The epistemological criticism of falsification scientific atheism or metamorphosis “clerical renaissance” in modern Russia

Abstract

This article focuses on the epistemological examination of the ideological and philosophical climate of post-Soviet Russia. The author shows that the so-called «religious renaissance» is far from being a harmless phenomenon of spiritual life but is rather a new form of ideological dictatorship. The method of the latter is confirmed as an alteration of information and political priorities in the direction of a purposeful discrediting of the scientific atheistic paradigm. The article identifies five levels or types of fraud based on an equivocation (mixing of senses) that is being firmly implanted in the public consciousness: atheism as an ideology; atheism as a discourse; atheism as a religion; atheism as immorality; atheism as a latent intheism (godlessness). According to the author, being purified from ideological impurities, scientific atheism is an adequate reasoned response from the intellectual and progressive community which consists in conscious counteraction against the discrediting of scientific knowledge, that seeks institute religious dogma and myth-making. These adherents, regardless of their religious affiliation pursue a common goal: the creation of a corporate pseudo-elite, claiming informational, ideological and political hegemony. The scientific-atheistic paradigm has genuine moral and ethical values and credibility in the sense that an atheist demonstrates reasonable spiritual autarchy, but within the framework of universal human universal values. This is rather a sign of the person’s intellectual maturity and correctness rather than deviance and social perversion. All this, as suggested by the author, can serve as the basis for the extension of scientific atheism as the foundation of a genuine humanist integration of differences and the development of adequate and rational concepts – a governance strategy. Its essence lies in the consistent implementation of the «doctrine of deterrence» toward clericalism in all its manifestations, restrictions on religious practice by regulatory and legal regulation of the limits of its distribution. Refs 33.