Veynik why I believe in God. Why do I believe in the God of Christians
Veinik A.I., “Why I believe in God. A study of the manifestations of the spiritual world”, Minsk: Publishing House of the Belarusian Exarchate, 1998. 320 pp.
Book text -
Introduction.
From the publisher.
Preface by the author.
Chapter I. What questions do journalists ask?
Chapter II. Religion and Science.
Chapter III. Two worlds - two sciences.
1. The genius Ivan Ilyin was sentenced to death.
2. Rational science resembles a country patchwork quilt.
3. What is science, such are the criteria for its evaluation.
4. The brilliant Thomas Kuhn was “chatted out.”
5. Implementation of the Russian idea in science.
6. The genius Ivan Panin was “silenced.”
7. General Theory (OT) of nature.
Chapter IV. Secrets of human nature.
1. Hunting for mirages.
2. Spirits of good and evil.
3. The law of free will.
4. Mechanisms of influence of spiritual laws on natural ones.
5. “Ask and you will receive.”
6. Humble yourself, you proud ones!..
7. Heaven and hell.
Chapter V. About the secrets of health.
Chapter VI. Secrets of thinking.
1. Error I.M. Sechenov and I.P. Pavlova.
2. The drama of the great scientist.
3. The brain is not an organ of thinking.
4. Does a person think with his heart?
5. Only the Almighty creates thoughts.
6. Does the human soul think?
7. The main secrets of thinking.
Chapter VII. Mysteries of the creation of the world.
1. What does atheism stand for?
2. What is time.
3. Six days of creation.
4. The Flood.
5. What is space.
6. Creation “out of nothing.”
7. The collapse of evil atheism.
Chapter VIII. About the structure of the universe.
1. The first bricks of the universe.
2. Briefly about space.
3. Dimensions and number of universes in the universe.
4. Briefly about time.
5. Parallel world.
6. Subordination of worlds.
7. The Bible - Attomir's message to our world.
Chapter IX. Secrets of a miracle.
1. Where does a miracle begin?
2. What is a true miracle.
3. Creed.
4. Seven sacraments.
5. The creation of thought is a miracle.
6. Man is a miracle computer.”
7. Where is civilization going?
Chapter X. Demons are infinitely inventive.
Chapter XI. Mysteries of superstition.
1. What the authorities say.
2. True faith and superstition.
3. How does superstition arise?
4. Examples of superstition.
5. Now it’s up to the Bible.
6. About the mysteries of superstition.
7. How to make your life not boring.
Chapter XII. Love and demons.
1. “I’ll help you bewitch your beloved man!”
2. Brownies and spirits, hello!
3. Bewitchment mechanism.
4. Is it possible to resist demons?
5. Retribution to the bewitcher
6. Consequences for the dried one.
7. What does the Bible say about this?
Chapter XIII. The East is coming.
1. Two significant facts.
2. What does science say?
3. The main spiritual law.
4. War is not for life, but for death.
5. Eastern passions.
6. What is happening to us?
7. What to do?
Chapter XIV. Practical application of the study of manifestations of the spiritual world.
1. The most important application.
2. Violations of some laws of mechanics.
3. Violations of the second law of classical thermodynamics of Clausius.
4. Application in metallurgy.
5. Stimulation of vital activity.
6. The admonition of the Lord.
7. A warning to researchers.
Applications.
An obsession called UFO.
Take care not of your spacesuit, but of your soul.
Ecology of the spirit.
1. The incredible things of the invisible world.
2. Intercession of the Mother.
2.1. Let's remember the soul.
2.2. What does science say?
2.3. “House of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
2.4. Tatar invasions.
2.5. Time of Troubles.
2.6. The Great Patriotic War.
2.7. Belarus is pagan.
The tragedy of Belarus (Spiritual Chernobyl).
1. Let's think about the following facts.
2. Facts of a different kind.
3. New physical phenomena have been discovered.
4. Human nature.
5. What is tragic about the situation?
6. A few beneficial facts.
7. Is society obligated to protect the human soul?
Information madness.
The spiritual world is proven from the standpoint of reason.
The spiritual world and man in the concepts of cybernetics.
1. Let's start with statistics.
2. Computer analogy of thinking.
3. Cybernetic analogy of thinking.
4. How the spiritual world controls a person.
5. Reasons for the harmful effects of computers on humans.
6. Keep children away from the computer!
7. Something apocalyptic.
Science, art and the evil one.
1. Almost everything in the sciences and arts is a gift from the evil one.
2. The main lie of the devil is atheism.
3. Exposure of evil materialism and evolutionism.
4. Crafty disguise of lies.
5. Retribution for refusing to follow a lie.
6. Diabolical bacchanalia in the arts.
7. What is the way out of this hell?
Faith and Science.
Protection from hidden coding and targeting of the population is necessary.
Notes
This question in one form or another is constantly heard in society - it was so in ancient times, and it is so in the modern world. At different periods of history, the changing fashion of attitudes towards God and something more sublime than banal earning money and talking about scrambled eggs for breakfast dictated their views - from widespread religiosity and the pervasive participation of the Church in the life of society ( as an example, Medieval Europe) to the complete denial of the existence of the spiritual world and God, the destruction of churches and synagogues, ridicule and censure of those who do not agree with the accepted " party policy«.
Of course, thinking sensibly, you come to the understanding that the essence of some things and concepts does not change at all depending on the season of the year and differences of opinion - Kind(mercy, sacrifice, compassion) remains kind, evil(hatred, envy, greed) remains angry. It’s exactly the same in the question with God - has anything been taken away from Him if He is not perceived? Has He become smaller? Has He stopped loving people, even those who are mistaken? Three answers " No«.
Why do I believe in God?
Perhaps it is worth considering this issue, this proposal is deeper, according to. We will approach this matter, as usual, in the Jewish way - from right to left.
Why do I believe in GOD? First, it’s worth figuring out what kind of God we’re talking about, and whether it can be called “ God» abstract « cosmic mind“, currently popular aliens, Greek Zeus, Egyptian Ra, Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. and so on.? When speaking about God, I can mean not the amorphous forces of nature, but the specific personality of the Creator, who created the world around us, determined its movement according to physical and other laws, and endowed the creatures inhabiting it with life and intelligence. The same God who advised Noah to build the ark before the flood, who spoke to Abraham and called him his friend, who sent Moses and led my people out of slavery in Egypt. In general, the list can be continued - we can talk about the reality of the Jewish God for an infinitely long time, without even delving into academic theology, only on the basis of a number of facts - the pantheons of deities of ancient and majestic peoples, such as the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and the same Greeks and Romans - dead, along with the greatness of their peoples, and the invisible God of the Jews, together with His small and long-suffering ( perhaps with the most impressive and rich history among others) people, alive. Moreover, not just “ somehow alive there among his own people“- but, to a certain extent, most of the world’s population is familiar with this very God of Israel - both Christianity and Islam are nothing more than a consequence of the spread of Jewish monotheism, the prophetic revelation of the God of the Jews to all nations.
