As you know, it was psychiatry that took on the role of the most objective evaluator of human actions. She also claims to be the final authority in assessing his thoughts.
At first glance, psychiatry seems to be a good arbiter of religion and religiosity, but this impression is deceptive. The fact is that she, without hesitation, labels a lot of things in human life and culture as “pathology.”
Of course, analyzing religiosity using the parameters of psychiatry, we will obtain rough and very general estimates. Nevertheless, these will be at least some primary guidelines necessary for understanding such a delicate subject as religious faith. However, we will have to be cunning and maneuver, avoiding a head-on meeting with the dogmas of fundamental classical psychiatry. The fact is that she does not condescend to discuss the intricacies of the phenomenon that interests us, but immediately pronounces a verdict.
W. Hellpach strictly states that “the religious element has almost always appeared in history in a painful shell. It spread and underwent its decisive transformations always on the wings of mass mental illness” (W. Hellpah. Die geistien epidemien Frankfurt am Main: Rutten & Loening, 1907).
Another classic of psychiatry, E. Kraepelin, notes: “In patients with a religious direction of thought under the influence of “revelations,” things can reach the point of delirium of prophecy, the idea that they are the chosen ones of God and the Messiah, and a desire is revealed to perform public worship and gain supporters” (cited based on the book by Pashkovsky V. E. Mental disorders with religious and mystical experiences, 2006).
R. Krafft-Ebing (needing no introduction or recommendations) considered all the main religious manifestations as “delirium about a mysterious union with God”, “sensual delirium of a religious-mystical nature” and did not allow any other origin of religious faith other than pathological.
The pillars of the Russian school (V.P. Serbsky, S.S. Korsakov) used only clinical terminology to characterize religious manifestations.
V.P. Serbsky generally “grabbed” all questions of faith under the term paranoia religiosa (religious insanity), noting that “hallucinations containing the faces of Christ and saints begin to dominate in the sphere of perception; auditory hallucinations arise, telling the patient about his high mission, the main the content of thinking becomes religious delirium about a divine calling” (Serbian V.P. Psychiatry. A Guide to the Study of Mental Illnesses, 1912).
It should be noted that none of the classics almost ever singles out “religious faith” as a special category of insanity. There is no such disease as “religious faith.” By clinical standards, this is only one of the manifestations of “delusional affective psychoses and hallucinosis, typical of phasophrenia, paraphrenia and schizophasia” (according to Kleist). In other words, it is a symptom of the disease, but not the disease itself.
Depending on the national and cultural specifics of the patient’s environment, this symptom of severe central nervous system damage can be “painted in the colors” of any religion. For example, a Chukchi, suffering from an acute form of schizophasia, will concentrate his passion on the tiny god Pivchunin, an inhabitant of the Russian world or Catholic Europe - on I. Christ, and a resident of India - on the elephant-faced Ganesha.
This concludes our brief presentation of the “classical view.” As we see, fundamental psychiatry was not inclined to deal with the nuances, but immediately and sternly “closed the issue.” In her opinion, it is not just one symptom that should be studied, but the problem of schizophasia or paraphrenia as a whole.
The categorism of the classics could have deprived us of all freedom of maneuver, but, fortunately, the situation has changed. The current status of “faith” allows us to use both the parameters and logical tools of modern psychiatry to study it. Vera is to be congratulated. In just a hundred years she has made a brilliant career. From a simple symptom to a separate phenomenon.
It is easy to notice that modern psychiatry not only curtsies before faith, but sometimes even touches it. Of course, psychiatry “keeps in mind” the formulations of Serbsky, Kleist and Kraepelin, but differentiates manifestations of religious faith into “pathological” and “completely healthy”, and sometimes even “healing”.
This tenderness is another mystery that we will try to solve in our short essay.
The concept of “pathology”, founded back in the 19th century, in relation to some manifestations of “faith”, of course, has not gone away. No internal contradiction has appeared in the assessment of religiosity by psychiatry.
Let's see what still falls under the concept of “pathology” today?
First of all, these are precisely those properties that, from the point of view of Christianity, are an example for any believer. The very ones that are inscribed in the history of religion as standards of piety that a religious person must strive for. Namely: categorical intolerance to other cults, sacrifice, severe asceticism, reaching the point of self-mutilation, unyielding and extremely emotional devotion to the religious ideal, as well as visions, “voices from above,” etc.
We have excellent material that contains all the main “symptoms” of true faith. These are the lives of the saints. They clearly, in detail, consistently demonstrate what the behavior and thinking of a believer should be according to the standards of the church. And by the standards of both classical and modern psychiatry, 75% of the saints of the Christian Church are subject to immediate hospitalization and compulsory treatment with chlorpromazine and haloperidol, increasing the dose to 30 mg per day.
It is not difficult to predict the diagnoses that would have been made (for example) by St. Simeon the Stylite, St. Blessed Laurus, St. Nikita Pereyaslavsky or St. Angela da Foligno. In all likelihood, these would be the same “delusional affective psychoses and hallucinoses.”
