Alastair's Adversaria - Conspiracy Theory and Autodidact Brain (with Susannah Roberts and Derek Rishmawy)

Episode Date: April 20, 2024

The journalist and writer Naomi Wolf recently posted on Twitter about her reading of a New Testament interlinear: https://twitter.com/naomirwolf/status/1780385997416497153. Susannah thought it provided a good occasion for a discussion of conspiracy theories and 'autodidact brain' and invited Derek Rishmawy to have a conversation with us. If you have enjoyed my videos and podcasts, please tell your friends. If you are interested in supporting my videos and podcasts and my research more generally, please consider supporting my work on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/zugzwanged), using my PayPal account (https://bit.ly/2RLaUcB), or by buying books for my research on Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/36WVSWCK4X33O?ref_=wl_share). You can also listen to the audio of these episodes on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/alastairs-adversaria/id1416351035?mt=2.

Okay, so I'm going to do a little bit of a reading to kick us off, and this is a reading from Twitter. And I will sort of bring us to a pointed question after this reading, but I think the reading is important. This is Naomi Wolfe's Twitter from yesterday at 8.01 p.m. Hi all. So Naomi Wolf, sort of feminist scholar, recent sort of sort of, sort of, I think we'll probably just have to get into who she is in the course of the episode. But yeah, historian, scholar, sort of feminist from the 90s. Hi, all. So I skipped ahead to the New Testament with a coinay Greek-English side-by-side literal translation.

And what am I to do? So much of the New Testament has been mistranslated or shall I say creatively translated. in addition to the Old Testament having often been mistranslated. Is it offensive if I analyze this fact when we get to the New Testament? The creative translations are outright mistranslations in the New Testament, often write out opus familiar language of a radical or reforming Jewish teacher slash redeemer of Israel, and heighten or present other language that introduces or showcases the idea of the establishment of a new Hellenistic-oriented religion.

As in later translations of the Old Testament, there's often distance introduced in later translations in the New Testament between, quote, the Sons of God that is humans and God that is not there in the original. I think this set of insights is important, but I do fear offending people. Two, in the original, there is also less distance between humans and Jesus than there is in later translations. For instance, the same term, Son of God, sons of God, is used for Jesus and for, well, people. three at the sermon on the mount jesus was not approached by his quote unquote disciples he was approached by quote unquote learners four also in the original the kingdom of heavens is here or nearing now people who are good or peacemakers participate in it now it's not blessed ar thee but happy arthy

that is to say now five i think it's odd that i've been doing a long video series on the geneva bible showing changes from the hebrew Old Testament to the various later English translations and no one objects. Indeed, it's warmly received, but some have the idea that translations can alter meanings is drawing fire in re the New Testament. This is in reference to people quoting the earlier tweets on that thread. If translations did not alter meanings, there would not be a perceived need for the Wycliffe, Geneva, KJV, RSV, etc, etc., etc. How is this idea even controversial? I was so happy when I read this. I was like, don't deserve to live in this moment. This is such a gift. And like you just, you picture her like with a sort of, you know, GMO-free extremely high caffeine energy drink,

like sitting down and opening like Biblehub.com backslash intralinear and being like, let's get to the bottom of this. And I'm just, I love it. I am so happy for all of us. But so obviously it's extremely funny. And she was like on the one hand, all right, I really do. I think it's kind of beautiful that she is now, she's, she's sort of agnostic Jewish in background. And she's actually, you know, it's wonderful that she's getting into reading God's word. Like, this is an incredibly beautiful thing. On the other hand, I do think that her approach highlights a kind of issue, which has been, which has sort of plagued her for her entire career, but it plagues many in our world, which is to say that she has autodidact brain.

auto-didact brain is a real problem. It's a social problem. It's like, you know, it's like syphilis different, but similar. I mean, the thing is, though, she got her doctorate from Oxford. She went to Yale. She's not, she has no excuse for having autodidact brain. Her father was Leonard Wolfe. And yet she somehow received autodidact brain.

