Despite all of the potential that science has, the accumulation of it all does not always obtain the results hoped for, says His Holiness Pope Francis when addressing the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for life. We know the problems our world is facing, says the Pope, and one of them is that we seem to be closing in more and more on ourselves. This, he says, underlines a “dramatic paradox”: that at the point in which science could offer the equal well-being that God wished for to all people, “we observe an embittering of conflicts and a growth of inequality”.
As reported by Vatican news, There are two sides to technology, continues the Pontiff. On the one hand, we cannot go without it; on the other hand, it imposes its logic upon us. “Yet,” says the pope, “technology is a human characteristic”. However, what we must understand, continues the pope, is that the artificial devices that simulate human capacities, are in fact, lacking in human qualities. These machines, says the Pontiff cannot take into consideration the phenomena of experience or that of conscience.
His Holiness Pope Francis ends his address by saying that the task of the Academy is an honorable one in “the ethical alliance in favor of human life”. Now that we are surrounded by more and more sophisticated machinery, and that they directly involve human qualities, both physical and of the psyche, the sharing of information between those working in the field becomes more and more important.
