Religion clashes with science in modern Russia

"Ten leading researchers have forwarded a letter to President Vladimir Putin, calling him to take urgent action against "the advance of clericalism." The signatories include Nobel laureates Zhores Alfyorov and Andrei Vorobyev, and fellows of the Russian Academy of Sciences Mikhail Sadovsky and Sergei Inge-Vechtomov, so the president can hardly shrug off their request.

What prompted them to sound the alarm was the recent 11th World Russian National Sobor (Assembly), held under the aegis of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose resolution calls on the government to add the ABCs of religion, under the name of Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture, to the list of compulsory school subjects. The Church thinks all children should be taught one Christian denomination - the one to which the majority of the population belongs.

[...]

Everywhere you go in Russia, you see a cassock. Priests bless warships and submarines, and sprinkle holy water over ballistic missiles. The Church has even published a Businessman's Manual of Morals. It fulminates against Western liberal values as erroneous and downright immoral.

The pendulum has swung to the side opposite militant atheism, and it is now likely to upset Russia's cultural balance."

RIA Novosti, 23/ 07/ 2007