Catholic Scientists conference to discuss "Extraterrestrials, AI, and Minds Beyond the Human"

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That’s a good starting point, but for a working definition (and particularly in the interests of ensuring that everyone has a common understanding), I think that we should establish the following two points:

  1. Assuming that “impulse, thought, emotion and intellect” can be separated from the body (even in a hypothetical, imagined dimension), and these internal aspects of human experience can collectively be referred to as a soul, as these things are all constantly in flux, must we then assume that there is no consistency of the soul from moment to moment? (Just to add: memories are also constantly in flux.) If consistency is necessary to the definition of the soul, what are the implications of that? I believe that a definitional requirement for consistency (much less permanence) would require a modified definition.

  2. Assuming the possibility of downloading a functioning mental state, and assuming the person whose mental state were so downloaded survived the process, would the downloaded mental state be its own unique soul or a duplicate of the original soul? Is uniqueness necessary to the definition of a soul? (This is a moot point in reality, as no two people can possibly have the exact same mental state.)

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get back to the basic message of a kind man who advised we treat all human beings men and women, sinners and saints equally.

…and completely ignore God’s demands for ethnic cleansing and his thug gangsterism of the old testament.

They replaced the traditions of the church with traditions of male dominated patriarchy. They replaced the hierarchy of priests and bishops with hierarchy of race and ethnic classes.

Male dominated patriarchy (patriarchy = male dominated), classism, and xenophobia is all over the bible like a cheap suit. No mothers nor daughters are mentioned in that long ass list of begats. Guess it was some form of male parthenogenesis which produced only male offspring. Where are the stories of all the great female healers and teachers of spirituality who must have lived during that long period of time? Maybe there actually weren’t any, because they were too busy breeding and working themselves to death? Only the men had enough leisure time for lofty thoughts?

The official position of the Catholic Church is that science is not a sin. Some applications of science can be immoral, for example chemical and biological warfare.

…and birth control, and anything medical even vaguely related to human zygote cells. The Pope said the latter doesn’t apply re: plague vaccines, but that failed to prevent at least one Yank Catholic high mucky muck’s screaming and railing against one of them.

Maybe the mutants here could prove their intellect by actually discussing philosophy, history, culture, and progress instead of trying to appear smart by just saying “religion bad” all the time.

A large part of free thinking involves a very serious, detached and unemotional questioning - a dissection, even - of all things which permeate, form, and inform our culture and lives. Only in that way does one reach more valid, intellectually achieved conclusions. Should one then choose to indulge the emotions by laughing one’s ass off and poking fun at things, it will often generate (perfectly reasonable) satire.

I am extremely impatient with, exhausted by, and offer no indulgence re: archaic and intolerant attitudes, laws, demands, etc and most especially the tales of a paradise which welcomes only one group’s members expounded by so-called spiritual groups originating from a small, small location on a small planet. People can say that religion has changed and “evolved,” but still we have a lot of supposedly celibate people men issuing orders and advice re: marriage, sex, and prohibiting divorce. A lot of them do not take their vows of celibacy very seriously anyway. (Whether they then feel guilty for giving in to biological drives and ask the deity for forgiveness is immaterial.) It’s more than understandable once one understands biology, and the way most humans’ hormones work. It is an artificial, archaic demand to make during rational, non-witch-torturing centuries. That a celibate would know all about it anyway because celibacy and training magically provides them with direct communication with the deity seems arrogant. Wouldn’t a married priest have a bit more insight?

How many middle eastern religions, hell, how many religions full stop have female priests who are absolutely equal in all ways to their traditional male counterparts? I’m aware of female preachers in a few Christian groups, but I don’t see any at all in many religions. Lots of statues, pictures, and talk of Mary (as but one example) doesn’t begin to make up for that. I’m not just picking on Christianity, either. The story of Tara, the Hindu and Buddhist emanation or goddess of compassion is a great example. She was a human devotee of a supposedly great and enlightened guru. His enlightment was actually quite limited, as he told her, “Your understanding, capability of learning, and practice are all exceptional among all students. Too bad you are only a woman.” Her response was expressing disappointment in his narrow mindedness, and a vow to incarnate only in female form until all beings in all universes reached complete enlightenment. That was a heavy duty reply to the heavy duty, still pervasive misogyny, casual and physical brutality directed at the females on our planet.