Let us remind you what exactly the mentioned characters are famous for. (These names are taken at random from many hundreds and thousands of Catholic and Orthodox saints who became famous for approximately similar acts.)
St. Simeon deliberately bred worms in the “ulcers of his body,” which stemmed from the saint’s habit of rubbing himself with his own feces.
St. Laurus was covered with such a thick layer of lice that the features of his face could barely be discerned under it, and he could not brush off the lice, because he constantly held his hands in a cross shape.
St. Nikita “wore a large stone hat for 40 years.”
St. Angela became famous for regularly burning her vagina with a burning log to “get rid of the fire of voluptuousness.”
It is clear that all the saints mentioned (if they fell into the hands of psychiatry) would be forever placed in high-security hospitals.
It is more difficult to predict what daily doses of clopsixol would have been prescribed to St. Arseny, whose “eyelashes fell out from constant crying for the Lord.” Apparently, to stabilize his condition, they would have to (within reasonable limits) exceed the “threshold” 200 mg.
The "Church Father" Origen, who publicly cut off his penis in the name of the "kingdom of heaven", would probably have been immobilized by means of a straitjacket with metal rings (for tying him to the bed), and the Venerable St. Macarius, who, in order to get rid of sinful thoughts, “immersed his butt and genitals in an anthill for a long time,” would spend the rest of his days fixed in a geriatric chair.
The pious ecstasies of ordinary believers (favorably received by the church) would also probably be assessed by psychiatry as severe mental disorders.
Let us remember one of the examples of such piety, left to us by Margarita-Maria Alakok: “He, God, took possession of me so much that one day, wanting to cleanse the vomit of a sick woman, I could not resist licking it with my tongue and swallowing” ( quoted from “The History of the Body” by A. Corbin).
In other words, in the actions of saints and pious people we clearly see the ability to very easily step over the barriers of complex reflexes established to protect both the most important functions of the body and its integrity.
A natural question arises. Why does the present and the reliably observable past offer no precedents of this type? Where are they, the real manifestations of what the church itself considers to be examples of real faith?
There is none of them. But why?
Has dogma or the very essence of Christian teaching changed? No. Are saints disavowed and decanonized? Have they lost their status as role models? Also no.
Perhaps “faith” in the true sense of the word has remained far in the past, and today we are dealing only with its imitation, with a complex pretense generated not by the “flaming abyss of ancient Hebrew revelations”, but by conformism, ignorance and fashion?
In all likelihood, this is exactly the case.
Here we finally understand why modern psychiatry classifies religious faith so friendly and condescendingly. Today's faith does not contain any extreme emotional manifestations, “unearthly voices” and visions. Its adherents do not have the slightest desire to become like Christian saints in unsanitary conditions and self-mutilation. It (almost) does not arouse the desire to sacrifice oneself or others to a religious idea.
She outlined her circle: a Easter cake, a candle, an icon, a tear of tenderness, as well as abstract conversations “about God and spirituality.” But everything that goes beyond the boundaries of this circle is still interpreted as pathology.
In other words, psychiatry’s tolerance extends only to the state of formal imitation of “faith.” To a state that, in fact, has nothing in common with the standards of life or canons.
It is precisely this kind of formalism, or, in the language of the Gospels, “lukewarmness,” that God strictly warns Christians in “The Revelation of John the Theologian” (Rev. 3-15,16), promising to “vomit” such a character “out of his mouth.” Naturally, the rich pathos of God is echoed by saints and theologians.
A simple analysis of patristic texts leaves no doubt that such a very conditional “faith” is interpreted by the church fathers as something that is “worse than unbelief.”
The imitation we are talking about can be quite conscientious, lengthy and thorough.
It may consist in the punctual performance of religious rituals, in declarations, dressing up, in the careful selection of accessories and vocabulary. It is still capable of generating anger towards dissent and some intolerance.
She will never encourage you to rub yourself with feces, wear a stone cap for forty years, or burn your vagina with a flaming log.
This probably happens for one simple reason: there is almost no pathological component in the actions of modern believers. Basically we are dealing only with the reconstruction of the state of “faith.”
And the reconstructor of the “faith” is not capable of significant self-torture or voluntary martyrdom. For one simple reason: he is healthy. He is only an imitator, never crossing the boundaries of reality. The very borders beyond which St. Simeon, St. Macarius, Origen and many others were once called “delusional affective psychoses and hallucinoses.”
Of course, all of the above does not rehabilitate religion. Even devoid of meaning and content, it remains a force capable of significantly and successfully resisting human development. If only because it still offers examples of undoubted pathology as the main ideological and behavioral guidelines.
Alexander Nevzorov, formerly the scandalous host of the famous program “600 Seconds” on St. Petersburg TV, then a State Duma deputy, and now a writer, publicist and horse expert, has recently appeared in yet another guise - an irreconcilable anti-clerical and critic of the Russian Orthodox Church. Today (especially after his speech on the NTVshniki program, where Nevzorov said that “The Orthodox Church is fooling the people”), as Alexander Glebovich himself says, he is one of the main “preachers” in the country. Why all of a sudden such hostility towards the church? Why is she not good for Nevzorov? We tried to understand the background of this confrontation.