Why do I BELIEVE in God? When I say I believe in God, what do I mean? From the point of view of banal literalism, today there are continuous “ believers". You can ask anyone you meet on the street if he believes in God, and the answer will most likely be in the affirmative. But what is the meaning of the word “ I believe"? I believe, that means I agree that there is some kind of “ God"Does it exist somewhere high above the clouds? And although Gagarin didn’t see it, maybe it’s still there, just hiding? Or, " God“doesn’t live somewhere in heaven, but in my apartment, in the corner - where the iconostasis is, where another icon of Jesus’ mother is crying in front of lit candles? Or he, “god,” hid behind the dusty curtain of the aron-koydesh in the synagogue, lurking there next to the Torah scrolls, and we are all very happy to see him on Simchat Torah, when we take out the Torah, dance around it and consider it a joy to touch the scrolls , " thus touching God«?
Is it possible to correlate phrases such as “ I believe in God" And " I believe in Aunt Sonya"? Well, why not? I agree that they both exist, however, the neighbor Aunt Sonya is even somehow closer, but “ God"There is also. Absurd? But this happens to many people...
Maybe in the word " I believe“Is there something more hidden? Something that God expects from each individual person? I believe in God, of course, what kind of questions do you have?.. But maybe I believe more in my uncle from Moscow, in my aunt from Montreal, in the president, in the opposition, in paper American Lincoln-Washington, in my thieves friend Seryoga Boar, into groom Kolya in a Mercedes, into yourself in the end? Who do I rely on? Where is my foundation, the foundation of my confidence in today and tomorrow? Am I building the house of my life on rock or on sand? Will he survive in difficult times, in times of financial and mental crises, in times of betrayal and depression, in periods of “small money and prison”, from which one “cannot renounce”?
Faith is not an abstract philosophical concept. Faith is not a folk primitive analogue of the word “religion”. Faith is a property of the human soul, implanted in it by the Almighty. A property that gives a person the opportunity to have communication with God, to see Him in everything that surrounds you. Faith is the only key to a full life here on earth, and to the discovery of real Life after earthly death.
When I pray for something and receive an answer, it reveals and strengthens my faith in God. When I see how sick people become healthy, how characters change and broken relationships and families are restored, it strengthens my faith. When, in difficult circumstances, it seems to me that the battle is lost and there is no hope, when at the very last moment an answer comes from God, help and salvation come - I can believe, I breathe and live by faith.
WHY I believe in God? Because it's so fashionable? Because it's not fashionable? Because that's what my ancestors did? Because they didn't do that? Because I’ve had a cross hanging around my neck since childhood? Because the Star of David?..
As they say, true love is when you love not for what", A " contrary to". You can look at the question of faith in God in a similar way - do I believe in Him for something? Am I ready to believe in Him and trust Him only for some of His actions, and only those that are convenient and desirable for me ( well, ask for a million evergreens and immediately find a bag under the bed; ask the groom and immediately hear the clatter of hooves of a white horse with a prince), or I am able to reflect on understanding faith in God as faith " contrary to“- contrary to public opinion, contrary to the modern fashion for humanism and, at a minimum, a frivolous compromise attitude towards the Bible and His commandments? Despite the fact that something is happening in my life that others ( and sometimes even to me) seems bad? Yes, and also contrary to what seems good - after all, I tend to forget about God altogether when everything is going well for me, everything is smooth and without problems. Maybe, by the way, problems appear in my life so that I, so to speak, “ didn't relax"and did not forget about the One who is the first cause of everything? :)
Two books by Viktor Veinik, science and Orthodoxy
“After decades of the dominance of militant atheism and lack of spirituality, the soul of every believer is pleased and inspired by any event in the field of religious life: a pastoral sermon open to an external listener, an article of religious content in the secular press, and a newly published book of spiritual content.” With these words the publishers of Viktor Veynik’s book “Why I Believe in God” greet the reader [Viktor Veynik. Why do I believe in God. Publishing house of the Belarusian Exarchate, Minsk, 2000. Further in the text, references to this book follow the number “I”]. To such a greeting I would like to resolutely object: it is not “any event in the field of religious life” that “pleases and inspires” the soul of “every believer.”
Many Orthodox Christians are not “pleased” or “inspired” by articles of religious content in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” and were saddened by the fact that the book “Why I Believe in God” was republished in 30,000 copies. The latter event was the reason for the birth of this article.
We did not set ourselves the “Napoleonic” goal to confirm or refute the scientific truth of all the many years of work of V.I. Veinik; we simply do not have enough knowledge of physics and mathematics for this. But in the field of scientific and apologetic activity of Professor Veinik, which intersects with the boundaries of Orthodox theology, we are quite competent. And it is precisely the boundaries of this area that outline our analysis of two works by Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Belarusian SSR, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor Viktor Iozefovich Veynik “Thermodynamics of Real Processes” [Viktor Veynik. Thermodynamics of real processes. Publishing house Science and Technology, Minsk, 1991. Quoted from: www.crimea.com/~enio/index300.htm. Further in the text, references to this book follow under the number “II”] and “Why I Believe in God.”
Scientific and apologetic activity of Viktor Veinik: its relationship with Biblical texts and the Sacred Tradition of the Orthodox Church
Let us pay attention to the peculiarities of quoting Holy Scripture in the book “Why I Believe in God.” For example, when discussing the structure of man, Viktor Iozefovich cites references from the Old Testament, which speaks of the soul... of animals: “The location of the soul is most easily determined, for Scripture speaks about this in plain text: “The soul of the body is in the blood. Anyone who eats it will be destroyed" (); “Blood is the soul: do not eat it, pour it onto the ground like water. Do not eat it, so that it may be good for you and your children after you forever” () (I, p. 110). Such a strange application of texts relating to animals to humans leads to false reasoning, which, however, would be taken quite seriously by members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect: “At the same time, a whole series of fundamentally important spiritual questions arise, in addition to moral, moral, ethical and others - about the admissibility blood transfusions, heart and other organ transplants, etc. The same applies to bone marrow transplantation, for it is said: “His bones are filled with sins” (), that is, harmful information. There are many similar texts in the Bible. Physicians have much to ponder, bearing in mind that Scripture is absolutely true” (I, p. 111).
Scripture is true, but Viktor Iosefovich’s incorrect interpretation has nothing to do with the truth of Scripture. Quoting the 11th verse of the 20th chapter of the Book of Job in this case is completely absurd. If we take this passage as an anatomical revelation, then what is worse than verse 15 of the same chapter: “The substance which he swallowed shall vomit: God shall pluck him out of his belly”?
Very fantastic physical and mathematical constructions follow the arbitrary interpretation of verse 5 of Psalm 89 of David: “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” This is what Victor Veynik heard in the words of the Psalmist: “This combination of ideas, of course, cannot be accidental and contains all the quantitative information we need. Let us take the day as the unit of duration, and the chronal corresponding to this day as the unit of chronal. As a result, the initial chronal at the creation of the world turned out to be equal to 365,250 chronal units, which corresponds to a thousand years according to the Julian calendar” (I, p. 131). I wonder why these fundamentally erroneous calculations had to be made using the Julian calendar? Is it really possible that this calendar, which appeared only in 46 BC? used by the prophet David, who lived thousands of years earlier? In addition, from the context of the verse it is obvious that David’s psalm is about the divine greatness and incommensurability of God and man: “Before the mountains were born, You formed the earth and the universe, and from everlasting to everlasting You are God. For in Your sight a thousand years are like yesterday.”
