Here is the text version of my talk on Seminar at the ML PSA Lab. Original announcement is here Dear colleagues, thank you very much for the invitation. It is a great honor and an excellent opportunity to participate in this seminar. My name is Nikita Obraztsov. I will briefly outline my background: my first degree is in law (I studied in Moscow at the Kutafin Moscow State Law University). After studying law, I made a sharp turn and moved into religious studies because I realized that this is what truly fascinates me. I completed my master’s degree at St. Petersburg State University in 2020, where I focused on the “Brights” movement using qualitative methods—specifically, conducting in-depth interviews. At the time, we didn’t have quantitative or computational methods in our program. Then, in 2025, I enrolled in the European University to study computational sociology, and right now, I have just completed my first year of the master’s program. ...

Translation of an article by Elena Strelkova, published in Forbes Young (Russia), 31 May 2026. Original in Russian →. Translated and published here with attribution. Sunday mass instead of yoga, and clubs for keeping the fast — it seems that young people are increasingly declaring a religious affiliation. We explore why and how they are turning to faith, what questions they are seeking answers to, and how they are changing their way of life. ...

Transcript of a public lecture delivered in Moscow, 20 May 2026. Good afternoon. Thank you for spending a sunny day on my lecture. Today I will be talking about religion in the modern world through a specific theoretical lens. The plan: first a short theoretical preamble, then we will discuss the contemporary religious situation — what kind of world we live in, where we are heading. Then secularization theory and its current state — is it alive, dead, more dead than alive? Views differ. Then how contemporary sociologists look at the religious situation anew. And finally, what the title promises: what does the modern person believe? ...

Transcript of a public lecture delivered in Moscow, 21 March 2026. Good evening. Thank you for spending your Saturday evening on religious studies. Today’s lecture is about the phenomenon of parody religiosity. I should say upfront: I found almost no academic or popular coverage of this topic — neither on YouTube nor anywhere online, in Russian or in English. A few videos on adjacent themes exist, so tonight we are, in some sense, filling a gap. ...

Does a Secular Course in Religious Studies Affect Religiosity? A Proposed Randomised Experiment Essay for the course “Introduction to Causality” Nikita Obraztsov, European University at St. Petersburg, 2025 Read the article →

Published in: Sociology and Society: Formation and Functioning of Social Memory. Proceedings of the VII All-Russian Sociological Congress. Moscow, November 2025. EDN QUINAN. Download PDF in Russian→ Nikita A. Obraztsov European University at Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Abstract. Analyzing the religious identity of Orthodox Christians in contemporary Russia, the author concludes that the concept of belonging without believing can be successfully applied to interpret sociological data. In particular, the author draws attention to a significant gap between declared religiosity and actual religious practice, and proposes possible mechanisms for interpreting empirically observable facts. ...

Based on an appearance on the Pascal’s Wager podcast, November 2024. This is not a transcript but a reconstruction of the main ideas from the conversation. Video: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LINK Rationality as a Bludgeon Start with an uncomfortable observation: the word “rationality” is today most often deployed irrationally. In media discourse it has become a weapon — a way to stigmatise opponents rather than describe a genuine quality of thought. The people who shout loudest about rationality typically make no effort to justify their use of the term or to build even a minimal conceptual framework. ...

Based on a video lecture. Video lecture: YouTube On this channel we often dive into specific topics: religion, atheism, contemporary science, how people in different parts of the world relate to various things. But we frequently overlook a more fundamental question: from what standpoint are we actually talking about religion in the first place? From what framework? The question seems abstract and philosophical, and for a long time I treated philosophy roughly the way Alexander Panchin does — as something fairly vague and disconnected from real research. But I have rethought that position lately. ...

Based on a video lecture. Video lecture: YouTube Richard Feynman was a Nobel laureate in physics, a participant in the Manhattan Project, and the author of the three-volume Feynman Lectures on Physics. He has long been one of my favourite scientists, and the reason is not only the physics. What I find genuinely appealing is that on topics outside his expertise — politics, religion, economics — he always said plainly: “I don’t know much about this, it’s just my opinion, feel free to ignore it.” He never lectured people on subjects where he had no standing. In our time, this is rare. ...

Based on a video lecture. Niccolò Machiavelli is perhaps one of the most controversial philosophers in history. And at the same time, as someone once accurately put it, he is almost unique among philosophers in needing no introduction: say the name and everyone immediately knows who you mean. A celebrated diplomat, military adviser, one of the founders of political philosophy in the modern sense of the word. He lived from 1469 to 1527. ...

