YouSaid · the spoken record

Ian Hutchinson

lines on the record: 114
first: 2020-07-29
most recent: 2020-07-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think it's something like yielding your will or desire to another. It's valuing others more highly or at least as highly as yourself. But that's just the start of it because true love, you reach a point where you feel compelled by the other. And that, I think, to some people sounds very scary, but actually it's terrifically liberating. And I think that love then brings you into service towards another. And I'm reminded of the phrase from the Anglican prayer book where it talks about Jesus whose service is perfect freedom. In other words, for us Christians to serve God is what perfects our freedom. And I think there is an amazing love as in part captivity, but in a kind of Paradoxical sense, it's also an amazing freedom.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tell a story in my book when I was a student before I became a Christian, I read a philosophy book whose approximate title was, what is the meaning of life? And that book basically said there is no meaning to life. You have to make up the meaning as you go along. And I think that's probably the predominant secular view these days, that there is no real meaning, but you can make up a meaning and that will give you meaning into your life. I don't subscribe to that view anymore. I think there is more meaning than that. But I do think that those things which give meaning to our life are very important and we should emphasize them.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The meaning of my life is many different things, but they are all kind of centered around relationships. I mean, for a Christian run's relationship with God is A crucial part of the meaning of life. But one's relationship with one's family, wife's wife, parents, children, grandchildren in my case, and so forth. Those are crucially important. These are all the places where people, whether they're religious or not, find meaning. But ultimately, I think a person who has faith in a creator who We think has an intention, many intentions, but a will in respect of the world as a whole. That's a crucial part of meaning. And the idea that my life might have some small significance in the plan of that creator is an amazingly powerful idea that brings meaning.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some extent at any rate on Earth, and ultimately in eternity to restore it fully. So that's really what Christians mean and gain from the story of Adam and Eve. Of course, lots of people ask the questions about how literally should we take these stories of particularly the first few chapters of Genesis, which is an important question. But we tend to get bogged down with it a bit too much. I think we should take away the message. And I think what actually we would have seen if we'd been there, okay, is something which is a matter of speculation, and it's certainly not terribly important from the point of view of Christian theology.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it is meaningful to me. I take the writings of the Bible very seriously. And I think that most Christians regard them as having some kind of authoritative role in What do I get from it? I mean, I think the most important thing that Christians get from the story of Adam and Eve and eating the apple and so forth is that the relationship between humans and God is broken, has been broken by man's disobedience. That's what the story of Adam and Eve and the apple is all about. And that broken relationship is for Christians what Jesus came to redeem came to overcome that brokenness and restore that relationship with God.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One shortcoming of that is the following of the analogy is this, that we think of a simulation as something taking place in the universe. It's taking place in my computer I don't think that's the right analogy for Christian view of creation. I don't think it's taking place in some other universe that God has made. I think maybe it's taking place in the mind of God. Christians might hypothesize, but I think that it's important to recognize that Christian theology at any rate is that God is not one of the entities in the universe and presumably therefore is very different from a simulation that we might run on a computer.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And his plan and set it in motion and is allowing it to run out maybe, as Christians say, he's sustaining it, actually, by his word of power, it says in the letter to Hebrews in this amazingly consistent and integrated way. I don't think there's very much difference between saying that and saying that it's assimilation. I mean, I think it's almost the same thing. But I think it's important to recognize that The simulation in that concept, the simulation and the creation or the universe are the same thing, okay? In other words, it's a simulation that is. Billions of light years across, okay?”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's fun, and it's been, of course, the subject of various movies. That some of which are very well known. I don't think it makes sense to think of it as a simulation hypothesis in the sense that we're really lying in banks on banks of beds having our energy drained away from us and the simulation is going on in our individual brains. That makes no sense to me at all. I don't think that's what's meant by the simulation hypothesis as you're using it now. But I think that there is a There is very little distinction between saying that an intelligent creator has set up the universe according to his will.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I certainly think that God takes delight in his creation and that it was created for that delight as much as it was for any other reason. And that therefore there's reason to be hopeful and awe struck by the creation, whether it's on the very small or on the very large.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The concepts of humanity and the mind and religion and consciousness are going to vanish because we're going to have complete physio-chemical description of the brain in the near future. We're not going to have that. And secondly, even if we had it, the mind and all these other things aren't going to vanish because of it.