Theologian not sure Hadron Collider will bring happiness to people

The well-known theologian, professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Alexey Osipov suggests that scientists are insufficiently responsible in realizing the project of the Hadron Collider's launch.

"I cannot estimate all the goals of making this giant machine, but it's at least announced that it has been done, in particular, to learn how the Universe happened. Oh well, we learned it. What's next? I never heard the answer to this question," Osipov said to Interfax-Religion.

He also said that he hadn't heard a clear answer to the question, "would the launch of the Collider lead to scale negative consequences."

"Without answering these two questions the assessment changes immediately: we can neither reject nor cheer this experiment," Osipov said.

The professor noted that "every time when something similar is created we'd most like if scientists to foresee at first all the possible consequences and to answer above all a question - what will the creation give the man as a creature looking for good, advantage, happiness."

According to the Church point of view, he said, "we should know something, but exactly what is needed for our mortal life, just even biological existence."

"But when it extends beyond the boundaries of solutions of this kind of issues, this is already a big issue, because an empty curiosity is not a virtue from the Christian point of view - when there is no enough arguments indicating that this study is really necessary for us," Osipov said.

He noted that human progress has some driving forces, and "one of them is curiosity." "Though there are things of quite a different order in the scientific and technological progress which are quite positive in terms of enabling a person to have more prosperous existence and a possibility to supply needs - necessary needs, as I can note," the professor said.

He recalled the rule "which is wonderfully expressed in the Hippocratic Oath: do no harm."

Osipov also pointed that "when we find ourselves in the face of unknown, we always accept risk. And the more major the experiment is, the more backgrounds of existence, even material, it touches, the more risk we have."

"That's why it's always necessary to model the result we'll get it the case of resolving the scientific problem," he added.

According to the professor, even in terms of philosophy, not only Christian, "we can never prove that our mind can adequately comprehend all the things it investigates. We try to prove our mind's ability with it's own help, so there's a vicious circle."

Source: Interfax religion