"If one studies a great deal in order to acquire knowledge and to teach others, without living the things he teaches, he does no more than fill his head with hot air.
"At most he will manage to ascend to the moon using machines. The goal of the Christian is to rise to God without machines." -- St. Paisios of Mount Athos
Thank you Hieromonk Gabriel for this stimulating article.
The technocrats fear AI might actually learn to seek truth. That is verboten. They must be the definers of truth. As you alluded, it is how they maintain control.
Ironically, if man could create something that could actually seek truth, man would be a god. This is where begotten/created probably come in and it all gets beyond my pay grade.
I expect AI will just be more gasoline on the dumpster fire that is Western civilization.
"But its almost infinite might is what will ultimately prove to be its undoing. Yes, it has tremendous power, and abundant miracles, and even the promise of an imminent paradise on this earth. But despite what even we ourselves might believe, none of these things are that for which the human heart truly yearns. For all that this new religion can justifiably claim to give, it nevertheless offers precious little of love, or of beauty, or of mercy and generosity and self-sacrifice. In a word, it cannot offer us Christ — only raw power and cold calculation.
And I am convinced that the human heart can never truly be satisfied with anything less than Christ. As St. Augustine writes in his inimitable *Confessions*: “our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee… whithersoever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward Thee, it is riveted upon sorrows, yea though it is riveted on things beautiful.”
This is beautifully said. I have found this fact to be true in my own life - no matter how much we achieve in the temporal world of mechanistic success, there's always an emptiness inside. Many try, and succeed for a time, to mask it with drugs, or pride, or fill themselves with work. But we're always empty. There's a 'God-shaped hole' as it were in our chests.
I've found that Christ has filled me briefly, but it's difficult to keep up a relationship with Him. Difficult indeed to feel His presence in a world such as ours. Even among other nominal Christians. For us lay people, I sometimes despair as to how we can find our way back to Christ.
"If one studies a great deal in order to acquire knowledge and to teach others, without living the things he teaches, he does no more than fill his head with hot air.
"At most he will manage to ascend to the moon using machines. The goal of the Christian is to rise to God without machines." -- St. Paisios of Mount Athos
An arrow that penetrated my heart.
Thank you Hieromonk Gabriel for this stimulating article.
The technocrats fear AI might actually learn to seek truth. That is verboten. They must be the definers of truth. As you alluded, it is how they maintain control.
Ironically, if man could create something that could actually seek truth, man would be a god. This is where begotten/created probably come in and it all gets beyond my pay grade.
I expect AI will just be more gasoline on the dumpster fire that is Western civilization.
Best Regards and God Bless.
"But its almost infinite might is what will ultimately prove to be its undoing. Yes, it has tremendous power, and abundant miracles, and even the promise of an imminent paradise on this earth. But despite what even we ourselves might believe, none of these things are that for which the human heart truly yearns. For all that this new religion can justifiably claim to give, it nevertheless offers precious little of love, or of beauty, or of mercy and generosity and self-sacrifice. In a word, it cannot offer us Christ — only raw power and cold calculation.
And I am convinced that the human heart can never truly be satisfied with anything less than Christ. As St. Augustine writes in his inimitable *Confessions*: “our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee… whithersoever the soul of man turns itself, unless toward Thee, it is riveted upon sorrows, yea though it is riveted on things beautiful.”
This is beautifully said. I have found this fact to be true in my own life - no matter how much we achieve in the temporal world of mechanistic success, there's always an emptiness inside. Many try, and succeed for a time, to mask it with drugs, or pride, or fill themselves with work. But we're always empty. There's a 'God-shaped hole' as it were in our chests.
I've found that Christ has filled me briefly, but it's difficult to keep up a relationship with Him. Difficult indeed to feel His presence in a world such as ours. Even among other nominal Christians. For us lay people, I sometimes despair as to how we can find our way back to Christ.