Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS report, dated 1 May 1989, is an English translation of an essay by academician Boris Raushenbakh from the Moscow journal Kommunist. The essay argues that people need both rational scientific knowledge and metaphorical, emotional knowledge, and that these connect to morality and religious feeling. It also criticizes crude atheist propaganda and calls for restoring moral principles. The only mention of UFOs is a passing remark that some people turn to belief in flying saucers.
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1989 ## Document 3 of 3 form of customs, habits and traditions. The brain was not overburdened by the problem of seeking optimal solutions to rationally formulated problems, and man was able to a greater extent to concentrate on problems of morality (naturally, as time passed the assessment itself of what was moral and what was immoral changed; here it is a question only of the trend followed in intellectual activities). 19. Today, in the time of triumph of the natural science and impressive discoveries in physics, astronomy, biology and other sciences which provide a rational explanation of life in the universe, the tremendous task has appeared of drawing a scientific picture of the world and, on its basis, developing a scientific outlook. Many people believe that the solution of this supertask will benefit mankind. However this claim is quite arguable. 20. Mankind needs an integral world outlook based on a scientific picture of the world, as well as an unscientific (including metaphorical) perception of the world. The world can be learned, as Homer said, both by the mind and the heart. It is only the sum of the scientific and the ''heart'' picture that can provide an image of the world worthy of man in his own conscience and that could be a reliable foundation for behavior. 21. In speaking of the need and possibility of creating an integral picture of the world, we cannot ignore the question of religion. It is frequently believed that religion is a sum of myths, behavioral rules and ceremonies. Obviously, in that case poetry will be the ability to speak rhythmically and in rime. It is obvious to everyone that such a definition of poetry loses its main feature: the poetic image, the poetic feeling. In precisely the same way failure to mention the religious feeling in the concept of "' religion'" deprives it of its main feature. 22. A religious feeling may be inherent in a given person (naturally, however, by no means in everyone) in the same way that people frequently have a sense of beauty. And if such a person is raised in an atheistic family and finds himself in an atheistic atmosphere, he may feel a certain spiritual discomfort, frequently without knowing why. In some cases, trying clumsily to satisfy his mental aspiration toward mystery and miracle, such a person feverishly seeks some kind of surrogate: he becomes attracted to mysticism, begins to believe in "'flying saucers'" (should such such "'saucers'" become universally acknowledged by reality, he would immediately lose any interest in them), etc. We know of many cases when such "'hereditary'" atheists have joined the church and felt a sudden fullness of life and become happy people, in the full meaning of the term. It is difficult today to say at which stage in the
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 13 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.