And that has colored her entire career. and I was kind of thinking through earlier, you know, how I... If you are afflicted by autodidact brain, please consider calling you a doctor. Susanna, please, please, now that we've kind of said, just briefly explain for me, I think I grasp what auto-didic brain is, but please give me a concise definition. Yeah, autodidact brain is what happens when you have not been, you've not sort of, it can happen to, there can be like generalized autodidact brain and specific auto dialect brain. It happens when you are getting into a topic or subject that you don't have

formal academic training in. And it can particularly happen if you don't have formal academic training in anything, especially in any humanity subject and you're getting into a humanity subject for the first time. And it can be wonderful. Like being an autodidact is a wonderful thing. thing. Not all autodidacts have autodidact brain. You know, most sort of amateurs of everything are, most of the best sort of literary scholars and thinkers and historians have been in some sense amateurs, especially before the past couple of 100 years. However, she, there is this kind of phenomenon of essentially a conspiratorial approach to the genre that you're, or the question that you're getting into.

And there's a kind of sense of, because you are discovering the beginnings of the complexity of an issue and realizing that it has, you know, there's more to it than perhaps like the Wikipedia or sub-Wikipedia understanding that you've had, you feel as though these things have been hidden from you and from the world. Why has nobody talked about this before? Why has nobody talked about this? And you see this usually people who, were raised Christian, didn't really stick with it, and now are sort of trying to like learn more

about Christianity. And they're like, oh, wow, my understanding of this as I had it at age seven is not, it's more complicated. There's a lot more here. This was kept from me. And it's like, no, you were seven. And there's a certain similarity between Naomi Wolf's approach and those then people who sort of fall into that temptation. But the problem here is that she is a full on adult semi-academic. She's a trained academic. She's not been, you know, working as an academic. She's been working as a kind of like popular polemicist and historian since the 90s. But she should know better. And it's kind of fascinating to me that she doesn't. And looking back on her, the previous sort of like arc of her career, starting from the beauty myth, which was the first book that I'd known her for,

which was really big in the 90s and 2000s. It kind of started to, I kind of started to realize that there are aspects of this kind of autodidact brain conspiracy theorizing that have plagued her and actually plagued, I guess the culture around the questions that she has addressed, which has included feminism, the patriarchy, fascism in America, those are kind of the two big ones for as long as I can remember. And I don't just want to dunk on her, although there were some really, really funny responses to this. I think the point that you made about some degree of continuity between the way that she thought about more respectable issues back in the 90s and early 2000s and some of her more

recent stuff, it's a lot more crankish and conspiratorial, obviously within the structures of the discourse. That, I think, is an important point. Because, for instance, you mentioned fascism in America. If you read most of the commentary upon right-wing thought within Christian circles, and you know anything about those circles, you see this is produced by cranks. They don't really know what they're talking about. They've picked up some details and they've gone wild with them. Now, there are definitely problems with right-wing thought within Christian circles. It's not as if it's not there. But there are like five of them. Well, maybe two more than that. But when you actually look at much of what is written, it has a conspiratorial flavor. It's this big picture account where

everyone's investors somehow in some great movement that you realize is there, but it's a very small thing. And most people have never heard of it. Most people, to the extent that they have heard about it, disagree with it or see it as fringe and weird. And so it's only something that would appeal to someone who doesn't really know the situation on the ground well, someone who's approaching the issue from a very ideological perspective or conspiratorial vantage point. And what you can recognize in context, for instance, in a discussion of Coyne Greek and the reading of the New Testament, or in discussions of vaccines or whatever it is, some area where conspiratorial thinking is very much recognized and highlighted, you can then start to see the commonalities with

these more respectable forms of thought that have the same patterns that they're just not called out as such. Yeah. So the issue that I'm wrestling with is, I don't have any really experience with reading about the history of fascism or feminism in Naomi Walspork. Actually, I only know her from Twitter and there's been some classics. But it's just the question I think you raised before the show was the, you know, the prerogative of doing your own research and being well informed. So there's there's a lot of there's a lot of interesting things where that that phrase now is

