1 00:00:25,667 --> 00:00:28,708 Communism is basically a religion. 2 00:00:30,458 --> 00:00:33,750 The Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist religion without a God. 3 00:00:35,500 --> 00:00:38,875 Which is a messianic religion. 4 00:00:40,125 --> 00:00:43,292 It has a holy book, it has a church. 5 00:00:44,625 --> 00:00:46,750 It has a head of the church. 6 00:00:47,250 --> 00:00:50,542 It has all kinds of rites, rituals. 7 00:01:10,917 --> 00:01:12,750 You, the Great Ones, 8 00:01:13,333 --> 00:01:15,500 I welcome you 9 00:01:15,708 --> 00:01:18,667 from the mountains, from the rocks. 10 00:01:19,417 --> 00:01:21,292 You lords of destinies. 11 00:01:21,750 --> 00:01:27,375 Give this man heart, give him mind. 12 00:01:28,833 --> 00:01:31,417 Purify this man. 13 00:01:32,792 --> 00:01:35,417 You who created everything, 14 00:01:36,250 --> 00:01:38,000 may you hear me 15 00:01:38,375 --> 00:01:40,500 and give him breath. 16 00:01:40,833 --> 00:01:43,333 I'm addressing these words to you, hear them. 17 00:01:44,042 --> 00:01:46,500 May you hear them. 18 00:02:27,250 --> 00:02:32,250 There are in the Communist Party, in many ways, 19 00:02:32,833 --> 00:02:36,500 the same thing that happenend in some heresies. 20 00:02:36,958 --> 00:02:41,042 It's the belief that you have to make things worse 21 00:02:41,417 --> 00:02:43,000 in order to become better. 22 00:02:43,250 --> 00:02:44,833 To destroy things 23 00:02:45,042 --> 00:02:47,417 in order to create the revolution. 24 00:03:10,417 --> 00:03:14,875 This is the Institute, which was constructed in 1938. 25 00:03:20,667 --> 00:03:22,125 It's very impressive. 26 00:03:22,500 --> 00:03:23,708 Yes, very. 27 00:03:24,250 --> 00:03:27,167 So, we have two inhabited buildings here. 28 00:03:27,500 --> 00:03:30,083 The one on the left and the one on the right. 29 00:03:31,042 --> 00:03:35,333 The left one is the shared apartment for the scientists 30 00:03:35,750 --> 00:03:39,083 who work here permanently, and also for the guests 31 00:03:39,667 --> 00:03:43,458 This is a kind of an infrastructure, very developed, 32 00:03:43,875 --> 00:03:47,417 so that people wouldn't need to go to the city. 33 00:03:47,792 --> 00:03:50,875 For instance, we have a cafe, a barbershop here. 34 00:03:51,250 --> 00:03:55,167 Now we should proceed to the security department. 35 00:03:56,000 --> 00:03:58,375 As we are on the territory 36 00:03:58,750 --> 00:04:00,500 of the restricted access Institute. 37 00:04:04,875 --> 00:04:06,625 So, comrade Sirs. 38 00:04:06,875 --> 00:04:08,208 You have arrived 39 00:04:08,958 --> 00:04:10,583 at a restricted, secret Institute 40 00:04:11,375 --> 00:04:13,875 which works on defence solutions for the USSR. 41 00:04:18,583 --> 00:04:22,917 Any pieces of information which you willl receive here 42 00:04:24,125 --> 00:04:27,125 are considered state secrets. 43 00:04:29,667 --> 00:04:31,500 All clear? 44 00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:33,792 Very clear. 45 00:04:34,125 --> 00:04:36,625 Are you willing to sign a declaration 46 00:04:36,917 --> 00:04:40,750 stating you will not divulge our state secrets? 47 00:04:42,375 --> 00:04:43,917 Yes, ready. 48 00:04:45,042 --> 00:04:46,875 Take a look at this. 49 00:04:47,125 --> 00:04:48,208 Signature, please. 50 00:04:49,833 --> 00:04:50,833 This is all. 51 00:04:51,917 --> 00:04:52,917 Thank you very much. 52 00:05:13,042 --> 00:05:14,458 Good evening, comrades. 53 00:05:14,917 --> 00:05:19,333 Today is the first day of our extensive conference 54 00:05:19,667 --> 00:05:23,375 dedicated to a rather new issue for our institute 55 00:05:23,792 --> 00:05:27,208 which is very current, interdisciplinary reasearch. 56 00:05:28,042 --> 00:05:30,375 and the synthesis of natural sciences 57 00:05:30,708 --> 00:05:32,583 and the humanities. 58 00:05:32,875 --> 00:05:34,417 I would like to note that 59 00:05:34,750 --> 00:05:38,083 our guests today are not solely religious practitioners. 60 00:05:38,542 --> 00:05:39,458 Father Daniil 61 00:05:39,708 --> 00:05:41,917 also teaches at the Moscow Theological Academy 62 00:05:42,333 --> 00:05:45,000 and Rabbi Steinsaltz is a professor 63 00:05:45,458 --> 00:05:46,917 at the University of Jerusalem. 64 00:05:48,000 --> 00:05:52,708 Naturally, we can be rather sceptical 65 00:05:52,958 --> 00:05:56,667 about what we're going to hear today. 66 00:05:58,083 --> 00:06:01,542 I would like to say, that our guests do not intend 67 00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:05,583 to prove to our academic community that God exists. 