The Sexually Voracious Woman

Porn is always portrayed as a man's problem. Women create it, but it is never portrayed as a woman's problem.

If porn is a drug, then apparently drug consumers are the only problem, drug dealers are virtuous victims of society. We shouldn't blame the dealers.

This "story" matches the story about how women need to feel safe in order to have sex with their husbands. No one discusses the fact that women are happy to get paid to have sex. Insofar as "safety" is an issue, then obviously sufficient cash makes women "feel safe."

Insisting that men are always the porn perps and women are innocent is itself a kind of pornography Christians tell each other, a fake story about how sex works. It's romance novel story-telling that Scripture SPECIFICALLY and EXPLICITLY denies.

Scripture constantly warns against the sexually voracious WOMAN, not the voracious man:

• Proverbs 2:16–19: Wisdom delivers “from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words, who forsakes the companion of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God. For her house leads down to death...”
• Proverbs 5 (especially 3–6, 8, 20): “The lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood... Her feet go down to death... Keep your way far from her... Why... be intoxicated with another man’s wife? Why embrace the bosom of a wayward woman?”
• Proverbs 6:24–35: Warnings against the “evil woman” / “smooth tongue of the adulteress.” “Do not lust after her beauty... For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life... Can a man scoop fire into his lap and not be burned?... He who commits adultery with a woman lacks sense; he who does so destroys himself.”
• Proverbs 7: A young man is met by a woman “with the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart. She was loud and rebellious... lurking at every corner.” She flatters and seduces him; he follows “as an ox goes to the slaughter... He did not know it would cost his life... She has cast down many wounded, and all who were slain by her were strong men. Her house is the way to Sheol.” Proverbs 9:13–18: Folly personified as a clamorous, simple woman calling passersby with the same invitation as Wisdom, but her guests end “in the depths of hell.”
• Proverbs 22:14: “The mouth of an adulterous woman is a deep pit; a man who is under the Lord’s wrath falls into it.”
• Proverbs 23:27–28: “A prostitute is a deep pit; a promiscuous woman is a narrow well. She lies in wait like a robber and increases the unfaithful among men.”
• Genesis 39: Potiphar’s wife aggressively pursues Joseph.

In that sense, Jesus contradicted the Old Testament prophets when he forgave the adulterous woman and instead talked about the problem of male lust (Matthew 5:27–28).

20th-century and 21st-century Christians followed that emphasis by completely ignoring the Old Testament, and instead treating every woman as Jesus treated the adulterous woman: white-knighting, forgiving, even ignoring women and their voracious sexual attitudes while condemning men. For decades, Christians have floated the story that women in porn are drug-addled survivors of sexual abuse, driven into the industry by voracious men.

OnlyFans demonstrates this story is nonsense. Women are happy to have sex, even sex in public, if it earns them money and attention. OnlyFans demonstrates that Old Testament Scripture is correct - the problem is at least as much the voracious WOMAN as it is the man.

The Silence of the Lamb

The Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus estimated that technology producers capture only a small share of the social value they create—roughly 2%—with the rest accruing to consumers as surplus.

That means, for example, Elon Musk has produced $50 trillion in total value for society.

But Christianity is totally ignorant about this effect. Most Christians don't understand wealth, because most Christians have not studied economics. Certainly, Jesus may have loved helping the poor, but he never said, "Blessed are the job-makers, for they shall enrich the poor." The Lamb is silent about the methods through which the poor are truly helped. 

This is ironic, because Christianity is based around the sacramental oikonomeia, the sacramental economy. Part of that economy of grace is supposed to empower Christians, result in Christians having a better understanding of, and willingness to, help the poor.

But it doesn't do that. Christians don't understand basic economics. To be fair, grace builds on nature. Being empowered by grace to understand a subject is not the same thing as training that power so as to understand a subject. I can, as a one-year old, have all the power in my legs necessary to run a 100-yard dash, but be unable to do it because, as a one-year old, I have not practiced it. Even if I can run well (which one-year olds are not necessarily adept at doing), I will be distracted, fall down a lot. I won't complete the race. 

Perhaps Catholics have the grace to understand economics via the sacraments, but they sure haven't trained that understanding well enough to accurately perceive or apply the reality. None of the Popes in living memory have had such economics training. Pope Leo has a BA in math, but knows nothing about how to apply that math training to economics. 

