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Orthodox Teachings on Creation and the Theory of Evolution
Introduction — Definition of concepts
This book, written in the genre of theological apologetics, is devoted to an examination of the Orthodox teaching about the emergence of the world and the appearance of man in it.
The subject matter of the book has topical missionary and spiritual-educational content. This is confirmed by the fruitful work of the “Six Days” Missionary-Educational Center, whose director is the author, in particular - many years of experience in conducting the section "Orthodox reflection on the creation of the world and modern science" at the International Educational Christmas Readings.
His Holiness Patriarch Alexis II gave encouragement and support to the educational work of the “Six Days” Center, and he blessed its activity and inspired us with the following parting words:
"The multipolarity of worldviews today puts the task of introducing students to a wide range of views on fundamental issues. Such questions traditionally include the emergence of life, the origin of the universe, and the emergence of man. And no harm will come to the student if he knows the biblical theory of the origin of the world. Man's awareness that he is a crown of God's creation only elevates him, and if someone wants to believe that he came from an ape, let him think so, but do not impose it on others." [124, с. 3].
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, blessing the author of this monograph for participation in the International Conference "The Ideology of Darwinism and its Impact on Science, Education and Society" (15-17 October 2009, Yalta), in particular noted that "the Orthodox Church, by the grace of God, avoided the mistakes made at a certain time by Catholics, who included certain scientific hypotheses in Church teaching. To criticize Darwinism, and to advance any other hypothesis, is the right of any competent participant in the discussion, including priests, expressing their own understanding of the problem" (letter dated September 22, 2009).
At the opening of the 15th annual Christmas Readings, Metropolitan Clement of Kaluga and Borovsk noted:
"With all the understanding of the secular nature of our state, we must clearly understand that in matters of the formation of worldview, especially in the study of theories of the origin of life on Earth and the processes of human development, the religious factor is no less important than the scientific. And in what way can science prove how life arose on Earth thousands of years ago? Therefore the Orthodox Church cannot remain aloof from the process of forming a system of spiritual and moral values in special disciplines, especially natural disciplines." [124, с. 4].
Questions regarding the Creation of the world and man must be solved while taking into account the Orthodox attitude to this subject, not only in the church, but also in secular educational spheres.
Let us define the basic concepts encountered in the book: scientism, evolutionism, Orthodoxy, and others.
Scientism
Recently the world has been dominated by the attempt to solve questions regarding cosmogony (the theme of the Beginning and the End) in terms of exclusively scientific hypotheses and models, without involving the source of knowledge which, in theology, is called "Divine Revelation". Well-known advances in physics and biology have, for many people, created the illusion that it is possible to explain the structure and origin of our universe and everything in it by purely scientific methods, without the sacred experience of making sense of existence.
This belief in the infinite omnipotence of science is called scientism.
St. Theophan the Recluse said:
"We do not have a single science that is firmly established in its beginnings. Something has been extracted from all the sciences, but this does not give anyone the right to refer to science as the decisive authority. There is no mere science, but there are scientists, who spin science as they want. Consequently, there are only conjectures and suggestions of scientists." [164, с. 112].
Fortunately, the belief in the universality of science is not shared by many major scientists, who are deeply aware of the limited possibilities of scientific cognition. To quote Henri Poincaré: “When a scientific theory reveals a claim to teach us what heat is, or what electricity is, or what life is, it is condemned in advance; all that it can give us is no more than a crude simile. It is therefore temporary and precarious” [128, c. 277]. And this is true of any theory and hypothesis.
Modern theologians have similar thoughts: "Scientific knowledge is always limited, contingent, and therefore can never claim to be absolutely true" [109, p. 165].
The failure of the scientific method in regard to cognition is particularly evident in addressing questions such as "how did it happen?", "how did it begin?", or "did it happen?" A reliable and convincing answer to such questions is impossible because experimental confirmation of historical events is excluded, and hypothetical extrapolations into the past and into the future cannot be considered reliable for many reasons.
For example, the geological "principle of actualism", according to which the laws of the universe are presumed to remain unchanged, is unprovable. Who would claim that the world before the Fall was governed by the same laws as we observe today? In particular, science cannot answer such questions: Has death always existed in the universe? Was the law of radioactive decay in effect in the Garden of Eden? What was the force of gravity in the primordial world? One cannot be sure that some fundamentally different physical laws did not operate in the past.
