Ian Hutchinson: Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, and Religion

through his acts has reconciled me with God me a sinner me someone full of sins of failings

of ways in which I don't live up to even my own ideals let alone the ideals of a holy

God have been reconciled to the creator of everything and and so Christians myself included

believe that prayer is in a certain sense a connection with God and there are times

when I have felt you know that God spoke to me I don't mean necessarily orally in words

but showed me things or enlighten me or inspired me in ways that I I attribute to him so I

see it as a as a two way you know relationship in a certain sense of course it's a very asymmetrical

relationship but nevertheless Christians think that it's a two way it's a two way street

we're not just talking into the air when we say we won't I'm going to pray for someone

in this two way communication is there a way that you could try to describe on a podcast

what is God what is God like in your view if you try to describe is it a force is it

a set is it a for you intellectually is a set of metaphors that you use to reason about

the world is it is it is it kind of a computer that does some computation that's the infinitely

powerful computer or is it like Santa Claus a guy with a with a beard on the cloud like

I don't mean I don't mean what God actually is I mean in your limited cognitive capacity

as a human what do you actually what do you find helpful for thinking of what God actually

looks like what is God well let me start by saying none of the above okay I mean clearly

God in the Christian God the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob etc it is is not any of those

things because all of those things you just mentioned are phenomena or or or entities

in the created world and the most fundamental thing about monotheism as you know Abraham

and Moses and so forth handed it down is that God is not an entity within the creation within

the universe that God is the creator of it all and that's what Genesis first two chapters

of Genesis is really about is it's not it's not about telling us you know how God created

the world it's about telling us and telling the early Hebrews that God created the world

okay and that therefore he is not you know simply an entity within it on the other hand

you know our finite minds have a pretty hard time encompassing that so so one has to therefore

work in terms of metaphors and images and and so forth and I think we would know very

little about who God is if we if it was simply up if we were simply left to our own devices

you know if if we were just you know here you are you're in the universe try to figure

out who made it and and so forth well you know philosophers think they can do a little