The discussion about the creation of the world and the possibility of the evolutionary development of species, about the hypothesis of creationism and the hypothesis of evolution dies down and flares up with renewed vigor. Recently, the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The editor-in-chief of the Orthodoxy and the World portal talks with the priest Alexander Timofeev about evolution, creationism and the creation of the world. Father Alexander researches biblical archeology, he graduated from St. Petersburg State University with a degree in geological exploration, St. Petersburg Theological Seminary, Moscow Theological Academy
Father Alexander, please tell us about the hypotheses of evolution and creationism. Is it possible that the biblical picture of the creation of the world does not cancel evolutionary development? Does the creationist hypothesis really state that the world was created in 6 days of 24 hours each?
- The word creationism comes from lat. creatio - creation, creation, therefore, every believing scientist is inevitably a creationist, since he understands that the whole world was created, that life was also created in this world. Therefore, those Christians who share the evolutionary point of view (and, in a fairly large number of variants), it would be wrong to call them simply evolutionists, since they also believe in the creation of the world by God. That is, both are creationists.
There is a technical term "scientific creationism" - this is a scientific direction that arose in English-speaking (mainly American) Protestantism, among Protestant fundamentalists. To be precise, he is especially supported by Adventists (see, for example, Morris's book The Biblical Foundations of Modern Science; Morris is an Adventist). There are quite a few Baptists among them. Among Protestant fundamentalists, Luther's slogan “Sola scriptura” (“Scripture alone”) was taken to its logical limit in terms of interpreting Scripture through Scripture. The directions of liberal Protestantism (primarily German) went by criticizing the text of Holy Scripture and searching for various stories and legends in it. And the path of the fundamentalists is somewhat different. They want to keep faith in the Holy Scriptures unchanged. As a result, they cling to the letter of Scripture,but not having a tradition of correct interpretation, they often come to contradictions. An example of such a fallacy was shown by Luther. He denied the Copernican system, proceeding from the words of Joshua "stand the sun over Gibeon!" After all, if Navin ordered the Sun, not the Earth, to stop, therefore, the Sun revolves around the Earth, and not vice versa!
The trouble is that many Orthodox neophytes, psychologically drawing closer to American fundamentalists, quickly adopted their methodology. A large number of books corresponding in their methodology to "creation science" began to be published and replicated under the loud banner "Orthodox view of nature and evolution." Moreover, many of the books are either a translation or a compilation of American books. Later, however, the quotations and bibliography of Protestant authors were removed and replaced with lists of the works of the Holy Fathers, but the methodology remained purely Protestant. It should be noted right away that such an approach is uncharacteristic for Orthodox theology. There are a number of issues that cannot be unambiguously resolved within the framework of a literalistic interpretation. For example, the question about the duration of the days of the creation of the world. Below I will try to show the aporias (i.e.e difficulties) caused by such methods.
Many of the authoritative Orthodox theologians, such as Fr. Alexander Glagolev, Metropolitan John Wendland, Archpriest Peter Ivanov, Professor Nikolay Fioletov, Archpriest Gleb Kaleda, Serbian theologian Archpriest. Lazar Milin et al. Held different points of view, and their approach was often much more robust. They are considered supporters of the approach called concordism (from the Latin concordia, agreement) - not the opposition of biblical-theological knowledge to scientific theory, but agreement. However, it is necessary to make a reservation that the system of complete "coordination", according to prof. prot. Vasily Zenkovsky, “is false in its principle,” because science is constantly developing, but the text of Scripture and the theological approach to it remains the same. But here it is rather a difference in methodology, a difference in the subject, and not a contradiction.
Concordism implies that we do not want to confront the Orthodox worldview with science. Only we must clearly distinguish: what in science are facts, what are theoretical assumptions (which can also be verified), and what are speculations and the influence of ideology. The reconciliation of theological knowledge with science does not mean that concessions are made to what is passed off as science, i.e. Darwinism, dialectical materialism, Oparin-Haldane's theory of spontaneous life or Fomenko's "new chronology" and so on.
