“Gotta wake up Labor Day to this (the fuck?)
Bein' rich-shamed by some prick usin' my name for clickbait In a state of bliss.”
“Mr. Rules here, is a member of a group here on YouTube, that as I’ve said in previous
videos, sees religion through this common anti-religious narrative, popularised by famous
antitheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Matt Dillahunty.
They have a belief system that assumes religion is some kind of mind-virus; some kind of parasite
feeding of off society, turning what would be rational, scientifically-minded people
into inept, superstitious losers.”
Adam Friended, otherwise known as Think Club and Friended4Ever, is a content creator who
once spent a fair amount of his time misrepresenting antitheists, but these days does the same
and adds dramatic clips and thumbnails of Jordan Peterson (because, you know, Jordan
sells… and Adam doesn’t).
In fact, Think Club (which is by far his most popular channel) is a Jordan Peterson Safe
Space.
“Ohhh!!!!”
“It’s a joke… tell your face…”
Now I actually want to begin by saying, with all sincerity, two things; the first is that
if any of you believe that any of my critiques of Jordan are unfair or erroneous, then please
don’t hesitate to let me and my audience know.
Contrary to some of the comments on Adam’s videos, I have never deleted a single comment
on my channel (not once… ever); and secondly, know that this video isn’t a response to
Jordan (who, as I’ve said many times before, I respect), nor is it a response to Jordan’s
fans (who, again, I respect) – it’s a response to Adam Friended, who’s a self-professed
troll whose misleading legitimate Jordan Peterson fans.
Now as of this date, Adam’s made three videos in which he’s “DESTORYED” me (a so-called
Jordan Peterson HATER), and a fair few of you have asked me to respond.
Well, you asketh, and now you reciveth: this is a JORDAN PETERSON DESCIPLE – DESTROYED…
So let’s get straight into the thick of it by watching the intro of Adam’s most
recent response to me, in which he accuses me of post hoc reasoning.
“The only thing that’s wrong with religion is the dogmatism.”
“You know, there’s a great quote from Steven Weinberg – that being “With or
without religion, you would have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad
things.
But if you want a good person to do bad thing, that takes religion.”
“Hey everyone, I’m Adam and this is Think Club.
I very much despise post-hoc reasoning.
Post-hoc reasoning is when you believe something, say, that the world would be a better place
without religion, and then you proceed to evaluate all evidence in a manner of ‘does
it prove this thing that I want to believe, or does it disprove this thing I want to believe?’
And then you summarily dismiss everything that disproves the thing that you so badly
want to believe and you elevate the evidence that proves this thing.
Or even worst yet, you look at evidence that could possible disprove what you want to believe,
but you twist that evidence around so it completely proves what you want to believe.”
Now Adam gets to his actual criticism in just a second, but I already need to correct him.
What he just described is not post hoc reasoning, it’s confirmation bias.
Post hoc reasoning is actually a form of false cause fallacy, and it occurs when someone
erroneously assumes that because one event happened after another, the first event was
the cause of the second.
This is a side-note, of course, but it’s absolutely worth correcting.
Anyhow, here’s Adam’s criticism: “Now I have a clip here from Rationality Rules’
latest video where he is evaluating the first debate between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris
in Vancouver.
And he throws out this bumper-sticker- this antitheist bumper-sticker, as if he’s adding
some deep philosophical understanding to the argument that Sam Harris is making, when all
he is doing is post hoc reasoning his way to the conclusion that he wants to reach – that
religion is terrible; that religion turns people into monsters; and without religion
people would just be great – they would be totally amazing people!”
Did you catch that?
You know, the abysmal starwman of me?
I thought you would, and you’re not alone – many people have, such as Bridges on Bikes,
who wrote “You strawman RR right off the bat so poorly that your strawman “Without
religion people would just be great – they would be totally amazing people!” is literally
refuted in THE FIRST SENTENCE of the quote YOU DISPLAYED”… haha.
Indeed, there’s a reason that Weinberg said “With OR without” Adam… it’s not like
he was, or I am, for that matter, so naive as to think that that “Without religion
people would just be great – they would be totally amazing people!”
Now funny enough, I actually anticipated someone misrepresenting me (call it clairvoyance),
and so I deliberately included additional words (words that, interestingly, Adam left
out): “You know, there’s a great quote from Steven Weinberg – that being “With
or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad
things.
But if you want a good person to do bad thing, that takes religion”, and I think that’s
pretty much what Sam was conveying here.
It’s an imperfect but very important point, and it can’t just be hand-waved away.
All of know an otherwise wonderful person who, because of religion, hates homosexuals,
don’t we?