often identified with people who are doing kind of right wingish, hey, do your own research. And this is why I opted out of X, Y, and Z. But it's it's structurally parallel to a lot of left wing kind of progressive stuff that gets a pass. I saw a study cited where. are conservatives or obviously authoritarian in their personality ties because they were unloved by their mothers or some stuff some some some some some crowd like that got picked up by the Washington Post and so like it's not I don't think it's actually just a right wing left wing thing

no it's it's it's structurally baked into a lot of the way we think about hey I'm learning about this new thing I have not been told about this before they're putting their fit and oftentimes they're putting your finger on something real so it's interesting wolf's interlinear approach towards the Bible in New Testament reading. The funny thing about that, everybody was kind of joking online.

Like, this is first year seminarian took Greek for a few weeks energy. Like, oh my goodness, when you first read this, wow. And the joke about the happy is,

you know, she's putting, there are whole monographs on the translation of that Greek term, Macarius, blessed, happy. Like, that's actually a legit,

one of the, one of the scholarly, But what's funny is it's the wow, why is nobody saying this edge to it? Because I'm curious how you guys saying because I've had experiences where I, for myself and medical field, I've had really bad health experiences, long history of health stuff. And the two and a half years of my worst health decline or when I was only going to guys with guys or girls with MD right behind their name who were giving me very clear, consistent, board approved methodologies and all that kind of stuff.

And then I started to feel better when I finally went to some guy who, you know, chiropractor license, all that kind of stuff, but had me take a whole bunch of supplements and, you know, lifted my arm in a weird way. And it was like, what is happening here? And then two weeks later, I'm like, well, I'm sleeping. And I don't feel like trash all the time. And this is nothing that my MD talks. to me about, right? You know, 10 years ago, you have a, you have a, you have a, you have an

issue with your gut. And they're like, well, you probably just can have to take medicines. And here's more, here's more antacid. And yeah, just keep taking the ad bill. It'll feel great on your joints. And then 10 years later, all of a sudden, we know about the gut microbiome. And oh, gosh, that ad, ad bill was frying, frying your, your, your gut lining. And all the antibiotics we gave you actually, you know, I take, I still take them, whatever. That, that, whole thing people it's not that there's no hook in reality right um and so there's this is this is me i guess sticking up for dr wolf and and the people do their own research a bit because there's times where official trusted authorities are not always even up to date on their own on the literature in their

own field oh absolutely that that's where that's where you know just the appeal to the agree to the degree what you have it and that's cool but that that doesn't actually shut down you know that doesn't actually shut down discussion and that doesn't actually shouldn't actually stop somebody from being an auto didactic so I guess like what's what's what's the good what's the good process on like proper

autodidacticism and proper kind of not merely handing over yes I think that way that you express the problem, Derek, is very helpful. There are clearly ways that experts, people who have degrees and letters after their name can let us down. The challenge is, I think, to move from that understanding that we can't just run by credentialism to avoid that on one hand, but also avoiding on the other hand this idea that we are just to distrust experts,

and go straight into our own research without recognizing that the experts have given a lot of thought to these subjects. They may have mistaken opinions, but they have those mistaken opinions generally for reasons, and those reasons are worth engaging with, even if we find ourselves disagreeing sharply. And this can be the case, even for the people with whom we disagree most sharply. And in these sorts of cases, it's at the very least important to understand. understand the limitations of our knowledge, the limitations of our knowledge of other people's knowledge and beliefs and where they're coming to their positions from. We may be able to see some limitations, but we may not be able to understand what are the persuasive factors for them,

what are parts of the picture that they're seeing that we're missing. And I've seen a lot of this within the field of theology because a lot of people who are thinking about theology on a regular basis are not experts. And they're thinking about it as people in the pews of their churches who should be thinking about theology. And the sort of credentialism that would say that they have no warrant to be thinking about theology because they've not had however many years of seminary education or education in some theology department, that seems to me completely unwarranted. Christians of all kinds, of all ages and of all academic and other backgrounds should be thinking about theology. But part of the challenge is moving beyond this idea that you either completely trust or distrust the experts,

