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Annotation

The basis for the content of this book was the lectures that were read by the author at the Combined Sunday School at St. John's Cathedral. Annunciation Monastery in the city of Kirzhach (Vladimir-Suzdal diocese). The author expresses his deep gratitude to Bishop Eulogius, Archbishop of Vladimir and Suzdal, with whose blessing this work was accomplished, to the brethren of St. Annunciation Monastery, all scientific consultants, as well as residents of the city of Kirzhach, who contributed to the lecture work.

From the publisher

The existence of God cannot be scientifically proved. Religion and science are too different, different phenomena, and the scope of their "competence" is also very different. At the same time, however, it is an indisputable fact: the true science of true religion cannot contradict it. On the contrary, very often it directly or indirectly confirms those propositions of Divine Revelation relating to the creation of the visible world and man, which seem to the materialistic mind the most "incredible" and "improbable." And if, as was said above, it is impossible to base one's faith solely on scientific data, then to become acquainted with them, to study them in order to strengthen it, is undoubtedly both useful and necessary. And this book, The World Is God's Creation, is an excellent opportunity for this. Written in the form of answers to questions and representing a series of conversations with which its author spoke to an audience (mainly young people), it is easy to read and at the same time contains a solution to many perplexities that are so often encountered when they come to the Church by people who have been educated in a society in which the goal was to prove that there is no God, And the world arose from non-existence by an accidental coincidence.

From the author

Science and faith are two daughters of the One Great Parent, and they cannot enter into strife. M.V. Lomonosov How often, when talking about Christianity in a "raw" audience consisting of teenagers, I had to see indifferent, bored faces. What is this? Why is that? "Everything is clear" to them. This "everything is clear" was born because of our godless mentality - from newspapers, from TV programs, from the words of comrades, from the impressions of contemplating cities filled with half-naked women in hot weather, from the howling of rock music... from school textbooks, finally. This "everything is clear," I think, can be formulated as godlessness: "There is no God in the world. There is only this life in which a person lives for pleasure. No one "there" will be responsible for anything." And the catechist's words turn into another fairy tale. "And we already had Hare Krishnas and... These were. How are they? From Porfiry Ivanov..." etc., etc. So is everything really clear? Divine Revelation teaches us that one of the paths to true faith is through the knowledge of the world. On this path, the modern adolescent overcomes a number of "obstacles" and "blockages" that are created by modern pseudoscientific theories ("myths"). In order to clear the road from the "rubble", it is necessary to debunk myths and, first of all, the myth of the contradiction between true science and true religion. St. Ignatius Brianchaninov wrote: "The truth of the Faith is in unity with the truth of science" [1]. And indeed, experience shows that the religion of Divine Revelation (Holy Orthodoxy, the dogmas of which we know from Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition) does not contradict true science. The conflict between science and religion arises, firstly, when comparing false scientific theories with the truths of Divine Revelation and, secondly, when trying to compare the data of science and false religious dogmas. Among other "myths-blockages" I would like to note the following: The myth of the possibility of explaining the original origin of the world. Uniformitarian myth - "The laws of nature are everywhere and always the same" [2]. The myth of the evolutionary origin of plants and animals. The myth of the evolutionary origin of man from an ape. The myth of the possibility of explaining all phenomena of the human psyche by the laws of physiology. The myth that science does not or even cannot confirm the existence of various phenomena of religious experience and miracles by its methods [3]. May the pious reader forgive me for so often quoting the data of foreign authors, most of whom are Protestants in their religious views. As for the collection and analysis of facts that contradict pseudoscientific myths and correspond to the idea of the creation of the world, they cope with this task very successfully and at a high scientific level [4]. As for a number of dogmatic issues, due to the existence of deviations from the truth in Protestant confessions, many errors can be found in the books of these authors. And it must be said that if creationist science knew and understood Divine Revelation more accurately (i.e., Orthodox), then at least on some issues it could take a more stable position [5]. What creationist scholars have been able to show, however, is that many truths in Revelation do not contradict the facts collected and analyzed by scientists. Addition to the "Discourse on Death".- Works, vol. 3. St. Petersburg, 1886. ^ The absurdity of this myth is easily illustrated by one simple example. Suppose that some alien decided to study the laws by which human society lives, and he took, say, modern China as an object of study. Having carefully studied the principles on the basis of which the life of the modern Chinese is built, the alien concludes: "All people on Earth live according to these principles and have always lived this way." It seems that to any sensible person, such logic will seem, to put it mildly, strange. But it is on this logic that modern cosmology is based (which, as is known, is "on the verge of fantasy"), geology, etc. Note that the physics of the microcosm has already had to abandon this principle - as physicists assert, the mechanics of the microcosm is qualitatively different. ^ Contrary to the known facts. For example, see the description of experiments with myrrh-streaming skulls in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, conducted in the XIX century (S. Destunis. "Lives of the Saints", August 28, St. Petersburg, 1904), as well as the study of healing by prayer before the Kozelshchansk Icon of the Mother of God, the luminaries of psychoneurology of the XIX century - Sharko and Korsakov ("The Legend of the Miraculous Icons of the Mother of God..." (February 21), Kolomna, 1993). ^ This now not young trend in modern science is called "scientific creationism" and exists with its own scientific associations, research institutes, periodicals, a system for training postgraduate students, etc. ^ "It is desirable that one of the Orthodox Christians, having studied the positive sciences, then thoroughly study the asceticism of the Orthodox Church and give mankind a true philosophy based on exact knowledge, and not on arbitrary hypotheses" (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, A Word on Death. Composition, vol. 3, St. Petersburg, 1886). ^

Conversation OneWhy did people decide that the world is original?