I’ve preached long enough, so won’t start on the racism and other crap which too many religions and their adherents espouse.

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“He emphasized the importance of promoting a successful collaboration between science and faith.”

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Hail the Omnissiah!

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Wow! Those last few posts were impressively lofty (seriously, well done @noah , @jerwin , @Jesse13927 ).

But really that’s counting angels on the head of a pin, so getting back to brass tacks (almost all) the Evangelicals, despite their wholesome beginnings are now in their zeal to initiate the end-times promulgating ignorance, intolerance and fascism.

Meanwhile the Catholic Church has spent the last century (in Ireland, the 'States and probably elsewhere) murdering, raping and abusing women and children and now in their time of reckoning are denying, plea-bargaining and putting their assets out of reach of the courts.

By their actions shall you know them.

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/donald-trump-the-herald-of-evangelicals-end-times/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-01-08/the-catholic-church-s-strategy-to-limit-payouts-to-abuse-victims

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Hey aliens, be careful
if the RCC treats you anything like they’ve treated us women,
you’ll be second class citizens for the next 2000 years.

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30 years? Look up the history of the Moral Majority.

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As far as I can tell, the Society of Catholic Scientists is a ley organization, AKA not clergy.

I’m all for holding the Church accountable for its systemic abuses. And I’m an outspoken agnostic about higher powers and atheist about religion.

But suggesting all 1.3 billion Catholics are responsible for those abuses because of their beliefs, or that they can’t also be good scientists because they’re religious, is just religious bigotry.

I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume at least some assumed this to be a Church organization.

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If you wiped all Christian scientists (not the religion, but scientists who happen to be religious), then you’d have pretty much no science in the “Western” world… :woman_shrugging:

Not really, no…

That assumes that the interpretation of Christianity has been consistent and singular throughout time, which it has not been. While there is a loud and noisy contingent of anti-science Christians, there are more than plenty of examples of the opposite of that.

I’m just not a big fan of ignoring actual history in favor of making broad sweeping assumptions about literally billions of humans in history and today.

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Nor I; it’s unscientific.

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But it’s okay, because they are “delusional” as Dr. Dawkins said, and he’s never a jerk, right? I mean, atheists are ALWAYS good people, right? /s

Paley Center No GIF by The Paley Center for Media

I’m all for holding institutions like the Catholic church accountable for their very real abuses and moral failings… What they did in Ireland as @Mercenary_Garage mentioned (not to mention many other places) is horrific, and needs to be addressed and some serious restitution made to the victims. But people making broad, sweeping judgements isn’t helpful, neither is ignoring the more complicated history of the Church (or other religions). Just saying “all religion is bad” and not paying attention to the historical nuance and context is just as anti-reason or anti-rationality as rejecting science because one is religious. :woman_shrugging:

But sadly, this is one of those things that the normally reasonable and thoughtful happy mutants that I still love and respect seem unable to take into consideration… It really does sadden me, because all it really does is drive a wedge between people who really are interested in improving the world that we all live on.

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I find myself wondering how Happy Mutants would react to a thread about a conference of the Islamic World Academy of Sciences by bringing up wahhabism and FGM. Hopefully with flags and moderation.

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It’s possible to hold two thoughts in our head at one time - that religion can be a method of controlling people in a brutal way, and it can contribute to furthering human freedom. I think that’s the best way to think about it, as a tool for explaining aspects of the world and humanity. Any tool can be destructive or constructive.

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Absolutely.

And I really do hope people were simply assuming the Society of Catholic Scientists was an organ of the Church. Because the points @Mercenary_Garage and others raised are extremely valid ones, but posting them in a thread that’s about Catholics rather than the Catholic Church is arguably anti-Catholic (against Catholics, not against the Catholic Church). And saying Catholics can’t and haven’t been good scientists is just flat out ahistorical prejudice.

Context matters.

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As an ex-Catholic and a lifelong science lover, I agree about the Jesuits. They are wonderful folks, and at one time I had aspirations of being one myself. One of the reasons I’m not Catholic (or anything else) anymore is the disparity between the kind of theology you can explore with a friendly Jesuit or discuss and debate at a good seminary, and the theology dumbed down and turned into a fairytale, “for the masses,” pun intended.