Another example of Viktor Veynik’s incompetence in working with the texts of Holy Scripture is his teaching about the creation of angels by God on the sixth day of creation: “It is generally accepted that the indicated army (ministering spirits, or angels) was created on the first day. But the Bible doesn't say this anywhere. All spirits were created on the sixth day” (I, p. 140). And then follows a reasoning based on an initially incorrect foundation. The fact is that literally nowhere in the Bible does it speak about the creation of the world of angels on the first day. But the Bible says that angels were present at the very beginning of the creation of the visible world: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? On what are its foundations established, or who laid its cornerstone, when all the sons of God (i.e., the angels - St. Andrew) shouted for joy?” (). This biblical text is fully consistent with the Holy Tradition of the Church: St. Gregory the Theologian, Basil the Great, Simeon the New Theologian, Irenaeus of Lyons, Dionysius the Areopagite, Athanasius the Great, Epiphanius of Cyprus, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, Gregory the Great, John of Damascus and Anastasius of Sinai clearly say that angels were created by God long before the sun, stars, and earth and everything else.
With such incorrect handling of the texts of the Holy Scriptures and ignoring the Holy Tradition of the Church, the active attitude of Viktor Iozefovich is very alarming: “It is obvious that most of us will have to radically reconsider our attitude towards the Bible and the Creator, and look at our lives with new eyes. The Holy Scriptures were dictated in relation to the very low level of knowledge of that time. This is where science should help by appropriately interpreting, deciphering, decoding these texts” (I, p. 36).
Victor Veinik's reasoning about the creation of angels contains another incongruity, or rather blasphemy: blaming God for the creation of evil on earth, for the fall of Adam and Eve. “The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God created” (). In these words, the main spirit of evil, the devil, is identified with the serpent, the reptile, and the reptiles were created precisely on the sixth day” (I, p. 141). However, back in the 4th century St. John Chrysostom wrote about the inadmissibility of seeing in this biblical passage the identity of the serpent and the devil: “Having found the serpent, who was superior in intelligence to other animals, using him as a tool, the devil through him enters into a conversation with his wife, and draws her into his deception” (Conversations on book of Genesis, XVI, 127). According to Saint John, the devil is not at all identified with the serpent, but entered into it to tempt man. Victor Iozefovich, identifying the devil with the serpent, the reptile created on the sixth day of creation by God, makes God the author of evil, since according to him it turns out that God created the devil as such. Thus, the author of the book “Why I Believe in God” rejects the Christian teaching that the highest angel Dennitsa became the devil (Greek – slanderer) by his own free will, having fallen away from God.
Another stumbling block that provoked a false stream of wisdom was for Viktor Veinik the fact declared by the Bible that God created the world from nothing (in patristic terminology, from non-existence). This feature of creation is indicated by the verb “bara” (Heb. – “created out of nothing”) in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” St. Theophilus of Antioch wrote about this in the 2nd century: “What is great if God created the world from ready-made matter? And a human artist, if he receives a substance from someone, makes of it what he wants. The power of God is revealed in the fact that he creates from nothing what he wants” (Epistle to Autolycus, II, 4). Viktor Veynik’s reasoning is decisively at odds with the patristic ones: “How can you make something “out of nothing”? To understand this, let us cite other similar phrases from the Bible: “He hung the earth on nothing” (), “out of the invisible came the visible” (); These phrases are quite enough. Now we know that the words “on nothing” in the first quote refer to an invisible and imperceptible, very subtle material gravitational nanofield. Therefore, the whole point is not the absence of a building substance, but its invisibility. Consequently, the visible material heaven and earth were created by God from invisible substances, but precisely from substances, that is, in fact, everything in the world is material, material. This is another crushing blow to naive materialism, for even the very name used by atheists to contrast the material with the spiritual loses its meaning” (I, p. 139).
It is difficult to call St. a “naive materialist” or an “atheist.” John Chrysostom, but he resolutely objects to Viktor Iosefovich: “And what excuse can you have, what excuse, when you are so crazy and dreaming of what is above your nature? To say that everything came from a ready-made substance and not to admit that the Creator of the universe produced everything from nothing is a sign of extreme madness” (Conversations on the book of Genesis, II, 2). So, according to the teachings of the Church, God, being an absolute Person, did not need any material, neither visible nor invisible, to create the world, and created the entire world according to the wave of His will. The beginning of the world was also the beginning of time itself: “day one”, “day two” (), etc. Before the creation of the world there was neither time nor any matter: there was only one eternal God. Therefore, saying that the verb “bara”, used in the first lines of the book of Genesis, indicates God’s use of an invisible “building substance,” Viktor Veynik argues that God is co-eternal with matter and is not an absolute Creator.
Let us add that, citing a quotation from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews to support his fabrications, Viktor Iozefovich deliberately takes it out of context. In fact, from verse 35 of chapter 10 and in verses 1-3 of chapter 11, the Apostle Paul speaks about faith: about the possibility of knowing phenomena and events invisible to us only through conviction in their existence, trust in divine Revelation. It should be noted that from a theological point of view, the very methodology of Viktor Veinik’s work with the texts of the Holy Scriptures is unacceptable. First, as has been shown many times, the author of the book “Why I Believe in God” does not take into account the context of certain fragments of the Bible.
Secondly, the purpose of the divine Revelation communicated through biblical texts is ignored, as the granting to man of the knowledge necessary for the salvation of the soul in eternity and the mechanisms and ways of realizing this knowledge. In particular, Viktor Veynik discusses the role of the brain in human life: “Analysis shows that in Scripture the word “brain” is mentioned only twice: (“Its insides are full of fat, and its bones are filled with brain”) and (“The Word of God penetrates to division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow"). There is not the slightest hint in these texts of any thought process associated with the brain, therefore the Bible clearly does not consider the brain to be the organ of thought. This once again confirms the previous physiological conclusion that there are no areas or points in the brain responsible for the creation of thoughts” (I, p. 105). Note that we, in principle, do not know who, where and when considered the bone marrow, which is discussed in the quotes cited by Veinik, as an organ of thinking. To attribute the very possibility of such an absurd statement to Holy Scripture is blasphemous. And it is clearly wrong to assert that if something is not said in the Bible, then it does not really exist: there is simply no need to look for physioanatomical revelations in a book that shows humanity the path to salvation in eternity.
Thirdly, if in the Biblical texts, as Victor Veinik claims, there are any mathematical patterns, allegedly discovered by Ivan Panin, then this fact in no way proves that the Bible “to its last line was literally “put into the brains” of those who wrote to her people by the Lord Himself” (I, pp. 14, 22, 31, 53 and many others). At best, from the dubious and unconfirmed discovery of Ivan Panin, it follows that the writing of the Bible text was guided by some superhuman intelligence, the character and moral orientation of which in the context of the discovery itself can be debated for a long time and without evidence. By the way, “mathematical proofs” and “deciphering” the texts of the Bible have led more than one mathematician to the “distant side” (). Here is another mathematician, A.T. Fomenko, “proved” that the whole history that we know is nothing more than a fake, and Jesus Christ was actually Pope Gregory Hildebrant. And some people also believe the “historian” and refer to “rigorous mathematical proofs”.