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, we will get much further than we have. And it'll be interesting. I mean, right now our methods of diagnosing the human brain are extremely primitive. I mean, the resolution that we have, you know, that comes out of NMR and brain scans and so forth, is miserable compared with what we need in order to understand the brain at the cellular level, let alone at the atomic level. You know, we're making progress. It's relatively slow progress, but it's progress and people are working on it and we're going to get better at it. And we will find out very interesting things as we do. The time resolution is also completely hopeless compared with what we need to understand that the thought, you know? So there's a long way to go and we will get better at it. But I'm not at all worried as some people are and some people speak as if this is a good thing that somehow”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The mind or the soul is not something added into humans as might have been the viewpoint historically. I do think there is something added to humans, but it's not the mind, it's the spirit. And that takes us beyond the physical, it takes us beyond this universe. But I don't think that consciousness, the mind, et cetera, et cetera, is that thing, which is necessarily”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a much more complicated way. And I also think that It's philosophically Ignorant to speak as if when and if the actions of the brain are understood at the physical and chemical level that the mind will vanish as a concept, you know, that we'll just say, we're nothing but brains, okay? Course it won't. I mean, it may well be that our mind is an emergent phenomenon that comes out of the physics and chemistry and biology. But it's also something that we have to encounter and take seriously. And so, you know, it's not the case that the mind is reducible to nothing but physics and chemistry, even if it's embedded in continuously into physics and chemistry, as I rather suspect it is. So that's my own view. Another way of putting it.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's most likely that quantum mechanics is very important in the brain. It seems most unlikely that it's not, to me. I know that that's contrary to the opinions of many people, but that's my view. And it's also a view, for example, of people like Roger Penrose and people like that who've written about it rather extensively. And if that's the case, then really my mind is not reproducible to some kind of software which can be considered to be portable. It is so connected to the hardware of my body that the two are inseparable. And so if that is in fact what we find, as I suspect will be the case, then the aspirations of the transhumanists will be very long in coming. If a tool, so I think that actually physics and chemistry are in a sense”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we're some computer like entity and that the analogy to digital computers is a pretty decent one. I mean, that's, of course, a viewpoint which drives the aspirations of the transhumanists. I mean, they so much believe that our minds are nothing other than a certain sense some kind of implementation of software in biology that they say to themselves, well, of course we're going to be able to download it into a digital computer. I don't think that's true.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that it's an interesting question. I think it's actually It's a jump too far. I think we don't even know the answer to the question, what is the mind, let alone consciousness? So if you distinguish between those two things, I think the question that's being addressed more directly scientifically, as well as in other ways, it is what is the mind. And that is certainly a very topical question, even in places like MIT, which is not historically involved with philosophical questions, you know, that people are doing neuroscience and so forth. I think it's a very important question, and I think that we're going to find that we are not computers. In other words, I think the commonplace theory of what mind is, is generally speaking, by analogy that we are basically wetware, okay?”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the Bible doesn't have much in the way of answers about that directly in the sense that you're perhaps asking it, which is more like, I think you're asking for some kind of quasi-scientific or maybe indeed scientific description of the project.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Other intelligence. So, if there is other intelligent life in the universe, what is its relationship to God? That is, in a certain sense, the puzzle that religious thinkers and writers have thought about for a long time. And there's a whole range of different opinions about that. I mean, personally, I think it's an interesting question, but it's not a very pressing question at the moment. And I think the same way about the question of what happens if we're able to build a sentient robot, for example, I think it's an interesting question, and we'll have to think about it when that happens. But I think we're still quite a ways away from that. And so I don't have a good answer. But I think there's a literature that one could tap to think about.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, religious writers have thought about this for centuries. You know, there's been a long debate about what was historically called a plurality of worlds. And it was actually more about whether there are places where other intelligent creatures live than it was about us creating them. But I think it's largely the same question.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which are enormously influential and obviously do things more powerfully than any individual human or even any combination of humans could do much faster and accessing databases and so on and so forth. All of this is outstripped our human intelligence. I'm not sure the extent, though, to which that is really intelligence in the way that was traditionally meant, but it's certainly amazingly facile and it multiplies our ability to access human knowledge and data and so forth.