Russia’s science and higher education ministry has dismissed the head of a prestigious genetics institute who sparked controversy by contending that humans once lived for centuries and that the shorter lives of modern humans are due to their ancestors’ sins, state news agency RIA-Novosti said Thursday.

Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination.

Kudryavtsev, who headed the Russian Academy of Science’s Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, made a presentation at a conference in 2023 in which he said people had lived for some 900 years prior to the era of the Biblical Flood and that “original, ancestral and personal sins” caused genetic diseases that shortened lifespans.

  • @afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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    110 months ago

    The constants of the universe do not require an intelligent designer. Additionally religion depends on the supposed non-consistent behavior of existence. E.g. miracles.

    Really can’t have it both ways. Does the universe appear governed by laws? That means it has an intelligent creator. Does it appear governed by chance? Well that also requires an intelligent creator. The assertion can’t be tested and as such isn’t worth worrying about.

    • @SpezBroughtMeHere@lemmy.world
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      010 months ago

      So where did gravity come from? Where did the laws of thermodynamics come from? What about the laws of motion? If you can’t definitively explain its origin, objectively why is God not a plausible answer?

      • @afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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        210 months ago

        Really can’t have it both ways. Does the universe appear governed by laws? That means it has an intelligent creator. Does it appear governed by chance? Well that also requires an intelligent creator. The assertion can’t be tested and as such isn’t worth worrying about.

        You must have forgotten to read this part. I know because you decided to ignore it.