Among all the hypotheses about the origin of humanity, the religious one is the most ancient: it appeared in those days when only religion, but not science, could answer complex questions. Religious theory of human origins does not require proof because it is based on faith. This does not suit scientists, but it completely satisfies believers.

Ancient religions and religions of the East

Residents of Ancient Egypt, as well as Sumerians They believed that man was the creation of the gods. At the same time, clay was confidently named as the material for creating the first person. In all likelihood, this was due to the fact that clay was a common material, plastic and convenient for modeling - in a word, ideal for creating people.

It is noteworthy that when creating the first people, it was not water that was used to mix clay, but blood, and the blood of the gods. This brought people closer to the deities. At the same time, the Egyptians believed that the gods created people for a reason, but as their slaves.

Eastern religions were rather indifferent to the question of the emergence of humanity. Buddha himself simply did not answer this question, and his followers did the same. The idea of ​​the endless wheel of samsara, from which one can only get off by reaching a certain level enlightenment and plunging into nirvana does not imply any beginning of the world at all. According to the philosophy of Buddhism, the world has always existed, and people have always existed, and how the forms of their existence changed depended on various factors.

Taoism, the only religion in the world where there are no gods as a class, also does not pay much attention to the creation of humanity. According to this religion, two energies emerged from the original chaos - male and female. And everything that exists in this world is the fruit of the interaction of these energies. There are no exceptions for people.

The religious views of the peoples of India, on the contrary, assumed the divine origin of man. There is no consensus regarding which god exactly people owe their appearance to, but most often they name the name of Brahma, and a little less often - Shiva. It is interesting that the Hindu gods did not sculpt people from clay, but simply created new creatures with the power of their spirit.

Christianity

Today Christianity is one of the most widespread religions in the world. In addition, this religion has had a huge influence on the culture of many countries on the planet. And it is not surprising that it was the Christian myth about the emergence of man that became widely known.

The process of creation of the world is described in the first part of the Bible - the holy Christian book. According to Christianity, man is God's last creation, which allows him to be considered the most perfect creation. The first man, Adam, was created from the “dust of the earth,” after which God breathed life into him and placed him in the Garden of Eden. Adam's task was to cultivate the garden and come up with names for all the animals that existed at that time. Soon Adam was given a wife - Eve. To create it, God used Adam's rib.

God forbade touching only two trees - the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. However, under the influence of the Serpent, the first people bypassed the ban and tried the fruit from the Tree. This caused the wrath of God, who drove Adam and Eve out of paradise. This story well reflects the essence of religion, based on humility and obedience - for violating the prohibition, people became mortal, Eve was predicted to give birth to children in pain, and Adam was predicted to work in the sweat of his brow. Subsequently, the life of the first people was joyless and full of suffering, but they fulfilled their destiny and became the ancestors of the human race.

Much less known is the legend about Adam’s first wife, Lilith. . The story of this marriage was not included in the Bible, but is mentioned in Kabbalistic theory. Lilith was created by God in the same way as Adam, therefore she considered herself equal to her husband and did not want to obey him. She escaped (or rather, flew away) from Adam, but was overtaken and punished by the angels . As a result, Adam's first wife turned into a demoness who specialized in killing newborn babies and women in labor. Despite the fact that she was the first woman, her line was interrupted, therefore Eve, whom God created taking into account previous mistakes, is considered the foremother of humanity.

Creationism

Creationism is a theological concept according to which man (like all things) was the product of the activity of a creator, that is, God. The origin of man from God has not been in doubt for thousands of years. However, at the end of the 19th century, the development of science led to the fact that religious views based solely on faith in God began to seem unconvincing against the backdrop of empirically verified scientific discoveries. As a result, a new term emerged to denote the views of conservative Christians who do not accept the theory of evolution and other scientific discoveries.

Most scientists are highly skeptical of creationism. None of the provisions of creationism can be verified empirically, therefore even theories that claim to be scientific do not inspire scientific world trust. Nevertheless, this theory has many fans, which is reflected, for example, in education: there were precedents when, under pressure from supporters of creationism, the theory of evolution was not taught in schools. For this reason, the attitude towards creationism in the field of education is wary; this concept is seen as violating human rights.

There are many currents in creationism - from literal interpretations of the Bible and other religious literature to theories at the intersection of science and religion. Such theories, for example, may not deny geophysical data about the origin of the planet, but categorically reject the theory of evolution. Only evolutionary creationism does not deny evolution as such, but at the same time considers it an instrument of God, and not a natural process.