68 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:11,167 The idea is to familiarise us with the concepts of Man 69 00:06:11,417 --> 00:06:14,875 in Judaism and Orthodox Christianity. 70 00:06:15,667 --> 00:06:17,833 I'll now give the floor to Father Daniil. 71 00:06:18,417 --> 00:06:19,500 Go ahead. 72 00:06:19,958 --> 00:06:20,958 Thank you. 73 00:06:21,208 --> 00:06:24,875 First of all, I must thank the Institute's directorship 74 00:06:25,625 --> 00:06:27,375 for inviting me to talk to you, 75 00:06:27,792 --> 00:06:29,667 the scientific community. 76 00:06:29,917 --> 00:06:31,625 I'm very pleased to be here. 77 00:06:32,083 --> 00:06:34,583 As the director said, 78 00:06:35,042 --> 00:06:37,708 I don't want my lecture to be seen as 79 00:06:38,167 --> 00:06:41,042 some kind of missionary work. 80 00:06:41,458 --> 00:06:43,375 It's more of a simple heart-to-heart. 81 00:06:44,083 --> 00:06:47,667 The spiritual practice of Christianity maintains 82 00:06:47,958 --> 00:06:51,167 that people cannot commit acts of pure goodness. 83 00:06:51,625 --> 00:06:54,625 They don't have the powers within themselves 84 00:06:55,167 --> 00:06:57,333 to commit purely good acts. 85 00:06:58,000 --> 00:07:02,000 Any good deed we do always contains 86 00:07:02,292 --> 00:07:04,667 an element of something impure. 87 00:07:05,000 --> 00:07:08,042 It could be through pride, or out of jealousy. 88 00:07:08,375 --> 00:07:11,958 It could be praising yourself, "Look how good I am". 89 00:07:12,542 --> 00:07:15,875 So this presence of something that isn't pure or good 90 00:07:16,375 --> 00:07:19,542 is found in every human act of goodness. 91 00:07:19,875 --> 00:07:20,875 Agreed? 92 00:07:23,833 --> 00:07:28,167 I have difficulty understanding good and evil. 93 00:07:29,167 --> 00:07:30,875 Trifonov, however... 94 00:07:31,750 --> 00:07:34,333 If we're touching on this topic, 95 00:07:35,750 --> 00:07:39,708 I'd say the main danger is that any person can claim 96 00:07:39,833 --> 00:07:43,917 the ability to judge what is good and what is evil. 97 00:07:44,667 --> 00:07:50,250 This ability to judge is, for me, much more dangerous 98 00:07:50,833 --> 00:07:53,792 than the presence or absence 99 00:07:54,417 --> 00:07:56,625 of well-defined criteria for good and evil. 100 00:07:56,875 --> 00:08:01,917 So it's a question of the criteria of good and evil? 101 00:08:02,708 --> 00:08:04,708 Not just about these criteria, 102 00:08:05,667 --> 00:08:10,625 but whether we're able to take on the responsibility 103 00:08:11,250 --> 00:08:15,375 for saying what is good and what is evil. 104 00:08:15,667 --> 00:08:19,667 Of course, from a human perspective 105 00:08:19,792 --> 00:08:23,500 it's impossible to define these concepts precisely. 106 00:08:24,042 --> 00:08:27,125 We can still assume that by "God" we mean someone 107 00:08:27,417 --> 00:08:30,708 who can commit that pure and absolutely good act, 108 00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:35,500 that we intuitively know, does exist. 109 00:08:36,208 --> 00:08:37,583 If we put it like that? 110 00:08:37,958 --> 00:08:40,083 So your understanding of God is ethical? 111 00:08:40,375 --> 00:08:42,708 As a source of the absolute good? 112 00:08:43,417 --> 00:08:46,875 Ontologically, the existence of God seems strange 113 00:08:48,167 --> 00:08:50,583 for a mathematician, in particular. 114 00:08:50,708 --> 00:08:53,875 It sounds like an ill-understood definition. 115 00:08:54,083 --> 00:08:55,917 The absence of a definition. 116 00:08:56,042 --> 00:08:59,542 But how can man find salvation in abstract concepts? 117 00:08:59,667 --> 00:09:02,250 God is an abstract concept in any case. 118 00:09:02,333 --> 00:09:07,333 God cannot stay abstract when he becomes very concrete. 119 00:09:07,583 --> 00:09:11,500 You just said that God is an unattainable absolute good. 120 00:09:11,625 --> 00:09:14,208 For us it sounds like an abstract notion. 121 00:09:14,417 --> 00:09:17,042 We're used to work with abstract ideas in a concrete way. 122 00:09:17,625 --> 00:09:21,625 If a person could commit a good act by himself, 123 00:09:21,875 --> 00:09:26,583 he would need neither religion, nor church, nor God. 124 00:09:26,958 --> 00:09:29,708 But he doesn't have those powers. 125 00:09:29,792 --> 00:09:31,958 They always come to his aid from the outside, 126 00:09:32,083 --> 00:09:36,583 as a sign of Go...
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