ian hutchinson phd - podcast interview transcript
Announcer:
00:03 Welcome to the Purpose Nation Podcast, inspiring conversations with Christians in science, technology, and industries of the future. For more information or to make a tax deductible contribution, visit PurposeNation.org
Brad Cooper:
00:16 This is Brad Cooper with Purpose Nation and on the podcast today, have you ever thought of bringing a little bit of the sun...that very bright and hot star in our solar system...maybe just bring a little piece of that right down here on earth so we could kind of use it and get energy from it? Or maybe bottling up some lightening or something like that?
Brad Cooper:
00:35 You probably don't think about that very often, but our next guest actually has spent a lot of time thinking about doing just that, along with a lot of other very important thoughts and work in science and in faith. And so I'm very honored and blessed to welcome my guest on the podcast, Professor Ian Hutchinson. Professor Hutchinson, welcome to the Purpose Nation Podcast.
Prof Hutchinson:
00:56 Thank you. It's good to be with you.
Brad Cooper:
00:58 Likewise. Likewise. Thank you for being here. And I do also have to say he is so, so gracious in that we've actually talked before and we had a little bit of a technical glitch, a little bit of human error (on my side) and so he's so, so gracious for spending time with us again and talking with us again.
Brad Cooper:
01:13 My description of bringing your work, you know in your, in your work and bringing the sun to Earth, probably scared people and didn't quite do it justice. So real quickly in lay person's terms, how would you describe that body of work that you do and what is it? What can do for us?
Prof Hutchinson:
01:25 Yeah, what I do is I study plasmas. Those are very, very hot gases that are in which the electrons are stripped from the ions. They have important electrical properties and the long-term purpose of this research, or at least one major purpose, is to enable us to use fusion energy, which is the energy source, the source of the Sun and Stars on the human scale to try to generate useful energy. This is a, this has been a long term research project over 60 or more years, more than my career and I spent most of my career on it. That's basically what I do. I'm a plasma physicist and I am a professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT.
Brad Cooper:
02:05 And when we talk about energy specifically and we talk about nuclear energy in particular, some might confuse fusion, which is I think what you focus on, with fission, which is very different. But what are the differences between these two?
Prof Hutchinson:
02:17 Yeah, so, so fusion refers to the reacting together of two nuclei, typically two isotopes of hydrogen. And when you do that, it releases energy. So these are light ions light nuclei. There are also heavy nuclei. I like uranium. And if you break those up, it turns out that also releases energy. And that breakage of the uranium nucleus fission, as it's called, of the uranium nucleus, it is what gives us the nuclear energy that we currently have. The potential advantages of fusion are that, um, that it has more abundant resources. It has a greater safety potentially. And, uh, it has other attractive features, but it's much more difficult to make it happen in a controlled way on us. Uh, and that's what we've been trying to find out how to do.
Brad Cooper:
03:08 Well, that's great. That's great. I'm really looking forward to having a bit of a sun like my backyard so I could just power up the house and charge the car and stuff like that. Sometime...
Prof Hutchinson:
03:16 ...probably not in your backyard.
Brad Cooper:
03:19 Uh, well as Professor Hutchinson said, he's a nuclear engineer and physicist and he's, as he said, currently professor of nuclear science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT not so shabby a place, uh, to do science and technology has a bachelor's in physics and a masters from Cambridge University and got his PhD in engineering at Australian National University. He's received many, many awards and honors in this field and so many very important contributions in the fields of nuclear engineering and physics. But he's also written a lot and spoken a lot about faith and science and the combination of the two and where there's different issues there.
Brad Cooper:
03:54 And so he's been a speaker at conferences and forums like the Veritas Forum, which is usually held on college campuses and where the speakers get to interact with a lot with the audience and especially students who may be there. And then he has a lot of questions that he receives that those talks and he's written a new book coming, sort of coming out of those questions called "Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles? An MIT Professor Answers Questions on God and Science. And so along with that book, he's written also a lot of scientific papers, books on science and faith.
Brad Cooper:
04:24 And I understand he also enjoys hiking, fly fishing and a bit of squash. Is that right? Is that right? Squash is a tough sport. I commend you for that. Seems very intense...
Prof Hutchinson:
04:34 Very, very energetic. And um, I intend to keep playing it as long as I can. So it's great for fitness.