Maria Bykova

The human worldview is anthropocentric by nature. As long as people have existed, they have asked themselves: “Where are we from?”, “What is our place in the world?” Man is a central object in the mythology and religions of many peoples. It is also fundamental in modern science. Different peoples at different times had different answers to these questions.

There are three global approaches, three main points of view on the emergence of man: religious, philosophical and scientific. The religious approach is based on faith and tradition; it usually does not require any additional confirmation of its correctness. The philosophical approach is based on a certain initial set of axioms, from which the philosopher builds his picture of the world through inferences.

The scientific approach is based on facts established through observations and experiments. To explain the connection between these facts, a hypothesis is put forward, which is tested by new observations and, if possible, experiments, as a result of which it is either rejected (then a new hypothesis is put forward) or confirmed and becomes a theory. In the future, new facts may refute the theory; in this case, the following hypothesis is put forward, which better corresponds to the entire set of observations.

Religious, philosophical, and scientific views changed over time, influenced each other and intricately intertwined. Sometimes it is extremely difficult to figure out which area of ​​culture to attribute a particular concept to. The number of existing views is enormous. Not possible in summary consider at least a third of them. Below we will try to understand only the most important of them, the ones that most influenced people’s worldview.

The Power of the Spirit: Creationism

Creationism (Latin creatio - creation, creation) is a religious concept according to which man was created by some higher being - God or several gods - as a result of a supernatural creative act.

The religious worldview is the oldest attested in written tradition. Tribes with a primitive culture usually chose different animals as their ancestors: the Delaware Indians considered the eagle to be their ancestor, the Osag Indians considered the snail to be their ancestor, the Ainu and Papuans from Moresby Bay considered the dog to be their ancestor, the ancient Danes and Swedes considered the bear to be their ancestor. Some peoples, for example, the Malays and Tibetans, had ideas about the emergence of man from apes. On the contrary, the southern Arabs, ancient Mexicans and the Negroes of the Loango coast considered monkeys to be wild people with whom the gods were angry. The specific ways of creating a person, according to different religions, are very diverse. According to some religions, people appeared on their own, according to others, they were created by gods - from clay, from breath, from reeds, from own body and one thought.

There are a huge variety of religions in the world, but in general creationism can be divided into orthodox (or anti-evolution) and evolutionary. Anti-evolutionist theologians consider the only correct point of view set forth in tradition, in Christianity - in the Bible. Orthodox creationism does not require other evidence, relies on faith, and ignores scientific data. According to the Bible, man, like other living organisms, was created by God as a result of a one-time creative act and did not change subsequently. Proponents of this version either ignore the evidence of long-term biological evolution, or consider it the result of other, earlier and possibly failed creations (although could the Creator have failed?). Some theologians acknowledge the existence in the past of people different from those living now, but deny any continuity with the modern population.

Evolutionary theologians recognize the possibility of biological evolution. According to them, animal species can transform into one another, but the will of God is the guiding force. Man could also have arisen from lower organized beings, but his spirit remained unchanged from the moment of initial creation, and the changes themselves occurred under the control and desire of the Creator. Western Catholicism officially stands on the position of evolutionary creationism. Pope Pius XII's 1950 encyclical "Humani generis" admits that God could have created not a ready-made man, but an ape-like creature, however, investing in him an immortal soul. This position has since been confirmed by other popes, such as John Paul II in 1996, who wrote in a message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that “new discoveries convince us that evolution must be recognized as more than a hypothesis.” It’s funny that for millions of believers, the opinion of the Pope on this issue means incomparably more than the opinion of thousands of scientists who have devoted their entire lives to science and rely on the research of other thousands of scientists. In Orthodoxy there is no single official point of view on issues of evolutionary development. In practice, this leads to the fact that different Orthodox priests interpret the moments of the emergence of man in completely different ways, from a purely orthodox version to an evolutionary-creationist version similar to the Catholic one.

