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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[–] JCreazy@midwest.social 73 points 2 years ago (23 children)

It's always confused me how someone that believes in a religion can be a scientist. They directly contradict each other. It just makes it sound like people are in denial.

[–] Haagel@lemmings.world 55 points 2 years ago (4 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/

[–] blackbelt352@lemmy.world 29 points 2 years 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.

[–] Moghul@lemmy.world 23 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] Haagel@lemmings.world 9 points 2 years ago

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

[–] CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years 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.

[–] danl@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years 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.

[–] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] danl@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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.

[–] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years 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.

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

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

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Humans are fantastic at compartmentalization

[–] NOSin@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 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.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years 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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[–] mohammed_alibi@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years 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.

[–] Haagel@lemmings.world 4 points 2 years 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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[–] blackbelt352@lemmy.world 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

To an extent it depends how that religion interacts with science. There's quite a few major foundational discoveries that came from priests and ordained clergy from the Catholic Church: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scientists

Within the Catholic Church there are a few orders of clergy dedicated to scientific discovery, especially the Jesuits.

Granted a lot of them conducted science under the broad philosophy of better understanding the universe God created, but if the end result eventually improves the lives of people, I don't see how that's an inherently bad thing.

If we wanted to be a bit more accurate to the hustoru of the real world, religious fundamentalism is opposed to science.

[–] FrostKing@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Its definitely not true that science and religion have to contradict each other. Take Christianity—you can easily believe in scientific methods to discover the way the world works, while believing that 'God' is the Creator of those things.

[–] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

The thing that gets me is this whole god thing has never in hundreds of years shown or done anything of biblical proportions and we are supposed to just believe it? Prove to me it's real. I love how the defense for this is how you need to believe for it to be real but I'm sorry that's not how that works. If you tell me you have a quarter in your pocket I'm but never show me it why would I believe you?

Why should we have to prove nonexistence when they can't prove existence? If there is no proof, I simply can't believe it.

But that's me.

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[–] trebuchet@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Yes but that's hardly the entirely of Christian belief. What about the part about living until 900 before?

Well, I suppose one way to reconcile those things is that God created genetic diseases at that point to punish us for our sin.

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Right we have found human remains and see no evidence of this.

[–] Mobiuthuselah@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

The big difference is that many religious beliefs can't be tested. They are just believed in faith. In science, nothing is believed. It's all evidence based and tested. A scientist doesn't have to reconcile their religious beliefs with their scientific ways because their beliefs are outside the realm of the scientific method. They accept that they don't have a way to measure or test those things.

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Ok let's take Christianity.

We are told a man came back to life violating what we know from biology. We are told the man had to die because original sin which was an event caused in the Garden of Eden, which breaks everything we know about evolution and the history of our world. We are told that 3 = 1 which breaks logic and math. We are told that women are to remain silent and yet the success of a country depends on the degree that women are able to be treated like equals. We are told that anyone who is LGBT+ is a bad person and yet the evidence doesn't support that at all. We are told that Pontius Pilot decided to put down a revolution by stupidly only killing the leader and then let the rest of the group operate under his nose for decades which breaks what we know about history, Roman culture, and freaken common sense.

We are told that the followers of Jesus could heal at a touch, that Paul could drift thru jail walls, that the Romans would allow a privileged burial for a criminal, that demons inhibit buddies, that food can magically appear, that water can become wine by prayer, that the mustard seed is the smallest seed, that leprosy can be cured with prayer, that there is another dimension full of human minds without human brains to power them, that two Jewish women would prepare a male body for burial, that a wealthy guy would randomly give away a section of his family estate for burial to a criminal, that the secret police of the Pharisees would break their own rules they had with Rome and have the local king do their dirty work, that 12 people would abandon their families to follow a cult leader just because he asked nicely...

List goes on and on. Christianity is not compatible with everything we know to be true.

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Cognitive Dissonance. I was raised very devout and I did it for years. It doesn't confuse me, it evokes pity. I get to see people making the same fucking mistake I made and it hurts.

I made that mistake, no one else has to. Rip the band-aid off!

[–] Stupidmanager@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

yep, same, for years. you WANT it to be true, so you ignore the contradictions.

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Of course humans are made in the image of God and get Parkinson's disease and diabetes.

[–] BastingChemina@slrpnk.net 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

They don't necessarily contradict each other (except for fundamentalist).

My understanding of religion is that the religion brings answer to the question "Why ?", the science on the other hand answer the question "How ?"

Science will explain how human life appeared on earth but not why human life appears.

Religion is one way to answer why are we here and should we do with our life. I don't necessarily agree with it but I could understand the appeal for some people.

[–] wahming@monyet.cc 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's more to do with religion falling apart when you apply the scientific method. And if you don't, what kinda scientist are you?

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[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

You know it just doesn't work. Psychology, psychiatric medicine, sociology, law, game theory. Religion lost the monopoly on how the universe operates and claims to know how humans should operate. The more we learn the less it got correct.

