INFO head Legoida regrets calls to ban Darwin’s theory
The head of the Synodal Department for Relations of the Church with Society and the Media of the Moscow Patriarchate (SINFO), Vladimir Legoida, expressed regret over calls to ban the teaching of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools. About his vision of the issue he told on the air of the radio station “Vera”.
According to a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the problem lies not in the theory itself, but in approaches to teaching. He noted that in an ordinary school, children “are told about the origins of man without philosophical depth.” And in Sunday school, without taking into account the scientific picture of the world, they are presented with what can be perceived as the opposite point of view. Because of this, the child may experience “cognitive dissonance.”
“What he will choose, what he will laugh at, what he will perceive as frivolous – we don’t know,” Legoyda said. At the same time, the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church noted that Christianity believes that modern science arose “in the bosom of the Christian tradition.”
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This, according to Legoyda, indicates the falsity of ideas about the inevitable conflict between science and religion. The question is not the need to ban certain theories, but to provide schoolchildren with an idea of the diversity of both the scientific world and ways of knowing that are not limited to science.
“The question is: why clash science and religion, why mix them? This is not very clear. Therefore, I regret some of the statements that were made by Orthodox people,” Legoida said.
He suggested that such people rushed to comment in a situation where “they could have remained silent” or given a more detailed and complex comment.
Previously, a bioinformatician, senior researcher at the Institute for Information Transmission Problems named after A.A. Kharkevich RAS, member of the RAS commission on combating pseudoscience Alexander Panchin gave a scientific assessment of proposals to ban the teaching of the theory of evolution in schools. In his opinion, the refusal to teach Darwin’s theory in schools will have a detrimental effect on the future generation, and the consequences will be complex.
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