Sang in a church choir and supervised KGB priests
– Alexander Glebovich, are you generally involved in the church from any side or do you act according to the principle “I haven’t read the Holy Scriptures, but I will tell you”?
- Involved. It all started when I was very small, protesting and quite stupid, about 30 years ago. I then sang in the church choir and traveled to monasteries. For various reasons, I left this priestly world, especially since with my orientation (it is traditional), I could not make a career there.
– Do you want to say that the clergy in your youth were exclusively gay?
– I knew, let’s say, only a couple of priests of normal orientation.
– And who are these normal people with whom you communicated?
– Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov (Chairman of the State Security Committee), with whom I was very friendly and with whom I had many common interests, called me to Moscow and offered to oversee KGB structures in the North-West. These structures turned out to be the very intelligence vertical of the church, which consisted of 60-70 percent state security workers. Not some people brought in from outside for patriotism or interests, but normal full-time employees. They are military people, they received orders to go work with believers and priests. It is clear that the Soviet government could not ignore a structure that controlled the opinions of many millions of people.
– Clean hands, cool head, black cassock. Service, so to speak, in every sense of the word?
– An excellent structural vertical was built: hieromonks, archimandrites, bishops, metropolitans - all our people who played in this theater. My powers were known, and they didn’t have to pretend to be holy with me. Hard service! Imagine an entire state security colonel who grew a beard, who had to smoke secretly and swear less in public. One of these even managed, thanks to his intelligence capabilities, to suppress an outbreak of ethnic hatred somewhere in the Donetsk region. This was reported to the Central Committee, the uncle was summoned and awarded personal praise from Brezhnev. Leonid Ilyich admired the colonel so much that it took enormous effort to persuade Brezhnev not to nominate him for the title of People's Artist of the USSR.
- What a horror. Was it really all that cynical?
- No horror, we should be proud of our security officers. And there is no hypocrisy - they are intelligence officers who were introduced into an ideologically alien structure, which they controlled.
– And how successful was this activity?
“In general, the intelligence network coped with the task. But unfortunately, the church then, in the 90s, was unable to provide serious assistance either in matters of the referendum or in matters of maintaining the stability of the Union. The intelligence vertical was partly asleep, walking around on its own. I then had educational conversations with someone.
Bearded riffraff teaches us how to live
– But now, one must assume, among the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church there are true believers, and not atheists with state security certificates posing as priests.
– The KGB’s paw withered away in 1990. Even those who were security officers, having lost contact with the authorities, mutated, transformed and were busy with their personal magical business. And as for the true believers... I cannot offend the same Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin with suspicions that he seriously believes that the bushes talk. And he is supposed to believe in this, since the Holy Scripture claims that Moses talked to the bush.
Today all this funny bearded riffraff decided that they would teach us about life. There is a role-playing game - “I am a servant of the faith”! By these rules, even play as mushroom elves, no problem, even dress up as Jedi, wave glowing swords - please! But - in specially designated rooms. I’m not against faith as such, even if they believe in talking office furniture.
– The game is not a game, but it seems to me that most people need it. It's more peaceful to live this way.
- Nobody needs this! Vera, you say? What is faith? This is a basic lack of knowledge. It is impossible to believe in the flammable properties of kerosene, it is stupid to believe in them, we know that they exist. Since childhood, we all believe in Santa Claus. A bearded creature who brings gifts. Some reward for good deeds will occur if we are such and such. After some time we find out: Grandfather Frost is a drunken artist from the regional philharmonic who drinks vodka in the elevator and grabs the Snow Maiden’s butt if he is still able to reach her. And our faith in Santa Claus ceases. God is such a big Santa Claus. Over time, knowledge of life, a vision of this life and understanding comes to a person, and Santa Claus has no place in it.
If someone wants to play, then let them play, but these games are very dangerous. For thousands of years we have seen the history of this religion, what blood and violence it turned into in our country.
– But it’s hard to argue with the fact that the beginning of Russian statehood is counted with the establishment of the Orthodox religion.
“We took Constantinople quite calmly and before the strengthening of Orthodoxy, being pagans, we beat the Bulgarians and had an organized army. We paid dearly for Orthodoxy. If it weren’t for such an exotic religion, we would have overcome the Tatar yoke faster than in 300 years.
Religion is a super profitable business
– Most will not understand you and will even judge you. Maybe their opinion should be respected?
- Let's respect those who need cocaine then. Who desperately needs vodka to be calmer and more confident in life. I am not against this faith, not against religion, but in the case when it is pushed into the place that is assigned to it by the Constitution. This is a private personal matter. This is a terribly dangerous thing, and it is not suitable as a national idea. Who can religion unite with whom? It can only split an already tormented society. There are many millions of atheists living in the country. Every religion divides. Let them believe in anything, even in copulating traffic lights, but they want us to support them! Imagine tax evasion due to proximity to a supernatural being. They do not want to pay taxes on profits, on real estate, on their retail outlets where religious and magical services are sold.
– But if there is a demand for these services, there must also be supply?
