Well this recently I was watching a video of a debate between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris.
Two people that are making quite a big cultural splash today. Jordan Peterson,
you know, is the psychology professor from Toronto who is now quite a
presence on social media in recent
months and years. I guess he's been talking a lot about religion. Now Sam Harris is one of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism
He's one of the most virulent critics of religion on the scene today. So that's why they brought these two
Thinkers together to get some sparks, you know
Harris very much like Christopher Hitchens and say in Dennett and and
Dawkins and the others
puts a great deal of stress on the dogmatism and lack of self critique that
He takes is essential to religion precisely because religion depends upon faith and not reason it is
liable to this dogmatic danger.
What does that do? It produces he thinks all of the outrageous that we we hear about from the critics of religion.
So think of slavery and genocide and violence
Which seem to be condoned in parts of the Bible that seemed to have dogged the religions up and down the centuries
It's the lack of critical reason, the authoritarianism born of faith, he thinks that gives rise to all of these these problems.
What's the rejoinder of Jordan Peterson? Well, I mean to a large extent he accepts the legitimacy of the critique.
He sees the danger and he'll use the Jungian
idea of the shadow. The shadow of
fundamentalism, which really dogs all of the intellectual systems of the world.
Namely, you know authoritarianism, lack of self critique, etc, etc
But Peterson also says there's an opposite extreme just as problematic,
namely chaotic relativism.
So sometimes as we're fleeing from the dangers of a dogmatic fundamental we can run right into the arms of a chaotic
relativism. So what's true? What's good? What's beautiful? Well, who knows? Who can say? It's all a matter of indifference.
Where we should be operating, Peterson argues, and I think he's right here is somewhere in between those two extremes of
dogmatism and and a sort of chaotic relativism.
He scores Harris for a reductionism
reducing religion to its shadow and
overlooking all of the ways that
religion does legitimately
inform us about the true, the good, and the beautiful usually in narrative terms and in regard to
ultimate things. And this side of religion Peterson things ought to be celebrated and here, you know, I find a lot of resonance with him.
You know, I get the new atheist critique of religion. I've talked a lot about it. I get that
There's a shadow side to it from from the Bible all the way into our present day
And in that measure it's a legitimate concern. But I've always been uneasy
with a view that simply rules out of court as
pre-scientific nonsense mythic
You know folderol something which is obviously shaped the human spirit and culture in profound ways
So, I mean I think Peterson is really onto something very important. But now what precisely is
Jordan Peterson's approach to religion? And I know a lot of people have been debating this and
The famous question, you know, does he believe in God? And he's given famously kind of elliptical answers to that question.
You know what struck me over the years
He's certainly a Jungian and so the the Jungian approach to these issues is very clear
And he tends to uncover the archetypal psychology
Embedded in the great narratives of the Bible and how those shed considerable light upon human experience. So that's pretty clear
But what became very clear to me in this debate with Sam Harris is not only how Jungian he is but how
Kantian he is.
Now when I say Kantian I mean to make reference to Immanuel Kant the great 18th century of Prussian philosopher
Probably the greatest of the modern philosophers in some ways the paradigmatic modern thinker
Kant maintained
that we can't know anything really truthful
metaphysically about God. He critiqued the famous arguments for God's existence. Felt that the human reason
couldn't attain to that level. What reason deals with legitimately Kant says is the phenomenological world
so the world sciences can examine. His Critique of Pure Reason involved the critique of this sort of leap into
metaphysical truth.
However, Kant said, in his Critique of Practical Reason and in his great book on
Religion that we can talk about God when it comes to morality. The idea of God
I'm oversimplifying here
This would be you know a course for other day
But the idea of God is a kind of regulative idea of the practical reason. In other words
It makes possible the moral life
Now in his text out of religion called Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant says that the
Narratives about Jesus
Present the archetype of the person perfectly pleasing to God. In other words, they bring forward this sort of image, this narrative
presentation of what it means to be
totally morally upright.
Are they making historical claims? Kant says in a way, you know, it doesn't matter.
We don't really have access to the history behind these narratives. What matters is the narrative itself as it presents
the archetype of the person perfectly pleasing to God to us.
Well as I listen to Jordan Peterson, and I thought that's key to his own thinking
Notice how often he avoids the sort of metaphysical side of the question of God. I
Don't think he's very sympathetic or he doesn't talk much about the classical arguments for God's existence.
Rather when he tends to do is to show how
embedded in the great narratives and and rituals of religion
are these archetypal truths that make possible the living out of a morally upright life.
I thought that's an updated version of the Kantian program
Now, as I say, I think all this both in its Jungian and Kantian form
represents a great advance over the New Atheists.
I mean, I I like the fact that he's kind of tweaking the nose of Sam Harris and his, you know, very one-sided
rejection of religion.
What I would would do if I had a chance to talk to Jordan Peterson is press him on this point.
Is he still on sort of one side of the great Kantian divide? Is God
simply a regulative idea of the practical reason? Is is God a sort of narrative
necessity if we want to live the moral life? Or is God a person? Is God a
metaphysical reality that we can have some knowledge of and with whom we have a relationship.
That's where I would probably press him. Even as I as I applaud his critique of the new atheist
I'd maybe press him on this point