Orthodox biology textbook

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Trinity-Sergius Lavra republished the textbook "General Biology" for grades 10-11, its author - Sergei Vertyanov, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences. The textbook is intended for general education schools and is, as its creators point out, "the first biology textbook not constrained by materialistic frameworks."

Sergey Yuryevich Vertyanov (this is a pseudonym, his real name is Valshin) introduces himself as graduated in 1987 from the Faculty of Molecular and Biological Physics of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, candidate of physics and mathematics. sciences. However, people who tried to find him among the MIPT graduates in 1987 did not find either Vertyanov or Valshin there. They also failed to find in the Higher Attestation Commission data on his Ph. D. thesis, which, according to him, he defended in 1990. Vertyanov does not mention the title of his dissertation anywhere. On account of his book "The Origin of Life" (2003) and the film of the same name, shot with his participation. Now here is a textbook for grades 10-11

The textbook has not yet received the stamp of the Ministry of Education and Science for admission to its use in biology lessons at school. But judging by the fact that since 2005 its third edition has been published, the author really wants schoolchildren to get an idea of living nature precisely from his submission. The name of the editor - Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yuri Altukhov, the textbook opens with his preface. Unfortunately, you cannot ask Yuri Petrovich (Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, former director of the Institute of General Genetics, died in 2006) whether the words attributed to him are precisely given:

The author of the textbook was faced with an almost impossible task: he had to try to put on the pages of the textbook a sufficient amount of biological knowledge so as not to deserve a reproach for inconsistency with modern educational standards, but at the same time to cross this knowledge with Orthodox ideology.

It is indecent for modern creationists to appear ignorant. But in these attempts, the author continually fails. The stitching of scientific knowledge with Orthodox ideology is done roughly and carelessly, all the seams stick out with "white threads".

The experience of a tutorial varies greatly depending on which page you open it on. The initial sections devoted to biological macromolecules - proteins, nucleic acids, metabolism, structure and function of the cell - are quite informative for high school students, and at first glance there are no mistakes. Modern creationists do not reject molecular genetics, but try to build it into their worldview. So the reader will learn about the genetic code, triplets, stop codon and reading frame, promoters and terminators, exons and introns, get an idea about the regulation of gene activity, about alternative splicing, etc.

Everything would be fine if in the text, like false teeth, suddenly the following passages did not appear: “For modern scientists, the very fact of the functioning of this complex system in the body is surprising. Many researchers absolutely exclude the possibility of its spontaneous appearance. Cognition of intracellular processes leads to the thought of the Creator."

That is, the complexity of the device evokes not a desire to understand, but a surprise. Difficult means that it has not been done without the Creator. However, for some reason, the author is not surprised that, based on the Book of Genesis, God created all the diversity of life in two days, and since the listed molecular biological foundations of life fully relate to the plant world, it means that on the third day (creation plants) everything was basically invented. Something remains to be done in order to populate the Earth with fish and birds (day five), and then animals (day six), and to be in time before the weekend; on the same day God created man, although he could have set aside a separate day for such a great mission.

Six-day author understands exclusively literally, as six days lasting 24 hours each, in contrast to some creationists who believe that the biblical days should be understood metaphorically and, therefore, they can be stretched to millions and billions of years.

The style in which the textbook is written jumps from pseudoscience to primitivism. The author tries to explain some things scientifically. For example: “Three codons do not encode any of the amino acids, they are called nonsense codons, or stop codons: the protein template on the mRNA ends with them. The sequence of nucleotides of mRNA, starting with the start codon and ending with one of the stop codons, is called the coding frame of the gene, or open reading frame (ORF) ". But very easily he slides from a neutral style of presenting factual material to the bombastic-sensitive one inherent in bad children's books, but certainly not in textbooks for modern high school students: “Our everyday experience sadly testifies that all living things are subject to death. Creatures get sick, get old, and finally die. Many have an even shorter life: they are eaten by predators. " One can hardly imagine that both were written by one person. By the way, the author always uses the word “creatures” instead of the neutral “living organisms”, and you somehow stumble over these creatures all the time.