you need to be doing these things on your own, doing your own research. That does not work. And you can see again and again that leads people to very weird and unbalanced places. Likewise, when people distrust the experts, often they're not distrusting the experts altogether. They end up with unfounded faith in a few controversial people outside of the field. People who often crankish because they're dismissing everyone else, rather than actually engaging with other people and their arguments. I think that's one of the key things that if we're going to be doing good research, we will be engaging with people who disagree with us in a way that recognises the force of their arguments. We want to realize why they have come to the positions

that they've come to, even if we find ourselves disagreeing. We want to understand how someone who has thought deeply about this subject might have arrived at these conclusions. And we'll also want to present our positions in a way that is grounded in very intense and deep thought. Now, this is something that we do not do by ourselves. And the auto-dueged, didact is not someone who needs to think about these things by themselves. To think about something for yourself does not mean that you need to think about it by yourself, as if there's no one else that you can learn from and with. And so ideally what you want are a multitude of counselors that you're reading people from various perspectives engaging with their thoughts and not just jumping

into one camp or another and trying to understand the strength of the arguments on different sides. And what that generally leads to is an autodidact who has thought about these things for themselves, but not by themselves, who respects expertise, who recognises that the experts have actually given a lot of thought to these subjects, even when they're wrong, even when they're profoundly wrong. And they are able to communicate some sort of respect for expertise. When you read someone like Naomi Wolf in her treatment, you can see that this is someone who, who because of her trying to think about these things by herself and her lack of regard for experts,

even though, of course, she's using an interlinear, depending upon the expertise of many people behind the scenes, when that respect for expertise is lost, what you have is Dunning Kruger's syndrome, this not knowing what you don't know, and having an incredible confidence that is misplaced because you're the person that's coming in, this, seeing some limitations in popular presentations, and you're not able to realize just

that the experts have been thinking about these things for quite some time. There are lots of debates going on. You may disagree with some of them for good reason, but it's worth engaging with them and respecting what they've done. Yeah, I do think the key thing is to avoid the bad kind of autodicism, understand that you're entering, you're joining a conversation, that's been going on for a long time. You are just, like, it is not you barging into the conversation and, like, picking up the materials and trying to figure it out. You should listen for a little bit to see what's been going on in the conversation.

You should sort of, like, you know, offer cautious remarks initially. You should sort of, like, get to know the people and the references and the in-jokes and the sort of the basic assumptions. And that's how you learn. You learn by, yes, dealing with primary sources. Or, you know, if you're in the sciences, yes, dealing with, you know, experimentation. But primarily also by, you know, or largely also, by entering into the conversation well. And the funny thing, the reason that Naomi Woolf's tweets were so funny is that this is one of the longest and most,

I guess well-populated conversations that has ever happened. And she's jumping into it as though she does not, she's not aware of that. And there's also the just this conspiratorial bent, which is a slightly different thing than the autodidacticism brain, which is it's not just that I'm picking this up. I'm not going to, I'm not going to regard the conversation that's been going on before me.

It's that if I understand something, Like she's clearly running into Jesus in some sense in these in her reading of the New Testament, you know, interlinear using I think the Geneva Bible and, you know, whatever strongs. She's running into Jesus and she's running into the idea of a God who is present and who loves her in a way that she is not before done. Like she hasn't encountered this text before. But because she has as well as the autotidact brain conspiracy brain, she thinks that because she hasn't encountered this before, it has been kept from her by experts.

And that's, and that is the kind of, you know, that's what makes it kind of unsurprising that if you scroll through the rest of her feed, it's a lot of stuff about chemtrails. Yeah. So I guess that's, I mean, another area in which I have not done much research. That, that element of, if I haven't. thought the thought before, if I haven't heard somebody mentioned this before, it's been kept from me and nobody must have noticed it either. That is, I think, an interesting feature that goes broadly, right? I've encountered a new argument that has upended prior ways of thinking

that I've had. It's an argument, you know, it just happens in theology and biblical studies. and talk to some students who they'll hear an argument about the Bible that, you know, again, first, second year seminarian pastor, we know about it. Like you've heard about it, you whatever. And there's arguments around it. And it's a fairly settled. But you encounter it for the first time. And you think, why was this never told to me?