Another obstacle to unconditional faith in scientific predictions is the drop in the reliability of measurements and the growing inaccuracy of calculations when predicting over long periods and distances. For example, the phenomenon of radioactive decay was discovered by physicists about a hundred years ago. Who can guarantee that "constants" such as half-life and others studied during this time have not changed from millennium to millennium? What kind of error - 100% or 1000% - can we get if we extend our hypothetical calculations to billions of years? Have there even been billions of years?
A blindfolded person walking across a flat field seems to walk in a straight line, when in fact he traces a circle and after a short time returns to his starting point. Similarly, if for some unknown reason the deviation from the azimuth is one degree per year, our instruments will show that in 360 years a straight line distance equal to three hundred and sixty annual journeys has been travelled, while in fact we have returned to the starting point. By extending our calculations to 360 million years, we will be sure that we have covered a distance on an "astronomical" scale, unaware that we have walked in a circle a million times, like Winnie the Pooh in his own footsteps.
When we study a particular parameter, we may never know which natural factors it depends on. For example, before the discovery of the Lorentz transformation, no one had even guessed that the length of a body turns out to depend on its speed (!).
Perhaps the main "Achilles' heel" of science in the last few centuries has been the insistence on explaining the origin of the world only by natural causes, without involving the hypothesis of an Intelligent Creator and Provider. Laplace declared frankly that when creating his model of the formation of the solar system (the famous Kant-Laplace model) he "did not need" the hypothesis of the existence of God.
But all such natural-scientific assumptions about the structure of the cosmos and life on earth, if they are not based on the premise of the divine origin of the universe, necessarily imply in their axiomatic basis an additional unspoken statement: "If there is no God, then...".
This is clearly underestimated by many people who believe more in science than in God. It is all the more important to remind modern socialists of the opinion of the Holy Fathers, who spoke of the knowledge of the world and its laws, without damaging faith in the Living God.
St. Gregory Palamas said:
"Is there anything useful in external science for us? Very much so, because even in poison extracted from the bodies of snakes, there is a lot of potency for healing, and masters of the art of medicine consider that it makes one of the best and most useful drugs ... In external wisdom one still must first kill the serpent, that is, to destroy the arrogance that comes from it - how hard it is, and not easy! It is not easy, because, as they say, ‘philosophical arrogance is not akin to humility’. But, one way or another, destroy it. We must cut off and discard as an absolute and extreme evil the head and tail of the serpent, that is, the obviously false opinion about mind, God, and origins and fables about creation, and the middle part, i.e. discourse about nature, you must, with the help of the testing and contemplative ability of the soul, separate from harmful speculations, as makers of medicinal potions by fire and water purify serpent flesh, boiling it away." [29, с. 32, 33].
These words of St. Gregory sound very much like those of a "Creationist", and are directly related to the content of this book.
St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) said:
Science is the fruit of our fall, the product of a corrupted fallen mind. Scholarship is the acquisition and storage of impressions and knowledge accumulated by men during the life of the fallen world. Scholarship is the lamp of the old man, the lamp for which ‘the gloom of darkness has been reserved forever.’ The redeemer has returned man to his place in the darkness of the world. The Redeemer returned to mankind the Light that was given to them at creation by the Creator, which they had lost in their fall into sin. This Light is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, who instructs in all truth, tests the depths of God, reveals and explains mysteries, and gives material knowledge when it is needed for the spiritual benefit of man. For the scholar who seeks to learn spiritual wisdom, the Apostle instructs: “If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.” (1 Cor. 3:18). Exactly! Scholarship is not wisdom proper, but only an opinion about what wisdom is. Knowledge of Truth is revealed to men by God. Access to it is possible only by faith, which is inaccessible to the fallen human mind. Scholarship replaces this knowledge with mere guessing and suppositions. Many pagans and godless people occupy a place of honor according to the wisdom of this world. But such worldly wisdom is directly opposed, in its very essence, to spiritual, divine wisdom. One cannot be a follower of the one and the other at the same time. The one must necessarily renounce the other. The fallen man is himself a lie, and from his thoughts was created a false mind, i.e., a way of thinking, a collection of false ideas and knowledge, having only the appearance of a mind, but in its essence - a staggering, delirious, demoniac brain, affected by the mortal plague of sin and the fall.
The Holy Fathers did not speak out against science, but against dignifying it, putting it on a divine pedestal. They understood that all our science belongs entirely to the sphere of fallen human activity. Science should not be made an idol, and should not be honored in the same way as the only God. Shame on all those who worship idols, who boast of their idols! (Psalm 96:7).
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