Now there are plenty more assertions, conflations and accusations within this video that I could
respond to, but as another commenter observed: “[Adam] didn't really respond to anything
I said.
The clip of me he played near the start had nothing to do with what he spoke about for
the rest of the video.”
He strawmaned me, and then burned it to the ground with irrelevant, pretentious rhetoric,
numerous fake laughs (“Hahaha”), and a lengthy quote from Jonathan Haidt.
Okay, with that buried, let’s move onto another of Adam’s videos – this time his
first, in which he post hocs my criticism of Jordan defining any and all action as “religious”
-- oh, sorry!
Not Post hocs, I mean strawmans.
*Laughing* “This is Everyone is Religious – Debunked.”
“But not really… hahaha.
So I love how these people are totally triggered by Jordan Peterson.”
So, to be clear, the crux of my criticism was not that Jordan had created a new definition
of religion, rather, it was that he was equivocating it with a colloquial definition in order to
evade legitimate criticisms of religion – and to prove it, here’s me saying as much: “But
to be clear, let me repeat what I’ve said in regards to Jordan redefining other words:
there’s nothing inherently wrong with him creating a new definition, but what is wrong
is the way uses it.”
“So both of these arguments are flawed for exactly the same reason: they either commit
an equivocation fallacy by using one definition of their keyword during their first premise
and conclusion, and a completely made-up and useless definition during their second premise,
and are thus invalid; or they use a nonsensical definition throughout, which while valid,
in the context of their conversation, only serves to confuse and obfuscate the underlining
question.”
Now I have to preface this, because Adam didn’t…
instead, he made out that my criticism was simply that Jordan was using a non-colloquial
definition of religion, and he then brought up Emile Durkheim’s definition of religion,
conflated it with Jordan’s (despite the fact that the two are significantly different),
and concluded by attacking antitheism…
“And the reason he can say that everyone is religious” “You can’t not be a believer
in your action.”
“Is because he’s made a new definition of religion that somehow more vague than the
already useless ‘A pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.”
“Says the guy who is pursuing the interest of atheist activism with great devotion!”
“I just assumed that Jordan Peterson was using the Durkheimian definition of religious
psychology.
Now maybe I’ve never had a problem with this idea that Peterson puts form because,
you know, I’ve studied sociology and Dr. Peterson’s definition of religious systems
as “What you act out” is so close to the definition put forth by the father of modern
social-science (the French sociologist Emile Durkheim) that I just assumed that this was
the definition that he was using.”
Now what I find to be extremely telling here, is that despite the fact that I made crystal
clear that I have no problem with Jordan’s definition in and of itself (“There’s
nothing inherently wrong with him creating a new definition of “religion”, but what
is wrong is how he uses it”), Adam still treated me as if I do…
And so, again, Adam didn’t address my criticism at all.
Instead, he, again, strawmaned me, and then burnt it to the ground with irrelevant, pretentious
rhetoric, numerous fake laughs (“Haha”) and several misrepresentations of antitheism…
“So this idea that factual, scientific truth is more valuable than inherited wisdom or
tradition, or what they would call dogma, is the axiom that is at the base of the antitheist
belief system.”
You know, there’s a trend here, isn’t there?
In fact, do you know what?
Let’s have some fun.
I’m going to Christen this the Adam Friended Formula, and here’s how it works – step
1: find a video in which someone isn’t deep-throating Jordan Peterson – step 2: quote-mine the
author (and, of course, be sure to discard any references or examples that they give)
– step 3: find as relevant a clip from Jordan or Jonathan Haidi as you can (and if you can’t,
don’t worry, just include one anyway); step 4: accuse the author of all of the disingenuous
tactics you’re currently employing (“I very much despite post hoc reasoning”) – step
5: add obviously fake and pretentious laughs (“Haha”) – and finally, step 6: make
sure that Jordan is in the thumbnail and that he’s shooting lazars from his eyes!
Yeah, Adam, jokes aside, you should take some advice from Jordan, and try steelmaning your
opponents… you seriously need to clean your room, bucko.
“See, one of the things that Carl Rodgers said (the psychologist) was that one of…
a good way to have a discussion with someone is to tell them what you think they think
until they think that what you said reflects what they said.”
And finally, let’s move onto Adam’s third video – in which he accuses me of deliberately
misrepresenting Jordan’s definition of truth.
“If you understand Jordan Peterson’s arguments, you know immediately that these statements
are false – that he’s misrepresenting Jordan Peterson’s idea of truth.”
“Peterson is asserting that because we can only perceive objective facts subjectively,
there are no objective facts.
But that’s not how it works, and it’s not what all of the evidence indicates.”
