A flashmob. Wrote this a while ago, decided to finally post it.
1. What do you do when you are scared? Say, a plane drops into an air pocket, an artillery bombardment starts, a cholera epidemic... In such cases, I take reasonable but completely insufficient measures (fasten my seatbelt, hide in a trench, wash my hands), and then I pray. What about you?
I'm often scared for no reason, so I've gotten used to it somehow (although you can't really get used to it). I convince myself that there's no reason to be afraid, if nothing can be done anyway, and it's just my imperfect brain inventing fears for itself out of reasons that don't exist in reality.
2. Do you not want immortality? Or do you want it, but hope to achieve it through pragmatic methods, such as new medical technologies, for example? Or do you want it, but know it's unattainable, so there's no point in wasting time?
On the one hand, I'm not afraid of death, so I don't have any particular reason to want immortality. But if the technological capability emerges, I'll be glad. For a start, though, I'd like medicine to reach such heights that all physical and mental problems are solved with ease, and then we can start thinking about immortality.
3. Do you want to believe and cannot? Or can you, but do not want to? Or can you not and do not want to?
I can't in principle, any religion looks and sounds too contrived, the evidence is ridiculous, and I just can't believe for the sake of believing. If it helped me achieve greater peace of mind and tranquility, I would gladly become a believer, but considering that for me such faith would always be pretending (see above), I wouldn't get any joy out of it, which means it's pointless to try.
4. Is there any book against which you check your reactions and actions? Well, for me it's the Gospel. And for you? "The Lord of the Rings", "Little Dorrit", "War and Peace"? "Das Kapital"?
I check my reactions and actions not against authorities, but against knowledge, as is fitting for a person with a scientific worldview. I draw knowledge from books and articles on psychology, neurobiology, and how the brain and consciousness work. My moral and ethical values come from humanistic and liberal views.
5. Are there any priests whom you consider to be the worthiest of people? Patriarch Tikhon? Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh? Valentin Felixovich Voyno-Yasenetsky (Archbishop Luke)? Father Alexander Men? Or no one?
I won't name names, but I often come across interviews with quite likeable characters who speak out against the persecution of Pussy Riot, the enrichment of the church, and religious obscurantism in general.
6. You do not recognize the existence of God, alright. But do you recognize the existence of other immaterial phenomena that cannot be seen, touched, or poked with a screwdriver? Do phenomena that have a name, a symbol, a history, a meaning, but which no one has ever seen, exist? For example, an integral. What else?
If something can't be touched, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. An integral is an abstract concept that is applicable in practice and reflects reality; it exists in our consciousness. Or black holes, for example, you can't touch them, but they exist with high probability because there are theories, models, and instrument readings that confirm these models. For more details, see the scientific method.
As for strictly religious and cultural concepts — they also exist only in our consciousness as beautiful ideas, but they usually reflect reality poorly, unlike scientific theories. Freud's ideas are a good example. They are quite entertaining, though.
7. How do you manage to appreciate works of art whose subjects are based on Gospel stories? Leonardo's "Annunciation". Michelangelo's "Holy Family". Pasternak's "Star of the Nativity". Brodsky's "Presentation in the Temple".
See above. Any culture is interesting because it has complexity, has structure, internal relationships, often a beautiful philosophy, and evokes emotions. Although, of course, non-religious culture and modern art are closer to me.
8. How do you imagine yourself on the other side of death? Will you turn into humus? But that will happen to your body. And where will your consciousness go? According to the Lomonosov-Lavoisier law, it can't just disappear, can it?
I don't imagine it at all, with brain death, consciousness will disappear. The conservation law doesn't apply to information, only to energy and mass; this is such a banality that it's unclear why the author included it in the question, to demonstrate ignorance? If you sent a copy of a book to a friend, you didn't lose anything, did you? And if you wrote an article and then deleted it, it disappeared forever in the exact form it was in (unless you have absolute memory)? Why should it be any different with consciousness?
9. Are you capable of paradoxical thinking? Can you wrap your head around the fact that an electron is simultaneously both a particle and a wave?
I have a good imagination, I can imagine anything. The Buddhist concept of the mind, for example, I can imagine without difficulty, as well as any sort of gods. All strictly as cultural ideas weakly connected to reality, however. You can invent a million beautiful, vague phrases, which Laozi, for instance, brilliantly demonstrated to us. But what will these phrases mean, and is there any use to them? Except perhaps in the sense that the brain works, trying to resolve and comprehend these paradoxes.
As for quantum mechanics, it isn't paradoxical, its model simply differs from the concepts of the macro world, and it is difficult to draw analogies to everyday life and the physical world that we perceive through our senses. In quantum mechanics, unlike esoteric and religious works, superficially vague phrases have a direct physical meaning. An electron is a particle and a wave because it behaves like a particle and a wave in different conditions, and the theory makes predictions, possesses testability and repeatability, as a scientific theory should.
10. If tomorrow all religions and all their manifestations suddenly disappear in the world, will you lose anything?
In Europe, religions are gradually disappearing as part of people's direct lives, and remaining only in the cultural space; has it lost anything?
Probably yes, but it has gained something too, and maybe even more than it lost.
11. Do you believe that evil exists in and of itself? Or is it merely a flaw in good?
Beautiful words, but to understand their meaning, you have to discuss for a long and tedious time what your interlocutor meant. When I'm in a good mood, I'm sure that everything in the world is arranged in the best possible way, and when in a bad mood — that it's not really. But these are just passing emotions, as the Buddhists teach. By and large, these concepts exist only in people's heads, and are different for everyone.
For example, I adhere to liberal values in everything except the economy. Liberal — in the sense of do what you want, as long as you don't bother others. Except the economy — means that the state should make sure that everyone at least lives tolerably, if not well, like they do in Scandinavia.
For me, evil is what leads to deception, delusions, and halting the progress of humanity. Hence, religions currently are evil, they exist in and of themselves. Is that an acceptable answer?
12. How do you force yourself to do something that needs to be done, but is very hard? Like, for example, going to a hospice, caring for a demented old man.
Even just living is hard for me, so for me the question stands as Camus posed it — is life worth living? If it is, then you have to live and act, and if not, the alternative is also known, and it doesn't evoke any enthusiasm in me.
13. What do you do if you have committed a bad deed, and the pangs of conscience won't let you go?
I haven't committed deeds so bad as to consider the pangs of conscience one hundred percent justified. In my understanding, those are crimes like violence, theft, fraud, etc.
In other cases - you have to realize that it's already in the past, and the main thing is - not to do the same in the future.
14. How do you fight vanity, if you cannot by definition consider any of your achievements to be pathetic nonsense compared to the achievements of God?
I haven't done anything so grandiose, unfortunately, for this problem to even arise.
15. Do you believe in any miracles? And what is a miracle, in your opinion?
I don't believe in a miracle as a violation of the laws of physics, but a miracle as something beautiful, amazing, unexpected, and outwardly looking like an unusual coincidence or an event with a rare probability — easily. For why such events seem like miracles to us, see books about how the brain works, like https://klugethebook.com/