He doesn't understand what Nordhaus demonstrated, nor does he understand that the best way to help the materially poor is not to give them money, the best way to help the poor is to:

• provide inexpensive goods for everyone, rich or poor,
• in part by providing the cheapest possible energy to the largest possible number of people,
• require the poor to become qualified to earn money,
• strongly enforce private property laws, which means
• lowering government taxes and regulations to the lowest possible levels.

Now, Christianity DOES understand that crime must be reduced. Poverty is caused by criminal behaviour, so if you can get criminals to reject sin and criminal behaviour, those criminals and everyone around them can be lifted out of poverty. 

But giving the poor money directly just enables sloth: "He who does not work, shall not eat." (2 Thess 3:10) is a verse that absolutely no Christian emphasizes anymore. Perhaps it is time for Catholic bishops the world over to read some Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman.

Pica and Bulimia

Contraception is akin to pica - eating things which are not nutritive (e.g., sand, rocks, wood chips). Pica is an eating disorder most commonly seen in pregnant women suffering from a vitamin deficiency.  

Pica allows the user to engage in a digestive act while removing all the nutritive elements.  

Contraception allows the user to engage in the procreative act while simultaneously removing all the procreative elements. It is sexual pica.   

Contraception is a sexual disorder most commonly seen in adults suffering a psychological break with how biology works.   

Abortion is sexual bulimia. You begin the biological process, but then vomit in order to prevent its completion.

Parents Have 10 Years

Catholics who pay attention to the history of canon law have it easy. For the entire history of Western civilization, the legal age of marriage as 12 for both men and women. In 1917, the Church raised it to 14 for women, 16 for men.

But that was a silly thing for the Church to do. In every human culture for which we have records, the age of consent was always around puberty, or 12 years old.

Men and women are made to be substantially ready for marriage by 12.

If you simply accept that your child will only be a child for ten years, if you really accept that in your bones from the time you start conceiving children, then you have a very clear start and end date.

You have ten years.
Period.

After that, your children are adults, they start making their own adult decisions, and you have to be ready to let them do that. You have to have spent the ten years you have with them as children to prepare them to be making adult decisions by the time they are 12. You have to accept their life choices. You lived your life, it is now time to let them live their lives.

Once they hit roughly twelve years old, you have to start treating them as adults because now they ARE adults. They are no longer your predominantly your children, they are now your colleagues, fellow adults with whom you work to accomplish everyone's life goals.

That is no longer "your child", that ten or twelve-year old is a co-worker, a junior colleague, the intern in the office, the journeyman learning the trade, but still an adult intern, an adult journeyman, an adult colleague, a fellow-laborer, a person who must be free to reject your advice, and you have to be ok with that. You're still on the same team, but your path is no longer coterminous with his path. Your child, now an adult, will necessarily branch out on his own. He will do things differently than you do, because he starts from a different place. There's nothing wrong with that. 

All of your ancestors prepared their children to be adults by age 12. They all did this - you can do it too. 

You have to do it, if you want to fully honor your children as persons. 

Incoherence from the Vatican

“Privately, once the Anthropic delegation arrived at the Vatican, Mr. Olah and his team lobbied the Pope’s advisers to take the prospect of A.I. model consciousness seriously,” according to the report, which details Olah’s efforts to engage with religious figures about “the possibility of A.I. consciousness.” 

How did the Pope respond? He uses the poetic term "collective consciousness":

135. The content that circulates within digital environments shapes how people perceive the world and introduces into the collective consciousness

As a reminder, while denying that AI is conscious, he then uses a term, "collective consciousness", which also does not exist. He also remarks on "digital environments" shaping this technically non-existent form of consciousness while not mentioning the non-digital art that does exactly the same thing (e.g., Mozart, Michelangelo).  

Then, he says consciousness only exists in the context of suffering, which is demonstrably false:

120. To eliminate suffering entirely would mean, in the end, extinguishing love and desire as well. Those who love and desire cannot avoid passing through trial and suffering; and over the years, we carry within us lessons that leave their mark like scars, the memories of a journey shaped by freedom and failure, dreams and disappointments. 

