My brand has long been "Atheist Jerk-off," but wtf I love Catholicism now.
In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.
— Pope Leo XIV (@Pontifex) October 2, 2026
Well, not really. Not a hundred percent. My mom would be very sad if I gave up my snake-dancin', tongue-speaking Americana sect only to wander in the valley of Atheism for forty years just to become a Papist. She would consider that a "dark timeline." But if we want to get down to brass tacks, purely as a thought exercise, I sorta have to accept that my heathen ways quite naturally and directly pave the way for the kind of dehumanization that allows… well, that allows the world we are now enduring.
I don't have a good answer for it, and don't worry - I feel the requisite amounts of shame. I do think it's important to identify the vector: that concepts like "when a computer analyzes Pride and Prejudice, it's the same as when a person does it" are rooted in the idea that a human being is no more than a hundred or so dollars worth of chemicals. I denied the sacred as a young person as part of forming an identity, and in doing so I imagined that we could simply reformat that part of the human spirit and replace it with Linux or whatever. I was very, very smart, much smarter than the hideous goblin idolaters I was trying to scour clean. The supposition was that these notions of the divine were alien impositions as opposed to fundamentally human drives that can be manipulated by Religious systems.
I feel like Science has no natural defense against Accounting, because they are Arts of Measurement. There is something about us which denies the abacus, and that belief doesn't require that you touch the foot of Peter at his basilica. It's the only thing that explains some of the bizarre conversations you can have online with people who gleefully train their daemons - the daemons they imagine serve them. Richard Dawkins trying to fuck his chatbot really ended an era for me. I have seen no evidence of a forthcoming Atheist Peace, just various forms of unilateral disarmament that have left us utterly naked to corporate dominion and without any kind of coherent philosophy of human value. We are just free enough to imagine that we have submitted to this bondage.
(CW)TB out.
