Some of you might be interested in extracts from a theological presentation–of a Russian Orthodox priest–that I just posted at:
pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/sysoev.html
Comments will be appreciated,
Ludwik
All I can find are other people’s comments about it. Do you have a functioning link to the paper itself?
…never mind. I found it.
As far as I can tell (which is pretty far), the only real conflict between Science and Christianity is a conflation of ontology. And it seems that Sysoev doesn’t understand that point.
Religion and Science are talking two different languages, but being unaware of this, many argue who is right or wrong rather than who actually meant what by what was said by each. On speaks of the behavior of a thing while the other speaks of the spirit in a thing. One speaks of dissonance while the other speaks of a demon. One speaks of the coherent and comprehensive whole while the other speaks of the holy.
And then beyond that, it appears that agreement is intentionally avoided by both parties. I can calculate why, but it seems to be one of those things that people just aren’t supposed to know (higher, hidden plans at work).
Unfortunately, I have to bring into question the sanity of all parties involved.
I don’t know about ‘religion’ or ‘science’ saying anything per se, as they don’t have mouths, but in a non-abstract way, religious people who do have mouths and scientific people who do have mouths don’t just speak a different language but happen to agree about everything beneath the words. That’s not true at all. They have fundamental, real, non-semantic disagreements about…well, about pretty much all the standard stuff most people think they disagree about.
To reduce these disagreements to a semantic confusion is the falsest thing I’ve read all day (but I did just wake up).
Just as an example, when I was a Christian I would have said to someone that they have to accept Jesus as their saviour in order to get into heaven (or rather the highest form of heaven) after death. When I said that, I wasn’t using any sort of obscure cryptic language that a scientific person doesn’t understand; I meant literally what I said.
And now that I’m not Christian, I literally, fully disagree. I don’t think that you’ll get any special rewards after you die for something so trite as believing in the right superstition. I’m not having a semantic disagreement with my old self. It’s a literal disagreement about what’s actually true.
Obviously that is the opinion you have gained in which you place utter immutable confidence. But then again, what do you really know about their semantic confusions?
For example:
You, being a scientism fanatic, don’t believe in spirits, right?
Think it’s quite strange to overestimate the role of theology now. I advise such people to read some scientific books on scientific topics -at first, Mr. Sagan.
Carl Sagan was a science-joke. 
Although I have to admit, his next generation mimic, M. Kaku, is even worse. 
… fairy tales to inspire children (aka “Santa-Claus stories”).