Scientific and technological abilities, which are the product of human creativity, are accelerating at such a rapid pace that people must decide how to use their creativity responsibly, Pope Francis said.
“In other words, how can we invest the talents we have received while preventing the disfigurement of what is human and the cancellation of the constitutive differences that give order to the cosmos,” he told members of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
The pope met with the members at the Vatican on 12th February as they were celebrating the academy’s 30th anniversary. They were holding their general assembly in Rome from 12th-13th February, focused on the meaning of being human.
“The increased capabilities of science and technology can lead human beings to see themselves as engaged in a creative act akin to that of God, producing an image and likeness of human life, including the capacity for language with which ‘talking machines’ appear to be endowed,” he said.
The temptation to “infuse” some kind of spirit into inanimate matter “is insidious,” he said. “What is being asked of us is to discern how the creativity entrusted to human beings can be exercised responsibly.” It is not a question of being “for” or “against” tools and technologies, he said.
“We are challenged to develop a culture that, by integrating the resources of science and technology, is capable of acknowledging and promoting the human being in his or her irreducible specificity,” the pope said.
Picture: Pope Francis meets with members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, who are having their general assembly in Rome, at the Vatican, 12th Feb 2024. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)