From time to time, Vertyanov falls into an edifying style, which is absolutely inappropriate when delivering information to high school students: "Excessive wine drinking and other excesses that distort the image of God in a person have always been considered a significant sin by the Orthodox Church." This is after the report on the influence of environmental factors, including alcohol, on the development of the body. Or a passage like this:

“According to Orthodox scholars, the Creator has laid down an edifying meaning that is understandable for man in the qualities of many animals. The lion reminds of the highest power, the dove - of moral purity, the eagle can serve as an image of spiritual soaring above the bustle of everyday life. A small ant personifies diligence, a huge dinosaur - a blind force, a monkey - a spiritless human personality."

There is a note to the reasoning about death: "The Holy Scriptures and the works of the holy fathers are permeated with the thought that death and corruption were not created initially, but entered the world as a result of the fall of the first man." This means that before the fall of Adam, animals on Earth did not die, but after him everything went to pieces: “The creatures devour each other, die from diseases, excessively low or high temperatures, they do not have enough food. Such disharmony in nature, if you follow the Scriptures, was not always, but appeared in the world after the fall of the first people in Paradise. The world was created "very well" (Genesis 1:31). The Scriptures say that before the Fall of man there was no death and all creatures ate vegetation."

The question immediately arises: how did everyone have enough resources before the Fall - when there was a complete idyll and animals did not die, and predators did not hunt for prey? The author is not puzzled by this question, but he is trying to prove that predators were once not predators.

“Indirect evidence of this possibility can be found in the signs of some animals. So, the panda can seem like a formidable predator. She has sharp teeth and claws. It is hard to believe that this animal feeds mainly on bamboo (). The lion's digestive system is tuned to fresh meat, but in crisis situations, lions can also eat vegetables […] Perhaps the sap of ancient plants contained more proteins, and mosquitoes reproduced successfully without blood. " Are you convinced? Not? Then further: “In the pristine world, the function of means of attack was probably different. Since the first man brought discord and death into the primordial world, some animals began to grab and eat victims, while others hid and flee. It can be assumed that the instincts of animals have changed due to changes in the functioning of genes and the corresponding changes in metabolic processes. Predators began to hunt, and the rest of the animals were afraid of them. It is possible that significant changes have occurred in the teeth and digestive systems of the predators."

Interestingly, in the section on ecology, Vertyanov adheres to a different concept and proves the usefulness and necessity of predators: “The interaction“predator - prey”is one of the main factors of self-regulation of biocenoses”, “The absence of predators can also turn out to be unfavorable for prey, the uncontrolled reproduction of which is accompanied feed, and then hunger catastrophically reduces the number of prey populations more intensively than any predators. Apparently, the author has already forgotten what he wrote earlier. One of two things: either predators appeared as punishment to all nature for the sins of the first man, or predators are necessary for the existence of biocenoses, and then it is not clear why the Creator did not create them from the very beginning.

The stumbling block in discussions with creationists is naturally the question of human origins. Moving on to him, The author first of all draws attention to the fact that “as the Bible Book of Genesis tells us, the first people lived for 800-900 years”, and “in about four generations, life expectancy was gradually reduced threefold”. Well, then - and ten times.

Explaining the reasons, the author refers to the assumptions of Yu. P. Altukhova, that “such a long life was ensured by the fact that almost all genes in the first people were represented by dominant alleles (remember that recessive alleles are mutant forms of normally functioning dominant alleles) … With an increase in heterozygosity for genes encoding enzymes, organisms mature faster and faster are getting old. Human longevity increases with the fall in heterozygosity. In fact, everything is exactly the opposite: it has been repeatedly shown that heterozygosity has a positive effect on viability, and a decrease in genetic diversity in animal or human populations is always harmful.

The shrinking life expectancy, which is offensive for a person, in comparison with Adam and Methuselah, however, receives an explanation, which, probably, should serve as a consolation for us. “If we, modern people, get sick a lot and die early, but still forget about eternal life, then how much more frivolous we would live if we had good health and a thousand-year life, and even more so immortality? The temporary death of our body is a barrier to sin, protection from the eternal death of the soul. So, we can thank Adam who sinned and his descendants who sinned even more.

The kinship of man with animals is strongly rejected.