God has no body, therefore God does not suffer. God is impassible. Sure, Jesus is God, Jesus has a body and Jesus suffers, but suffering is not intrinsic to being a person, nor is it intrinsic to being Love. God is Love long before God ever suffered in the human nature that He took on. If He had never taken on human nature, never suffered via human nature, God is still Love.

So, Leo's remark does not apply to either the persons of the Godhead or the persons of the unfallen angels, but only to human persons. Yet the Pope's statements are still demonstrably false, since Adam and Eve did not NEED to fall, and if they had not fallen, there would arguably be no suffering. Now, one might argue that Genesis speaks of "increasing the pains of childbirth", so perhaps pain was always going to be part of even unfallen human experience. Still, we must further restrict his remarks to primarily applying to fallen humanity.

Which leaves us at a loss. There's no reason to think AI is sentient, conscious or has a soul, but there is also no particular reason to say God couldn't provide any of those things to a silicon-based lab creation. If he were to do so, there is still no reason to think that AI's suffering, or lack thereof, would logically follow from God's action.  

Inanimate objects do not suffer, yet inanimate objects - art, music, AI, etc. - accurately depict human suffering. This entire line of papal argument about suffering confuses the person with the tool. It assumes AI is a person, then denies personhood based on the lack of an attribute no one ascribed to AI. It is exactly the anthropomorphic nonsense that Olah attempted to foist on the Vatican, just dressed up in papal language.

But, let us move on. Pope Leo denies that AI is conscious. OK. Remember that Pope Leo acknowledges that the creation of AI is an artistic participation in the act of creation:

111. In one sense, technological innovation can represent human participation in the divine act of creation. Developers, therefore, bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility, for every design choice reflects a vision of humanity. Just as the creator of an artistic or literary work must consider the values it conveys, so developers are called to embed values in their projects with due seriousness: with transparency, responsibility toward affected communities and careful attention to ensuring that what is being cultivated is a genuine good.

But what the Pope giveth in the encyclical, he then taketh away in the general audience:

Pope Leo XIV told a group of artists on Friday: “The Church needs you,” the pontiff said at the Oct. 2 encounter at the Vatican. “This is especially true in this age of artificial intelligence, in which we urgently need to distinguish human art from what is produced by machines.”

“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 the human, whereas ‘authentic culture and art preserve this spark,’”

The takeaway: AI is not conscious, AI is art created by engineers, but it isn't human art because it is made with math, so while it is art, it is made by ...what?... an alien... something?... which is not consciousness, but is also not human.

How does all this work? No one knows. Apparently, math algorithms suck the humanity out of an endeavor? But, why? Why would the universal language of math, developed by mankind (checks notes) lack in the human spark, while the universal languages of music (which is just auditory math) and photo-realistic art with vanishing point perspective (which is just visual math) assuredly contains the "spark" that binary math somehow ... does not?  

When did math stop being part of the quadrivium? How is AI not simply an application of the quadrivium, one of the seven core subjects of Catholic education for the last millennium? 

Why would there be an "ontological difference", that is, a difference in the very BEING of, say, Mistral versus Mozart or Michelangelo? Especially given that, language, whether English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese or binary, is all just mathematics dressed up as words?

Remember, a computer can only add two numbers together. A computer can't do anything but that. Computer AI produces understandable human language output precisely because each and every human language is fundamentally, ONTOLOGICALLY, at its very core, just math. Because computers can do math (and only addition), computers can output understandable human language, which means language is just math dressed up as words. This is why computer output is always spelled correctly and always has correct grammar. Language rules are all just applied math rules. Language is an algorithm using words instead of numbers. 

But if algorithms are inhuman, then what is it when we use math dressed up in words and call it poetry or Scripture? Is it still human or divine, as the case may be? But the Pope implies that if the math is dressed up in human words by one of our human tools it (checks notes) lacks a human spark. A human-made tool using the Ur-Language of human notation (math) creates an inhuman result?

How does that work, exactly? The Pope says AI is not conscious, but it is also not human. Every other kind of art mankind makes is human, but this particular kind of art is not human because... why? Because it uses statistics? Algorithms? Math? Math is inhuman? A lot of students consider statistics inhuman. That is mostly because they struggle to reach the peak of human understanding that is statistics. A lot of people feel the same way about Immanuel Kant and James Joyce. Are poets, philosophers and novelists not human?