Brad Cooper:
04:41 Yeah. And don't, uh, I don't plan to join you anytime soon you would do would destroy me. It's been a long time since I've played, uh, also understand, yeah, you're a bit of a singer as well. So is that, is it baritone? tenor?
Prof Hutchinson:
04:53 Um, yeah, I think, but I think both, both baritone and tenor and in different choruses. I've got a couple of performances Haydn's Theresienmesse coming up in a month's time and a few other things. So I really enjoy singing. It's part of my, my interest and, and activities and hobbies.
Brad Cooper:
05:13 That's awesome. But again, you won't find me joining me in your chorus, anytime soon they'd have the big hook that comes out and grabs me and take me off the stage and that's, that's awesome. So just real quick about your newest book. Did I get that right as it seemed like it spawned out of a lot of these different forums that you do and the questions you receive from those audiences? Is that right?
Prof Hutchinson:
05:29 Yeah, it's, it's literally based on the questions I've been asked at Vertitas Forums, many of which have been video recorded so I can actually access the literal questions that I've been asked. And because those questions are in many ways the most interesting things. And the, and the question time is the most interesting time in these forums. It seemed to me to make sense to make that sort of motivation and content of my book. So although "Can a scientist believe in miracles?" is just one of those questions, one of over 200 questions that I addressed, it's also a very important question that has consequences for the Christian faith. Um, generally. So the book is all about the questions that young people mostly in universities ask about the relationship between science and Christianity.
Brad Cooper:
06:19 It sounds like you also, um, I, you obviously you answered the question and maybe maybe in some cases you didn't add at the forums themselves, but it sounds like you also had some time to go back and think a little bit and kind of come on because I know on those things, and I've done some of these speaking engagements do, and you know, some of the questions may come out of left field. It's like, Oh, I... and you kind of maybe stumble on some of them, but it sounds like you had went back and even put some more thought into in some of the answers.
Prof Hutchinson:
06:42 Yeah, I mean it's not that I don't stand by the answers I gave her the time. I do in general, when you're speaking life to an audience, you have to limit the amount of answer you give sometimes to quite interesting and deep questions. And so those questions in a certain sense sent me back to say, well, okay, let's think about this topic harder and give them more sustained and deeper probing type of answer to this question. And the book gathers similar questions together and into different topics and so it gives, that gives it some kind of con good continuity. And it's actually, the questions are very wide ranging. I mean many of them are about science or the relationship with science to the Bible or to other aspects of life or of a, of faith. But some of them have very little to do with science, but nevertheless they're the kind of questions that come up.
Brad Cooper:
07:35 That's great. And Yeah, I definitely recommend the book and I want to talk more about that. A lot of great questions and answers in. They're a great resource for you. If you're looking for some answers from, from a pretty smart guy.
Brad Cooper:
07:45 So I definitely want to talk more about that and as specifically get into some of those questions before I do, I also want to take a little step back and just kind of tell folks how you got into all of this. It's not every day, you know, the kid kind of wakes up and says, you know, I want to be a nuclear physicist and engineer and work on, you know, plasma physics. So take us back a little bit and sort of what point in your life did you decide, well, there was a kid or maybe later on she wanted to go into science and more specifically engineering and physics.
Prof Hutchinson:
08:09 Well, when I was in middle school or early high school, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. Uh, and I was studying the classics and various other things, which I thought would be good for that. But that was before I took my first course in physics, which immediately attracted me immensely compared with these other topics. And I had an excellent physics teacher who was exciting and interesting, fun. And, and I, I that just totally changed my life. I realized I wanted to be, uh, into physics and mathematics that I was more talented at those. Yeah. And that's how I got interested in science in general. I went to Cambridge University and um, so I was, and I was studying physics and math there, were my majors and that's really how I, how I grew into the field that I, I'm currently an and have been working in for most of my career. I didn't set out specifically get to go into that field. Well I would say generally speaking it was the fascination of finding out about the world in a deep way that drew me into science.
Brad Cooper:
09:14 So you know, for all you teachers and educators out there, I don't know if you call it that, but that was sort of one of the turning points at least. And I'm sure God played a role as well in, in guiding you where he wanted you to be. But you know, the importance of, of, it sounded like you got a great physics teacher yeah. In high school. So there you got all your educators and teachers out there see, see what to your students can become, yeah. Inspire them and have great to physics lessons in, in high school. And then, and then how about your, in terms of your, your faith background and your Christian background. Did you, were you raised in a Christian family and kind of how did you, uh, become a Christian?