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I stopped playing chess seriously when I encountered computers that could beat me, okay? I still play with my grandchildren a little bit, but yeah, it seemed like in a certain sense it became a solved problem when AI was able to do it better than I could. So, I think that there are ways in which today we've seen computers do things which historically were regarded as being very characteristic of human intelligence. And in that sense, there is some success to AI. I also think that there are certain things which one might think of as being AI, which are completely widespread”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think one should be a little bit more modest about one's claims for AI than have typically been the case. I think that actually a lot of people in AI are somewhat chastened. And so there are more modest claims than are common with the transhumanists and so forth. And I used to play chess when I was a kid. I was pretty good at it, won competitions and so on and so forth. And I'm talking about when I was in high school, I thought it was pretty unlikely that a computer would be able to become good at chess. But I was dead wrong.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think we find out by near death experiences or those kinds of things, but I think that we have sufficient, I feel I have sufficient information, if you like, in terms of God's revelation to be confident that I will go somewhere else. But it won't be here. To me, aspirations of transhumanism are horrific. I mean, I think it would be a nightmare, not a dream, a nightmare, you know, to be somehow downloaded into a computer and live one's life like that because it completely discounts the integrity of our bodies as well as our minds. We aren't just disembodied. Minds. It would not be me that was in the computer. It would be something else if that kind of download were possible. Of course, it isn't possible and it's very long way from being possible. But, you know, amazing things happen. So we shouldn't be too certain.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I do think, and maybe this is part of my Christian outlook, that there is life beyond the grave. But I don't think that it's life in this universe or in this, certainly not in this body and maybe not in a certain sense in this mind. I mean, you know, Christian belief in the afterlife is that we will be resurrected, we will be in a certain sense be with God. I don't know what that means and I don't think anybody else really quite knows what that means. But there are lots of ways that over history people, artists and writers and so forth have pictured it. And these are all perhaps some of them helpful ways of thinking about it.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm afraid of lots of things in a conceptual way, but it doesn't keep me awake at night, okay? I think, like most people, I'm more afraid of pain than I am of death. So I don't want to put myself forward as some kind of hero that doesn't worry about these things. That's not true.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a whole big topic that I'm not exactly an expert. But I'm of a certain age where my mortality is more pressing or more obvious to me than it once was.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From billions of years ago. So just to be clear about that, on the other hand, I do, so if that's the case, then certainly in that sense, at the very least, suffering, or at least death, is part of the biological existence. And that probably seems so completely obvious to somebody who is au fait with science, whether they're a scientist or not”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think you said two different things that aren't exactly, at least that aren't exactly the same. One is that suffering is an integral part of our experience. You know, that might be considered a challenge to certain types of Christian theology or even Jewish theology. In other words, Christians talk about the fall and talk about Adam and Eve in the garden and have a vision of there being some kind of perception or perfection from which we have fallen. And I think there is a perfection from which we've fallen. But I don't think that perfection is some kind of physical perfection. In other words, I don't subscribe personally to the view that some Christians do, that there was some state prior to the fall in which death did not occur. I don't think that that's consistent with science as we know it.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so the consistent behavior of nature is very, very important. It's what enables us to be what we are. And if you're calling upon God in your critique of why isn't this benevolent creator fixing things? One answer is he's fixed things in a certain sense to have an integrity in them. And that integrity is the best thing. It's the way we have our existence, it's the way we live and move and have our being. And, you know, if you want something different, you've got to show that there is a way in which you could invent a world that is better, that it has the integrity that we need to exist, okay, and to be able to think and love and be. But you are going to do it better. And the atheists think that maybe they have got a better idea. But if they thought about it a bit more carefully, they'd realize no one has put forward a better idea.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely crucial part of it. You know, the fact that our world behaves reproducibly in the main is absolutely essential for the integrity of our lives. Without it, we wouldn't exist. And so there is a sense in which the integrity of creation calls for there being consistent behavior, which these days we think of as being the laws of nature.