education of minors, most often orphaned minors, their behaviour in Australia was somehow better or worse than their behaviour elsewhere - they rotated bad priests in and out, dodged responsibility, and hands down "won" the prize for most children abused.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_...
There are clearly more gravesites than we currently know about. The scale of this atrocity is beyond what was predicted.
I am not denying that there are large gravesites or that terrible things happened at those schools.
Take a look a little further down the page and you can see a list with the numbers of suspected and confirmed graves per school clearly laid out. The first three examples already put the number at over a hundred.
I dont know where you imagine all those 4,126 children went when they died if not into unmarked graves?
[0]https://apnews.com/article/canada-67da8a8af88efc91e6ffc64630....
I don't think what I have said is strong at all. The reports are eyeopening, the level of care afforded to these kids is abysmal. The Church stood in the way of providing documentation for families to find their kids. Basically buried them and forgot where.
The fact we can't find these children is the "strong" complaint I have. You are suggesting that because we can't find over 3000 children.
The discoveries of unmarked graves began to make international headlines in May 2021, starting with the detection of 215 potential graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. This was followed by several other significant findings, including over 600 potential graves at the Marieval Indian Residential School site in Saskatchewan and 182 at the former St. Eugene's Mission School in British Columbia, among others.
All of that sounds like a very strong motivation to feel the way I do. I should not have to explain how this mistreatment is all racially motivated, too.
Lots of evidence of abhorrent mistreatment, over 3k lost children in hundreds of potential burial sites and you have the bravado to say "no one has been found" as if that means nothing is to be found.
People downplaying this stuff makes me want to vomit.
[0] https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/A...
You're sort of singling out Catholicism though. Islam does all those things much much worse than Catholicism ever has - in the present day too! I'm not Catholic and I don't care to defend them. Still, I don't want them singled out when Islam is demonstrably worse in every way.
Yes, because church is the context of this post, and the OP opened the door. What does your comment have to do with the facts?
This is not a small problem. It’s a chronic structural problem. Frankly it’s so entrenched and fundamental it rots the institution to the core.
I’m frankly surprised any right thinking human being can call themselves a Catholic with a straight face.
Nobody seems to randomly bring up sexual abuse (and the various cover ups) of public school teachers when schools are brought up. When is the last time you saw a thread about Catholicism where it isn't brought up? The post has literally nothing to do with abuse and yet it is brought up for no reason other than to attack the Church.
If somebody did this with schools they would be down voted and told it is unrelated to the topic.
We've had to warn you about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37561153. Eventually we have to ban accounts that post like this and I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please stick to the rules from now on, we'd be grateful: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
When someone is breaking the site guidelines 16 times in a single thread, I can't post 16 responses, nor would readers want me to.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37805102 (Oct 2023)
as well as not to post flamewar comments generally:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32040045 (July 2022)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30419620 (Feb 2022)
We have to ban accounts that keep doing these things despite our requests to stop. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Otherwise they wouldn't discriminate against woman.
Christians and others are by far the most hypocritical humans on earth.
Yeah they built a couple hospitals here and there but does that really make up for all the evil?
This statement really does read like an OpenAI blog post. Its clearly engineered to be in line with the popular corporate discourse and really adds absolutely nothing to the conversation. It is interesting only in that its from the vatican and has to do with current events
It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. Catholicism is an institution implementing and developing a religious philosophy that has a profound love of humanity, creativity, and understanding.
> The inherent dignity of each human being and the fraternity that binds us together as members of the one human family must undergird the development of new technologies and serve as indisputable criteria for evaluating them before they are employed, so that digital progress can occur with due respect for justice and contribute to the cause of peace. Technological developments that do not lead to an improvement in the quality of life of all humanity, but on the contrary aggravate inequalities and conflicts, can never count as true progress. [8]
The entire thing is worth reading, but this particularly summarizes my feelings.
AI is good, but only insofar as it advances and centers the beauty of humanity.