Prof Hutchinson:
09:43 Uh, no, I wasn't raised in a Christian family. My family didn't go to church, except really for weddings. And so there wasn't really any faith commitment within my family background. The school I went to for middle and high school, I had a nominal association with the Christian Church and had prayers and in assembly and that kind of thing. But I, I was therefore not totally ignorant of Christianity. It wasn't something that attracted me. It was something wasn't something I believed in. And I just took it as part of the, of the background of my experience in high school. So it really wasn't until I went to Cambridge that I began to take Christianity more seriously. Uh, and the main reason that I did with that was that I had to close a student friends who were people I enjoyed. They were fun, they were smart and they have a Troy had attractive lies and both of them were Christians.
Prof Hutchinson:
10:36 So perhaps made me think much more deeply about the Christianity having some relevance possibly from my life. Late later on in the second year of my time at Cambridge, they invited me to go to a series of lectures given by Michael Green, who was a well known Christian speaker at the time in England. And much to their surprise I said yes. And I went to those lectures and I was struck by two uh, important new ideas that I hadn't gained from my, the Christian background that I had from my school. One was that actually the evidence for the truth of Christianity, particularly of the resurrection of Jesus, was actually rather good historical evidence for it. And secondly, that Christianity isn't not so much, Huh, an intellectual ascent to some kind of propositions, but it's actually a cold to a personal relationship with God. And those two facts seem to me to be new ideas that I hadn't thought about before.
Prof Hutchinson:
11:36 And um, I began to realize that I actually did more or less believed that there was truth in Christianity, that Jesus was who he said he was. But I, I realized also that if I was going to go further with this, it was going to require me to make a step of personal commitment that would change my life. And eventually I came to the point where I said yes, I, I'm not 100% certain of the truth of Christianity, but I want to take that step of uh, commitment. And I did. And I knelt and prayed a prayer of commitment to Christ and I've been a His follower ever since.
Brad Cooper:
12:14 So you had already been in a little bit into the science culture and I mean, was there any change? Obviously you had Christian friends, so it probably wasn't a whole lot of change there and then just ongoing in your career. I hear different things from different folks I have on the podcast.
Prof Hutchinson:
12:31 There was in the long term, there were many changes in my life, but it didn't suddenly change the studies that I was doing or anything like that. And I found that myself drawn into fellowship with other Christians. I didn't know much about Christianity even though I had studied it at school. I knew you some of the New Testament, but I certainly didn't know how it applied to my life. And so in a certain sense, my Christian faith and my science grew up together through the undergraduate experience and on into graduate studies in Australia.
Brad Cooper:
13:02 Great. And so you've also kind of been very vocal and outspoken about your faith. Some scientists kind of prefer to keep it a little closer to the vest and not talk a lot about their faith. I mean, how would you describe sort of relationship with your peers and your scientific endeavors? Have they been mostly supportive? Have you had people have questions? I mean, how would you characterize your interaction with other peers?
Prof Hutchinson:
13:21 Well, I think most of the people that I've ever worked with know that I'm a Christian. Um, and as you say, I'm, I'm fairly open about that. Um, that was the determination that I made sort of early on in my Christian career. I took seriously the, the words of Jesus who said that "those who are ashamed of me, I'll be ashamed of." And I didn't want him to be ashamed of me, so I decided I wasn't going to be ashamed of Christ. You know, on occasions, yes. People have been surprised by my Christian faith and asked me questions like, will, how could a smart guy like you believe all that kind of stuff. And that's an interesting opportunity to talk about the fact that I don't find Christianity to be implausible or in, in any sense, inconsistent with my science. In fact, I think there's some deep resonances and consistencies there.
Prof Hutchinson:
14:09 And there have been occasions on which people have talk to me down behind my back. But in general, I don't think I've suffered any direct persecution from the administration of the institutes that I belonged to among my scientific colleagues. I find quite an a substantial number of people who are also followers of Jesus. So I think that, while people often think that there are very few scientists who are Christians actually isn't the case. If you do demographic studies of American universities and you ask, well, okay, amongst the professors, is it the scientists that are mostly secular or is it people in other fields? Answer, is it scientists are in many cases the least likely to be unbelievers. In other words, they're the most likely to believe in Jesus because, um, they don't find any, uh, conflict between walking by faith and practicing the Christian life and the practice of science.