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be a part of his creation in the person of Jesus Christ and suffer death, the most horrible death on the cross for our benefit. So that's one side of suffering. But the question, the philosophical question remains, surely if God is good and God is omnipotent, benevolent, why doesn't he take away all the suffering? Why doesn't he cause miracles to occur that will take away all this suffering? I think there are some good answers to that question in the following sense that we live in a world where the consistency of the world is an”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With their intellectual answers. But if they had been there, and some of them were there, they sat alongside, that is some level of comfort. And after all, that's the meaning of the word compassion. It means to suffer alongside of somebody. And I would say, first off, you know, what does a Christian say about suffering? The first thing a Christian should say is compassion is all that really counts. And what's more, we say that God has acted in compassion towards us. That is to say, he has suffered with us in the person of Jesus Christ. And when we see the passion of Jesus, we recognize that God takes suffering deadly seriously, has taken it so seriously that he's been willing to come and...”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So suffering is a reality. And there is nothing that I can say that is going to solve their feeling of agony and angst and maybe despair in those types of situations. There is really only one thing that I think humans can do for one another in those kinds of situations. And that is simply to be there. to be there alongside your friend or your colleague or whoever family member or whoever it might be. And that's the only really sense in which we can give comfort. If we try to give intellectual solutions to these problems, we're going to be like the comforters that were in the book of Job in the Bible who brought no comfort to Job himself.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I have some answers, but you're right that it is one of the toughest questions. The problem of pain or the problem of suffering or the problem of theodicy, as theologians call it, is probably one of the toughest. I think it's important to say that there are certain types of answers to this question, but there are aspects of this question to which there is no intellectual answer that is going to satisfy. And the fact of the matter is, you know, when I'm speaking to an audience, let's say at some kind of lecture, I can be sure that there are people in that audience who are either personally suffering, they've got illness, they've got pains, maybe they're facing death, or someone in their family is in similar sorts of situations.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And yet from early on in Hebrew history, the crucial thing that Yahweh came to mean, or I would say, revealed of himself to them was that he wasn't just a tribal deity, he was the God that created the whole thing. And if he is the God of the whole thing, then he's not just the God of the Hebrews. Or in the case of, you know, Americans, God is not just the God of Americans, he's the God of everybody. And that is a way, in a way, the most amazing transcending of tribal loyalties. And one of the crucial occasions. Aspects of Christianity or the claimed transcendent aspects of Christianity that it transcends culture and that's certainly something which I find appealing.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there is tribalism everywhere, and I think tribalism in the US at the moment is rather difficult to bear from my point of view And it's, I think, fed by the internet and social media and so forth. But historically, tribalism has been a trait and remains a trait in humans. The genius of Christianity is that it supersedes tribalism. I mean... Yes, when the Hebrews, Thought about Yahweh initially, they thought about him as their tribal deity, just like the tribal deities round about them.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the West, thankfully, shied away from in the past half or three quarters of a century. But I think it is the case that Christianity gives me a basis for my moral beliefs that is more than mere. Pragmatism.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But none of that seems any more than mere pragmatism to most people. And so that's one of the things that Nietzsche, amongst others, really identified, if God is dead, if the idea of God as grounding our moral behavior is no longer viable in the West, which Nietzsche thought that it wasn't, then what does ground it and he had no good answer for it? In fact, he claimed there was no answer, but then he couldn't live with that. And so he invented the idea of the Ubermensch, you know, this superior human being, okay? And this was a different way of trying to ground morality, not a very successful one. You could argue that it's the forerunner of the sort of racism of Hitler's regime and so forth that, you know,”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have towards deciding what makes ethics or morality moral. But I do think it's the case that It's very hard to ground morality. In any kind of absolute way or persuasive way. In mere human relationships. And so it's certainly the case that in Christianity, there is a sense in which morality and The morality of morals comes from a transcendent place, from a transcendent deity, and that we Ground are the compelling force of morals on God more than we do on individuals. Because after all, if you've got nothing but other people. Why should you treat your neighbor well? Why shouldn't you defraud your neighbor if it's good for you? Well, you know, you can construct all kinds of arguments and some of them are, you know, obviously arguments that are commonplace in religion too. You should do as you would be done by and all this kind of thing”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that resonates with me and I obviously would affirm it I think just to correct an implication that you made, I don't think it's necessarily the consequence of atheism that we lose track of those kinds of things. I mean, I think that atheists can be loyal, if you like. The question more often comes up in the context of where does morality come from? And loyalty, I think, and duty are related to one another. You know, if we have loyalty to someone, then we have a duty to them, okay, as well. And I think that insofar as we see ourselves as having some kinds, any kinds of duties or moral compulsions with respect to our relationships to other people, I think it's a question that always arises, well, where do these come from? And there are various approaches that people...”