Research Project

Science – Religion Dialogues in Orthodox Church (SReDOC)

I.	Motivation of the project
One of the main motivations of this project is the actual situation in cosmology. There were very few persons that dealt with this very important theme in our country.
Romania is passing a very difficult transition period of time, when most of the teenagers and, generally speaking, the young persons are disoriented. With this project we'll try, through conferences, courses and broadcastings to get young people closer to the ethical problems of our world. We need an appropriate system of values, including the moral and religious ones.
That's why we believe that this project is necessary needed here from all the points of view.

II.	Objectives
•	the organization of a  team-work in order to debate  religious and science themes relying on creationism; the elaboration of scientific studies based on the respective themes;
•	the establishment of connections with the Lutheran and Catholic Churches for a better  collaboration; on this aim a Summer School on science and religion themes at Cozia Monastery from the Oltenia Metropolitan Church will be organized;
•	the broadcasting of T. V. transmissions  for the dissemination of the information;
•	the launch of a Post-Graduate course having as goal the Adults Education at the Faculty of Theology and Physics (Creationism);
•	the creation at the University of Craiova of an Information Center containing a library with specialty works in both fields (science and religion);
•	the creation of a web site for group reflection.
III.	The research team
1.	Radu Constantinescu – Prof., Faculty of Physics
2.	Dumitru Popescu  - Rev. Prof., Faculty of Theology
3.	Gelu Calina -  Assistant and Ph.D. stud., Faculty of Theology
4.	Anda Babalean – Lecturer and Ph. D. stud., Faculty of Biology
5.	Dana Constantinescu - Prof., Faculty of Mathematics 
6.	Delia Marasescu -  Assistant and Ph. D. stud., Faculty of Chemistry 
7.	Nicoleta Calina – Assistant and  Ph. D. stud., Faculty of Letters.
The coordination of the project will be assured by
•	Radu Constantinescu – University of Craiova, Dept. of Physics
13 A.I.Cuza, 1100 Craiova, Romania
Tel.-fax: +40 51 415077
E-mail: rconsta@central.ucv.ro
•	Gelu Calina – University of Craiova, Dept. of Theology
13 A.I.Cuza, 1100 Craiova, Romania
Tel.-fax: +40 51 415077
E-mail: npresura@mx.central.ucv.ro

IV.	The graphic of the actions

May – June 2000:
-	documentation for the elaboration of the scientific works;
-	the organization of some meetings between the members of the team.

July 2001:
-	conference: Reconciliation between Faith and Science
The conference will be held at Calimanesti, Romania, and will consist of dialogues on scientific and religious themes, with the participation of representatives from the scientific and religious communities belonging to the three main Confessions: Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant.
Lectures of specialists from the University of Tessalonik (Greece), University of Lund (Sweden), University Montpellier III (France), University of Craiova (Romania), University of Bucharest (Romania) will be held.

August 2001:
-	visits of intercultural documentation for 2 members of the team in representative Catholic and Protestant centers.

September 2001:
-	the launch of the Post-graduate Cosmology Course at the University of Craiova.
-	the launch of the Universitatea T. V. periodical broadcasting  on scientific and religious themes.

January 2002:
-	the creation of a reflection web-site for dialogues on scientific and religious themes.

V.	Budget

Action	Specification	Total cost	Sums solicited from the project	Other sources
(University)	
Mobilities 	2 persons 	2.400	2.000	400	
Organization of a international conference	30 persons
5 days x 40 USD/day	6.000	5.000	1.000	
Editing & Printing	- Cosmology course
- Audio-video materials	1.000
2.000	-
1.000	1.000
1.000	
Administrative costs	- Communication costs
- Administration of the project
- Translations	600
1.600
500	-
800
100	600
800
400	
Academic costs	- Salaries for the researchers from the team
- Academic fees for invited lecturers	1.000

400
	500

400	500

-	
Overheads		500	200	300	
Total costs		16.000	10.000 USD	6.000 USD	

VI.	Research theme

Key words: cosmology, scientific creationism, genesis, evolutionism, creation, Redemption, "New Sky and New Earth", cosmic Restoration, cosmic Liturgy, Universe.