Reconciliation and agreement are two different things. This is primarily a matter of methodology. It is methodologically important to assess that the Lord has left a lot of cognitive opportunities for a person, even in his fallen state. Sensory experience has been left to man, and it is reliable enough. Human intelligence can draw the right conclusions and there must be an understanding of the place of this in the history of human ideas, human searches, and human thought. The knowledge of this world is available to man, and therefore science has a legal right to exist; another thing is that we must understand the boundaries of science, understand where the possibilities of the human mind end. The sane scientist understands how little he can comprehend, how limited the possibilities of science and rational knowledge. However, in addition,what science has groped empirically, what can be verified, must be trusted. After all, this is trust in human experience. And the complete denial of human empirical experience raises a big question. After all, religious knowledge is also based on experience. Experience should be testable, but not denied. The experience of religious knowledge is different from scientific experience.
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Let me explain with an example. The question that is a typical stumbling block is the question of the duration of the creation of the world. The science of geology - an empirical science that differs from the exact theoretical sciences and related to reality - is based on the study of earth deposits. For example, sedimentary deposits, of which the earth's crust is composed, are quite diverse. Different layers of limestone, sandstone and other sedimentary rocks overlap each other in a certain sequence. All this appeared on Earth as a result of her life, and obviously not on the first day of creation. Geology examines these layers, looks at them. Those layers that are below arose earlier, those that are higher later. Traces of fossils were discovered, then the fossils themselves. The question arises: how to relate to the fact that over the course of a long geological record,which can be traced in sediments, at the base are more primitive animals, at the top - more highly organized? It can be recognized that during the time when the deposits were formed, life changed in a certain way, or we can say that maybe God created this world in this way, that primitive organisms and dinosaurs were already in these rocks. Or offer a model, like catastrophic geology or flood geology, explaining the origin of the entire set of geological layers by their sediments during the flood year. And this is already a claim both for the scientific knowledge of the world and for a certain interpretation of Scripture.that maybe the Lord created this world that way, that primitive organisms and dinosaurs were already in these rocks. Or offer a model, like catastrophic geology or flood geology, explaining the origin of the entire set of geological layers by their sediments during the flood year. And this is already a claim both for the scientific knowledge of the world and for a certain interpretation of Scripture.that maybe the Lord created this world that way, that primitive organisms and dinosaurs were already in these rocks. Or offer a model, like catastrophic geology or flood geology, explaining the origin of the entire set of geological layers by their sediments during the flood year. And this is already a claim both for the scientific knowledge of the world and for a certain interpretation of Scripture.
Descartes was not so wrong in his argument about trusting experience. His thought “if God is love, then He could not give me feelings that would completely deceive me” is definitely a Christian reasoning. The question is, can the world around it be read, deciphered by a person? For the holy fathers, the world is truly a book that can be read. Saint Gregory Palamas called the world "the writing of the Self-Hypostatic Word." Gregory the Theologian called the world a “book”. Basil the Great called the world "the school of rational souls."
That is, the world can be cognizable, and with the help of it you can learn a lot. But if instead of sound reflection, accompanied by a feeling of reverence for the Creator, you blame everything on the fact that the Lord created this world in this way, then this is not right. This approach is observed among Protestant fundamentalists. The question arises, in what world do interpreters of this kind want to place us? To a world in which we cannot trust even our sensations, i.e. looking at the trail of, for example, a camel, we have no right to assume that a camel passed here. What if the Lord created sand with this footprint like that? The followers of the so-called creation science have strayed far from the patristic understanding of the relationship between faith and knowledge. Although we have a rich tradition of correct and sound correlation of the requirements of faith and reason.