Brad Cooper:
15:10 Amen to that. Yeah, absolutely. And we obviously have a lot of them on the podcast as well going forward a little bit in terms of your work, again, as a scientist, tell us a little bit more about that. And so what about if I'm pronouncing this correctly, but what is a tokamak, is that how you pronounce that?
Prof Hutchinson:
15:24 That's pretty good. Yeah, that's good...
Brad Cooper:
15:27 ...why would we build such a thing?
Prof Hutchinson:
15:28 So a tokamak is a toroidal device that confines plasma. These, these incredibly hot gases. These plasmas are hotter actually than the center of the Sun. They can be as much as a hundred million degrees Celsius...
Brad Cooper:
15:41 Wow.
Prof Hutchinson:
15:41 ...and if you have something that's hot that is that hot, you can't just put it in a regular material bottle and hope that you're going to keep it there because it would instantly melt the bottle or else it would cool off. So we have to confine it using immaterial forces and the creators fusion reactors, which are the stars are held together by gravity, which is an immaterial force. But in order to hold something together on a much smaller scale, gravity is too weak because the gravity between small objects is rather small. So what instead we do is we use magnetic fields to confine the plasma. And we fashion these into a donut shape, which is what a torus is, and the magnetic fields act to hold in the plasma and isolate it from the walls of the vacuum vessel in which it sits. And the whole challenge of fusion, can we hold this plasma together, uh, well enough, isolate it from the walls for long enough times so that the fusion reactions can take place, maintain the plasma hot enough.
Brad Cooper:
16:46 That's amazing. It seems like almost an impossible feat of engineering. It just seems so complex and incredible. Where are we in terms of the progress? I understand there may be this experiment in France, but we're, where are we in terms of the stage of, of where this might someday be a source of energy on the grid for us?
Prof Hutchinson:
17:01 Well, yes, it's tough, but we've been pursuing this for some decades as a result of the experiments, including the experiments that we've done here at MIT in my group was, um, very serious, smaller scale experiments. We now think that we know how to build and are in the process of building in the south of France, a multi-nation collaboration. That is an experiment. It's successful. It will demonstrate controlled fusion reactions at the level of several hundred megawatts of power of reactions for hundreds of seconds at a time. And that will be a scientific demonstration of magnetically confined controlled fusion reaction. It won't energy on the grid because it's an experiment. It's not designed as a, as a power reactor and there will be substantial amount of engineering beyond what, uh, has been done for this experiment in order to make it run round the clock and routinely generate energy. So it won't immediately hail a new era of fusion energy. But I think it will be an important step towards the long term deployment of fusion energy for human scale.
Brad Cooper:
18:12 So just a few years back when they turned on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, you know, everyone was worried, "Is it like going to create like a black hole or something that's going to open up in the center of the earth and swallow us all up?" or something like that. No, no concerns about black holes with this, right?
Prof Hutchinson:
18:26 No. The experiment that's being built in France is actually somewhat bigger in overall scale then the, a Large Hadron Collider. Um, but one of the attractions of fusion is that it doesn't have such serious risks of meltdown or other accidents as is potentially exist for our current nuclear energy. And so really it will be quite safe. The amount of energy involved, uh, in the fusing plasma is relatively small, so it's not liable to cause any kind of danger to humankind. And so that safety is one of the selling points of fusion energy,
Brad Cooper:
19:07 Prayers for you and then, and the teams that are putting this together. And what are your thoughts on, you know, when we might see this on the grid, is this something we might see in our lifetimes, by the end of the century, what, what are your thoughts on how close we may be?
Prof Hutchinson:
19:18 Well, one of the problems with this experiment is that it's very big and it takes a long time to build because it's complicated and in fact it won't come into operation even the experiment won't come into operation until I'm well and truly retired from my professional career. So that was one of the disappointments in my life. Certainly when I began doing fusion research. I hoped that we would have fusion energy in my lifetime. I don't now think we will. Nevertheless, I think it's an important scientific study and has potential for the future.
Brad Cooper:
19:50 Absolutely. Now talking again about your book and again we're talking with Professor Ian Hutchinson about his work and his faith and and the book that he has, which is really, really great resource. I definitely recommend it. We will have a link to the book in our podcast page so you can go check it out and get it from wherever you get your books. But it's a book, it's called "Can a Scientist Believe in Miracles?" An MIT Professor Answers Questions on God and Science. So what sort of prompted you to put, put these together and to write it and what, what did you hope to accomplish with it or what did you hope folks would get from it?
