Interfax-Religion has a dramatic headline:
Russian scientists certain of the existence of God
The existence of God has been proved by scientific methods, Academician Anatoly Akimov, director of the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics, has stated.
‘There is God, and we can see the manifestations of His will. This is the opinion of many scientists; they not only believe in the Creator but rely on certain knowledge’, he said in an interview published by the Moskovsky komsomolets daily on Friday.
…’if man had appeared on the Earth as a result of evolution, then, considering the frequency of mutations and the speed of biochemical processes, more time would have been required to develop man from elementary cells then the age of the Universe itself’.
Besides, he continued, calculations have been made to show that the number of quantum elements in the observed Universe cannot be fewer than 10155 and it cannot but possess a superintellect.
…Academician Akimov was baptized at the age of 55.
Funnily, however, Interfax prefers not to dwell on Akimov’s dubious background as the purveyor of bizarre “torsion field” pseudo-science. This website has the allegations (dead link removed):
According to the Commission [Against Pseudoscience and Falsification of Scientific Research, established by the Russian Academy of Sciences], in late 1980’s, a group of charlatans posing as serious physicists organized a large-scale “torsion fields” fraud and spent millions of roubles from the state budget; and now the swindlers are attempting to repeat the fraud in other countries. The main figure in the Soviet fraud was a Anatoly Akimov, who claimed to have discovered a so-called torsion field and claimed to have invented what he called “torsion technologies”. Under the pretense of developing his “torsion technologies”, Akimov’s “Center for Nontraditional Technologies” contrived to spend about 500 million roubles of state money until, in 1991, this fraudulent activity became known to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and a scandal broke out. The USSR Academy of Sciences conducted an in-depth investigation; it was established that millions of roubles had been spent for “torsion fields research” without any scientific examination. Akimov’s Center was closed, Akimov was fired. But very soon A.E. Akimov organized a small private enterprise with a sonorous name “The International Institute for Theoretical and Applied Physics” and this “Institute” published quite a number of pseudoscientific papers about nonexistent “torsion technologies” largely based on a so-called “Theory of the Physical Vacuum” created by a Gennady Shipov.
Further allegations are preserved by Skeptik:
Leading Russian physicists, including experts in torsion, have repeatedly emphasized that the so-called “Theory of the physical vacuum” (AKA the Theory of Torsion Fields developed by G.I.Shipov, a colleague of A.E.Akimov’s) contradicts known experiments, contains errors in calculations, and many of its equations are totally incorrect. Those errors make the entire “theory” just a heap of useless erroneous formulae.
Despite the fact that G.I.Shipov had been repeatedly told about the errors in his equations, A.E.Akimov and G.I.Shipov continue to advertise his book “The Theory of Physical Vacuum”…and continue to deceive foreign businessmen which do not understand the mathematics in that book and therefore cannot see the absurdity of Shipov’s claims.
…The scientific degrees used in Russia differ very much from those used in Europe and America. Roughly speaking (to simplify the complex system of Russian scientific degrees), there are two main scientific degrees in Russia: kandidat nauk and doktor nauk, the latter being higher than the former. A.E.Akimov and G.I.Shipov do not have any of these degrees.
Another website quotes Akimov on the theoretical basis for his claims:
Dr. A. Akimov, former director of the Soviet Centre for Non-Traditional Technologies, disclosed that Russian research had discovered a new class of physical fields and particles. They had also elucidated the effects these fields and particles exerted on living and non-living organisms and inanimate objects. New names such as ‘spinor’, ‘torsionnic’ and ‘microleptonnic’ were used to define these new classes of physical fields. Scientists in the West, who have little appreciation of the remarkable advances made by the Soviets, called them ‘scalar’ fields.
This discovery could supposedly be used as a mind control weapon; further background can be culled from other obscure and poorly-written websites, such as this one:
On September 27 [1991] appeared in Komsomolskaya Pravda another article where parts of the government project for the development of those weapons were published:
“remote medicobiological influence on troops and population by means of torsional radiation, remote psychophysical influence on troops and population by torsional radiation”…For the realization of those projects the center Vent was established by the State Council for Science and Technology. The center was financed by the Ministry of Defense and according to its director A. Akimov the funding, coming also from Military-Industrial Commission at the Ministerial Cabinet of the USSR and KGB, amounted to half a billion of the Soviet rubles.
…On November 11, 1992 another Russian daily, Pravda, printed an article on this subject where the director of the Center Vent, A. Akimov, told that “as a result of experimental work there is at the hands everything necessary to produce the factory samples” and that “torsional fields… are capable to relay information with no barriers to stop them”.
I suppose we ought to be grateful to Akimov for doing his bit to waste the resources of the Soviet Union. However, with the Communist regime gone and the Orthodox Church in the ascendant, Akimov clearly has his eye on finding new sources of support – and Intelligent Design might be just the ticket.
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