The Creation of the World in the Light of the Holy Scripture and of the Contemporary Science. The Reconciliation between Faith and Science at the Beginning of a New Millenium.
There are two well-known theories: the creationism and the evolutionism.
The creationists consider the world  created by God <<ex nihilo>>,  but reject the idea of the evolution of the world, because, according to them, the world was created absolutely perfect by God, even from its first moment of existence. The sustainers of this theory sustain the initial creation of the world and believe that the world goes through an ulterior process of progressive degradation.
The evolutionists don't believe in the initial perfection of the world and sustain that the world is the result of a natural evolution that ends with the apparition of   the human being. The ascendant evolution of the world is no more the result of God's intervention, but of the hazard, of the happening or of the natural selection.
These theories exclude the continuous work and presence of God in the creation. The adepts of the creationism isolate the divinity in the transcendent, while the evolutionists are more directed to pantheism, because they ignore the existence of a personal God.
A substantialist thinking is at the basis of the creationism and evolutionism, founded on the existence of the "things in themselves", considering that God  remains immovable and that the world is moving in time. The non-movement  of God and the movement of the world are incompatible. This proves that the two theories are the product of a  mechanicist  metaphysical  conception, that ignore the personal quality of God-Father and change the divinity in a "primus movens imobile".
On the other side, world is considered an alive organism that is looking forward for his setting free under the burden of the corruption, as St. Apostle Paul says in the Letter to the Romans, chapter 8. v. 20-21. The world appears to us like  a machine that functions autonomic towards its Creator. This mechanicist  conceptions conquered Immanuel Kant that affirms that the universe can be compared only with a great precision clock. 
We notice that our man can dominate the nature with the technology produced by him, but can not control himself, because he lost the spiritual power of the Spirit of God.
The crisis of the modern man  is a spiritual crisis because the Spirit of God, that was in the beginning above the waters, was eliminated from the creation and closed in the human subjectivity. Between creationism and evolutionism there is a conflict that had unhappy consequences for the man.
The anthropology of the past centuries couldn't get the man out of this dilemma. The cult manifested towards the "reason" didn't elevate the man, but descended him on the scale of the spiritual values, looking for his origin among the beings inferior to him.
The "natural selection" principle (Ch. Darwin) and the self - made man myth are the consequences of these theories applied in the social field. 
The principle of the aggression from the evolutionism, introduced into the society, is against love and feeds the violence. The ephemeric values of the world took the place of the spiritual ones, and the world of today is more concerned in the economical and body matters and needs. "Time is money" – the contemporary man has no more time for soul and prayer, because time, for those, do not change any more in eternity, but in money.
There is a polemic between creationism and evolutionism in the Orthodox Church today, too.
The mechanicist conscience of the world, based on the existence of the thing in itself and on the exterior connection between things and beings  - which is at the basis of the evolutionist or creationism metaphysics – is an extremely serious obstacle in the way of the spirituality and of the Orthodox theology. During the last century, man managed to divide the atom – as a thing in itself – and to explain the world through global correlation between the elementary particles  of the subatomic world.
Fritjof Capra says that this "global correlation is considered by some of the physicians as the essence of the quantic reality itself". As soon as we enter the zone of the microscopic dimensions, the influence of the global connections becomes more and more important, and the separation of the part from the whole becomes more and more difficult. David Bohm explores the level of the non-manifestation and discovers an order of implication or an order of content that puts in relief a new quality, the "mutual implication". This global correlation disables the hazard theory or that of the happening. 
The fundamental Physics revolutionized the contemporaneous thought and the world does not explain itself in a mechanicist and hazardous way, through external connections between things and beings, but through the changes and connections that take place at the level of the fundamental structures from the subatomic world, where Physics and Metaphysics meet.
The contemporary science sustains, through its discoveries, the biblical and patristic intuitions. The physicians came at the conclusions that the organization of the world is the "result of the cosmic dance of the elementary particles" and of the "surplus of information", that shapes the nature   in the diversity of the things and beings of it.
The results of the fundamental Physics research help us overcome the deism and pantheism of the evolutionist and creationism and to promote the meeting and reconciliation between the Eastern and Western cultures. This reconciliation allows us to overcome the seeming conflict between faith and science regarding the creation and restoration of the human being and of the world. 
The scientific purpose of our team is to put in relief the possibilities that the last achievements of the contemporary science can bring towards the fundamental questions man puts himself: How everything did begin? Where do we are from? Where are we going? Naturally, our interest concentrates on the beginnings and on the flow of the time.

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