Are you scared of it? Are you hiding it from me? I'm not saying, I don't have students to do this regularly. But this, this, this, this thought. The thing that's interesting is that I think. that that it's not that people just generate this it's that people are taught to think that way I mean there's I mean there's actually the whole strain in scholarship that that's part of how you sell certain kinds of books part of how you sell your thesis is I've rediscovered this thing

that's been suppressed I have you know nobody's read the things in light of the first century before that sort of you know we've got the parallel text now that you know it turns out. The sons of God thing is the funniest thing. And certainly when we think about the narratives of suspicion that are so dominant within many fields of scholarship, those narratives of suspicion just teach you to see through things, to distrust and establish lines. Now, those have become the established lines in many circles. But they are fundamentally conspiratorial. Well, the fascinating thing here, there's so many things, like once you start to see this, you're just like, oh, wait, this is kind of everywhere. So I, you know, I'm not going to like, I just finished listening to the

rest of this history of podcast on series on Luther. And there is a certain, the thing is like, it's not really there in Luther exactly, but it is there in popular readings of Luther. And certainly, so my friend Ben Crosby quote tweeted Naomi's original tweet with, you know, so hi, hi all. So I skipped ahead to the New Testament with the Coyne of Greek English side by side literal translation. And he quote tweeted that and said, John Nelson Darby, mid-1800s. Like, this is a very Protestant approach. And it's a very,

not, you know, not necessarily Lutheran approach, but it is, you know, it is a kind of like low church product. Like, this is where you get dispensationalism from. And it's very weird to realize that like actually that same... Although we should talk to Crawford Gribbon on Nelson Darby and dispensationalism. He has some very important

and new historical research on the question. But you do realize that it's actually the same attitude as the hermeneutic of suspicion. That is the kind of like key sort of Foucautian literary approach to a lot of texts now where there are powerful people who are twisting reality to suit their class interests or their or their, you know, whatever, their special interests. there might not even be a reality to twist. It might all be, you know, a question of, you know, of will and power. But that whole hermodyedict of suspicion approach is a fundamentally conspiratorial one.

And it's really weird looking back on Naomi Wolf's original sort of topics. And the one that I ran into, you know, with her first was feminism. And I remember learning about this. Like, so, you know, back in the day, there was this kind of belief that was like widely circulated that everyone kind of everyone who was biannponcant believed that like 150,000 adolescent girls per year were dying of anorexia. And that belief was, you know, invented essentially or like popularized by an Amy Wolfe in the beauty myth. And it turns out that the real number is something like 50 or 60.

not, you know, and I can remember like learning, wait, this like totally commonly circulated statistic, which if you think about it for five minutes is obviously wrong, because that would mean like the entire, you know, like every girl in every, like, or half the girls in like every class at Groton would be dying, like would be like dropping like flies every semester. And that didn't, you know, that's not real. But she was very into this. And then you start to realize, okay, if you actually look at the structure and conspiratorial flavor of these ideas, you realize that patriarchy is a conspiracy theory. Like at least the way that it's discussed in or at least the way that it was discussed in like the 90s and 2000s.

It's very much a, you know, this was hidden in plain sight, like, reinterpretation of your own experience, according to a sort of hermeneity of suspicion and a sense of like there being people who are trying to keep something from you. It's, and that, that really blew my mind. And then. Yeah, so every structure, every society, every society everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, every society everywhere for thousands and thousands and thousands of years came up with a completely arbitrary structure to society that has no absolutely no basis in biological capacities. To oppress women and to gaslight them into like agreeing to this, you know, this thing, which is fundamentally like an arbitrary, you know, class-based power grab where men are the like oppressor class. And you're just like, oh, wait, I think that kind of sounds very familiar.

