Despite Russian Hopes to Combine Them, Science and Religion Now at the Periphery of Public Life, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 3 – Last week, Aleksandr Sergeyev, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called for integrating Russian society by combining the ideals of science and the Russian Orthodox Church (nauka.tass.ru/nauka/7063595), a call that ignores the fact that both religion and science are increasingly marginalized, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

            The Russian economist says Russia and the world more generally are at “the end of an era,” one that saw “extremely complicated relations between faith and knowledge” with science displacing religion as the source of descriptions of the world and promoting the idea of the centrality of natural law not faith as the source of values (snob.ru/entry/184764/).

            Science appeared to be the victor in this competition especially given that religion at the time of every period of revolutionary ferment stood against change. But science couldn’t simply replace religion because it was increasingly instrumental and specialized and thus not readily accessible to the population at large.

            Indeed, one can argue, Inozemtsev suggests, that the clashes between religion and science “which were the central vector of European history of the 16^th through the 19^th century led not so much to the victory of one of the sides as to the desacralization of both,” something reflected in the increasing number of atheists and of those without serious educations.

            “Neither in the religious nor in the scientific sphere can the overwhelming majority of people imagine themselves as actors” or even be inspired by the leaders of either side.  That has opened the way for the rise of a humanitarian legal culture based on elements of both but one that has weaker foundations than many suspect.

            As a result, “today, the most advanced societies really are at a certain crossroads and one must not fail to take note that both religion and science are speaking in the best cases at the distant periphery of the main discourses in society but are not setting the tone” for such discussions.

            That can be seen in fights over various sexual orientations and in discussions of the possibility of providing everyone with a certain minimum income. These struggles appear to represent the victory of one side or the other, but in fact, neither side is “capable of changing anything in the process of forming the outlines of a future society.”

             “The church can concentrate retrograde energy by uniting those who do not want change or are afraid of it.  And science can attract those who are curious by nature and who are willing to imagine a future very different than the present. But neither the one nor the other can be a unique focal point for those facing rapid and them inexplicable change.

                According to Inozemtsev, “the world of the 21^st century s a world of changes of such an extent that humanity has never known in its history. Religion and science to an equal degree are responsible for this state of affairs,” the first by setting up frameworks for social life and the second by breaking them down.  But neither can set the weather.

            “The era of religious communities has ended or is ended,” the economist says; but “the era of technotronic societies has not taken its place.” Instead, because of this contest, “irrational decisions are beginning to dominate the public agenda.” This may be good or bad, but it marks the retreat from the center of public life of the conflict between religion and science.

            Neither is as important to the population as either was earlier, and that truly opens the way to a brave new world whose basic features are far from clear.