Public lecture at Tele2 Art Space, Yelagin Island, St. Petersburg, August 26, 2023. Video recording: YouTube Joan Rowling’s Harry Potter novels are not the primitive teenage fiction that certain intellectual circles like to dismiss them as. This is a major work that has generated a genuine subculture. I am firmly convinced that no hollow piece of writing can be elevated to cult status through advertising alone, however aggressive. Every genuinely good work contains multiple layers of meaning. ...

Based on a video lecture. Video lecture: YouTube On April 24, 1929, Albert Einstein received a telegram from New York rabbi Herbert S. Goldstein, and the question was direct: “Do you believe in God? Stop. Answer paid. Fifty words.” Einstein used fewer than half his allotted words: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.” ...

Based on a video lecture. Video lecture: YouTube Today we look at one of the most important court cases in the history of American education — a case that is central for anyone seriously interested in how we draw the line between science and religion. It is usually called by the name of one of the plaintiffs: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Dover is a small municipality in Pennsylvania. But the case quickly became a matter of national importance, debated on major television networks and in the press. ...

Based on a video lecture. Video lecture: YouTube After the World Cup in Qatar, the internet filled up with videos titled “Messi is God.” Lionel Messi scored twice in the final against France, scored his penalty in the shootout, had a genuinely brilliant tournament, led Argentina to victory, and permanently wrote his name into history as one of the greatest footballers of all time. Whether he has eclipsed Pelé and Maradona is a matter of debate, but that he has become an absolute expression of the game — that is beyond doubt. ...

Based on a video lecture. Video lecture: YouTube Academic religious studies are relatively free of pseudoscience compared to, say, medicine. But one myth still deserves serious attention: it can be heard not only from outright cranks but from quite respectable scholarly works. The idea in question is primordial monotheism. What the Myth Says Primordial monotheism holds that monotheism, the belief in a single god, is the original form of religious consciousness. All subsequent development of religious ideas in paganism represents degeneration, the result of a fall from grace, a loss of revelation. ...

Transcript of a public lecture delivered in St. Petersburg, 25 May. Video lecture: YouTube The goal of my lecture is to move through the main stages of the history of atheism from antiquity to the twenty-first century. A word on terminology first. What I do is secular, non-confessional religious studies. We present facts; we do not evaluate them from the position of personal belief or unbelief. A religious scholar can be a believer or not — what matters is that belief is left at the laboratory door. ...

Paper presented at the XXX International Educational Readings “Peter the Great at 350: A Secular World and Religiosity”, May 2022. Video recording: YouTube Tambov: Orthodox Christians Who Don’t Go to Church Let me start with a specific study. In 2014, the Centre for Religious Studies at Tambov State University named after G.R. Derzhavin surveyed more than 1,500 students to identify the main patterns of religiosity among young people in Tambov and the Tambov region. ...

Published in April 2022 on Alexander Bydantsev’s Yandex Zen channel (“Trickster”). Read the original (Russian) → Read the interview in English→ Tell us about yourself. Where did you study? What do you do? I live in St. Petersburg — my home city. I spent four years studying for my bachelor’s degree in Moscow, which among true Petersburgers is considered a mortal sin. Better to sleep on a bench near Sennaya Square with a volume of Dostoevsky under your head than to rot in that spiritually bankrupt Moscow. I never saw it that way, and I still don’t. ...

Based on a video lecture. Video lecture: YouTube Today I want to talk about agnosticism. At first glance, it’s a simple topic: ask anyone with an interest in philosophy or religion what agnosticism is, and they will confidently tell you it is the position that one cannot know for certain whether god exists or not. Neither believer nor atheist: a person allows for some higher power without asserting either way. The answer is broadly correct, just far from complete. ...

Based on a video lecture. Watch here (in russian) Erasmus of Rotterdam is one of my favourite figures in world history. A great humanist, forerunner of the Reformation, a man who could not abide fanaticism in any form, and who left a deep mark on the intellectual life of Europe. He was, in fact, the author of one of the first secular bestsellers in European history. Good material on Erasmus in Russian is scarce. The best I found is a programme from the Kultura channel. The format of “philosophy in five minutes” exists for students who need to pass an exam without doing the reading. So: a proper treatment today, covering biography, ideas, and texts. ...