The teaching of Viktor Veinik about human diseases as an automatic consequence of violation of spiritual laws is completely contrary to the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition: “In the human body, the Creator has installed automatically triggering mechanisms that, during a sinful life, cause spiritual and physical diseases” (I, p. 55). If we turn to the texts of the Holy Scriptures, we will see that the Bible says a lot about the illnesses of the righteous and the prosperity of sinners. It is enough to mention the Old Testament Book of Job or recall the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (). From the Holy Tradition we can give an example that is closest to us in time: Saint Ambrose of Optina, being himself a seriously ill man and at the same time a righteous man, healed spiritually and physically many who came to him. The list of diseases and the causes that supposedly automatically cause them, which Viktor Veynik cites (I, pp. 78-78), does not in any way correlate with the Orthodox teaching about God as the Provider and Savior of the world, who is directly involved in the life of every person.
We will allow ourselves to leave numerous arguments by Viktor Iozefovich that a person is not able to think independently, but can only perceive thoughts coming from God or the devil, without detailed comment. Let us simply note that, discussing the creation of man in the image of God and the difference between man and the entire created world, St. Gregory Palamas, Simeon the New Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Anastasius Sinaite and Blessed. Theodoret unanimously affirmed the existence of such an ability in humans.
Replies from school
Professor V.I. Veinik clearly outlined his position in relation to modern science: “Modern official science not only does not help, but even interferes and harms faith” (I, p. 317). The scientist contrasted this “modern official science, taught in schools, technical schools and institutes and professing atheism,” with “science from Christ” (I, p. 318).
In the process of reading Viktor Veinik’s book “Why I Believe in God,” many things seemed dubious and incomprehensible to us from the standpoint of the physics course that we once studied at school. But numerous references to experiments allegedly described in the early work “Thermodynamics of Real Processes” made us believe the author. “Measurements show that there are two types of spirits: good and evil” (I, p. 189). “The latest scientific, theoretical and experimental studies show that in our material world there really are spirits of good and evil” (I, p. 238). “Today it is possible, with the help of instruments and installations, to check the presence of a spiritual world that lives outside of time and space” (I, p. 277). These are quotes from the book “Why I Believe in God.” Everything looks quite scientific: “research”, “devices”. However, faced with the need to thoroughly answer questions from parishioners about the book “Why I Believe in God,” we, through the Internet, found “Thermodynamics” published in Minsk in 1991. To our surprise, it turned out that this work was posted not on the scientific, but on the occult site “Eniography”.
Let's turn to the book “Thermodynamics of Real Processes” and see what kind of research Viktor Veynik conducted and what instruments he used.
“No less indicative are my experiences of mentally charging water in a bubble at a distance. It is enough to think about the bubble and mentally say a certain word for the water to be charged with plus or minus chronons. I was at different distances from the bubble: in the same room with it, at a distance of 10 km, in another city, etc.; in all cases the result was the same, upon arrival I recorded the sign of the chronons with a frame” (II, XXVI, 4, italics – Priest Andrey). “For example, taking 20 g of red champagne on an empty stomach after 1-2 minutes, when alcohol penetrated the brain (according to the sensations of a psychic woman) was accompanied by an increase in the radius of the ellipsoid from 0.24 to 0.42 m.” (II, XXVI, 6, emphasis added). For those uninformed in matters of occultism, let us explain: a “frame” is a traditional tool of a psychic: usually a steel knitting needle bent in the shape of an “G”, which the psychic holds in his hand and the deviation of which is recorded and interpreted depending on the nature of the requested information. We would not be surprised if scientists subjected this occult “tool of labor” itself to careful study and research, but using it as a physical precision measuring instrument is nonsense. How to subsume “the sensations of a psychic woman” under the category of physical and mathematical measurements, we also find it difficult to say.
These two examples given (out of a possible set) are enough to assert that some of the experiments and conclusions described and made by Viktor Veinik on the pages of the book “Thermodynamics of Real Processes” have nothing to do with science.
Flirting with the world of the occult does not happen without sad consequences for anyone. In his later works, collected in the book “Why I Believe in God,” Viktor Veynik makes obvious logical errors in reasoning and evidence, unforgivable given his scientific credentials.
On page 141 we read: “A person does not have an organ of thinking, the creation of thought: the human brain is intended exclusively to control all functions of life and body.” To support his thesis about the absence of a human organ of thinking, Viktor Iozefovich gives the following examples: “In 1925, in the hospital of St. Vincent's child was born in New York; he developed quite normally, but died on the 28th day of life; an autopsy showed that he had no brain. In the 50s of the 20th century, the German professor Hufland observed an adult patient with normal mental and physical capabilities, but after his death it was discovered that his skull instead of a brain contained only 310 g of water. The question is, what do these examples prove? They, of course, refute the author’s own statement that “the purpose of the brain is to control all internal processes of life” (I, p. 160). Otherwise, how could an “adult patient” have “normal physical capabilities” in the absence of a brain? And what external manifestations of “thought creation” in relation to a 28-day-old “physically developing quite normally” child can we in principle be talking about?
Viktor Veinik makes another gross mistake in the chapter “The Spiritual World and Man in the Concepts of Cybernetics” in the book “Thermodynamics of Real Processes”. The author cites the unknown method used to obtain the data: “A few statistics. Being collected in a huge enterprise controlled by almost a thousand computers, it is terrifying, because almost 100% of professionals who constantly work with computers and do not lead a church lifestyle in Orthodoxy are possessed by demons, and the degree of possession among programmers is on average 5.7 times higher, than non-programmers who maintain computers" (I, p. 283)." How one can scientifically diagnose obsession and on what scale the author measured the “degree of obsession” is a theological mystery. But the author promises that “he will try to substantiate this scientifically below” (I, p. 284).
We read further, waiting for justification, and we encounter another unsubstantiated statement: “Over the past seven and a half millennia, demons have trained themselves to be first-class programmers. In addition, it was not without their participation that computers themselves appeared” (I, p. 296). And finally, on the next page there is a claim to “scientific justification”: “Today, programs for a machine computer are compiled by a programmer, from whom highly developed intuition and imaginative thinking are required. Demons willingly help him with their rich experience - it is much simpler, easier, more natural and unnoticeable than imposing malicious thoughts on others for the purpose of entrapment. Now it has become their second profession. As a result, the programmer quickly becomes dependent on them and becomes at the forefront of the risk group in terms of loss of will and demonic possession. The situation is aggravated by the role assigned to the computer by the end of this dying century. Evidence of all this is the amazing statistics mentioned at the beginning of the article, which is a consequence of the presence of a huge army of demon “helpers” and their large concentration around computers” (I, p. 297). So, the statement that Viktor Veynik promised to “scientifically substantiate” at the beginning of the chapter is proof of everything that has been written to substantiate this statement.
Indeed: this is not “modern official science, taught in schools, technical schools and institutes and professing atheism,” but certainly not “science from Christ” (I, p. 318).
Scientific and apologetic activity of Viktor Veinik: its relationship with the rituals and Sacraments of the Church
“Taking water and food artificially charged with a chronal field, for example with a finger or other means, increases energy. To make food and drink more useful, it is enough to quickly wave the index finger of your right hand at them several times; as a result, they are charged with chronal radiations, and the amount of the acquired charge is proportional to the number of strokes” (II, XXVI, 6). It is not difficult to correlate this “scientific discovery” with the experience of the Church, which, fully caring for the welfare of its children, invites them, in the name of Christ, to make the sign of the cross over their food before eating, and not “quickly wave the index finger of their right hand at them.” “By measuring energy, you can judge the compatibility of people. For example, a person has to communicate with another person. I measure his energy (the measuring device is the same occult frame - St. Andrew) before and after communication and, based on the change in energy, I judge the nature of communication, the relationship of these people, the impact of the second on the first. By measuring the energy of team members before and after communication, it is not difficult to judge their compatibility; psychologists (and bosses) could take this into account” (II, XXVI, 6).
