Russia’s science and higher education ministry has dismissed the head of a prestigious genetics institute who sparked controversy by contending that humans once lived for centuries and that the shorter lives of modern humans are due to their ancestors’ sins, state news agency RIA-Novosti said Thursday.

Although the report did not give a reason for the firing of Alexander Kudryavtsev, the influential Russian Orthodox Church called it religious discrimination.

Kudryavtsev, who headed the Russian Academy of Science’s Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, made a presentation at a conference in 2023 in which he said people had lived for some 900 years prior to the era of the Biblical Flood and that “original, ancestral and personal sins” caused genetic diseases that shortened lifespans.

  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I don’t know. Given that your skydaddy is all knowing shouldn’t it know? Shouldn’t it be sitting in heaven now thinking “oh man this one is searching for me and not finding. Let me do the one thing that would convince him”. You know exactly like the road to Damascus Experience or Thomas putting his hands on Jesus?

    • SpezBroughtMeHere@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Well, I didn’t ask what God would do to prove himself. I asked is there anything that would change your mind or is it made up and there’s nothing that would get you to change your beliefs? I have to ask because I’m not all knowing, I rely on conversation to get info.