In the history of Russian theology and science, we will find a lot of positive examples
For example, here is the view of the great Russian scientist M. V. Lomonosov on the relationship between religious experience and scientific truth, which he calls truth, in the question of the order of the world: “Truth and faith are two sisters, daughters of one Most High parent, they can never come into conflict with each other, unless someone out of some vanity and testimony of his wisdom, enmity will creep on them. And prudent and kind people should consider whether there is any way to explain and disgust the imaginary civil strife between them, as perpetrated by the above-mentioned wise teacher of our Orthodox Church [meaning St. Basil the Great], to whom, in agreement, Saint Damascene … said “So, let it be admitted that it [the earth] is established on itself, or on the air, or on the waters, or on nothing, should not deviate from the pious way of thinking,but to confess that everything is preserved together and is contained by the power of the Creator "[Exact presentation of the Orthodox faith 2.6] That is: physical reasoning about the structure of the world serves to glorify God and is not harmful at all." Having cited rather extensive discussions about the structure and origin of the world of St. Basil the Great and John Damascene, M. V. Lomonosov continues: "So these great lamps tried to make friends with the knowledge of nature with faith, combining his condescension with divinely inspired reflections in some books, in proportion to the knowledge of that time in astronomy."Lomonosov continues: "So these great lamps tried to make friends with the knowledge of nature with faith, combining his condescension with divinely inspired reflections in some books, to the extent of the knowledge in astronomy of that time."Lomonosov continues: "So these great lamps tried to make friends with the knowledge of nature with faith, combining his condescension with divinely inspired reflections in some books, in proportion to the knowledge of that time in astronomy."
Lomonosov's further reasoning shows how far he was from materialism and the ascension of his own scientific knowledge “Oh, if then the present astronomical instruments were invented and numerous observations were made from men, ancient astronomers with incomparably superior knowledge of heavenly bodies; Oh, if then thousands of new stars with new phenomena were discovered, what spiritual soaring, combined with their excellent eloquence, would preach these holy rhetoricians the majesty, wisdom and power of God!"
Finally, I will allow myself a classic quote from this famous work of Lomonosov, about "The Appearance of Venus in the Sun, observed at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences", in which he published his remarkable discovery of the atmosphere on Venus: "The Creator gave the human race two books. In one he showed his majesty, in the other his will. The first is the visible world, created by Him so that a person, looking at the enormity, beauty and harmony of his buildings, would recognize the divine omnipotence, in proportion to the concept given. The second book is Holy Scripture. It shows the creator's favor for our salvation. In these prophetic and apostolic divinely inspired books, the interpreters and exponents are the great church teachers. And in this book the addition of the addition of the visible world of this is the essence of physics, mathematics,astronomers and other exponents of divine in nature influenced actions are the essence of what the prophets, apostles and church teachers are in this book … Interpreters and preachers of the Holy Scriptures show the path to virtue … with thanksgiving to the Almighty. Wallpaper not only certifies us about the existence of God, but also about His untold deeds to us. It is a sin to sow tares and strife among them! " (For the full text, see, for example, https://djvu-books.narod.ru/lomonosov.html) Here is the admonition of the great Russian thinker both to fundamentalists who deny scientific knowledge and to those who have lost faith in God and extolled by their knowledge of scientists.apostles and church teachers … Interpreters and preachers of the Holy Scriptures show the way to virtue … Astronomers open the temple of Divine power and splendor, and I also seek ways to our temporary bliss, combined with thanksgiving to the Almighty. Wallpaper not only certifies us about the existence of God, but also about His untold deeds to us. It is a sin to sow tares and strife among them! " (For the full text, see, for example, https://djvu-books.narod.ru/lomonosov.html) Here is the admonition of the great Russian thinker both to fundamentalists who deny scientific knowledge and to those who have lost faith in God and extolled by their knowledge of scientists.apostles and church teachers … Interpreters and preachers of the Holy Scriptures show the way to virtue … Astronomers open the temple of Divine power and splendor, and I also seek ways to our temporary bliss, combined with thanksgiving to the Almighty. Wallpaper not only certifies us about the existence of God, but also about His untold deeds to us. It is a sin to sow tares and strife among them! " (For the full text, see, for example, https://djvu-books.narod.ru/lomonosov.html) Here is the admonition of the great Russian thinker both to fundamentalists who deny scientific knowledge and to those who have lost faith in God and extolled by their knowledge of scientists. Wallpaper not only certifies us about the existence of God, but also about His untold deeds to us. It is a sin to sow tares and strife among them! " (For the full text, see, for example, https://djvu-books.narod.ru/lomonosov.html) Here is the admonition of the great Russian thinker both to fundamentalists who deny scientific knowledge and to those who have lost faith in God and extolled by their knowledge of scientists. Wallpaper not only certifies us about the existence of God, but also about His untold deeds to us. It is a sin to sow tares and strife among them! " (For the full text, see, for example, https://djvu-books.narod.ru/lomonosov.html) Here is the admonition of the great Russian thinker both to fundamentalists who deny scientific knowledge and to those who have lost faith in God and extolled by their knowledge of scientists.
