(Leo Tolstoy, Confessions), I was not so much alienated by the fact that in expounding their religious beliefs they confused Christian truths that had always been close to me with much that was unnecessary and irrational. Only for me, wretched fellow, it was obvious that the truth was interwoven with fine threads of falsehood, and that I could not accept it as such. (Leo Tolstoy, Confessions). It is similarly impossible to give the name religion to Comte’s positivism, since it only establishes a relationship between man and mankind, not with the infinite. Children are taught the dogma of the Trinity, which cannot be accommodated in a healthy mind, and the descent of one of the three Gods to earth for the salvation of the human race and His resurrection and ascent to Heaven. They are now doing the same to the Chinese and are proud of it. According to rational knowledge life is an evil and people know it. Death Shadow Two. And this was not only applied to murder in time of war, but, during the troubled times that followed the war, I witnessed members of the Church, her teachers, monks, and ascetics condoning the killing of helpless, lost youths. Well here we have one, Leo Tolstoy, of immense intelligence and integrity, a convert to Jesus, denouncing the ways of the world and religion, and describing his reasons for conversion with all the literary power of the greatest minds. Vladimir Chertkov (left) with Leo Tolstoy (right) The Tolstoyan movement is a social movement based on the philosophical and religious views of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). (Leo Tolstoy, 1882). Given the current censorship in physics / philosophy of science journals (based on the standard model of particle physics / big bang cosmology) the internet is the best hope for getting new knowledge "When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: I wished to be a brother to these people. They could accept them and believe in the truth, in the same truth that I believed in. "(Thomas Hobbes), The Wave Structure of Matter (WSM) in Space, Discussion on Metaphysics / Religious Philosophy of Leo Tolstoy, Summary & History of World Religions. I have no doubt that there is truth in the teachings, but I also have no doubt that there is falsehood in them too, and that I must discover what is true and what is false and separate one from the other. ‘Religion is a definition of human life based on the bond between the human spirit and those mysterious spirits whose dominion over the world and over himself is recognised by man, and with which he feels himself united. Tolstoy the peculiar Christian anarchis t Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. (Leo Tolstoy, Confessions), Even if we accept the impossible and believe that in a thousand years social progress alone will have united the whole of humanity in one entity which will form a single state, with a single government, even then one must not forget that the struggle between nations and States that will have been abolished will turn into a struggle between the human and the animal kingdom. Leo Tolstoy - Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace: Voyna i mir (1865–69; War and Peace) contains three kinds of material—a historical account of the Napoleonic wars, the biographies of fictional characters, and a set of essays about the philosophy of history. Yet it was from just these very religious principles, or rather as a consequence of their being propagated as religious doctrines, that through a long process of distortion, all the religious miracles and supernatural events were drawn up, which are now considered basic characteristics of any faith. The second is for a person to perform actions under the influence of his emotions and then to invent intellectual explanations or justifications for them. (Leo Tolstoy, Confessions), It must be careful and attentively examined in order to be understood, even if it is not understood in the way I understand the propositions of science. "(George Orwell), "Hell is Truth Seen Too Late. religion, unites men. However cruel Attila, Genghis Khan and their followers may have been, the act of killing people personally, face to face, must have been unpleasant: the wailing relatives and the presence of corpses. Neither is a belief in propositions which give man no definite guidance in his conduct. The vast, poor and uneducated majority, consisting of people who with few exceptions are true believers, finding themselves slaves under the influence of hypnosis, think they believe in what is suggested to them beneath the guise of faith. This was the first step backwards. I want to understand in such a way that everything inexplicable presents itself to me as being necessarily inexplicable and not as being something that I am under an obligation to believe. The oldest and most common definition of the word religion (religare, to bind) runs as follows: religion is the bond between man and God. And the name ‘Resurrection’ was also given to the weekly feast day. and the misguided. (Leo Tolstoy, Confessions), In contrast to what I saw happening in my own circle, where the whole of life is spent in idleness, amusement and dissatisfaction with life, I saw that those people who laboured hard throughout their entire lives were less dissatisfied with life than the rich. (Leo Tolstoy, Confessions), From the most elevated to the most primitive, there is not one single religion that does not have as its basis the establishment of man’s relationship to the universe, or to its first cause. And, therefore, people do not do what is most natural, possible and necessary in our times: they do not destroy the deception that resembles religion, and do not adopt and propagate the truth. (Albert Einstein) And think about your connection to the universe! in conquering the forces of human nature, been achieved as in the nineteenth century. Tolstoy's views were formed by rigorous study of the ministry of Jesus , particularly the Sermon on the Mount . There is not a single question which the men of our world can approach simply and straightforwardly. In My Religion, Leo Tolstoy accuses the church of hiding the true meaning of Jesus, which is to be found in the Sermon on the Mount and the call to resist evil. In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning. As he writes; All the concepts we use to compare the finite to the infinite, and to arrive at an understanding of life, of the concepts of God, freedom and goodness, are put to the test of logic. 