The theology of a Catholic astrophysicist or evolutionary biologist is profoundly different than your average parishioner at Sunday morning services. Rarely will you find one who believes in physics defying miracles, in an anthropomorphic Creator that is a person in any sense of the word generally used, in a literal Heaven or Hell, original sin, etc. There is far more abstraction and acceptance of ignorance among the sophisticated elite than most people realize. What ticks me off is the facade of certainty and exclusive access to Truth that they show to the sad folks in the pews. It feels fundamentally dishonest to shield them from the truth, (or at least the acceptance of profound ignorance), “for their own good.”

The elite are comfortable with theological ambiguity and complexity, but they feed certainty and simplicity to the flocks who give them power.

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eg, me. Not Catholic, but yes, Christian. Of the “caring for the sick and the poor, driving out the money changers” sect, but still tend to get caught up with the “religion bad” kind of talk. In any group, there are assholes, some more than others, and some (Southern Baptists come to mind) seem to make a sport of driving out any non-assholes. But as many evils as have been committed in the name of religion, I tend to blame the folks who choose to use the face of religions to push xenophobic, misanthropic, omniphobic viewpoints far more than the existence of religion itself.

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This is true of almost anything. We “dumb down” and whitewash history (Columbus, Revolutionary war, Civil Rights) and even science (what is genetics or the motion of the planets) for children, and far too many adults hold onto those interpretations well into adulthood.

Which I’d argue is a problem with authoritarian mindsets, rather than just religion. It might explain why certain groups (especially white Evangelicals) are prone to authoritarian mindsets, though.

Right?

also, movements like this…

And then recent Encyclicals by Pope Francis, leaning into these ideas.

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In Dan Simmons’ 1989–97 Hyperion Cantos, Teilhard de Chardin has been canonized a saint in the far future. His work inspires the anthropologist priest character, Paul Duré. When Duré becomes Pope, he takes Teilhard I as his regnal name.

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I believe Pope Bob, aka Robert Anton Wilson, gets some love on the BB. He was hardly a friend of religion.
Here are a few things he said.

Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking

Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary “common sense.” B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, “This model”- or theory, or interpretation of the data- “fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model.” We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week.

The materialist fundamentalists are funnier than the Christian fundamentalists, because they think they’re rational!

We all build our worlds upon belief, whether it’s taking the preacher’s word or the scientist’s who is explaining something down to our level that we take on faith.

Also, my belief is that science and religion are hardly exclusive. My first read of Capra’s “Tao of Physics” decades ago tipped this off. The further physics goes, the more one sees overlap with religion (mostly eastern religions, to be fair). There are scads of books written by physicists supporting this idea.

Personally, I love the irony of the Church discussing ETs. Giordano Bruno was simply born in the wrong century.

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I absolutely take your point about this being a post about Catholic scientists and not the catholic church.

But we’re here now and I’d like to address one of your other points.

I wasn’t casting any aspersions about the quality of any Catholic scientist’s work but to be clear, I hold every one of those 1.3 billion Catholics accountable for the abuses of the church.

It’s been several decades since the Catholic Church’s abuses started coming to light but I’m pretty sure that the abuses were widely know at the time they happened. Those 1.3 billion Catholics have had plenty of time to examine their consciences and demand redress for the victims, or to jump ship to a more ethical religion.

The Catholic Church is enormously wealthy. Yet it cynically denied the abuses in the face of damning testament, moved abusive priests from diocese to diocese where they continued their abuses, adopted deliberate delaying tactics so allow time for its accusers to die, and as I mentioned above is still playing the shell game with its assets.

Where are the 1.3 billion cries for justice? What about voting with your feet?

EDIT - This isn’t intended as a personal attack @GulliverFoyle

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Even the ones who were victims of that abuse, many of whom were Catholic (and even still are) themselves?

I’d argue we do have to separate out the institution from the people to a certain degree. Of course, anyone lay person or clergy who aided and abetted is guilty as the institution itself and in fact should be the focus on investigations by law enforcement as such. But should women or children who were victimized by the Magdalen system who remain in the church be blamed?

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