And I mean, then she, obviously the second sort of batch of things that she was really into was American fascism. And I can remember, like her making all the arguments post-9-11 about how, you know, we're America's in its vimar era. And, you know, we're about to undergo a fascist takeover by. George H.W. Bush. And in retrospect, that sounds so goofy, but at the time, people were 100% behind this. Like, my dad, my personal father, had this little sort of moment where he thought that 9-11 was the Reichstag fire. And like that was what people on the Upper West Side thought for a while. And Naomi Wolf wrote a book about it. And it's just, it's this kind of ongoing conspiracy mindset or conspiracy approach to, you know, whatever is going through her head.

That is like that is the consistent thread. She's gone, she's gone politically sort of from left to right. If she's on the right now, it's kind of not really clear. She's attached. She's like approached many different topics, but it's the conspiracy mindset and the total lack of sort of precision or regard for accuracy that has been like the real precision thread here and it's really like okay I think I think there's a warning here like don't be like that and you know God bless her I hope that he needs to read the Bible but I hope she reads some other people who read the Bible also she'll probably mention she's just been on Tucker oh has she was I mean she was I mean she's on

She's been on Alex Jones. Wow. Yeah. I think that point is really key, that this is a sort of thinking that is continuous across Naomi Wolf's history of thought. And it's something that in that respect can join together a way of thinking on the left and on the right, a way of thinking that is respectable, the sort of mainline feminist thought or the mainline progressive thought about right-wing politics.

and also something can be very much on the right in unrespected forms of discourse. I mean, Naomi Wolf has just appeared on Tucker Carlson. She's been on Alex Jones. She's been very much within this right-wing space for a while, particularly after COVID. And so it seems to me that what we're dealing with here is helpfully in the case of Naomi Wolf,

highlighted as not just a partisan reality. This is a broader way of thinking. And so we're thinking that is not merely playing out within political discourse. It's something that, as we've noted in the case of this particular issue, that can play out in the reading of scripture too. And so when we're having these sorts of conversations, it's very easy as we're speaking to areas that are not necessarily our area of expertise. We may have some sort of academic background. All of us here have an academic background. But this is something that maybe can be a danger for academics

who feel that since we have some sort of academic credentials, that we are justified in speaking with authority to areas where we do not have any sort of background. But yet at the same time, there is an academic way of approaching things. And I think that's one of the things that you mentioned earlier on, Susanna, about the surprise that Naomi Wolf has had, academic training and although she may not be speaking into areas of her expertise when she's writing about the Bible, there are certain academic instincts, there are academic norms that

shape people's way of writing and thinking about issues that are new to them. And to do so in a way that is responsible is possible. And so it would be interesting as we bring things towards a conclusion to talk about some of those instincts and practices and habits that enable you to talk about something that is new to you in a way that is responsible and academic, even if you're not a credentialed academic, but an autodidact. Well, so one of the things that what you highlighted there was important was that that air of a lot of academics will say like, hey, I've got a PhD in X, therefore I, I am an expert, which means that I'm very smart,

which means I can know a lot about almost anything. There's this just illegitimate authority transfer from one discipline to another. Or like, hey, I mean, yeah, I mean, rich guys do this. Rich people do this all the time. Like, hey, I'm really good at making money. Therefore, I can, I don't know, help you run your church or I can do. Like there's, you know, wealth does that. Academic expertise does that.

Different kinds of expertise can confer unwarranted. confidence in other areas. I think what it should do, if you do have some academic training, it should, it should, your first instinct and you're starting to look in a new area is like, hey, let me go find a good literature review. Or like, let me, a really well-qualified explainer that explains kind of the breadth of the field and the ranges of opinions in that area. Like, assume that you're walking into an area where there are disputes and there are, there are contested ideas. If you've been in academia long enough, you know that while there may be a dominant consensus opinion for reasons, like you got to get to know why, why that's there beyond just,

I don't know, big, big AAR or big SBL, like has determined that that's the, maybe, but also you should know what's the big dominant, what are the arguments? And then also what are, what's the main major minority views? Because there's almost always, minority views within some at least something like the humanities right that kind of thing and so just like equating yourself with the disputes before you start taking a major side and opining and teaching because that's the thing that's the other thing there's there's teaching there's trying to influence the conversation publicly uh when you have no no understanding of it and then there's just hey i want to learn a little bit right there's a there's a there's a bad i think that even that's a

vast difference between saying like, hey, I'm noticing something really cool for the first time. And like, I wonder if somebody's written on this. Like, this looks like this word should be happy. I wonder if somebody talked about this in the 2 to 3,000, you know, 2,000 years of people reading the New Testament. If there's reasons that the translators had for translating it that way other than just incompetence. So I wonder.