They took it a long time ago. In free newspapers, published in millions of copies, entire spreads are devoted to “occult services” sections.
“It’s interesting that even names are divided into lucky and unlucky. Measurements show that lucky names charge a person with plus-chronons, and unlucky names charge a person with minus-chronons. This means that by calling a person an unlucky name, we each time irradiate him with a field harmful to health” (II, XXVI, 10).
At Baptism, a person is given the name of some saint, that is, a name sanctified by the Church. For some, this name, of course, can be considered “unlucky”...
“Operating monasteries and temples greatly contribute to the cleansing of the chronosphere, but so far there are too few of them, so they are powerless to resist the coming disaster. There are known attempts by individual enthusiasts to solve this problem in their own way - by meditating a very large group of people. For example, the meditation of about two dozen psychics for an hour daily dissolves malignant chronic developments so that within a week the number of violent crimes in the surrounding area decreased by 29%" (II, XXVI, 12).
From the above fragment it follows that during the ruin of the Church, psychics become temporarily “acting as” saints.
“As for saints, their portraits always emit plus-chronons. For example, I found that in the famous Lives of the Saints of Dmitry of Rostov, all the portraits in all 12 volumes are positive, with the exception of one or two or three on that volume. Exception portraits give either zero or negative radiation. In the first case we are talking about the imagination of the artist, in the second the person was canonized by mistake” (II, XXVII, 13).
No comments…
Supporters of the apologetic work of Viktor Veynik argue that the work “Thermodynamics of Real Processes”, published in 1991, does not reflect the subsequent religious views of the author: in January 1992, Albert Veynik was baptized in the Orthodox Church with the name Victor. However, this is how Viktor Iozefovich began his new Christian life: “In January 1992, I began to receive Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, while simultaneously determining my chronal energy by measuring the radius of the nano-chronal ellipsoid (i.e., returning home after Communion, Viktor Veynik was engaged in occult practice at that time - priest Andrey). Previously, I found that one prayer “Our Father” increases the radius of the nanochronal ellipsoid by thousands of times, and an hour’s stay in the Orthodox Church during worship increases by hundreds of thousands and millions of times. For an ordinary person, the radius of the ellipsoid is several meters, for psychics it reaches many kilometers, this happened to me too” (I, p. 173). “Now it turns out that Communion exponentially increases this radius. In addition, each subsequent Communion increases the overall average energy level. For example, on one Saturday before communion, the radius was equal to one followed by 56 zeros meters (1056 m). Participation in Saturday evening worship increased it a billion billion times (to 1074 m). On Sunday, the morning prayer required before Communion multiplied it by approximately the same amount (up to 1091 m). And Sunday Communion itself raised the radius to values exceeding one with 252 zero meters (10,252 m) - I no longer had insulating sheets of polyethylene on hand (each sheet reduces the measured radius by 10 times). Amazing result!” (I, p. 173).
Yes, indeed, the imagination is amazing. It is especially shocking when comparing the above passage with a fragment from the work “Thermodynamics of Real Processes”: “Watching the KVN-86 program on TV by one psychic who loves humor increased its radius from 1000 to 35,000 km. The program “Around Laughter” significantly increased the energy level. A colossal increase in energy can be achieved through meditation. For example, prayer increased energy in one case from zero to 1.35 m, and in another from zero to 560 km. Staying with the shrine of Sergius of Radonezh for an hour increased energy by 1 million times and for a long time (the experiment was repeated three times). A session of therapeutic hypnosis increased the patient’s energy 100 times and decreased that of the hypnotist 10 times” (II, XXVI, 6).
It is obvious that after his reunification with the Church, Viktor Veynik did not abandon occult practice, but at the same time he changed the objects of research: now they became the shrines of Orthodoxy, incl. Holy Communion. Viktor Iozefovich continued his propaganda of extrasensory perception: in his opinion stated above, after Communion changes occur in a person that elevate him to the level usual for the average psychic. At the same time, according to Veinik, the influence on a person is exerted regardless of why the person came to the temple and what he did there: the “radius of the ellipsoid” still increases. Let us pay attention to the fact that the “radius of the ellipsoid” promoted by Veinik increases both from reading the prayer “Our Father”, and from the transmission of KVN-86, and from staying at the shrine of St. Sergius of Radonezh, and from meditation, and from Holy Communion, and from a session therapeutic hypnosis, and from watching the program “Around Laughter.”
Yes, Viktor Veynik accepted Orthodoxy, but not as the Truth, but as a space for his new experiments. This time, experiments with God's long-suffering...
On the one hand, the author of the book “Why I Believe in God” admitted that before joining the Church he had direct contact with fallen spirits: “In direct experiments I was able to show that it is demons who operate the dowsing frame, for the Light Forces do not engage in farcical tricks.” (I, p. 171). On the other hand, having been baptized, Viktor Iozefovich had no intention of stopping his “stunt tricks,” but was only trying to protect himself from the unwanted and already known to him consequences of occult practice by participating in the Sacraments of the Church: “Remembering that “this same kind can only be driven out by prayer.” and fasting" (), as well as the fact that the Body and Blood of Christ drives away demons from the communicant, I in a calm atmosphere checked the reliability of the testimony of the dowser frame" (I, p. 172). “The previously obtained signs of chronal radiations of portraits of deceased people were verified by the previous frame after five Sunday Communions” (I, p. 174). The question arises: why was it necessary to drive away “this generation through prayer and fasting” - and then again, “like a dog, to return to your (occult - Priest Andrew) vomit” ()?
Viktor Veynik himself was aware of the inadmissibility of such research: “Now it is already possible and appropriate to reveal here, finally, my other secret, to repent and express a serious warning to those who are overly inquisitive. The fact is that in the book “Thermodynamics of Real Processes” the abbreviation SD, for censorship reasons, meant the Holy Spirit, and the abbreviation ND meant the unclean spirit. The SD substance (SD-what!!? – Priest Andrey) is used to charge (bless) water, prosphora, oil, artos and other substances in the Church. Holy water and prosphora are most accessible to believers, so I took the risk of measuring their chronal and power properties. And he was punished for his insolence: when he came to church after the experiment, he lost consciousness, fell and broke the right side of his face and right leg until it bled, then he limped for two weeks and admired his scars. Artos is a more serious shrine, and it carries a more serious punishment. And one inquisitive monk immediately paid for the Holy Gifts with a terrible death - he was torn to pieces by demons” (I, p. 175). Well, the circumstances of the death of Viktor Veinik under the wheels of a car make us think about many things: “On November 24, 1996, at six o’clock in the morning, Viktor Iozefovich hurried to the early Liturgy at the Cathedral of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in the city of Minsk to be a communicant of the Holy Body and Blood of Christ, however The Lord judged differently. His bloody and crushed body remained lying on the ground” (I, p. 328).
So, based on the theological and general analysis of the content of two books by Viktor Veinik (“Thermodynamics of real processes” and “Why I believe in God”), let us draw the following conclusion.