Were da Vinci's drawings of a helicopter inhuman, while his drawings of the Vitruvian Man human? Or was Vitruvian Man too algorithmic to contain the "spark"? Was Archimedes' engineering inhuman? The Pantheon inhuman because it reflects mathematical principles? Does the Fibonacci sequence in the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" render these works inhuman because all three apply a mathematical algorithm to visual perspective? If those applications of math contain the human spark, then why not Grok or ChatGPT? Exactly when does the human use of math stop being human? 

The Pope is making nonsensical distinctions between the artistic tool made by men called AI versus every other artistic tool made by men. He simultaneously admits AI is art and denies AI is art. 

Put down the meth pipe and pick one. But if you pick "inhuman", you have a lot of explaining to do. 

Can People Control AI?

Bacteria aren't as smart as people, but bacteria both help and kill billions of people each year. Bacteria in our guts keep us alive, bacteria in the wrong place kill us. It isn't about intelligence. We can easily kill AI without needing to be as smart as AI.

Bacteria have no brain. But famous "mind control" behaviors—like losing the fear of cats—are typically caused by the single-celled parasite Toxoplasma gondii, normal and pathogenic gut bacteria also exert powerful control over rodent behavior via the gut-brain axis. We have evidence the same thing happens to people. Certainly Toxoplasma gondii can even influence human behaviour.

Let us say AI becomes as much smarter than human beings as mice are smarter than Toxoplasma gondii. People might still be able to control that super-intelligence. Control and killing smarter organisms is not necessarily as big a problem as people make out. 

Can AI Ever Be Conscious?

 Can AI ever be conscious?

That's a theological question.

If consciousness is purely a product of natural physical laws (chemistry, electromagnetism, etc), then of course AI can eventually be conscious.

If consciousness is endowed as a supernatural quality by God into beings, then it depends on God doing it.

If God *CAN* do it (and given that he obviously does do it for carbon-based beings who begin as man-made laboratory constructs, such as IVF babies), then will He do it for silicon-based beings who begin as man-made laboratory constructs (PCs)?

Or, to rephrase the question, to what extent does God allow human beings share in His own creative power?

So, the question may appear to be a straight physics question, and it might well be, but theists will extend the question into their own discipline. The answer is not necessarily a proof for the existence of God, but it is a commentary on how God exists. 

Why Ancient Faiths Cannot Survive

Christianity cannot survive contact with modernity. Islam survives contact with modernity primarily by rejecting everything associated with "women's rights." 

Insofar as Islam does not deny "women's rights", it loses. 

Insofar as Christianity does not deny "women's rights", it also loses.

"Modernity" is primarily that worldview which treats women as the political, economic or social equal of a man. Technically speaking, original Christianity only allowed woman to be the spiritual equal of man. Women have an equal opportunity to salvation, but that equal opportunity to salvation for women was achieved by totally different means than salvation was achieved for the man.

In Christianity, a man is saved by sacrificing his life for his wife (Eph 5:25), while a woman is saved by the bearing of children (1 Timothy 2:15), sacrificing her needs and wants for her children. The first part of that sentence, Eph 5:25, is emphasized by every Christian church, the second part of that sentence, 1 Timothy 2:15, is completely ignored by every Christian church.

1 Timothy 2:15 is replaced with the modern creed, "Every woman should be able to reach self-actualization." This is why Lindsay Clancy hits a dissonant note. She strangled her three children, thereby violating 1 Timothy 2:15, but living out the modern creed. The man who refused to hold her as innocent was a Catholic Haitian immigrant. He may not have held out because of his Catholicism, but he certainly did not give in to the creed of modernity.

Christianity cannot survive having the second part, the woman's source of salvation, replaced with the modern creed. Now, you may argue that Catholic Faith not only allows, but encourages, women to live celibate lives as nuns or sisters. True. But those same nuns and sisters are required to give their lives in service to those around them. Those women exchange service to a particular set of people (their own children) for a universal set of people (all children, all people).

Christianity cannot survive contact with the modern creed because the modern creed, which includes women holding their own selves as more important than anyone around them, is antithetical to Christian belief. In a similar way, Islam cannot afford to grant women that kind of equality. Islam is built around the idea that women exist to service and serve men. Again, the modern creed does not allow for service to other, it only allows for service to self. 