– Any trade in anything is an amazing business. Their product, called “grace,” does not require customs clearance, warehousing, and is not subject to shrinkage. And plus the widest illegal network in the country of trading silver and gold. This trade occurs without duty, without cash registers. They have become dangerous. They incite their idiots to destroy exhibitions. They are throwing out orphanages, planetariums, and local history museums from supposedly religious buildings. This is not even a church with domes, just a building that once belonged to some kind of diocesan administration. They set their idiots to beat up girls at gay pride parades. People have the right to be what they want to be, and no one has the right to dictate what they should be based on Hebrew mythology.
“Perhaps they will soon begin to teach the Law of God in schools.” So, does the state need this?
“They go to school for one simple reason - they want to provide themselves with candle buyers for two generations to come. Let them hold a referendum and declare Orthodoxy the state religion, then we will think about what to do in response. Whether it will be mass migration or a civil war – we’ll see.
P.S. In the coming issues, “Interlocutor” will give the floor to Alexander Nevzorov’s opponent, Deacon Andrei Kuraev, who is called “the main PR man of the Russian Orthodox Church.”
Alexander Nevzorov
Alexander Nevzorov
Can you imagine a situation in which this not commendable prank of the girls in the HHS would bring pleasure to the believers? At least satisfaction? Such a situation is not difficult to imagine. Everything is the same: the same dance, the same turns to the altar with their butts, the same lifting of legs and incomprehensible texts, but at the end of this whole procedure, respectively, lightning, incineration of the blasphemers to the state: either handfuls of ashes, or just bloody pieces meat with scraps of knitted hats mixed in. But that did not happen. This once again did not happen. And judging by the reaction of the believers themselves, they understand that this will never happen.
Alexander Nevzorov
What is fasting? Why does fasting exist? Where did fasting come from and the reasons for the origin of fasting? It is clear that physiologically this is a completely absurd action, not only not useful, but also extremely harmful, since after the era of deprivation there comes a time of monstrous unbridled gluttony, which has a corresponding name in various religious practices. Where did the posts come from? Where did the need to fast come from?
Alexander Nevzorov
Living with believing, church-going parents is torment and a huge problem. Boys and girls sincerely and confusedly ask what to do, what to do. How can they coexist with such parents? Alexander Nevzorov answers one of the most difficult questions of the younger generation.
The legend of Russian journalism, Alexander Nevzorov, is known as a consistent and uncompromising critic of the church. Episodes of his program “Lessons of Atheism” were watched by millions of people on the Internet. And finally, all the texts are collected under one cover. How to talk with believers, what Christian values are, how the relationship between science and the church has evolved from century to century, why it was necessary to protect the feelings of believers - Alexander Nevzorov discusses this and much more in his signature sarcastic manner on the pages of the book. The book “Lessons of Atheism” was published by Eksmo Publishing House along with an audio version of the lessons in October 2015.
Alexander Nevzorov
Today I will try to answer extremely interesting questions that were proposed to me, as paradoxical as it may sound, by an underground (underground!!) atheistic circle of one of the St. Petersburg universities. There, things really get to the point of insanity, and to such insanity that libraries are prohibited from lending out Yaroslav Golovanov, Taxel, La Mettrie and various works by Rousseau on this subject. And now the students, who are already the most intellectual, the most independent and reasonable, unite in some kind of atheistic circles, and questions come from them. It must be said that the questions are, indeed, distinguished by some knowledge of the subject and a certain kind of sharpness.
Alexander Nevzorov
Today we can observe worsening hysteria around this simple reality of life, which is, was and will probably be a very important sign of human freedom in matters of deciding both one’s own fate and in matters of deciding the fate of the derivatives of one’s body. The right to this decision, to this freedom is probably one of the fundamental human freedoms. This is very important to know and understand. In the same way, it is important to know and understand that science has had its say in this matter a long time ago, having determined, with a large safety margin, the timing of termination of pregnancy that is safe for a woman’s body, as well as the location and status of the embryo.
Alexander Nevzorov
There is also such a delicate and wonderful topic as insulting the feelings of believers. Of course, the feelings of believers must be protected from any insult, and we must monitor this very carefully and understand that believers are special people, they scurry around and look for opportunities to be offended. They scour the afterwords and prefaces of books, websites, magazines, exhibitions, and everywhere they eagerly look for opportunities to be offended by something and throw another hysteria. But they have the right to these hysterics, and of course we must take care of these feelings. This reverent attitude towards their feelings absolutely, however, does not prevent us from delving deeper into the history of what has offended believers and offended Christians throughout world history. What factors were most offensive to them, and what caused them the most massive, prolonged and noisy hysterics?
Alexander Nevzorov
Well? As, in fact, I warned, another skeleton has fallen out of the closet of the Russian Orthodox Church. But I must say, the skeleton is quite weighty. I mean the homosexual scandal, the details of which were announced by Deacon Kuraev. To be honest, I don't really understand the hype about this. But not only did everyone seem to have been warned about this and had to be prepared for it, but I don’t really understand the hysteria about this. Because everything that happens is so normative that it was initially, in principle, not even discussed in church circles.