“So, this is very far from what Jordan Peterson is asserting.
Jordan Peterson is asserting that there are infinite number of facts, and that those facts
need to be hierachially ordered, and we do this all the time.
If we are against a particular political position, we order the facts that support our position
above the facts that disconfirm out position.
It’s the exact same thing that Rationality Rules is doing in this video.”
“Jordan Peterson believes in objective facts.
Jordan Peterson is a science (reality alert!) Jordan Peterson was a professor at Harvard,
okay?
He believes in facts!
This assertion that Rationality Rules makes is bonkers! Jordan Peterson believes in objective
facts – he says that the way you order those objective facts is subjective… which, news
flash, it is!”
Now to fair, in my original video, I should’ve explained that by saying “Peterson is asserting
that because we can only perceive objective facts subjectively, there are no objective
facts”, what I was driving at is that by asserting that scientific, realist truth is
nested within, subordinate to, or contingent upon, Darwinian truth, Jordan is, by extension,
necessarily asserting that literal truth does not exist without Darwinian truth (since he
insists that literal truth is entirely predicated upon Darwinian truth) – and so, what I’m
saying here is that I’m largely responsible for this confusion – sorry.
However, with this said, Jordan did assert that his Darwinian truth supersedes literal
truth in regards to truth claim (not just that it supersedes in regards to what we should
care about), and I gave ample examples in my video (all of which, by the way, didn’t
make it into Adam’s response)… and so, for what it’s worth, here’s a few of them,
and few extra for because… why not?
“The fundamentals of truth are those that guide action, and then the objective science
is nested inside that.”
“The ethical pursuit supersedes the scientific pursuit with regards to truth claim.”
“If somebody writes down a hundred digit number in front of you, and it ends in a one,
and they say 'This number is prime, and what is more it's the largest prime number any
human being has ever consciously beheld', right?
That is either true or false, and its truth or falsity has absolutely nothing to do with
the ultimate survival of the species- or your personal wellbeing.”
“I know, that's what you think.
I understand that, perfectly well, but I don't agree, hahaha.”
“But your non-agreement hasn’t--" “I would say it’s sufficiently true for all
likely contexts that are to arise in the next while.”
“The claim I'm making is that scientific truth is nested inside moral truth, and moral
truth is the final adjudicator, and your claim is no, moral truth is nested in scientific
truth, and scientific truth is the final adjudicator.”
And for a cherry on top, here’s just one more example: “I think you’re simply deciding,
at the end of the day, to say that any truths that led us down a path where we suffered
unnecessarily, or died, weren’t true…”
“Right!
You have to choose what you mean by true!
You have to- and I’m not accepting the same definition of truth that you operate under,
and it’s partly because I believe Darwin trumps realism, let’s say- I believe that
pragmatism trumps realism.”
You see, when Jordan says “I’m not accepting the same definition of truth that you operate
under”, and then declares that “I believe that pragmatism trumps realism”, he is not
merely saying that “The way you order those objective facts is subjective.”
As already said, realism is the position that facts exist independent of our perception
(it’s got nothing to do with how we order facts), while pragmatism (or in this case
more accurately, Jordan’s Darwinian Truth) is the position that “if it doesn’t serve
life, it’s not true.”
And so, I wasn’t contending the assertion that “the way you order those objective
facts is subjective”, I was contenting the assertion that “pragmatism trumps realism”.
My central thrust was simply that Peterson truth “Doesn’t supersede with respect
to the truth claim, it supersedes with respect to considerations of behaviour and policy.”
I’ll say that again – my central thrust was simply that Peterson truth “Doesn’t
supersede with respect to the truth claim, it supersedes with respect to considerations
of behaviour and policy.”
Now I grant that this topic is confusing, and that I should’ve done a better job of
expressing my objection, but Adam really didn’t address my concern at all.
Instead, he applied the Adam Friended Formula, but this time quote-mined Jordan as to strengthen
his actual position.
To conclude, I’m more than happy engage with critics of my content (time permitted,
of course), but Adam does not strike me as earnest – he strikes me as a troll.
He’s misrepresented countless people (especially antitheists), conflated their views with nonsense,
and worst of all, he’s provided sincere Jordan Peterson fans with pig shit for ammunition.
“I am here because I am interested in these arguments.
I’m genuinely interested in what Jordan Peterson has to say, and I’m curious if
he’s right about his argument.”
I’m honestly not convinced, Adam.
“Our order does not deal with pig shit!”
Anyhow, I’m Steve Woodford, or Rationality Rules, and as always, thank you kindly for
the view, and an extra special thank you to my wonderful patrons and those of you who’ve
donated via PayPal.