Prof Hutchinson:
20:20 Well, they're really two sides to my motivation, both of this book and for them the great amount of speaking that I do to mostly to university audiences about the relationship between science and Christianity. One is to help inform Christians about science and help them to understand better the relationship between science and their Christian faith. But the other is also is to, uh, appeal also to skeptics or seekers, people who are unbelievers, and to help them to recognize that there is a far more constructive relationship between science and Christianity than is often portrayed both by skeptics and by Christians. And in fact, it is the case Christianity grew up in what amount I should say science grew up in what amounted to, uh, a fertile environment, which was largely provided by the Christian faith and the by the biblical worldview. And so far from Christianity and, uh, being a drag on science, holding back science.
Prof Hutchinson:
21:24 Some people have said for hundreds of years, it seems to me that that history is in fact telling us the opposite. And this is evidenced by the fact that you know, a large fraction of the greatest scientists of history. We're in fact Christian believers. So the myth that has been promoted for the past maybe hundred and 50 years, that somehow science and Christianity are completely incompatible, is just untrue. And we need to get past that. We need to understand both Christianity and science better in order to realize that there's a much more constructive relationship between them than that.
Speaker 4:
22:02 Yeah. And so what would you say it's probably a lot of them, but what, what was one or two of the most common questions you get at these forums, would you say?
Prof Hutchinson:
22:09 Well, the most common questions include particularly questions for example, about the Bible and science and those types of questions come from both of the audiences that I referred to. They come from Christians trying to understand the extent to which their understanding of, of the Bible is consistent with discoveries of modern science. But they also come from skeptics, sometimes quite a militant skeptics who think that asking questions about the relationship between the Bible and science reveals the weakness of Christianity. I think they're awesome weaknesses in some interpretations of the Bible. Um, and these are things that one should think deeply about, but in most cases those apparent contradictions are contradictions with certain types of interpretation of the Bible. So to take an historical example when there was controversy about whether the earth orbits the sun or the sun orbits the earth. This is the famous activities and controversies surrounding the life of Galileo.
Brad Cooper:
23:17 Yeah.
Prof Hutchinson:
23:17 Some people in the church, some ministers in the church, would point to the psalms and say "ah, here, it says in the psalms that the earth is firmly established and can never be moved. Ah, and that proves that the earth cannot orbit the sun." Well that was a misinterpretation of the psalms. The psalms were giving a poetic emphasis and declaration of, of the, of the security of the, and the power of God in establishing it. It wasn't meant to say that we should come to that and interpret to do some kind of scientific claim about what body orbits another. And so these days, essentially nobody believes that the sun orbits the earth and they all believed that the earth orbits the sun and we reinterpreted, changed our interpretation of that psalm. Well there, there are some other aspects of the Bible that are often problematic if you take certain types of interpretation of them.
Prof Hutchinson:
24:19 So I think the most important thing in trying to understand the relationship between science and the Bible is to recognize that even though the Bible has lots of different types of literature, it has, it has history, it has biography, it has letters, it has poetry, it has liturgy and so on and so forth. The one type of literature the Bible does not contain is scientific literature, as we understand it today. It is a mistake if Christians go to the Bible expecting to be able to read scientific interpretations into it. That is not the way my view, that we should most fruitfully approach the Bible.
Prof Hutchinson:
25:01 And so there are many specific questions in my book that are addressed, but that's the underlying principle that I find to be most valuable. I take the Bible very seriously. I take seriously and, and, and would affirm the, the notion that it is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, reproof and correction as it says in 2 Timothy 3:16 but that doesn't mean that when we come to it, our particular interpretations are always affirmed by God. The Bible is a book that requires us to read it like every other literature interpretation as part of that process of reading it.
Brad Cooper:
25:41 And the questions you get that you go through in your book, would you say, and there's differences in just different parts of the country here, even in the United States, I imagine Boston might have a different set of questions, even from Christians, maybe then the Bible belt or something like that. I've had, I don't know if he was or how much, you know, you've been outside of sort of the, uh, academic kind of areas, but what are the differences just in terms of the questions you get, that get fielded in different parts of the country even.