Alexander Nevzorov
All cults and religions have one small problem. It lies in the absence of God as such, as well as any indirect signs of his existence. This annoying little thing, of course, unnerves believers. True, not always. They themselves have already learned to come to terms with this fact, but they are very worried when others find out about it. It seems to believers that when the true state of affairs is revealed, they look rather stupid with their candles, cult of the dried dead and turbans.
All cults and religions have one small problem. It lies in the absence of God as such, as well as any indirect signs of his existence.
This annoying little thing, of course, unnerves believers. True, not always. They themselves have already learned to come to terms with this fact, but they are very worried when others find out about it. It seems to believers that when the true state of affairs is revealed, they look rather stupid with their candles, cult of the dried dead and turbans.
The secret of the absence of God, of course, can be masked by the vagueness of magnificent rituals, ritual dances or demagoguery about “spirituality.”
Can. But only up to a certain minute. And sooner or later it comes, and then the practical absence of a deity becomes obvious to everyone. Agree, this is not a very pleasant moment for a believer. Made to look like a fool, he, as a rule, falls into a rage, which (to the extent of his depravity) can be realized either through a simple scandal or through a queue from the AKM.
There are many different ways to expose the piquant fact of God's absence. But only good, juicy blasphemy has the universal ability to dot the i’s in this matter.
Why? Because, having directly affected the personal dignity of God, blasphemy, in theory, should provoke him to immediate retaliatory actions.
In essence, God gets a slap on the head. Of course, he can tuck his tail between his legs and remain silent, but for a creature with such a menacingly bloody image, such as, for example, a Judeo-Christian god, this is not a very decent pose. The silence and inaction of the deity in this case works to desacralize him, that is, to desecrate him. The professional reputation of God, firmly hammered into the consciousness of the public, is collapsing.
Writers of religions copied the main features of the gods from themselves. Therefore, vindictiveness, suspiciousness and hysteria have become characteristic features of supernatural characters.
Of course there are variations. There are softer and harsher cults. But Judaism, Christianity and Islam have long been caught in the trap of their own propaganda campaign. They, unlike other religions, cut off any paths of retreat for themselves, having invented for themselves not only a very evil, but also an extremely capricious god. Their god is completely devoid of a sense of humor, and 80% of his vocabulary is blackmail and bloody threats.
Of course, all deities, from the Buddhist Palden Lhamo to the Chukchi Pivchunin, quarrel, hysterically and exterminate people. But Zeus is at least periodically distracted by inseminating unwary Greek women, Palden spends part of his time sewing accessories from his son’s skin, but the biblical god has no other activities except narcissism and intimidation of poor homos. He asserts himself exclusively through mass murder and fingering. Both, judging by the Bible, had crazy success among the cattle breeders of antiquity:
“And I will pour out my indignation on you, I will breathe on you the fire of my wrath... You will be food for the fire, your blood will remain on the earth, you will not be remembered, for I, the Lord, have said this” (Ezekiel 21-31,22)
“And you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters you shall eat” (Leviticus 26-29)
“Beat the old man, the young man, the maiden, the child and the women to death” (Ezek. 9-6.)
“He who is far away will die of pestilence; and whoever is close will fall by the sword, and those who remain and survive will die of hunger... and you will know that I am the Lord...” (Ezekiel 6-12,13)
Even if he is not offended by anything, this god throws stones from the sky, pours fire on people, or sends epidemics, wars and misfortunes upon them. (Joshua 10-11)
He can dry up a tree without finding fruit on it in the month of March, and with a snap of his fingers turns a lady looking back at her burning house into a pillar of salt. (Matt 21-19; Genesis 19-26)
For no reason, he destroys entire cities and slaughters peoples, and at one point he arranges a mass murder of all humanity as a whole. In the waters of the global flood, the biblical deity drowns everyone in cold blood, including infants, pregnant women and ancient crones, making an exception only for his confidant named Noah.
Note that the Bible gives us a very specific picture of the disaster. All attention is focused on the boat, where the animals and Noah’s family are comfortably located. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of children and adults dying painfully at this moment receive only a casual mention: “every creature that was on the surface of the earth was destroyed; from man to beast..." (Gen. 7-23)
An innocent joke by the village children towards his other confidant (the prophet Elisha) also evokes an immediate reaction from God. But since he is always inventing some new methods of killing, the kids are not burned with sulfur and drowned, but torn apart by she-bears. “And two she bears came out of the forest and tore to pieces forty-two children among them” (2 Kings 2-24).
God and the bears will probably pick their teeth melancholy after this, leaving the mothers to collect and mourn the remains of their torn children.
In general, according to the “holy scripture”, children are a special weakness of the Christian God. He loves and knows how to destroy them.
We really don’t know exactly how God killed all the firstborn in Egypt (Exodus 12-29). But the mass slaughter of babies was precisely his image campaign, for which he carefully prepared, discussing it with Moses. The “Holy Scripture” of Christians diplomatically reports only that “there was a great cry in the land of Egypt, for there was no house” where there was not a little dead man.