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Action and belief on the basis of incomplete evidence is not something that I feel uncomfortable doing or I feel that I feel that somehow my Christian commitments have forced me to do when I wouldn't have had to have done it otherwise. I would have had to do it anyway. And so, you know, there's a sense in which I think it's important to see the breadth of meaning of faith and to recognize that certainly in the case of Christianity, it's trust and loyalty that the key themes that we're called to.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The proof or evidence or knowledge that enables you to make a completely rational or well-informed or prudent decision. We do this all the time. My drive down here, I nearly took a wrong turning and I thought, which way do I go? Do I keep going straight on? And so my voice came out of my thing, go straight, okay? So you have to make decisions, and sometimes you don't have a navigation system telling you what to do. You just have to make that decision with insufficient evidence. And you're doing it all the time as a human, and that's part of being sentient. And so that kind of”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, belief in propositions that we might not have full proof about, or maybe we have very little proof about. But it's also trust and loyalty. And actually, in terms of the Christian faith, Christians are far more called to trust and loyalty than they are to belief in things they don't have proof of, okay? But the critics of religion generally tend to emphasize the first one and say, well, you know, you believe things for which you have no evidence. That's what they think faith is. Well, yeah, there is a sense in which everybody has to live their lives believing or making decisions in situations when they don't have all”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think faith is very often misunderstood in our society at the moment because it's often portrayed as being nothing other than believing things you know ain't true, you know, or believing things that are not proven, okay? And this, and faith does have a strand, which is to do with basically believing in concepts or propositions. But actually, the word faith is much broader than that. Faith also means trusting in something, trusting in a person or trusting in a thing, the reliability of some technology, for example, that's equally part of the meaning of the word faith. And there's a third strand to the meaning of the word as well, and that is loyalty. So, you know, I have faith in my wife and I try to act in faith towards her. And that's a kind of loyalty. And so those three strands are the most important strands of the meaning of.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Teaching is part of religions. But I don't think that necessarily that leads one to blind dogmatism. And I certainly don't think that faith, we can talk about this later if you'd like, but I certainly don't think that faith means thinking you know something and not listening to counter-arguments, for example. I think that's crucial.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The mystery. We need to be modest or humble even about what we know. I accept that. And I certainly think that's true. Not simply because in the future we'll know more science and there will be more powerful ways of finding out about things, but simply because sometimes we're not right. We're wrong in what we think we know. So that's crucial, but it's also a very Christian outlook. That kind of humility is what Jesus taught. I don't know whether this was in the back of your mind when you were thinking about this, but it's often the case that people of religious faith are accused of being dogmatists, okay? And there is a sense in which dogma teaching accepted.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you read their books, that's what you find they really mean, is science doesn't lead you necessarily to believe in a creator god or in any particular religion. I accept that. That's not a problem to me because I don't think that science is all the knowledge there is. And I think there are other important ways of getting to know things. And one of them is historical, for example, and I mentioned earlier that I became persuaded and I still am persuaded that the historical evidence for the resurrection is very persuasive. Again, it's not proof or anything like that, but it's pretty good evidence.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That there are arguments rather old. You know, are drawing heavily on scientism. So when they say things like, there's no evidence to support Christianity. What they are really focusing on is to say that Christianity isn't proved or the evidence for Christianity is not science. Science doesn't prove it.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, these are two separate things, okay? I'm quite sure there are many people who don't believe in God, and yet recognize that there are many different ways we get knowledge, some is history, some is sociology, economics, politics, philosophy, art history, language, literature, etc., etc. There are many people who recognize those disciplines as having their own approaches to epistemology and to get how we get knowledge and valuing them very highly. I don't mean to say that everyone, you know, who's an atheist automatically subscribes to the scientistic viewpoint. That's not true. But it's certainly the case that many of the arguments, in fact, most of the arguments of the aggressive atheists of this century, people are sometimes called new atheists, although they're actually rather old.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is not reproducible. You can't do reproducible experiments or observations and go back and try it over again. It's a one-off thing. History is full of unique events. And so you can't hope to do history using the methods of science.”
2020-07-29 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #112 – Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source