Every ancient faith system was built around a subsistence-level society, wherein all members of the society have to care for one another. Modernity assumes a surplus-goods society in which people can afford to worry primarily about themselves because the tools-network is sufficiently robust to allow the tools to substitute for human care. Selflessness, to the point of giving one's life so another might live, is no longer a required attribute for successful community. 

Modernity still expects the man to give his life for the community, but no longer expects anything close to that for the woman. But every ancient faith system was built around some aspect of requiring women to put the life and needs of the children (Christianity) or her husband (Islam) ahead of her own. This ancient requirement, when levied on women, is blasphemy within the modern system.

But this can be extrapolated further. Again, ancient faiths assumed children had duties towards their parents, just as parents had towards their children. This web of duties was the necessary foundation for all subsistence-level societies. Five-year olds were expected to work, just as their parents did, to support the family as a whole.

The first group to lose their responsibilities were the children. Because children competed for adult jobs, mandatory schooling laws were passed to force children out of the workplace and out of the job market. They lost their responsibility to be economically responsible for family life. As children were squeezed out of the marketplace, the role of motherhood (and women) also lost its central place in family and community well-being. Mothers used to contribute by having children. Now, having children became an economic burden, not a benefit.

So, women were introduced into the marketplace so as to secure their importance in the community. But this meant male dominance as bread-winner was now weakened, suborned. The last major Catholic voice that insisted women were saved through the bearing of children was St. John Chrysostom, Father  and Doctor of the Church (347-407 AD). Even Pope St. John Paul II emphasized women being saved through marriage, vocations to religious life and widowhood, but he did not mention being saved through bearing children. The Catholic Church has been silent on this passage for sixteen (16) centuries. 

Thus, it was not well-suited to deal with a situation in which women having children simply... stopped. No other Christian denomination in the last 1000 years has made this passage a centerpiece of the Gospel teaching. Once the community made child-bearing economically peripheral, there is literally nothing to tie women to anyone at all. So, just as children's contributions to society were marginalized,  because children's contributions were marginalized, so women's contributions were also necessarily marginalized. Children are not expected to sacrifice, women are not expected to sacrifice, for anyone.

That leaves only the men who are still expected to sacrifice. But now we have AI, and waiting in the wings, robotics.

Once AI-drive robots enter the picture and begin to do all the dirty, life-endangering jobs, men will no longer be expected to sacrifice either. Even as we speak, the non-AI drive tool-set has become so strong that even men's sacrifice is being slowly relegated to the waste bin of history. 

The fear of AI may well be founded in a puzzlement concerning what any society can look like if no one at all is expected to sacrifice to maintain that society. Can the society be maintained? If it *CAN* be maintained without any human person undertaking any level of sacrifice, then what does that look like, and what does "society" mean?

Obviously, Christianity, and it's message of crucifixion, will simply not be understandable, it will have absolutely no meaning in such a social milieu. If we don't have any poor, there is no one to sacrifice for. If AI-driven robots do all the work, none of us make up in our body what is lacking in the suffering of Christ, for the sake of His body (Colossians 1:24).

None of the Abrahamic religions, none of the ancient faiths, whether Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism or any other "ism" can be understood within a society that does not have any significant, meaningful physical suffering or danger for any substantial number of its members. If you want to suffer, you will have to go to Mars or the Moon, and even that will only be true for a century or so. 

We don't have a language, or a vision, or a way of understanding this kind of society. But that is what robotic AI promises - a society in which no one is expected to make any significant sacrifice. And, to be fair, the society we currently inhabit is so radically different from even the life of the 18th century, that they would consider us completely free from all meaningful suffering. The past is a different country. We are living in the past.

On AI Slop

People keep calling AI generated output "slop"

Dudes and dudettes, listen closely: AI essays are the average output of all human beings.

These essays are BETTER than what 50% of humanity can produce, probably better than what 70-80% of humanity can produce.

AI = us in an electronic mirror.

So, every time you denigrate AI, you denigrate the majority of people in the world. 

Every person who uses AI is ACTUALLY partnering their own skills with the skills of a team of tens of thousands of absolutely brilliant software engineers. That's what AI produces - it's a team effort with thousands of the brightest people on the planet.

And you say this team effort is:
a) cheating
b) slop.

Huh.