A. Nevzorov: The moment comes when the most powerful insult to the feelings of believers become... iconsGod loved to have fun with babies (1 Samuel 6-19, Ps. 136-9), but he did not deprive the fetuses of attention (Hosea 14-1). On this occasion, the book of the prophet Hosea uses a particularly piquant expression - “cut open the pregnant women.”
However, torn children, massacres and epidemics are a regular repertoire. Simply to maintain the proper degree of “fear of God” in the public and an enduring reminder of “his greatness.” The real hysteria of a deity begins when he receives a slap on the head in one form or another. That is, it becomes an object of ridicule or direct mockery.
Naturally, none of the characters in the “holy scripture” calls God an “idiot.” Nobody draws caricatures of him. The ancient Hebrew blasphemies are of a very delicate nature. But! Even an attempt to simply look into the “ark of the covenant” causes an immediate and very angry reaction from God: “And he struck the inhabitants of Bethshemesh because they looked into the ark and killed fifty thousand and seventy people of the people” (1 Samuel 6-19). The funny trick of the boys Nadab and Abihu, who dared to burn the wrong incense, leads to the fact that “fire came out from the Lord and burned them, and they died before the Lord” (Leviticus 10-2)
We can present many such examples, even these are enough to get an idea of the character and inclinations of Jehovah-Sabaoth-Jesus. For twenty centuries, his image as a lightning-fast and merciless punisher was carefully maintained and cultivated by the church.
Naturally, any innocent joke addressed to God should, even today, guarantee that the impudent person will turn into a handful of dust. And immediately. And in the event of a direct insult to “God’s majesty,” the heavens should crack, and the archangels should draw their fiery swords and chop the wicked man into a hundred fried pieces.
The splitting of the cult boards (icons) on the vernissage should have ended with streams of flaming sulfur from the heavens. And the song in the KhHS is an instant tearing of the blasphemers, at least in two. But... “pussy” songs sound, icon chips fly, Charlie markers creak - and nothing happens. Six-winged seraphim do not fly and sixteen-eyed cherubs do not open the heavens. The bloody show repeatedly promised by the Bible turns out to be just a Hebrew tale. As stupid and evil as the figure of its central character.
This moment for every “believer”, trained in the conviction that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and most importantly, extremely ferocious, is almost unbearable. Of course, the sign of “absence” is also obvious to him. And then with his own vanity he tries to mask the unbearable silence and everyday life that comes after blasphemy. And he fills it with the howl of a million-strong rally, machine gun fire, or the voice of Marina Syrova.
Believers can be understood. They really don’t want to look like fools who wasted their lives slamming their heads on the floor and kissing dried corpses. Having some religious experience, they know for sure that nothing will happen as a result of blasphemy, and they undertake to do his “work” for their god.
The priests are heating up the situation. When it is no longer possible to veil the fact of the absence of God using ordinary methods, then new articles of the Criminal Code are composed, fires are lit, and believers are invented with certain “special feelings” that other people do not have. These “feelings” today are a good substitute for God, themselves becoming an object of worship.
We will talk about whether these “feelings” actually exist in the second part of our article.
There is a stereotype based on canonical and dogmatic ignorance. Believers naively divide the Old and New Testaments, probably assuming that they talk about different gods. Not at all.
The special piquancy of the situation lies in the fact that Jesus and the tearing of children by bears are one and the same god, changing names, etc., depending on the situation. "essences".
In Christianity there are not three gods or two. He's alone.
When a simple question is asked: “Is it possible to offend the feelings of believers?” - even the most hardened liberals turn sour. Ideological skewers are immediately shoved into their sheaths. The time comes for reservations, dozens of different “buts” and scrapings. The result is an incomprehensible bleat that contains no answer at all.
A. Nevzorov: On the territory of the Russian Federation, unfortunately, we are deprived of the opportunity to publicly blasphemeAlthough the answer to this question is extremely simple: in those territories where there is no direct legislative prohibition of such an insult, it is undoubtedly possible to do this. Moreover, it is necessary. And even necessary.
Of course, there are territories that have chosen intellectual degradation as their lot, or have no development ambitions. Their list is well known: Bangladesh, Russia, Nigeria, Afghanistan and other powers focused on identity and spirituality. There, laws protecting the “feelings of believers” are, of course, used and applied.
In the codes of developed countries, such prohibitions are sometimes found (in the form of legal fossils), but basically the civilized world follows the decisions of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe, which long ago recommended “excluding blasphemy from the list of offenses.”
The meaning of this recommendation is clear. The fact is that the right to blasphemy is a much more important right than it seems at first glance. Blasphemy is an essential component of freethinking, allowing one to succinctly express one’s attitude towards a set of those archaic absurdities that lie at the basis of any religion. Moreover, public blasphemy is an excellent way to remind believers that they are not the sole owners of the world, culture and information spaces. That in addition to their views, there are also diametrically opposed ones.
This reminder is also useful for believers themselves. The fact is that in favorable environments they are quickly forgotten and lose their behavioral guidelines. Which subsequently inevitably leads to drama. We have repeatedly observed how priests first stick their hands under everyone’s noses, importunately demanding kisses, and then become offended, contemplating their bloody stumps. Periodically bumping into the blade of atheism with their Adam's apple, believers sober up and “return to the shores.” This maintains balances and avoids unpleasant excesses.