But the question may arise: are we thus making concessions to Darwinism? Darwinism is not an empirical science, it is a theory based on a limited number of facts, tendentiously selected and built into a model. The only scientific prediction about continuous transitions from genus to genus failed during the subsequent period of development of paleontology. For example, I was studying turtles that appeared suddenly in the Triassic, they were very large, clumsy (like Triassochelys). And no matter how much they looked, they could not find candidates for ancestral forms. Angiosperms also appear suddenly at the end of the Cretaceous. The identification of specific ancestral forms still causes great difficulties.
The famous paleobotanist academician A. L. Takhtadzhyan (died last year) was even forced to offer an original ontogenetic model of macroevolution (the so-called "soft saltationism", from the Latin "saltatio" - a leap). The most difficult problem of macroevolution - the gaps between large taxa, was explained by him with the help of tiered neoteny (a purely speculative and scientifically unproven phenomenon), as a result of sharp qualitative leaps, which the truth cannot be observed.
The gradual development of life, which we see, speaks not of spontaneous evolution, but of the deployment of the hierarchy in time. The Lord created the world hierarchically. In God's plan, living beings are arranged in a certain hierarchical order, and this hierarchy is consistently revealed in time, and there is no spontaneous evolution from amoeba to man. The hierarchy that we see in this world is a harmonious building plan, a harmonious plan of God. The concepts of nomogenesis and orthogenesis, including the facts that exist today, can be considered as much more reliable.
Let's return to the question of the duration of the days of the creation of the world. When they say that the day of creation, according to the Holy Scriptures, is 24 hours, this is an attempt at a literal interpretation of Scripture. Every day of creation, something new appeared that the Lord brought out of non-existence. One day differs from another by the emergence, by the creative will of God, of something new that could not appear independently as a result of development, which is fundamentally irreducible from the previous one, but requires a new manifestation of the Almighty creative power. The literal interpretation of the Holy Scriptures corresponds little to reality. It is not very correct to refer to the holy fathers of the Church who spoke about creation in 24 hours. First, not everyone thinks so. It is enough to read The Six Days of St. Gregory of Nyssa. Secondly, it is necessary to understand in what context the Holy Fathers wrote about the creation of the world:they argued with pagan philosophical ideas about the infinity and beginninglessness of the world (that is, attributing divine properties to it). In this regard, it was very important for the Church Fathers to show that the world was created at a certain time, it is not beginningless, but has the beginning of its existence from God, it is not infinite, but created at a certain time.
Protestant creationists are contrary to Scripture. Considering the day of creation of the first chapter of Genesis as 24 hours long, they do not notice that already in the second chapter all days before the appearance of man are named “that day”. The synodal translation does not sound very clearly "at that time", although in the Hebrew text it is written in that "yom", i.e. day. A contradiction also arises in connection with the patristic concept of the time of human history. Now what day of creation is it? Seventh! Isn't it really delayed in comparison with the previous ones ?! The future century, according to church tradition, we call the eighth day. Even the mathematical infinity icon ∞ is taken from this tradition. The Protestants get out of this difficulty in a very interesting way. You can see the most amusing reasoning of Morris: "the seventh day, on which the Lord rested, was also 24 hours long, but after it came the eighth, ninth, tenth, and so on until the present day." But if such a reasoning can suit a Protestant, then it cannot satisfy a person of church tradition.
The scientific picture of the world is also full of aporia. Creationists attribute sedimentary deposits to the time of the global flood, since in six days of the creation of the world, such a huge amount of sediment would not have had time to form. But how to explain the sequence of fauna in sedimentary rocks? Absolutely fantastic pictures are drawn: trilobites crawled along the bottom, so they were first covered with sand, then primitive animals were covered, then dinosaurs, then more highly organized animals that ran faster. The last one was a man (apparently people ran the fastest). This picture is very naive, and even a sane schoolboy will laugh at it.