But here the author is faced with a difficult task: how to explain the numerous finds of fossil human ancestors? After all, these are not paleontological transitional forms, about which the average person knows little - even children know about Australopithecus, Erectus, Neanderthals, they can no longer be hidden. And here the author uses a very curious trick. In order to prevent the thought of human evolution, it is necessary to declare some fossil finds as monkeys, others as people, just like you and me.

So, Australopithecus and earlier Ramapithecus are declared simply monkeys, without any signs of "transition to man".

The author denies the Australopithecus in upright posture, in the use of tools. Homo habilis is a skillful person, from his point of view, also does not belong to any hominids. The dramatic enlargement of the brain can be ignored. Found tools of Olduvai culture? Or maybe they didn’t belong to them at all. But Homo erectus was lucky, they were recognized as people: upright posture, the tools of the Acheulean culture - everything is with them.“Apparently, erectus possessed articulate speech: the corresponding signs of their skulls are incomparably more pronounced than those of habilis, and are close to ours” - this is misinformation, based on the features of the skull, anthropologists cannot make an unambiguous conclusion about the presence or absence of speech in ancient people, this issue remains one of the most controversial. The author claims that erectus are extinct sapiens and practically did not differ from us. As for the appearance, "large teeth, heavy brow ridges, significant relief in the area of muscle attachment are formed when eating coarse food and have nothing to do with descent from an ape-like ancestor."

As for the Neanderthals, the signs of their body structure are explained only by their adaptability to the harsh environmental conditions. And in general, by old age we will all become Neanderthals:

“Anthropologists point out that as people reach old age, they develop 'Neanderthal' features: heavy brow ridges, elongated cranial vault, etc. According to the anthropologist E. N. Khrisanfova, the Neanderthal complex is limited only by metabolic and hormonal features."

And again: "According to the data of modern research, Neanderthals were not inferior to modern humans in all motor, intellectual and speech abilities." About speech abilities an outright lie, anthropologists still can not unequivocally decide whether the Neanderthals spoke. And the fact that the genome of Neanderthals is quite different from the genome of modern humans is that DNA has deteriorated over time, says Vertyanov.

“It is perfectly legitimate to conclude that monkeys have always been monkeys, and people have always been people! Man is not descended from an animal. Research shows that he appeared on Earth immediately in his human form,”the author proudly concludes.

It turns out that since the right of the first people was recognized for erectus, then Adam and Eve should be represented as a pair of Pithecanthropus. Only for some reason they are not drawn in this form.

The last section of the textbook is devoted to ecology. It proves the need to preserve animals and plants, like all the creatures of God on Earth. These instructions look hypocritical in the context of the fact that "the life of the creatures around man is made by the Creator in dependence on the life of the king - man." Nature has already suffered from the fact that man imposes his dominance on her.

The second page of the cover of the textbook contains reviews of several biologists. Naturally, they all praise the textbook for all sorts of merits.

“This phrase was pulled out of my negative opinion, which I wrote in 2005, when this textbook was submitted to receive the stamp of the Ministry of Education on admission as a teaching aid in schools. Since the review needs at least something to praise, I wrote a few positive words, but along with this I noted that: a) the textbook contains a lot of factual errors and b) its Orthodox ideology is completely unacceptable. What they preach there in church is their business, but schoolchildren should be taught scientific knowledge. My review was negative, as was V. A. Tkachuk. Without asking permission from us, Vertyanov pulled out some phrases from our reviews and put it on the cover of the textbook. I think that he is behaving simply indecently, Alexander Rubtsov, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Deputy Dean for Science of the Biological Faculty of Moscow State University, explained to the Gazeta. Ru correspondent.

“It was in 2005, Vertyanov sent me his book, I wrote that I strongly disagree with the section“The Origin of Man”, I did not look at the other sections. My review was negative. Nevertheless, Vertyanov put a positive review under my name on the cover of the book. In addition, he called me a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, although I never had this title. I wrote to him many times demanding to remove my name from the textbook., but did not receive an answer, said Elza Khusnutdinova, professor at the Institute of Biochemistry and Genetics at the Ufa Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Bashkortostan.