Prof Hutchinson:
26:05 I'm not sure that there are such great differences, but of course I'm mostly speaking to university audiences and so perhaps the questions that come to their mind, uh, a more uniform across the country. Certainly the case that in different areas of the country, uh, Christianity has broader or narrower appeal to, um, the people who live there. But I think within the university, these kinds of intellectual challenges that people have are relatively common common across the nation. There are questions that are more, more fraught I think in America as a whole. And perhaps these questions, which also have regional variations. So I'm thinking of things like people are more troubled by the relationship between evolution, for example, the scientific theory of evolution and how does that fit with the biblical story and those types of questions. In my, in my travel to other countries, and I've lived in Australia and England as well as an in America, I find it that particular question is less problematic in those other countries than it is in the U.S. And that's partly because of American history and famous and high profile trials and arguments and so forth influenced the culture at large.
Brad Cooper:
27:23 Yeah. And what would you say, uh, is there any questions that stumped you, have stumped you or maybe were difficult to answer? What were, what were one or two of the, the questions that are most difficult for you?
Prof Hutchinson:
27:33 Well, there are many questions that remain difficult. Actually. Most of them are theological questions rather than scientific questions. But I think that one of the toughest questions that Christians as a whole face is how can god be powerful and old benevolence and yet good people suffer. And so it's the problem of pain or Theodicy. I think that question is one were there are no simple answers. And if people are suffering, there really isn't a theological way that we can comfort them or explain that situation to them. All we can do I think, or what we should do in those fraught and difficult types of situations is be alongside the person. And that's the whole meaning of the word, compassion, is in a certain sense to suffer with them. And I think that the only sense in which there is a theological comfort for them is when we realize that God himself in the person of his son has practiced precisely that compassion, precisely that suffering with us. And that's part of what it means to say that Jesus came and suffered and died for us in. Um, so I think that God practices in a certain sense that compassion towards people who suffer but that, but the intellectual question of well how could it be possibly be that suffering exists and yet there is an omnipotence and omni-benevolent God. I think that actually does have some fairly good theological answers, but those answers are, are aren't of any comfort to people who are in a place of suffering.
Brad Cooper:
29:17 Right. And do you think that, with Christians in the audiences you speak to, you know, how in terms of you being a scientist and obviously know your stuff and also know quite a bit about theology as well, but just in terms of their reception to scientists in science in general, especially again here in America, as you said, a little bit of a different perception. Is part of this, just maybe some mistrust of science and scientists they see on, on the television, you know, the speak most of this allow the spokespeople, you know, Richard Dawkins and all these other folks are what we would call the new atheist kind of aggressively, as you said, sort of somewhat semi-militant against Christians. I mean, or, or do you get more respect because you are a scientist? I mean, how would you describe that in terms of how people with these audiences view you as a professional scientist and also a Christian versus yeah, the pastor in their church in terms of how they receive this information and the questions they ask?
Prof Hutchinson:
30:04 Well, I think science generally has very high respect in our modern society and it deserves it in a certain sense. I mean, science has been tremendously successful in finding out about the world and the technologies that is, has spawned, are extremely powerful and in many cases helpful. So, so it's not surprising that scientists generally have high respect. But the problem is that in many cases, scientists, particularly those who are anti-theistic in their views, use that to essentially appeal for the things that they believe in. And so when the anti-theist like Dawkins and the, and his ilk, um, speak and claim that science disproves religion, if other scientists don't speak up and say, no, it doesn't, that's a mistake. That's a misunderstanding of theology and philosophy and so forth. It's just an, uh, an extrapolation, an improper extrapolation of science as if science gave you all the answers that there are in life... that's incorrect.
Prof Hutchinson:
31:08 So, so it's important for people I think like me or like others in science to speak up and say, no, I don't believe that that's true. And here's, here are the reasons. The main reason that I would argue to discount the claims of the anti-theist is that they're basically extrapolating science's success into a claim or a belief that science is all the real knowledge there is. This is the mis-practice of scientism so that they're are scientistic claims made that somehow science governs all kinds of other thinking and disciplines. And there's no way to get to know anything other than through science. But that's a ghastly intellectual mistake. It's an intellectual mistake often made by high profile and stick scientists. But it's important for folks like me to speak up. I don't think that I have any particular authority in theology or anything else. I'm certainly not an expert in all of these areas. But I do think it's helpful for people who, uh, live in our society where science has such a high profile to know that there are people who are serious scientists who have standing, who have thought about the question and have not found the contradictions to be the way that the anti theist have claimed.