A. Nevzorov: An innocent joke addressed to God should still guarantee that the impudent person will turn into a handful of dustLet's return to our topic. On the territory of the Russian Federation, we, unfortunately, are deprived of the opportunity to publicly blaspheme. Why do we say “unfortunately”? Because today we need to find out whether believers have some special “feelings”. Of course, it would be easier to do this using some live example. Having launched the mechanism of blasphemy for a moment, we could easily discern the structure of the notorious “feelings.” Believers are trained to respond to such provocations and always provide excellent research material with their reaction. But! For well-known reasons (Article 148 of the Criminal Code), we cannot do this, and therefore we will consider the “blasphemy - insult to feelings” mechanism, without in any way setting it into motion. So to speak, statically. However, even when turned off, this mechanism is also understandable, and poking around with the tweezers of logic is even more convenient.
So. Let us assume that the “feelings of believers,” that is, certain sensations unknown to science and inaccessible to other people, really exist. In this case, we are dealing with a phenomenon. With a paranormal phenomenon worthy of careful study. Almost every “believer” claims that the presence of such “feelings” radically distinguishes him from all other people. This is a serious statement. Let us note that today it is a claim to a whole set of significant privileges.
What is the nature of these “feelings”? According to the logic of things, they should be an addition to the set of dogmas with the confession of which every believer begins. But if this is so, then they must be unchangeable in the same way as Christianity itself. And have equally ancient origins. In this case, what was offensive to the believers of the fourth century must be equally offensive to the worshipers of Jesus in the seventeenth century. And what was unbearable for Christians in the 10th century must certainly “work” in the 21st century. Is it so? Let's see.
Starting from the 3rd century, Christians were mortally insulted by Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, as well as all the ancient classics. Why? Yes, because these authors mentioned or glorified pagan gods in their writings. Therefore, Homer and other Sophocles were banned from teaching in schools, and their works were burned, buried in the ground or scraped off parchments. Those who dared to recite them or simply read them were killed. An endless number of books containing the names of Osiris, Zeus, Hermes, Mars and other competitors of Jehovah-Jesus were destroyed.
Athenaeus of Naucratis in his “Feast of the Philosophers” gives relatively precise figures: he writes that approximately 800 names of ancient writers and scientists and about 1,500 of their works were lost forever during the period of reprisals by the followers of Jesus against ancient literature.
In 391, Bishop Theophilus burned down the Library of Alexandria. There remained about 26,000 volumes of “offensive” literature. The most pious Valens ordered that books from the pre-Christian period be specially collected throughout Antioch and destroyed “without any trace.” Pope Gregory I in 590 issued a decretal obliging to put an end to the “abomination” of the Homers, Apuleians and Democrites. In the heaps of burned books there was often a place for scientists of that time.
Although we must give Christians their due: at that time they still loved to look at the torment of their offenders and preferred to kill them in some smokeless way. For example, cutting off meat from them with sharp shells. From the living. This is how they managed to put an end to the first female astronomer Hypatia, who was killed by order of St. Cyril of Alexandria.
A. Nevzorov: Torn children, massacres and epidemics are the standard repertoireIt must be said that not only books, but the entire ancient culture “offended the feelings of believers in Christ.” Followers of the “sweet god” demolished temples, crushed statues, washed away frescoes, crushed cameos and chipped mosaics.
Just a few centuries later we see representatives of the same faith lovingly collecting ancient Roman and Greek art. They are already making glass capsules for cameos with Apollo and blowing dust from Athena's marble eyes. For some mysterious reason, what tormented believers so much and caused them “mental anguish” becomes an object of their own admiration, study and trade.
Here the first doubt about the presence of certain special “feelings”, acutely and directly related to faith, becomes legitimate.
Then everything develops even more curiously. The moment comes when the most powerful insult to the feelings of believers becomes... icons. Let's take a moment to look into Orthodox Byzantium of the 8th century. Nobody cares about Homer anymore. But we see huge bonfires of icons. We see icon painters whose fingers were cut off or their hands boiled in boiling water as punishment for their work. 338 Orthodox bishops at a council in 754 (in the Blachernae Church) declared icons the most terrible insult to religion and demanded their complete destruction. Orthodox crowds prowl throughout Byzantium, looking for a reason to be more offended. They find it easily, since there are icons in every home. Anyone who has a picturesque image of Jesus Iosifovich or his mother in their house has this icon broken on their head. Once broken, large fragments of the once sacred boards are pounded into the backsides of their owners. Or down the throat. There is also a tendency to mock images. Pig-dog or “other demonic snouts” are painted on top of the faces on the icons.