Modern creationists conduct numerous studies in order to prove the lack of continuity of ancient people with modern people, or - existence completely modern people in ancient times. To do this, they use the same materials as anthropologists, but look at them from a different angle. As practice shows, creationists in their constructions rely on paleoanthropological finds with unclear dating or location conditions, ignoring most of the other materials. In addition, creationists often operate using methods that are incorrect from a scientific point of view. Their criticism attacks those areas of science that have not yet been fully illuminated - the so-called "blank spots of science" - or are unfamiliar to the creationists themselves; Usually such reasoning impresses people who are not sufficiently familiar with biology and anthropology. For the most part, creationists are engaged in criticism, but You can’t build your concept on criticism, and they don’t have their own independent materials and arguments. However, we must admit that scientists have some benefit from creationists: the latter serve as a good indicator of the understandability, accessibility and popularity of the results scientific research to the general public, an additional incentive for new works.

It is worth noting that the number of creationist movements, both philosophical and scientific, is very large. In Russia, they are almost not represented, although a significant number of natural scientists are inclined towards a similar worldview.

Religious hypothesis (creationism)

Views based on the fact that man was created by God or gods arose much earlier than materialistic theories of the spontaneous generation of life and the evolution of anthropoid ancestors into man. In various philosophical and theological teachings of antiquity, the act of human creation was attributed to various deities.

For example, according to Mesopotamian myths, the gods under the leadership of Marduk killed their former rulers Abzu and his wife Tiamat, the blood of Abzu was mixed with clay, and the first man arose from this clay. Hindus had their own views on the creation of the world and man in it. According to their ideas, the world was ruled by a triumvirate - Shiva, Krishna and Vishnu, who laid the foundation for humanity. The ancient Incas, Aztecs, Dagons, Scandinavians had their own versions, which basically coincided: man is a creation of the Supreme Intelligence or simply God.

This theory states that man was created by God, the gods, or divine power out of nothing or from some non-biological material. The best known biblical version is that God created the world in seven days, and the first people - Adam and Eve - were created from clay. This version has more ancient Egyptian roots and a number of analogues in the myths of other peoples.

The myths about the transformation of animals into people and the birth of the first people by gods can also be considered a variety of the theory of creation. Of course, the most ardent followers of this theory are religious communities. Based on the sacred texts of antiquity (the Bible, the Koran, etc.), followers of all world religions recognize this version as the only possible one. This theory appeared in Islam, but became widespread in Christianity. All world religions gravitate toward the version of God the creator, but his appearance may change depending on the religious branch.

Orthodox theology considers the creation hypothesis to be self-evident. However, various evidence has been put forward for this hypothesis, the most important of which is the similarity of myths and legends of different peoples telling about the creation of man.

Modern theology uses the latest scientific data to prove the creation hypothesis, which, however, for the most part do not contradict evolutionary theory. Since the end of the last century, the theory of evolution has dominated throughout the world, but several decades ago new scientific discoveries made many scientists doubt the possibility of the evolutionary mechanism. In addition, if the evolutionary theory has at least some explanation for the process of the emergence of living matter, then the mechanisms of the emergence of the Universe simply remain outside the scope of this theory, while religion provides comprehensive answers to many controversial issues. For the most part, creationism is based on the Bible, which provides a fairly clear diagram of the emergence of the world around us. Many people believe that creationism is a hypothesis that relies solely on faith in its development. However, creationism is precisely a science based on scientific methodology and the results of scientific experiments. This misconception arises, first of all, from a very superficial acquaintance with the theory of creation, as well as from a firmly established preconceived attitude towards this scientific movement.

As a result of this, many people have a much more favorable attitude towards completely unscientific theories not confirmed by practical observations and experiments, such as, for example, the fantastic “paleovisit theory”, which allows for the possibility of artificial creation of the known Universe by “external civilizations”.

Often, creationists themselves add fuel to the fire, putting faith on a par with scientific facts. This gives many people the impression that they are dealing more with philosophy or religion than with science.

The main goal of creationism is to promote human knowledge of the surrounding world using scientific methods and use this knowledge to solve the practical needs of mankind. Creationism, like any other science, has its own philosophy. The philosophy of creationism is the philosophy of the Bible. And this greatly increases the value of creationism for humanity, which has already seen from its own example how important the philosophy of science is for preventing the rash consequences of its development. Area of ​​research aimed at searching scientific evidence This version is called “scientific creationism.” Modern creationists strive to confirm the texts of the Bible with accurate calculations. Example: In particular, they prove that Noah’s ark could accommodate all “creatures in pairs” - considering that fish and other aquatic animals do not need a place in the ark, and other vertebrate animals - about 20 thousand species. If you multiply this number by two (a male and a female were taken into the ark), you get approximately 40 thousand animals. A medium-sized sheep transport van can accommodate 240 animals. This means that 146 such vans would be needed. And an ark 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high would accommodate 522 such wagons. This means that there was a place for all the animals and there would still be room left - for food and people. Moreover, God, according to Thomas Heinz from the Institute for Creation Research, would probably have thought of taking small and young animals so that they would take up less space and reproduce more actively.