The gross logical errors in reasoning and evidence noted in the books under review, and the propaganda of the results of occult practice as the results of scientific experiments allow us to make an assumption about the degradation of the author as a physicist that developed as a result of his passion for the occult. Numerous examples of methodologically incorrect handling of the texts of Holy Scripture also reveal its theological inconsistency.
These books are not “a crushing blow to naive materialism and atheism,” as Viktor Iozefovich Veinik argued, but a discreditation of the Church, in whose name anti-scientific (i.e., false) knowledge is disseminated and pseudo-Orthodox occult doctrine is preached.
Instead of an epilogue. The path to faith in God and the path to trust in God
In numerous conversations about the books of Viktor Iozefovich Veinik, we often heard accusations addressed to us: “How can you say this about an outstanding person, about an excellent, talented scientist who served science for several decades, who walked his thorny path to the Orthodox faith?” We answer: how can we remain silent about this?
It would be strange not to hear protests from a scientist whose laboratory would be attended by a first-year student who had failed the exam and would unceremoniously begin to rearrange and reconfigure all the instruments with the words: “in fact, everything should be like this!” It is all the more irresponsible to silently observe the antics of a person with a professorial rank who, having just crossed the threshold of the Church, immediately declares its erroneous understanding of the texts of the Holy Scriptures and calls for “fundamentally reconsidering its attitude towards the Creator.”
Yes, different people come to Christ in different ways. And everyone comes with their own. Someone with palm branches. Someone with a whip, nails and a hammer. Someone - with peace and incense. Someone with a frame and polyethylene. For two thousand years now, the Church has been preaching that the grace of the Risen Christ permeates the entire universe, all the layers of polyethylene that are in it. Only one thing cannot penetrate the grace of God: a heart that does not trust the truth of the Resurrection, forcing human hands again and again to climb into all the wounds of Christ with pseudo-instruments.
A Christian who has found the Truth does not measure It, but lives It. Personally revealed in the books, the spiritual experience of Viktor Iozefovich Veinik, a man who entered the Church with an occult frame and pieces of polyethylene, shows the reader not the experience of faith in God, but the experience of active distrust of God and the Church of Christ.
This is the main thing we wanted to show with our article.
priest Andrey Deryagin, Vsemirov A.V.
Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary
village of Erino, Podolsk district, Moscow region,
2003-2005
Clive Lewis
B. Pascal. "Thoughts".
If a few years ago, when I was still an atheist, someone had asked me why I didn’t believe in God, I would have answered something like this: “Look at the world in which we live. Almost all of it consists of empty, dark, unimaginably cold space. There are so few celestial bodies in it and they themselves are so small in comparison with it that, even if they were all inhabited by the happiest creatures, it is not easy to believe that the power that created them had their happiness and life in mind. In fact, scientists believe that very few stars have planets (perhaps only our Sun), and in the solar system, apparently, only one Earth is inhabited. And moreover, there was no life on it for millions of years. And what kind of life is this? All its forms exist, destroying each other. At the very bottom this leads to death, but higher up, when the senses are included, it gives rise to a special phenomenon - pain. Living beings cause pain when they are born, and live through the pain of others, and die in pain. At the very top, in man, there is another phenomenon - the mind; he can foresee pain, foresee death, and in addition, he is able to imagine much more pain for others. We took advantage of this ability to great effect. Human history is full of crimes, wars, suffering and fear, and there is just so much happiness in it that while it exists, we are painfully afraid of losing it, and when it is gone, we suffer even more. From time to time, life seems to get better, civilizations are created. But they all die, and the relief they brought to them is completely balanced by new types of suffering. It is unlikely that anyone will argue that in our civilization this balance is achieved, and many will agree that it itself will disappear, like all the previous ones. And if it doesn’t disappear, so what? We are doomed anyway, the whole world is doomed, because, as science tells us, the Universe will someday become uniform, shapeless and cold. All plots will end in nothing, and life will turn out to be just a fleeting, meaningless smile on the idiotic face of nature. I do not believe that a good and all-powerful spirit created all this. Either there is no such spirit at all, or he is indifferent to good and evil, or he is simply angry.”
One thing did not occur to me: I did not notice that the very strength and simplicity of these arguments poses a new problem. If the world is so bad, why did people decide that a wise Creator created it? Perhaps people are stupid - but not that much! It is difficult to imagine that, looking at a terrible flower, we will consider its root good, or, seeing an absurd and unnecessary object, we will decide that its creator is smart and skillful. The world known to us by the evidence of the senses could not become the basis of faith; something else must have generated and nourished it.
You will say that our ancestors were dark and considered nature better than we, familiar with the successes of science, consider it. And you will be wrong. People have long known how monstrously large and empty the Universe is. You've probably read that in the Middle Ages the Earth seemed flat to people and the stars seemed close; but this is not true. Ptolemy said long ago that the Earth is a mathematical point compared to the distance to the stars, and this distance in one very old book is determined to be one hundred and seventeen million miles. And then, from the very beginning, other, more obvious things gave people a feeling of hostile infinity. For prehistoric man, the neighboring forest was quite large and just as alien and evil as cosmic rays or cooling stars are alien and evil to us. Pain, suffering and the fragility of human life have always been known to people. Our faith arose among a people squeezed between great warlike empires, subjected to invasions, taken into captivity, who knew the tragedy of the vanquished, like Armenia or Poland. It is absurd to think that science discovered suffering. Put this book down and think for five minutes about the fact that all great religions arose and developed for many centuries in a world where there was no anesthesia.
In a word, at any time it was difficult to deduce the wisdom and goodness of the Creator from observations of the world. Religion was born differently. Now I will describe the origin of faith, and not defend it itself - it seems to me that without this it is impossible to correctly pose the question of suffering.
In all developed religions we find three elements (in Christianity, as you will see, there is also a fourth). The first of these is what Professor Otto calls “the sense of the sacred.” For those who have not encountered this term, I will try to explain it. If they tell you: “There is a tiger in the next room,” you will be afraid. But if they tell you that there is a ghost in the next room and you believe it, you will be afraid in a different way. The point here is not the danger - no one really knows why a ghost is dangerous, but the fact itself. Such fear of the unknown can be called horror or horror. Here we touch on some boundaries of the “sacred”. Now imagine that they simply tell you: “There is a powerful spirit in the next room.” Fear and sense of danger will be even less, embarrassment will be even greater. You will feel a discrepancy between yourself and this spirit and even an admiration for it, that is, a feeling that can be expressed in the words of Shakespeare: “My spirit is crushed by it.” This is reverent fear of what we called “sacred.”
There is no doubt that from very ancient times man has felt the world as a receptacle for all kinds of spirits. Probably, Professor Otto is not entirely right and these spirits did not immediately begin to evoke “sacred fear.” This cannot be proven, because the language does not really distinguish between fear of the sacred and fear of danger - we still say that we are “afraid of ghosts” and “afraid of rising prices.” It is quite possible that once upon a time people were simply afraid of spirits, like tigers. Another thing is certain: now, in our days, the “sense of the sacred” exists and we can trace it far into the depths of centuries.
If we are not too proud to look for examples in a children's book, let's read a passage from The Wind in the Willows, where the Rat and the Mole come closer and closer to the Island Spirit. “Rat,” the Mole whispered barely audibly, “aren’t you afraid?” - "Afraid? - asked the Rat, and his eyes shone with unspeakable love. - Well, what are you talking about! But still... oh, Mole, I’m so afraid!”