We know what mountains are: they are quite complex formations, consisting of sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous rocks and arising at the site of the collision of two continents. Two plates collide with each other, this collision is called a collision of continents. Sedimentary rocks are deformed into folds and mountains are formed. The flood account says that it lasted until the summits of the highest mountains were covered. Those. the mountains already existed. It follows from this that geological activity, sedimentation processes leading to the formation of sedimentary rocks, existed already before the flood. Therefore, it is simply impossible to attribute the entire geological history of the Earth to the time of the flood.
Tell me, please, do geological studies confirm the existence of the flood and can we talk about scientific confirmation of the biblical story? Was the ark really found on Mount Ararat?
- Perhaps, the Holy Scriptures indicate not Mount Ararat, which is located in Armenia, but a whole mountain range, since we are dealing with the original consonant text, which indicates three letters ppm. Hence the name of the ancient Armenian state of Urartu in the east of modern Turkey.
Indeed, an expedition was organized to Mount Ararat, three of which were headed by the Spanish explorer Fernand Navarra. The most effective was the 1955 expedition. It was assumed that he found the ark frozen into the ice of a mountain lake at an altitude of five kilometers. Perhaps this is so, but perhaps not, since he found pieces of ancient wood inside a glacial lake, but it is impossible to unequivocally prove that this is an ark. A piece of the wall could be seen through a small hole in the ice, but it is not known whether it comes from the ark or from an ancient wooden building. To prove this, more thorough and serious research is needed. He brought several pieces, botanists identified this tree as a representative of the genus Quercus, i.e. oak. The age by the radiocarbon method was determined about 5 thousand years
Regarding the expedition, about which the press was written, I can say the following: this is sheer charlatanism. This expedition set out in search of the ark, ignoring all previous data. They photographed the so-called "Ararat anomaly", similar to a seed and representing a rock. The expedition report, which was published in Arguments and Facts, is scientifically incorrect and is a common newspaper duck.
As for a possible explanation of the mechanism of the flood from the point of view of a geologist, I can say the following.
I am sure that the story of the flood is quite realistic, but it was not universal (in the sense that it covered the entire Earth), but universal. The coverage of the entire earth's surface by the waters of the flood for at least a couple of kilometers (and the tops of the highest mountains should have been hidden) is unlikely from a physical point of view and not necessary from the point of view of Scripture. In the Greek language, the flood is called cataclysm (from the Greek kataklysmos), which can be translated as purification. That is, it was necessary to cleanse the world of human sin, and there was no need to drown Australia, where there were no people either. Accordingly, the flood affected only those territories where people lived.
Almost all peoples: the Polynesians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the American Indians, etc. - in the epic there is a reference to the flood. But this does not mean that the flood was in America (as American creationists are trying to show), but that all people come from the offspring of Noah. The waters of the flood really covered Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Front East to the Caucasus. It was accompanied by catastrophic showers and thunderstorms.
Even when the Scriptures say that “the springs of the great abyss were opened and the windows of heaven were opened,” here we are talking not only about water from heaven, but also about the ocean (in this case, the ocean is called the abyss in both Hebrew and Greek). Most likely, the land was flooded with water from the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Thus, the cleansing of the Earth from human sin was carried out. I think that at first there was a downward movement of the earth's crust, then upward, and we can observe traces of this movement. In the regions that have been flooded, there is a large amount of sediments, and there are also chains of lakes-seas: Black, Caspian, Aral. The subsidence of the earth's crust, and then its uplift in this region, is also indicated by the presence of a large amount of oil in this region. In the zones of the Caspian Sea, Iraq, Iran and the Persian Gulf are the largest deposits of oil,since it was these areas that experienced the fastest sinking and uplift. Oil, as you know, is formed in the territories that have experienced rapid tectonic movements: submersion and then rise. Of course, I cannot scientifically prove this hypothesis, since this requires serious geological research. This is a hypothesis. Another confirmation that the flood was in those regions that I spoke about is that the first civilizations were located in these regions, for example the Sumerian.that the flood was in those regions that I spoke about, it is that in these regions there were the first civilizations, for example, the Sumerian.that the flood was in those regions that I spoke about, it is that in these regions there were the first civilizations, for example, the Sumerian.
But I can say for sure that the flood is a very real event, and the only realistic description of the existence of the flood and the ark is only Holy Scripture.
Thank you very much, Father Alexander
Anna Danilova spoke with priest Alexander Timofeev