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Astronomer Vladimir Sudin: I would like to “live through” the history of the Universe
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- Астроном Владимир Сурдин: Я хотел бы ‘прожить' всю историю Вселенной
- Russian
- Asliturk, Miriam
- Education - Biology:evolution - Religious studies - Education, Science and Orthodoxy - Westernism and anti-westernism - Various approaches to the problem of correlation between science and theology
- 19-01-2017
- Астроном Владимир Сурдин: Я хотел бы ‘прожить' всю историю Вселенной
- Pravmir.Ru
- Evolution - Higher education - Physics - Secular education - religious education - Catholic Church - Russian Orthodox Church - Moscow State University
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- <p>Коскелло, Анастасия и Маковейчук, Юлия (2012). Астроном Владимир Сурдин: Я хотел бы ‘прожить' всю историю Вселенной. <em>Pravmir.Ru</em>. Retrieved from: <a href="http://www.pravmir.ru/astronom-vladimir-surdin-ya-xotel-by-prozhit-vsyu-istoriyu-vselennoj1/">http://www.pravmir.ru/astronom-vladimir-surdin-ya-xotel-by-prozhit-vsyu-istoriyu-vselennoj1/</a> </p>
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Moscow State University (MSU) professors taught a course for theological PhD students on new achievements in science. Professor V.G. Surdin is an atheist, critical of the Russian Orthodox Church’s role in Russian society. However, he participated in the MSU project. Surdin does not go to Orthodox churches and finds the atmosphere there depressing, unlike in European Catholic churches. In his writings Surdin has stated that Catholicism overcame the naïve methods of fighting science, whereas the ROC still fights against school curriculum in science. According to Surdin, this proves Russian backwardness in comparison with the more advanced Western culture. Surdin gave two courses and found theological students to be quite educated and curious, pointing out that they can clearly be divided into two categories: humanities and science students. The humanities students had weak knowledge of basic cosmology, for example, they could not tell the difference between a planet and a star. The science students knew astrology very well, some of them had been secular physics students, and were nostalgic of their secular scholarly life. Nowadays, there are no clerics that would interpret literally the Bible’s view on the origin of matter and other scientific knowledge. Catholic experience is valuable as it had dissociated science and spirituality. The solution, according to Surdin, is in having no interference of the Church in natural science. Church should work only with ethical and moral aspects of human life.
Speaking about his research, Surdin pointed out that currently there was no scientifically grounded alternative to the theory of the Big Bang. In the last thirty years progress in astronomy has been immense. According to Surdin, in the 1960s scientists basically knew nothing compared to today. He argued, however, that this is not a justification to use creationism in science. If humanity does not understand something now it will in the future. Science is leaving religious explanations behind. Even if we take into account the constantly changing scientific knowledge there is still no space for "God’s will" explanations. Surdin mentioned that he knew only two or three religious men in the scientific community, whereas women were, in his view, too emotional, easily manipulated by social trends and therefore more drawn to religion. The scientist argued that men possessed reserved minds and did not show their religiosity openly. Surdin explains the insignificant religiousity of MSU astronomers by the fact that their research centre had always been independent from the Department of Physics. The latter had had closer Communist party control, which is now transformed into closer affiliation with the state ideology of reviving religion. Surdin’s theory is that some scientists possibly turn to religion due to their personal fear of death, as a way to seek a form of comfort.
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