Moving forward a century further, we find examples in Wardworth in a remarkable passage from the first book of the Prelude, where he describes his sensations from a ride in a shepherd's boat, and even further in Malory, where Sir Galahad “trembled, for mortal flesh touched him invisible." At the beginning of our era, we read in Revelation that John the Evangelist fell at the feet of Christ “as if dead.” In pagan poetry we will find in Ovid a line about the place where “numen inest”; and Virgil describes the palace of Latina, which “was surrounded by a grove ... and was considered sacred (religione) from ancient times.” In the Greek fragment attributed to Aeschylus, we will see the word about how the sea, land and mountains tremble “under the terrible eye of their master.” Let us move on further, and the prophet Ezekiel will tell us about the heavenly wheels that “they were terrible” (Ezek. 1:18), and Jacob, getting up from sleep, will exclaim: “This place is terrible!” (Ge. 28:17).
We don't know how far further we could go. The most ancient people almost certainly believed in things that would evoke such a feeling in us - and it is only in this sense that we have the right to say that the “sense of the sacred” is as old as humanity. But it's not about the dates. The fact is that once, at some stage, this feeling arose, and took root, and did not go away, despite all the progress of science and civilization.
The sensation we are talking about is not generated by the influence of the visible world. You can say that for ancient man, surrounded by countless dangers, it was quite natural to invent the unknown and the “sacred.” In a certain sense, you are right - and in this sense: you are a human being, just like him, and it is easy for you to imagine that danger and confusion will cause such a feeling in you. There is not the slightest reason to believe that in another kind of consciousness the thought of wounds, pain or death will lead to such a sensation. Moving from bodily fear to “fear and trembling,” a person jumps into the abyss; he learns what cannot be given in physical experience and in logical conclusions from it. Scientific explanations themselves require explanation - say, anthropologists derive the above-mentioned feeling from “fear of the dead” without revealing to us why such harmless creatures as the dead cause fear. We emphasize that horror and horror are in completely different dimensions than fear of danger. No enumeration of physical qualities gives an idea of beauty to someone who does not know it; so it is here: no enumeration of dangers gives even a small idea of the special feeling that I am trying to describe. Apparently, only two points of view logically follow from it: either it is a disease of our soul, which does not correspond to anything objective, but for some reason does not disappear even from such full-fledged souls as the souls of a thinker, poet or saint; or is it a sensation of real, but extra-natural phenomena, which we have the right to call revelation.
However, “sacred” is not the same as “good,” and a terror-stricken person, left to himself, may think that it is “beyond good and evil.” Here we come to the second element of faith. All people about whom there is even the slightest evidence recognized some kind of system of moral concepts - they could say “I must” about something, “I can’t” about something. This element also cannot be directly deduced from simple, visible facts. It’s one thing “I want”, or “I’m forced”, or “it’s beneficial for me”, or “I don’t dare”, and completely different - “I have to”.
As in the first case, scientists explain this element by saying that it itself needs to be explained, say (like the famous father of psychoanalysis), some kind of prehistoric parricide. Parricide created a feeling of guilt only because people considered it evil. Morality is also a leap over the abyss from everything that can be given in experience. However, unlike “fear and trembling,” it has another important feature: moral systems are different (although not as much as they think), but they all prescribe rules of behavior that their supporters do not follow. It is not someone else’s code, but its own that condemns a person, and therefore all people live in a feeling of guilt. The second element of religion is not just awareness of the moral law, but awareness of the law that we have accepted and do not fulfill. This cannot be deduced either logically or in any other way from the facts of experience. Either this is an inexplicable illusion, or it’s still the same revelation.
Moral feeling and “sense of the sacred” are so far from each other that they can exist for a very long time without touching. In paganism, the veneration of gods and the disputes of philosophers are often not connected with each other. The third element of religious development arises when a person identifies them - when the awe-inspiring deity is also perceived as the guardian of morality. Perhaps this too seems natural to us. Indeed, this is characteristic of people; but “of course” this is by no means obvious. The world inhabited by deities does not behave at all as the moral code tells us - it is unfair, indifferent and cruel. The assumption that we just want to think so will not explain anything - who would want the moral law, which is not easy in itself, to be invested with the mysterious power of the “sacred”? Without a doubt, this jump is the most amazing, and it is no coincidence that not everyone made it; non-moral religion and non-religious morality have always existed, and they still exist today. Probably only one people accomplished it completely; but great personalities of all countries and times also committed it at their own peril and risk, and only they were saved from the obscenity and savagery of an immoral faith or from the cold complacency of pure morality. Logic does not prompt us to take this leap, but something else attracts us to it, and even in pantheism or paganism, no, no, let the moral law appear; even through stoicism some reverence for God will appear. Perhaps this, too, is madness, natural to man and for some reason bearing wonderful fruits. But if this is Revelation, then truly in Abraham the tribes of the earth were blessed, for some Jews boldly and completely identified that terrible thing that lives on the black mountain tops and in thunderclouds with the righteous Lord, who “loves righteousness” (Ps. 10:7 ).
The fourth element came later. Among the Jews a Man was born who called Himself the Son of a terrible and righteous God. Moreover, He said that He and this God are one. This claim is so terrible, so absurd and monstrous that there can only be two points of view on it: either this man was a madman of the most vile kind, or He was telling the pure truth. There is no third. If other evidence about him does not lead you to accept the first point of view, you are obliged to accept the second. And if you accept it, everything that Christians claim will become possible. It will not be difficult to believe that this Man has been resurrected, and His death in some incomprehensible way has changed our relationship with the terrible and righteous God for the better.
By asking whether the visible world looks like the creation of a wise and good Creator or rather like something meaningless, if not evil, we dismiss everything that is important in religious issues. Christianity is not derived from philosophical debates about the birth of the Universe; it is a shattering historical event that crowned long centuries of spiritual preparation. This is not a system into which the fact of suffering must somehow be squeezed into; This is a fact that any of our systems have to reckon with. In a certain sense, it does not solve, but poses the problem of suffering - there would be no problem in suffering if, living in this world teeming with troubles, we did not believe that the ultimate reality is full of love.
I tried to talk about why faith seems justified to me. Logic does not force it. At any stage of development, a person can rebel, in a certain sense, violating his nature, but without sinning against reason. He can close his eyes and not see the “sacred” if he is ready to break with half the great poets and with all the prophets and with his own childhood. He may consider the moral law a fiction and cut himself off from humanity. He may not recognize the unity of the Divine and the righteous and become a savage, deifying sex, or death, or power, or the future. As for the historical Incarnation, it requires a particularly strong faith. It is strangely similar to many myths - and not similar to them. It defies reason, it cannot be invented, and it does not have the suspicious, a priori clarity of pantheism or Newtonian physics. It is arbitrary and unpredictable, like the world to which modern physics is gradually accustoming us, a world where energy is in some tiny clumps, where speed is not limitless, where irreversible entropy gives direction to time, and the Universe moves, like a drama, from the true beginning to the true end. If a message from the very heart of reality can reach us, it seems to have that unexpectedness, that stubborn complexity that we see in Christianity. Yes, in Christianity there is precisely this sharp aftertaste, precisely this overtone of truth, not created by us and not even created for us, but striking us like a blow.