We know that some people are medically better off presenting as a different gender than what they were born with. We know that some people prefer the same sex and that this is common among animals that are like us. We know that the fear of hell doesn't motivate people to be more empathetic, just look at crime statistics in religious areas vs non-religious areas. We know a society that doesn't charge interest on loans has no credit system that works. We know that physically beating a child that misbehaves does not correct the behavior. We know that the wealth level of a society depends almost completely with the degree that women can work.

And to a degree none of this should be surprising. Religion is a selfish meme. It doesn't exist for our benefit it exists for its own. So of course religious societies do worse, their parasite is thriving.

[–] yetiftw@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

people have to put their faith in something. science itself can serve as a personal religion

[–] MJKee9@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

If so, then they are horrible scientists.

[–] batmaniam@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Science and religion (in the broad sense, not specific statements of a religion) are just two entirely separate things. Faith by it's definition exists outside anything testable, so it's just not part of science. Here's the one hitch: science does in-fact point to faith. Bare with me here.

We know with whatever certainty anyone would require that the universe is expanding, and that the rate of that expansion is accelerating. We know with certainty that >90% of all that we know is there, just by looking up, is already permanently and irrevocably beyond our grasp. It will all blink out of the night sky, and no interaction will ever be possible.

Future scientists (human, alien, whatever) will look at certain phenomena, the cause of which we today would know to be a specific galaxy, etc, but we would have no way to gather a single shred of evidence. There would be no way, literally none, to ever interreact with those stellar structures.

To these future scientists you would be citing ancient texts and proposing a 100% untestable hypothesis. You would be proposing literal gods outside of the machine. And you'd be right. But it would all have to be taken on faith.

[–] teichflamme@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

There's a difference between working with the latest and most probable hypothesis under the assumption that it could be wrong and faith in a religious sense.

Faith and dogma leave no shred of doubt that they're right. Science acknowledges that it could be completely wrong but we have no further data to replace at this point in time.

[–] batmaniam@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well right, which is why they're separate things entirely. And I am definitely taking some poetic license, but I outlined a pretty concrete example of how the way the scientific process is structured it's a tool for what's demonstrable, not inherently what's correct. In what I outlined, it's possible you could never gather that data. In every sense that matters most of the universe would no longer exist.

You can do the same thing in reverse (we'll never actually know what happened at the big bang, we weren't there, still we can figure out a lot). It just drives the point home more when you realize there are things you can look at, observe, make hypothesis and test against here today, that will essentially leave the realm of science in the future.

So again, this is definitely some navel gazing, and I'm just about as atheistic as they come, but the original spawn of this part of the thread was "how can any scientist be religious". It's because the scientific process isn't actually concerned with being "correct", now or in the future, just plausible and useful. I've worked in the lab with folks who viewed their work as understanding the universe someone created for them. That's entirely compatible with the scientific method. You can take a minute to appreciate the insanity and beauty of everything we know about this universe and the fact that were even capable of comprehending some of it without it corrupting your scientific method. Some people choose to appreciate that insanity and beauty and assign divine intent. So long as the graph has a decent R^2, that's just fine.

[–] teichflamme@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I think you make an interesting point and got me thinking, didn't want to come of as standoffish or something.

I just think science pointing at faith loses the nuance between the assumption that a working theory is currently correct and the deep belief in dogma. Technically you could call both faith, but they are very different.

As you pointed out science deals with unknowns and sometimes there's not even a theory. Faith has historically been one of the primary ways to deal with any kinds of unknowns, of course, but it's not the only one.

I agree that being a scientist and being faithful isn't a contradiction. I feel like science is a very broad term and certain disciplines might be more or less inclined to be religious though.

[–] batmaniam@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It's just one of those things in terms of logic of the system giving rise outside of itself. Like I said, dogma and religion are two very different things. I just find a lot of beauty in the fact that science can predict literal apotheosis by our own definition; it's inherent in the system. If someone chooses to see that and assign intent, I can't argue.

There's just something amazing about a system which defines the conditions which are outside it's grasp. It's like how banach-tarski shows 1+0=2. Practical? Not really, but none the less... under certain conditions...

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

No.

Faith isn't outside of science by it's nature it was decreed to be as such. We can study faith perfectly fine. Go join all those studies where they get people to pray while getting a CAT scan or testing the impact on patient recovery with prayer. Of course it never works the opposite way. If religion had evidence it was true you would never stop hearing about it, since it doesn't it declares that it doesn't need it. Isn't that freaken convenient?

Secondly your example of one day, in tens of billions of years, humanity won't be able to study somethings is not here or there. Yes, as far as I know it will be true but a limit on what we can know is not the same as a capacity to know. If I flip a coin and don't tell you the results, you don't know the results but you can certainly comprehend the result.

The supernatural claims of religion are beyond our capacity to understand since they break what we know to be true.

Religion makes testable claims and those claims are broken often.

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