Brad Cooper:
32:27 Amen. Amen to all of that. And so for you personally as a scientist and working on some very important things, as you said, I mean, that's why we're here at Purpose Nation as we want to encourage folks to support scientists like you and your work. Very important work. I mean, there's so many things that can come out of it in terms of medical discoveries and technologies and energy and all of these things. So we definitely want Christians to not only support it, but you know, potentially get into these fields themselves. For you personally, how has your Christian faith reinforced your work and vice versa? I mean, how do they, how would you describe the interplay between your faith and your work?
Prof Hutchinson:
32:58 Well, there is a sense in which some of the motivations for the things I actually study spring out of my sense of compassionate and duty towards the people who in trouble or in terms of making people's lives better. But I would also point to the fact that science is not just, you know, what you learn in science lectures. So a practicing scientist who is going to be successful draws upon all kinds of other skills and aspects of their character. So if you were in leadership of a big group as I was for a substantial part of my career, you know, dealing with people, individuals, personal interactions, uh, building teamwork, speaking to funding agencies and so forth about the value of our work. All of these are things which go far beyond what one learns in technical lectures. And so being a scientist is far more than just what do you know and what have you learned and what equations can you solve? I would certainly say that some of the things that have stood me in good stead in some of these leadership and teamwork roles have been things that I've learned much more from, um, my Christian life, uh, and my Christina fellowships and churches than I have from, you know, the lectures or the studies that I've conducted in universities. So scientists are whole people and they benefit from the strengths that come from being a follower of Jesus, just the same as everyone else does.
Brad Cooper:
34:29 Amen. That's a great point. Just the personal interaction and the skills you learn and kind of the, the, uh, the parables, uh, and the teachings of our faith as well can help folks in any field.
Prof Hutchinson:
34:40 Absolutely.
Brad Cooper:
34:40 So if somebody is a, maybe it's a parent with a, with a young person or as a young person is in the audience and they kind of, yeah, feel somewhat scientifically minded and they like building things or they like, you know, different learning about physics or other types of science. And what would you say to them to encourage them to potentially pray about a calling in in one of these fields?
Prof Hutchinson:
34:56 Well, first thing to say is that it's not the case that you can't be a scientist and a Christian. They are not incompatible. They're perfectly compatible and that's been my experience through my, through my life. Of course. The other thing is if you're drawn to and interested in things of nature and if you like to tinker with stuff as I did when I was a kid, you know, all kinds of crazy things I did looking back, I shudder. But you know, don't be discouraged by that. Be encouraged. Science does call for a level of dedication, study, seriousness because science isn't just sloppy. In science, we'd find out quite quickly when things are true and when things are false and so it's naturally a rigorous study, but it's one that's enormously rewarding. I certainly derive great pleasure and enjoy deeply discovering about the way that God has created the world. And I certainly see that as part, in some sense of my Christian calling. I'm happy to be doing it. And I do it as best I can in a sentence sense as to the Lord.
Brad Cooper:
35:59 Amen. Thank you. We've been having a delightful conversation with Professor Ian Hutchinson. And again, he's got a great book out, a definitely a useful resource for Christians and non Christians alike to some of these very important questions. Uh, and he's answered many of them in this book and gone through and, and just really put them together very nicely and organize on the well and it's a great resource for you and your church and interacting with people. And again, it's called a "Can of Scientists Believe in Miracle? MIT Professor Answers Questions on God and Science."
Brad Cooper:
36:26 So you mentioned the chorus concert coming up, anything else?Squash tournament? Any fly fishing? Hikes this summer? What, what do you have coming up?
Prof Hutchinson:
36:34 Ha Ha. No, I'm going to take, uh, take some time off this summer and relax. I'm going to go to see my mother in law to be at my mother in law's 90th birthday and Australia and that'll be my biggest adventure.
Brad Cooper:
36:46 Okay, good, good, good. Well, well God bless you. And in your work and your, your travels this summer it to Australia and beyond. And just thank you so, so much for being on the podcast with us today.
Prof Hutchinson:
36:55 You are very welcome. It's been a pleasure being with you.
Brad Cooper:
36:58 Professor Hutchinson, thank you so much and God bless you.
Prof Hutchinson:
37:00 And you...
Announcer:
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