religious hypothesis orthodox anthropogenesis

In the field of biology, the Middle Ages did not provide new ideas. At the same time, many ancient achievements were either lost or reinterpreted in a religious spirit. This is especially true for such ideological problems as the origin of life and the origin of man. Within the framework of the religious worldview, the origin of life and man was considered as a direct, immediate creation of them by God.

In one form or another, this view is characteristic of all three world religions of Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul,” is written in the biblical Book of Genesis. Islam interprets this issue in approximately the same way. Allah (who, according to the Koran, has a face, hands, eyes, sits on a throne) molded a man’s body from clay, and then spiritualized it: “... breathed into him from his spirit.” “God created you and what you do,” says the Quran. In Buddhism (with its strong focus on the search for moral self-awareness and self-improvement), the question of the origin of human society is not formulated so directly. Therefore, the suffering of the world and the people in it is beginningless. But on the other hand, an individual person is formed at all stages (nidanas) of his growth under the direct influence of the supernatural spirit. Divine consciousness permeates a person’s soul at the stage of his embryonic development, and then accompanies him throughout his life.

Religious ideas about the time of the emergence of man, as well as about the patterns of development of human society, were far from reality. Thus, Christian historiosophy attributed the beginning of human existence to 5509 BC. The entire history of mankind was divided into two main periods - “antediluvian” and “post-flood”. According to the biblical story, in the antediluvian era, on the last, final, sixth day of creation, God created Adam from the dust of the earth, and then Eve from his rib, and gave them the opportunity to live carefree in the Garden of Eden - the paradise abode. The new, “post-flood” humanity descended from the only “divine” people of the “antediluvian” era (i.e., direct descendants of Adam and Eve) - Noah and his descendants, who were saved during the flood in the ark, etc. and so on. It is interesting that in the Middle Ages, religious dogmas about the creation of man by God coexisted quite well with the most incredible fictions about the past of people and about the peoples of unknown countries.

Thus, medieval geographers and chroniclers took seriously the legends about dog-headed people, Phanesians (i.e. people wrapped in their huge ears like blankets), centaurs (people with the body of a horse), mantichores (creatures with the face of a man, the body of a lion and the tail of a scorpion), etc. Stories about the “miracles of India” that emerged in antiquity from mythological sources were especially popular. India is a country of “true miracles”: “There lived pygmies who fought with storks, and giants who fought with griffins. There were “gymnosophists” who contemplated the sun all day long, standing under its scorching rays, first on one and then on the other leg. There people were milling around with their feet turned back and with eight toes on each foot; kinocephals, i.e. people with dog heads and claws, barking and growling; a people whose women give birth to only one child, and always with white hair; tribes whose representatives have white hair in youth, but darken over the years; people who lie on their backs and lift their huge single leg up, thereby escaping the sun; people who get full from the smell of food; headless people whose eyes are in their stomachs; forest people with hairy bodies, dog fangs and terrifying voices; as well as many terrible zoomorphic creatures that combine the characteristics of several animals.”

As for the question of the emergence of humanity and its initial history, in the Middle Ages it was believed that everything about this had already been said in the Bible. Attempts to question this one of the main dogmas of Christianity were considered a most dangerous heresy and were severely persecuted. So, in 1450, Samuel Sars was burned at the stake of the Inquisition, who suggested that humanity is much more ancient than what is said in the Bible. The religious concept of human origin was an influential element of social consciousness in European countries until the mid-19th century.

11 Science and religion about the origin of man.

Medieval thinkers everywhere saw the manifestation of the Divine Mind, as each new discovered pattern convinced them of. The same position was held by the great naturalists of the New Age - Kepler, Newton, Leibniz, Maupertuis. Gradually, however, the situation began to change; scientists increasingly began to emphasize that science could do without the God hypothesis. In a modern textbook, for example in physics, you will not find discussions about God. The reason is that the existence of God cannot be confirmed by facts.