4 0 obj At the beginning of the year 1901, the renowned French scholar Berthelot delivered a speech in which he informed his audience that the age of religion has passed and that it must now be replaced by science. Therefore, the people of our world who profess a distorted form of Christianity do not actually believe in it. We hope you enjoy the following quotations from Leo Tolstoy on religion, the Church, God, faith and morality. And this hostility increases in proportion to one’s knowledge of theology. Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six. Inequality between people, not just between lay and clergy, but between rich and poor, and masters and slaves, was established by the Church Christian religion in the same clear cut manner as in other religions. And that something is the same origin which the other religions recognise as God.). (Leo Tolstoy, Confessions), It is truly desirable that moral teaching should not be adulterated by superstition, but the truth of the matter is that moral teaching is only a result of a particular relationship established between man and the universe, or God. So long as people do not consider all men as their brothers and do not consider human life as the most sacred thing, which rather than destroy they must consider it their first and foremost duty to support; that is so long as people do not behave towards one another in a religious manner, they will always ruin one another’s lives for the sake of personal gain. They are as follows: Tolstoy is best known for his two longest works, War and Peace (1865–69) and Anna Karenina (1875–77), which are commonly regarded as among the finest novels ever written. It is true that there have been and still are periods in the life of nations when the existing religion has become so distorted and remote from life that it no longer guides it. By understanding how we and everything around us are interconnected Moreover, those considered and referred to as learned are quite convinced that a science already exists which should and can replace religion and which has already obviated the need for it. All the other twelve feast days, except for Christmas, were in memory of miracles- things which I endeavoured not to think about, in order not to deny them: the Ascension, Pentecost, the Epiphany, the Intercession of the Virgin, and so on. The site includes many photographs from Tolstoy's life and an assessment of his works. If the establishment of such a relationship is expressed in forms we feel to be superstitious, then in order to avoid this we must strive to express it more reasonably, clearly and precisely, or even to destroy the previously established relationship between man and the universe that is now inadequate, and replace it with one that is more reasonable, clear and precise. The same happened with Papal Christianity during the Middle Ages, leading to the Reformation. Since in no place, and at no time, has this equality ever existed in reality, nor will it ever, what has happened is that as soon as a new religious teaching appeared (including as always a recognition of equality between all men) those for whom inequality was more advantageous have immediately tried to conceal this basic feature, thereby misconstruing the actual doctrine. By Roza Riaikkenen . Perris, et al., first published in London by Hoder and Stroughton in 1903. (Leo Tolstoy, Confessions), At the time it was so essential for me to believe in order to live that I subconsciously hid from myself the contradictions and obscurities in the religious dogma. The death of his brother Nikolay in 1860 had an impact on Tolstoy, and led him to a desire to marry. This is without mentioning all the nonsense in the Old Testament, such as the creation of light before the sun, the creation of the world six thousand years ago, the housing of all the animals in the ark, and all the various immoral atrocities such as the order to murder children and entire populations at God’s command. of cultural life. (Leo Tolstoy, Confessions), True religion is that relationship, in accordance with reason and knowledge, which man establishes with the infinite world around him, and which binds his life to that infinity and guides his actions. (A. Reville). Against the attribution of sacred knowledge to books it was said that what is important is the spirit and not the letter, that man ought not to believe in human traditions, and that all the laws and the Prophets, that is all those books in which the writing is considered sacred, lead only to the fact that we should do to others as we would wish them to do to us. However, since the appearance of rational man there has not been one human society that could live or has lived without religion. The idea of the individual being linked to the cosmos is expressed in the Latin root of the word religion, religare (to bind strongly). And I saw that the Orthodox Church regarded as heretics all those who did not profess an identical faith to theirs, just as the Catholics and the others consider the Orthodox followers to be heretics. Thus, while the deliberations of religious people are always simple, uncomplicated and honest, the mental activity of non-religious people is particularly subtle and extremely complex and dishonest. People of today’s world cannot take enough delight in the brilliant, unprecedented and colossal achievements of nineteenth century technology. Even if a religion establishes a relationship between Man and God, but does so through affirmations which are so contrary to the level of knowledge people have reached that they cannot believe in them, then neither is this a religion, but merely a semblance of one. (Leo Tolstoy, Confessions). We can now deduce the most simple science theory of reality - the wave structure of matter in space. Let us observe Tolstoy's crisis and "conversion" in detail through his Confession. 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