Religion and Science collide through the book of the Cypriot Egyptian A. Christodoulou

Meet a Forgotten Essayist

Religion and Science collide in Antonis Christodoulou's book, which is published by the Lux Orbis series of iWrite Publications, eighty-eight years after the first edition of the work. Let's first see a little about its creator.

For the life and activities of Antonis Christodoulou, the available sources are scarce. There is no information available about the exact time and place of his birth, however it is known that his origin was from the province of Pafos in Cyprus. His activity in Egypt begins in 1903, while he died thirty-five years later, in 1938 in Paris. His studies were in Chemistry and probably in Agriculture, while his life in the city of Mit-Gamr. He also founded with his brother a company around the cotton trade.

Since 1903, Christodoulou makes his appearance in the field of Egyptian Greek letters. In this context, he starts publishing the satirical newspaper "O Kopanos", in collaboration with Georgios Stratis. At the same time, he collaborates with the magazine "Panaygyptia" and the newspapers "Kairo", "Kairo-Kleio" and "Imerologio Parga". He wrote three plays. Hymn to Laziness (Alexandria, 1933), Don Quixote on Fountains (Mit-Gamr, 1934) and The Scientific God (Mit-Gamr, 1935). Finally, it is noteworthy that his last residence was the cemetery of the libertarians/atheists/irreligious of that time in cosmopolitan Alexandria.

A book ahead of its time The Scientific God is, without a doubt, the most radical and daring work of Antonis Christodoulou. An acute attack on the timeless role of Christianity and its representatives, priests and theologians. Not even Judaism escapes the author's arrows, since Christianity is a derivative of it.

Relationship with science Ancient Greece and the break with religion

A point worth considering is Christodoulou's position vis-à-vis the ancient Greek world. The worldview that he produced, as well as his twilight during the period of the emergence and prevalence of Christianity.

The foregoing are issues that strongly preoccupied the thinking of the Cypriot writer. He writes characteristically:

"The ancient Greeks, with their easy-to-digest and immortal and practical and naturalistic religion, had almost reached the limits of perfection. Plato and Aristotle and Euclid and Pythagoras and Eparchus were only able to create so many spiritual explosions with the touch of such an eclectic religion. If unscientific Christianity did not interrupt their work, humanity today would know the majority of Einstein and Pasteur and Marconi and Edison".

But how did the transition from the ancient world to Christianity take place? What does the book say about Religion and Science?

Another point in which the advanced thinking of the Cypriot thinker is clear concerns his view on politics and the public discourse of the orthodox Christian priesthood in his time. An era in which scientific progress continued its frantic gallop. He had already completed at least seven decades of groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of biology, physics and chemistry. Discoveries that emphatically demolished various theological doctrines.

What the critics of the time said about the Scientific God

In February 1936, the magazine "Panaygyptia" published a laudatory book review of The Scientific God by Sokratis Lagoudakis. In his text, Lagoudakis informs us, among other things, that the publication of Christodoulou's "persuasive" book caused a great disturbance in the Greek community of Egypt.

We do not know more about the development and outcome of this specific case. Nevertheless, one can easily understand the severity of Christodoulou's positions that caused such a reaction. As well as the potential ability of the Church to "block" the circulation of an author's work in the Greek community of Egypt. A few weeks earlier (January 1-15, 1936), Dinos Koutsoumis characterizes the book in his note in "Panaygyptia" as "the best and most useful book of the year".

From the available sources and the articles that appear in the Egyptian publications of the time, Christodoulou did not feel like a black sheep of the Greek diaspora. In Egypt and Alexandria there was a very advanced group of Greek libertarians. At the same time, for reasons of resistance to the foreign environment, conservatism is known, at least in matters of religion and tradition. And this is a phenomenon that needs special study and interpretation.

The originality and symbolism of the new edition

At Lux Orbis series of iWrite publications, we have chosen to symbolically honor Christodoulou's vision for the future role of Science. And we achieved this through the cover of the new release. For the first time the design is the product of an artificial intelligence program. Only the right guidelines were given to create an artistic composition with futuristic elements of the 30s. The plan was a future in which the god of science would have prevailed over those monotheistic religions.

Who is the Scientific God of Antonis Christodoulou?

Find out more about Religion and Science in the book "Scientific God" by iWrite Publications