And maybe you'll be happy to find that actually you notice something that a lot of people have noticed. and you're right, but you're not the first person who's right. In the humanities, that kind of slowing down just makes a lot more sense. I think the scientists is probably a little different just because the hard sciences and, you know, chemistry, biology, all those sorts of things. There's some things that are unchanged, but there's some things that are research does develop, right?

Medicine and, you know, the science, the underlying medicine, that is actually always constantly in development. There are new, you know, a doctor who's an expert in a field. who's extremely competent and you should listen to generally might still be unaware of a new study that you know is googlable uh right because it's just not hadn't been replicated and so there's there's you know non nefarious gaps even when you're looking at expert knowledge um but in the humanities that kind of slowing down assuming if i'm dealing with something that's been looked at forever i am it's almost entirely unlikely that i'm i'm the first person having the thought that i'm

currently having reading this text, right? Somebody somewhere has had this reading, you know. So that's, that's, that's one thing. And also just asking lots of questions before you come out with strong statements. And just finding out why people believe what they believe. What are some of the positions out there? What is the literature? And what issues have been discussed?

What issues have not really been discussed much? What issues are the one, the main issues on the table. at the moment, the framing questions for the discipline and what issues have really passed in that respect. And then beyond that, facing a lot of questions from other people who maybe recognize some of the blind spots in your angle of approach. And when you blunder into a conversation with such confidence, that is usually a sign that you've not either faced those sorts of questions or engaged in that sort of questioning. And that, in my experience, is the best way to start,

to ask genuine questions and to face genuine questions. I think that there's a real distinction to be drawn here between autodidact brain and amateur brain. And I think amateur brain is a beautiful thing. And I think, and I'll go into what I mean by that in a second, but I think the other sort of thing to think about here is that there is a kind of like, we're talking about a humanistic approach

or a kind of like renaissance humanist approach to these questions where, you know, for obviously for certain aspects of, for example, Christian doctrine or biblical interpretation, there is, you know, in different traditions, a magisterial authority, which you should, which must be consulted. Like we are, you know, we say the creeds. We're not going to like reopen the can of worms necessarily of trinitarian theology, although obviously, you know, you can think about this and work through the ways that it has been worked through before. But within, so there is a kind of like authoritative, there is an authority to the church and to the tradition, but obviously, especially within Protestantism, but also within sort of, for example,

Erasmus's approach to Christian humanism, which was a Catholic approach, there is this kind of like, it's a humanist approach to literary and philosophical and theological and theological questions, which has to do with joining in a very long conversation. And that's what Luther was trying to do with the church fathers. That's what, you know, and what a lot of the Catholic reformers were also trying to do with the church fathers. But this kind of like approach of joining in a conversation, like not thinking that it's just to you and the text as though the text is like this objective scientific data on outside of you, which you can interpret and you must interpret by yourself, but recognizing both the primary source, the primary text, you know, the Bible or the fathers or whatever, and then secondary texts as in commentaries and people's theological sort of musings and all the sort of ways that

interpretation has gone, gone forward over the past couple of thousand years. Like, this is a conversational thing. And that is amateur brain. And it's not autodidact brain because it's not about you alone with the text as though it were a scientific object that you personally have to uncover through a kind of cabalistic, you know, parsing. That element. just thinking about, you know, the lone wizard in his study, like piercing the veil of reality