In science, they are very sensitive to the reliability of knowledge. Knowledge is reliable if you substantiate it well by logical means and appropriate experiments. In the case of religion, experimental methods are powerless in confirming or refuting the existence of God. God, by definition, is given in his revelations and miracles. This cannot be confirmed or refuted experimentally. Therefore neopositivists and analysts They do not consider religion to be a science. But they are not going to ridicule it, since they realize that religion is a cultural phenomenon, and rejection of it, if not always, then at least in very many cases, is tantamount to forgetting spirituality. “What would our feelings be if we heard nothing about Christ?” - asked Wittgenstein. But what, then, is faith in God? In answering this question, scientists, as a rule, strive to avoid any mysticism. Faith in God is a feeling, many analysts believe; faith in God is a universal thought about good, others believe, by the way, following Kant.

So, faith in God is a certain value, the validity of which is confirmed not by physical experiments, but by the practice of life. Religion acts as a certain aspiration of human consciousness, which, unlike mineral seekers, does not bite into the thickness of the earth, but builds a staircase to heaven. There are no scientific reasons to prevent this construction. This is where the formula defended by many scientists was born, according to which religion and science do not deny, but complement each other. There is no need to oppose science to religion or to elevate one above the other.

The position on the complementarity of religion and science is not to everyone’s liking - they often give priority to either religion or science. If this priority is expressed in a harsh form, then it comes to confrontation. The question is how highly one values ​​religion and science. In this regard, the following poetic lines of Goethe (your translation) are indicative: Science, mastering art, Religion will be sparingly appreciated. Without knowing science or art, they sincerely love religion.

As for modern, newest philosophy, it gives priority to science more often than ever before. The religious content of philosophy is decreasing. At the same time, variants of Christian philosophy are widespread. In Russia, Orthodox philosophy is cultivated, in the West - neo-Catholic and neo-Protestant.

“The natural cause of religion is anxiety about the future” (Thomas Hobbes).

“Religion is the art of intoxicating people in order to distract their thoughts from the evil that those in power inflict on them in this world” (Paul Henri Holbach).

“Philosophy is identical with religion” (Georg Hegel).

And although modern Russian Orthodox theologians are trying to create the impression that the Orthodox Church, unlike, for example, the Catholic Church, has never been at odds with science and has not persecuted advanced scientists, real historical facts testify to its wary, hostile attitude towards education, science and scientists. The Russian Orthodox Church, although on a smaller scale than the Catholic Church, in the pre-revolutionary period banned and burned scientific books, organized the persecution of major natural scientists - materialists, persecuted atheists and freethinkers, and hindered the development of education and science.

The Bible states that God created everything out of nothing. Modern science admits (precisely admits, but does not assert) that everything could be created from nothing. “Nothing” in scientific terminology is called a vacuum. Vacuum, which physics of the 19th century considered emptiness, according to modern scientific concepts, is a unique form of matter, capable of “giving birth” to material particles under certain conditions.

THE CONCEPT OF THE ARISE OF LIFE ON EARTH.

There are five concepts of the origin of life: --- creationism - the divine creation of living things; ---the concept of multiple spontaneous generation of life from inanimate matter (it was adhered to by Aristotle, who believed that living things could also arise as a result of the decomposition of soil); ----the concept of a stationary state, according to which life has always existed; ----the concept of panspermia - the extraterrestrial origin of life; ----the concept of the origin of life on Earth in the historical past as a result of processes that obey physical and chemical laws.

The first concept is religious and has no direct relation to science. The second was refuted by a 19th-century French microbiologist who studied the activity of bacteria. Louis Pasteur (known to us by the word "pasteurization"). The third, due to its originality and speculativeness, has always had few supporters.

Back to top XX V. the last two concepts dominated in science. The concept of panspermia, according to which life was brought to Earth from the outside, was based on the discovery during the study of meteorites and comets of “predecessors of life” - organic compounds that may have played the role of “seeds”.

The concept of the appearance of life on Earth in the historical past has two options. According to one, the origin of life is the result of the accidental formation of a single “living molecule,” in the structure of which the entire plan for the further development of living things was laid down. French biologist J. Monod writes that “life does not follow from the laws of physics, but is compatible with them. Life is an event whose uniqueness must be recognized.” According to another point of view, the origin of life is the result of the natural evolution of matter.