Why We Remain Jews by Vladimir Tsesis

Author:Vladimir Tsesis [Tsesis, Vladimir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Memoir
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

HOW I WAS A TEACHER OF SCIENTIFIC ATHEISM

In the Soviet Union, where religion was continuously repressed, people seldom shared their personal opinions about religion, but once I found myself in a situation where I could not avoid giving a more or less straight answer about my attitude toward the idea of God.

In September 1971, the local trade union committee of the Odessa Infectious Diseases Hospital, where I worked as a physician, put me in charge of the Scientific Atheism Study Group for nurses and hospital attendants. Considering the possibility of undesirable consequences, I could not turn down such an offer, however unattractive.

In spite of the fact that the conclusions of modern science in the fields of cosmology, nuclear research, biology, and mathematics demonstrate that religion can explain the fundamental bases of the universe better than science, in order to gain more authority, atheists call their “science” concerning the absence of God “scientific atheism.”

After giving some thought to the matter, I found a way to teach scientific atheism that allowed me to avoid compromise with my conscience.

At that time in the Soviet Union, the book Bible for Believers and Nonbelievers, written by Polish writer Zenon Kosidovski, was published in great quantities and was widely available. Even with the semi-legal position of religion in the USSR, interest in religion never faded, so Kosidovski’s book, one of the rare literary publications to successfully survive the censorship of high party officials, became an instant bestseller. Up to this time I believed that this work must have been a dissidents’ Trojan horse somehow allowed to become a part of the official materialistic propaganda.

In his Bible for Believers and Nonbelievers, Kosidovski first describes in detail the contents of the Bible but then, in a professorial manner, rejects its content, showing that the Bible is incompatible with common sense.

Because it was mandatory for the study group members to attend, or, more exactly, as we used to say in Russian, to be present on a “voluntary-compulsory basis,” and because absentees in the Soviet system could be punished in various ways, the attendance of the study group was close to one hundred percent.

An additional reason for the “popularity” of the study group was that the classes were conducted during working hours. Under such arrangement, nurses and nurses’ aides came to the meeting hall of the hospital every Friday at 2 p.m., “thirsty” to learn what scientific atheism said about the “nonexistence” of God. Naturally, while the study group discussed the lofty topics of scientific atheism, the patients in the hospital departments remained in their rooms unattended, enthusiastically hoping for God’s intervention to relieve urgent problems with their health.

“Dear comrades,” I began, with Zenon Kosidovski’s book in my hands for dramatic effect, “to be more effective and convincing in our atheistic work we must learn how to criticize unenlightened and retrograde believers in the most efficient and skillful manner. With this in mind, we should educate ourselves in what religion tries to say in order to brainwash people.”

Thus, the method I chose for teaching became an introduction to the content of the Bible for my audience.

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