Victor Veynik
Why do I believe IN GOD
Study of manifestations of the spiritual world
From the publisher
This book was conceived by my father a long time ago, back in 1990, but due to various circumstances it is being published only now. I tried to preserve the author's edition as much as possible. All or almost all of the materials presented here have been published previously, but it should be noted that the author’s versions are much more complete; my father worked on the book literally until his last days.
The Appendix includes some materials that were not included by my father in the original version of the book, but show the gradual development of his views from a simple study of anomalous phenomena to a comprehensive assessment of the spiritual essence of this phenomenon.
August 1998
Alexander Veynik
introduction
There are people endowed with an ear for music and memory, while others have the gift of a special artistic perception of visible reality and displaying it in their paintings. Victor Iozefovich Veinik is a person with a heightened sense of spiritual reality.
From a materialistic worldview, Professor V.I. Veinik, through the study of “paranormal phenomena” (UFOs, poltergeists, extrasensory perception and other kaleidoscope of bright and noisy “miracles”) comes to the Christian faith, to a deep understanding and acceptance of the Orthodox faith. Of course, it was not immediately easy to understand and reject those pseudo-spiritual and pseudo-religious statements that Professor V.I. Veynik examined and studied with kind inquisitiveness, scientific objectivity and responsibility. A sincere and selfless natural scientist, he tried to act in accordance with the instructions of St. ap. Paul: “Test all things, hold fast the good things” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). He resolutely investigated everything, all aspects of earthly and afterlife. It is known that there are phenomena hidden from man, located beyond the boundaries of empirical experience. Much is inaccessible to consciousness, which is darkened by the current sinful state. The curiosity of a spiritual and physical person is inappropriate and sinful here. But one who is spiritual can judge all things and understand all things (cf. 1 Cor 2:14-15).
Scientific research and theological understanding of phenomena located on the border of the material and spiritual is possible only under conditions of deep humility, reverence for the Creator and Provider, constant prayer and repentance. It was these virtues that were characteristic of the late Viktor Iozefovich. In scientific works and in many journalistic articles, he outlined interesting and extraordinary judgments, and possibly discoveries. There are topics that need further study, judgments on which have not been definitively and authoritatively announced to the Church. Here is the area of free theology and the point of view of the respected professor V.I. Veinika has the authority of private opinion.
The ever-memorable professor V.I. lived a long and difficult life. Veynik and, I think, the words of Bl. Augustine: “Lord, You created us for Yourself, and our soul is troubled until it rests in You” - fully relate to his life and works.
Priest
“Russia will be saved by creativity - renewed religious faith (within Orthodox Christianity), a new understanding of man, new political construction, new social ideas...” These words belong to the outstanding Russian thinker, philosopher, statesman, historian of religion and culture Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin (1883 -1954).
He rejects the rational science of the West. Western science, in his words, knowing “nothing other than sensory observation, experiment and analysis, is a spiritually blind science: it does not see the object, but observes only its shells; her touch kills the living content of the object; it gets stuck in parts and pieces and is powerless to rise to the contemplation of the whole.”
“Russian science is not called upon to imitate Western scholarship either in the field of research or in the field of worldview. It is called upon to develop its own worldview, its own research. Every real, creative researcher always develops his own, new, method... A Russian scientist, by his entire nature, is called upon to be not a craftsman or an accountant of a phenomenon, but an artist in research; a responsible improviser, a free pioneer of knowledge... His science should become a science of creative contemplation - not in the abolition of logic, but in filling it with living objectivity; not in trampling on fact and law, but in seeing the integral object hidden behind them.”
“Only a new idea can revive Russia: only renewed souls can recreate it...” “The Russian idea is the idea of the heart. The idea of the contemplative heart. A heart that contemplates freely and objectively and transmits its vision to the will for action and thought. She claims that the main thing in life is love, and that it is through love that life together on earth is built, for from love will be born faith and the entire culture of the spirit. The Russian-Slavic soul, from ancient times and organically predisposed to feeling, sympathy and kindness, historically accepted this idea from Christianity; it responded with its heart to God’s gospel, to the main commandment of God, and believed that “God is love.” “Love is the main spiritually creative force of the Russian soul” /I.A. Ilyin. Our tasks. Volgograd: Tsaritsyn Society for the Revival and Strengthening of Orthodoxy, 1994. T. 1. Selected articles/.
Beginning with Ivan the Terrible and especially with Peter the Great, the widespread penetration of Western culture and science, guided by insensitive reason, changed in Holy Rus' the relationship between heart and mind, feeling and knowledge in favor of the latter, and a great apostasy from faith occurred, ending in the catastrophe now observed. It is unthinkable to return to the former spirituality of the heart, that is, to renew the soul, if we do not overcome the heaps of deceit and lies that Western materialism and atheism brought with them. And they can be overcome only by turning to the main source of God’s gospel - to the Holy Scripture, for it is addressed precisely to the heart of a person, to his feeling, which gives birth to love and faith. Scripture also provides a limited minimum of natural scientific information; it is necessary and sufficient to cope with the task.
Of decisive importance in this matter is the greatest discovery of our time, created by the brilliant Russian scientist Ivan Panin (1855-1942), who strictly mathematically proved that the canonical Bible, down to its last line, was literally “put into the brains” of the people who wrote it by the Lord Himself. Therefore, she, like God, is absolutely true, and must be believed unquestioningly. Therefore, in order to understand the structure of the world and man in a new and correct way, we are obliged to take the natural scientific texts of the Holy Scripture as a basis. A new understanding of the world and man must inevitably be followed by new ideas for political and social construction.
The most important should be recognized as texts that put a completely new meaning into the well-known physical concepts of time and space. On this foundation a new science was built - the general theory (GT) of nature. It contains a number of previously unknown laws that explain the fact of the existence of an invisible spiritual world parallel to ours and allow us to give a simple and clear theoretical and experimental interpretation of many other biblical texts that previously seemed incomprehensible or even doubtful. For example, it became clear how “Philip was taken away by the angel of the Lord, and the eunuch did not see him... But Philip ended up in Ashdod” (Acts 8:39-40); how during the flood the relatively small ark of the righteous Noah could accommodate so many “pairs of clean and unclean” along with the food they needed; how a whale with its narrow neck could swallow the prophet Jonah; how during the battle of Gibeon “the sun stood in the midst of the sky and did not hurry towards the west almost the whole day” (Joshua 10:13), etc.
Against this background, the noted I.A. Ilyin, the artificiality, formality and one-sidedness of Western scientific constructions, in particular, the meaninglessness and fallacy of the theory of relativity, the emptiness of quantum mechanics, starting not from contemplated nature, but from guessed mathematical equations, to which they then tried to give some kind of physical meaning, etc.
This book contains some articles that, in a popular form, present from the standpoint of the new theory the most important physical aspects of the spiritual problem associated with the invisible parallel world. Over the past four years, these articles have been published by the author in various magazines and newspapers, mainly in “Orthodox Word”, the magazine “Svet” (“Nature and Man”), the almanac “It Can’t Be” and others. They briefly touch upon the history of the issue and experimental confirmation of OT (Chapters I and XIV), then speak in some detail about the discovery of Ivan Panin and the subordinate role of science in relation to religion (Chapter II), about the science of the rational and the heart (Chapter III ) etc.
With the help of OT, a new understanding of human nature is given (Chapter IV) and amazing automatically triggered mechanisms are described...
