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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    11 months ago

    Right but it shouldn’t be up to us. If there is an all knowing being it knows the answer to this question and it chooses otherwise. I assume you are Christian if not I am sorry for my wrong assumption. Why doesn’t the all knowing being of the universe not do whatever it would take to convince people that it exists to save all those billions from hell, when it knows exactly what is required?

    It did it for Paul, it did it for the doubters around Gallie, it did it for Thomas. Why play favorites? Especially as an all knowing being it knows what will happen if it does?

    Almost as if none of this bullshit happened and James was running a cult.