338 Orthodox bishops are rubbing their paws and stirring up the believing crowds even more diligently, describing in vivid colors the nuances of the mental pain that iconography should cause to true believers. But after a few years, everything changes magically. 338 Orthodox bishops, having whispered, get down to business again - and throughout Byzantium a round-up begins on those who chopped icons and boiled the hands of living icon painters in boiling water. As a result, the same Orthodox Christians who were offended by the existence of icons begin to be offended by even the thought of burning or chopping them. A new search for those responsible begins. They are found without any difficulty and fed with lead melts. The Byzantine landscape is decorated with corpses with their mouths and entrails burned out. These are blasphemers and iconoclasts. Now it is they who cause the hatred of Christians. Exactly the same as what icon painters and iconostases called for a few years ago. 338 Orthodox bishops glow with happiness, and icons are again declared especially revered objects. Having played enough of iconoclasm, believers rush in search of new reasons to be offended.
Of course, comparing Christians with Banderlogs, who, having pogromed and played dirty tricks, quickly lose interest in the object of the pogrom and run to look for new, stronger sensations, is not very correct. Let's hold off on it for now. Let's see what happened next.
A. Nevzorov: For no reason, he destroys cities and slaughters peoples, and at one fine moment he organizes a mass murderAnd then it was even more interesting. Christians began to be offended by everything that came to their hands: astronomy, chemistry, printing, paleontology and botany. To open pharmacies, electricity and X-rays. Let us omit the textbook and well-known examples of De Dominis, Bruno, Buffon, Miguel Servet, Charles Estienne, Ivan Fedorov, et cetera. Let's look at lesser-known, more recent scandals.
The very beginning of the 19th century. Offended by anatomy, Russian seminarians, under the leadership of Kazan Bishop Ambrose, burst into the anatomical department of Kazan University, destroy educational collections, and throw everything that remains not broken or trampled into specially prepared coffins, perform a funeral service and bury them under the ringing of bells and singing.
Mid-19th century. Believers have been dealt a new terrible insult: huge bones, which, in their opinion, serve as proof of the existence of the giants described in the Bible (Genesis 6-4, Numbers 13-34), have been declared by science to be the remains of ancient lizards. Scientists are directly accused of blasphemy, belittling the authority of “holy scripture” and encroaching on the “foundations of piety.”
End of the 19th century. Now believers are outraged that gynecology could become a legal branch of medicine. The opportunity to look at, discuss, study and depict rima pudendi makes them incredibly furious. And just 50 years later, Christian women, sitting in gynecological chairs, cheerfully wave tickets to paleontological and anatomical museums that have become fashionable.
For many centuries, believers had the opportunity to resolve any issues with the help of bonfires. When the matches were taken away from them, they rushed into the legal abyss, demanding the protection of their special “feelings” by special laws. It is almost impossible to list everything that has caused their hysterics over the course of twenty centuries. This is the invention of railways, radio, aviation, drilling wells and the explanation of the origin of species. Today we can confidently say: everything that once offended religious feelings necessarily became the pride of humanity.
But that's not the point. We are more concerned about the fact that each time the insult of believers was caused by some new reason, and after a while it passed without a trace. Moreover, having been offended to their fullest, Christians turned out to be very active and grateful users of what had recently caused them such “mental pain.”
With all our might, we do not see any connection between their “feelings” and the tenets of their faith or other paranormal textures. We see only ordinary human anger, skillfully directed by their ideologists to one thing or another. This anger painted a pig's snout on icons of Christ in the 8th century, forced the destruction of the first printing house in Russia in the 16th century, and poisoned Darwin in the 19th century. Looking even more closely, we can notice (in addition to anger) intolerance towards dissent and innovation. Undoubtedly, anger and intolerance are strong feelings. But they are not unique and do not give rights to privileges.
Even this brief analysis allows us (with some confidence) to assert that the “special feelings” of believers are a fiction. The same far-fetched and artificial concept as faith itself.
A. Nevzorov: Essentially, God gets a slap on the head. Of course, he can tuck his tail between his legs and remain silent, but...The fact is that religiosity is not an innate and inevitable property of a person. DNA is not concerned with such trifles as the transfer of religious affiliation. Faith is always the result of suggestion, teaching or imitation. It is always determined by environmental conditions and circumstances. The situation is exactly the same with “insulting feelings.” If a believer is not taught to be offended, then he will never do it.
Let's look at this statement with a very simple example. For maximum clarity of our thought experiment, let’s take the figure of the main Christian of Russia, a zealot of Orthodoxy, Vladimir Gundyaev, known under the church pseudonym “Patriarch Kirill.” Suppose (anything can happen) that little Volodya, at the age of two or three years, was kidnapped by gypsies. And, covering their tracks, they would resell it to another, distant camp. And from there - even further. State borders are a relative concept for Roma. Therefore, the resale of the curly-haired baby could end in Assam, Bihar or another state of beautiful India. Of course, raised in the jungle, Volodya would have been a completely different person. He wouldn't know his real name. His mother tongue would be Bengali. He would not have the slightest idea about any Christs, dikiries and kathismas. His gods would be the elephant-faced Ganesh, the many-armed Kali and the monkey Hanuman. His feelings would never be offended by the prank of “Pussey.” And from the slivers of the cross cut down by Femen, our hero would build a fire and cheerfully roast a fat festive cobra on it.