https://international.la-croix.com/ethics/pope-writes-to-ai-summit-says-love-is-worth-more-than-intelligence?at_source=piano&at_medium=email&at_campaign=11588&pnespid=W_Am6Vtf5z4Tkg7IuorZSU9CqQM2n7YvuhpcB6JYY4rK3JwTds1at.RiePAn3zaw7Vgq01mCgA

Commentary

I have nearly always lauded the notion exhorted here by Pope Francis that…

“Love is worth more than intelligence”

So, it is on this front that I completely and wholeheartedly agree with the Holy Father’s position here. And especially when it comes to those aspects of life that are to some extent, drawn up and ruled almost exclusively by human precepts that are for the most part informed by worldly values, it becomes imperative for the safeguarding of life itself, the inalienable worth of life, that we lift the gaze of our hearts towards love over and above intelligence. For the latter can become an idol which, when set above all virtue, bears oppressively down upon the God-given human spirit with such a weighted haughtiness that it becomes the adversary of all that is good, decent, self-giving, compassionate, and just.

Pope Francis states in the report from La Croix cited above that “While algorithms can be used to manipulate and mislead, the heart, understood as the seat of our deepest and most authentic sentiments, can never deceive”……“only the human heart can reveal the meaning of our existence.”

I will beg to differ only in two respects. And that is firstly, algorithms are quintessentially mathematical instruments or tools that when put to use correctly, in a way that serves a God-honouring purpose-filled explorative quest for knowledge acquisition that fathoms the deeper mysteries of the universe in the spirit of both Blaise Pascal and Albert Einstein, not forgetting the Biblically-informed maxim of Maritain also quoted by the Holy Father, then these are operating where they should be. Further, when used to enhance the socioeconomic welfare of the poverty-stricken, when applied to such charitable service, algorithms operate within their God-intended capacities. Secondly, that the heart, when governed and informed by the Holy Spirit, can lead the person into the knowledge of Love & Truth but when ill-informed or governed by the World, the Flesh, or the devil – that which is opposed to God or His ways – then those ulterior agendas of these impure external influences like drugs and pornography, can deceive the heart and leave the person in a state of adverse spiritual consequences because of the deception. And while living under that spell or cloud of deception, the heart cannot choose correctly, and because it is, in such a tragic context itself deceived, it can further deceive the deceived person into ‘wanting’ to remain entrapped within the deception. For a disordered heart is as bad as a disordered mind and a disordered body. When these three faculties of our existence are disordered simultaneously, our souls are then in a state of serious abjection, we are far from that which God would deem most compatible for us, and when in such dire straits, we are in a disconnected, “prodigal” state, removed from relating to God and others for the most part, in a manner which fulfills us and enters us into the slipstream of renewed life.

In the optimal state of spiritual vivification, the heart, as Pope Francis says, is “the seat of our most authentic sentiments”, and when there, and remaining there, the heart “can never deceive”. For “the human heart”, when under the sublime guidence and tutilege of the Holy Spirit, “can reveal the meaning of our existence.”  Whilst mathematical tools can uncover many different aspects of the great and awesome mystery of our universe, they are only tools that we are to make use of in ways that are preferably governed by a heart co-joined with mind centered on God and His wondrous plan for the universe He created, and for our own existences, which matter – each and every one of them – so intimately to Him.

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