that everybody else. Don't be that. Don't be that guy. But that is basic, basic humility with respect to others, I think, in terms of just knowing that, hey, I've, I've come on the scene late, just in human history. And I'm not discovering everything for the first time, right? That, I mean, it sounds so dumb to boil this down to be humble. And like the suspicion thing is the thing that might be interesting. It might be more difficult to manage because, and I know we got to close in a minute here, but I'm curious if somebody has an closing thought on this. Because at the same time, you know, the whole critical instinct, the whole critical impulse,

if you have a sufficiently robust doctrine of sin like we do think you know like the Bible gives us impulses towards thinking that there is you know there are sinful schemes that the enemy has worked up lies that have the whole world in darkness and that sort of thing like Christianity itself gives

that Protestant impulse to like go back to the truth of God is the one truth that unveils all truth and all lies and all that sort of thing. And so I guess managing both of those things at the same time is that humility as well as critical awareness of the, that pure deference in a world with sin is actually unwise. That's sifting. And so that's, I guess that's what I'm, there's a fine line between looking at, you know, Satan's schemes and then thinking that, you know, you're the first person on the scene who's ever read

the Bible. So, yeah, that's part of the tension that I want to kind of wrestle with. And you really need to do that sifting to recognize that these ideas that are out there are not produced by pure moral creatures, creatures without sinful instincts, creatures without moral blindness, creatures without ulterior motives. and the ability to use and twist truth or create error in order to get their way or to secure some sort of advancement or some status for themselves. But besides that, there's also a sense that these narratives of suspicion that can drive a certain type of autodidact brain are driven by fear and distrust of other persons. And I think you see this in certain areas, for instance, of Christian thought in apologetics or in those sorts of areas where people feel themselves engaging with opponents, with those who do not have their best interests, with people they do not want to give any quarter to. If there's any recognition of the validity of the sciences that are criticizing Christianity, any validity to the validity to the expertise of people who are raising tough questions, it's a,

feels that the person who's in the apologetic position is granting a very dangerous warrant to something that can threaten them and can threaten their faith and can threaten their community in the church. And so that sense of fear and anxiety, I think, is often behind these narratives of suspicion and the ability to do something beyond purely trust people and radically distrust them, I think is one of the challenges that we face. Are we able to take alternative perspectives and view them with something less than complete trust and something more than complete distrust to regulate the ways that we place trust upon them, where we place trust upon them, how we understand their positions,

recognizing there are ways in which these people will be presenting self-interest, positions, but people are seldom acting in a purely cynical and self-interested fashion. People do care about truth on some level. They will generally try and avoid certain subjects rather than just directly lie about them. And once you have a bit more of a sense of that area in between and how you can distribute trust, you're able to engage with experts who disagree with, disagree with you. you're able to engage with authorities who may not have your best interests at heart and still be able to do something more than engage in radical suspicion or complete

predulity. And that, I think, is one of the struggles that someone like Naomi Wolf has, where this inability to engage well with research that is presented by people you do not believe have your best interests, once that context of personal trust and relationship has broken down, then the conspiratorial thinking, I think, really kicks in. And so the alternative is to have well-regulated trust and a measure of realism, distrust, suspicion that is not absolute. And that, I think, enables us to engage in things where we're thinking for ourselves,

but not just by ourselves. We're engaging with critics and people who disagree with us. And we're engaging with our eyes open. We're not naive. We recognize that they have interest. We recognize that they have prejudices. We recognize that they have blind spots. But we also appreciate we have the same things

and that they will be able to observe aspects of reality that we miss. They are not purely self-interested. They will generally have, even in their self-interest, perspectives that countervail some of the things that we're seeing, and we need to engage with those in good faith. And once we do that, I think we'll escape the worst of autodidact brain without ruling out the possibility that as amateurs, we may enter into an area where people who are experts dominate and yet still be able to find truth and be able to disagree with the experts without being disrespectful to their expertise and the work that they put in.

Thank you very much for listening. At some point, we may come back with a conversation between the three of us on, I don't know, Dune 2 or something like that. Dune, Dune, too! Oh, we got to, we got to, we got to do it. We have to do that. Okay, yeah. But for now, thank you for listening and hopefully see you all again soon.

God bless.