Issue 22

Editor’s Notes

• Valerii Kuvakin in his Immersions into Society comments two important events in which PHS took part, that is the international congress Science, Antiscience and Paranormal Beliefs and the Civil Forum.
• Reason Against Religious Terrorism, A Call of Russian Humanist Society.

From the Proceedings of the Congress Science, Antiscience and Paranormal Beliefs

• Against Antiscience, Charlatanism and Irrationalism in Russia. Resolution of the International Congress.
• Edward Kruglyakov Why Antiscience is Dangerous? For the last decade the science in Russia was too indifferent in terms of pseudoscience. Academician Kruglyakov gives his answer to the question: What is to be done in order to purify science and to defeat the false science?
• Garry Abelev in The Sources of Pseudoscience shows that the beginnings of any false science are the interference of ideology, power, illegal money and public’s ignorance. Finally the antiscience is rather more harmful for the people then for science as such.
• Roy Brown writes about his impressions of the Congress. His From Russia with Love is the sharp and friendly observation of the Russian mentality and the people’s behavior of the postperestroika times.

Resonance

• In The Circles on the Water Evgenii Smetanin observes the press, which covered the event. Newspapers and journals devoted a number of articles and reviews to the Congress. That is the sign of the social importance of the resistance to antiscience.

The Humanist Program of National Building

• Toward the United Russian Nation. The Open Letter to the President of Russia, the Federal Parliament and the Government of the Russian Federation.

The Lesson To Be Learned

• Valerii Kuvakin analyses the world situation after the terrorist attack in New York and Washington in September 11, 2001. Let Us To Accept The Truth, Even In Silences, - author says. Religious terrorism puts the societies with the mixed – many confessional and secular – cultures into ambiguous position. Their governments cannot openly and courageously to identify the real enemy, the religious ideology. Secular Humanism is the “secret power” that confronts to the religious fanaticism.

Humanist Dictionary

• Alexander Kruglov defines Terror, Terrorism as the worst kind of blackmailing, as a maximal usage of the destructive freedom, the freedom from all-human values.

Freedom of Consciousness and Law

• Sergey Buryanov and Sergey Mozgovoi in The New Threats To Freedom of Consciousness disclose the facts of the anticonstitutional relations between the state and so call “traditional” religions in Russia.

X-Files of Zdraviy Smysl

• Sergey Efimov UFOs over Kazakhstan. Reports about more then 500 flying “plates” is a symptomatic socio-psychological phenomenon. The Efimov’s paper is a fragment of his book in which he tells about his own investigation of the information about the UFO.

Debates

• Humanism and/or Atheism. Minutes from the Summer seminar of RHS June 27 – 29, 2001. The question is discussed: should we reduce the secular humanism to atheism or we have to search for the universal humanist values that are able to bridge the gap between people and culture?

Literary Pages

• Vsevolod Lyashenko Ben Ladun - the tragedy-farce in a style of pop art.