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The Six Days Against Evolution Pilgrim 2000

The Six Days Against Evolution

(collection of articles)

The editor of the collection is Priest Daniel Sysoev.

From the authors. Preface

"And the light shineth in darkness, and darkness shall not encompass it"

(John 1:5)

The Orthodox Church worldview, based on the prophetic, apostolic and patristic tradition, has always had a clear attitude to the questions of the origin of the universe – heaven and earth, as well as life and man. The need to publish this edition is due to the fact that under the guise of Orthodox teaching, anti-Christian ideas of evolutionism began to be proposed more and more often and more persistently by various authors. These poisonous seeds have already penetrated into the system of Orthodox education and are sometimes perceived by people who are not experienced as "progressive" Christianity. In fact, "Christian evolutionism" is one of the varieties of renovationism, modernism in theology.

A number of the materials included in this collection were put on public display at the October 29-30 meeting at the Russian Orthodox University named after St. John. Up. John the Theologian at the conference "Teaching in Orthodox Schools of the Creation of the World, Life and Man", held by the Department of Religious Education and Catechization of the Moscow Patriarchate. On the part of the evolutionists present, the presented reports provoked a violent emotional reaction (however, completely unsupported by any theological or scientific arguments).

When our book was already in typeset, it became known about the publication of another publication propagandizing the ideas of "Christian" evolutionism, the book "That Command, and I Was Created" (Christian Life Foundation, Klin, 1999). This book has a wonderful Orthodox title, but not content. In it, the authors, ostensibly in order to defend science and reconcile it with the faith, on the one hand, undermine the authority of Orthodoxy, and on the other hand, directly attack Orthodox creationists. Here is the pathos of the book: "Recently, books of a completely creationist nature have begun to appear, written by Orthodox clergy (the last two words are deliberately highlighted in bold – Author), which, in addition to bewilderment, already causes serious concern, because knowingly false, anti-scientific ideas are supported in this case by the authority of the priesthood..." (pp. 4-5)

In fact, in our opinion, the zeal of the laity and the authority of the priesthood are called upon to defend precisely the patristic teaching on the Biblical Six Days, and not at all the newfangled mythological hypotheses of "scientific" evolutionism.