this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Russia’s science and higher education ministry has dismissed the head of a prestigious genetics institute who sparked controversy by contending that humans once lived for centuries and that the shorter lives of modern humans are due to their ancestors’ sins, state news agency RIA-Novosti said Thursday.

Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination.

Kudryavtsev, who headed the Russian Academy of Science’s Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, made a presentation at a conference in 2023 in which he said people had lived for some 900 years prior to the era of the Biblical Flood and that “original, ancestral and personal sins” caused genetic diseases that shortened lifespans.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 9 months ago (5 children)

With all due respect, my friend, you're assuming a false dillema. The majority of academic scientists are religious, reflective of the general population's religious affiliation.

Of course there are a minority of highly vocal outliers on both sides of the spectrum who profit from the discord, real or imagined.

https://sciencereligiondialogue.org/resources/what-do-scientists-believe-religion-among-scientists-and-implications-for-public-perceptions/

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago (2 children)

There's a few Neil DeGrasse Tyson clips I remember seeing around about various scientific and religious interactions.

Like he calls nonsense on the BCE/CE vs BC/AD change because scientists, and really most of scociety, operates on the Gregorian Calendar which was created by the Catholic Church under Pope Gregory XIII and is the most accurate calendar we've ever made to account for leap years. Why deny the creators of a fantastic calendar their due respect just because they were religious in a time when everyone was religious?

And in a different he also talked about the Baghdad House of Wisdom and how throughout the Middle Ages of Europe, Baghdad was a center of intellectual thought and culture, until the Fundamentalists got into power and declared manipulating numbers was witchcraft, and ended up being a huge brain drain in Baghdad for centuries.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (1 children)

NDT is a massive blowhard. I'm not religious but I got turned off by his weird interview with God thing.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago

He's one of the profiteers, in my opinion.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (2 children)

His point about the change to BCE/CE is the actual nonsense. His point is that we should keep religious terminology being used in science? Out of respect for the creators? When have we ever done that? Science is secular and should be a secular pursuit. Every biologist and anthropologist shouldn’t have to reference Christ just to date their samples even if the calendar is the same. I respect NDT for his work but his awful takes like this hurt what he says often.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Planet names, days of the week, months, which year is zero - even that we have 7 days in the week - All of these are direct religious references that we’re fine with.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Months are actually numbers and politics. For instance, August is named for Augustus Caesar and December basically means 'tenth month.'

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

January is named for Janus, February for a religious feast, March for Mars and June for Juno (Jupiter’s wife). April may also be a goddess Apru but the connection is still not agreed upon.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think the BCE/CE thing is dumb because it's just a religious calendar under a different name. It doesn't change what Year 1 represents anymore than changing the spelling of a word changes its etymology. If we want a secular calendar we should do something like add a few thousand years to count from the founding of the first cities, or have it start in 1945 with the founding of the UN, or even 1970 when Unix time begins. As I see it, calling it the 'common era' does absolutely nothing to divorce the calendar from the birth of Jesus.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Make it 1969 for the moon landing. It would just be slightly off unix time which will annoy low level programmers forever.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Humans are fantastic at compartmentalization

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Not throwing a pike here, but you are short sighted.

To think it needs to be compartmentalized or that religion and science are mutually exclusive is a false dilemma as said above.

Science can simply be the way that God/s would choose to interact with our world.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (38 children)

They're not necessarily incompatible, technically, but I am very suspicious of anyone who claims to be a scientist yet are willing to believe such extraordinary claims despite a complete lack of evidence.

If they would never use such a low bar for evidence in literally anything else in their lives (such as, presumably, their academic and scientific career, which I hope didn't involve "faith" at all), and yet are willing to completely suspend that need for evidence for their belief in the supernatural, then I don't trust them.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (7 children)

This is the real issue. Sure, science and religion COULD exist at the same time, but science is all about not making assumptions where you can instead build data, and heavily distrusting anything you can't build data for. Religion is specifically designed to never be tested. It can never be meaningfully supported or negated through observable mediums, which makes it the antithesis to science regardless of their potential coexistence.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (10 children)

Yes. And it's just as likely that super-god created God to do exactly that.

But that's not the point. The scientific mind requires evidence and repeatability. To believe in God without evidence or repeatability means they've compartmentalized that part of their thinking.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You can be all sorts of religious and be a scientist.

But the moment you start to claim anything from one of the popular holy books is literally true, you become a massive hypocrite.

But there is no disconnect between deism and science.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Its interesting to see your post to be so controversial. People who thinks all scientists are atheists either just don't know any scientists or never been out in the real world. There's really no difference between scientists and any regular population. I'm a engineer and in my group of about 40 engineers, many of us are Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and some Atheists. We don't let religion interfere with our work, and there's no conflicts with each other. We do a mix of R&D in our work, and we build software and hardware that gets used by millions of consumers daily.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I agree with you. I think this is a result of the New Atheist preaching of guys like Dawkins and Hitchens. They're rather crude and provacative in their anti-theism and their followers subsequently have a pretty simplistic view of a complex subject.

Of course, there are even more religious fundamentalists doing exactly the same rabble-rousing. It behooves us to ignore all extremists.

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