“I discovered the terrific phrase the other day that our mutual friend Eric Weinstein
came up with. We're talking about the manner in which you can discuss within the sciences
certain scientific problems, and he said, look, if you've got a scientist who you know
is also basically a very literalist Christian, you will listen to their argument a whole
long part of the way, and there's somewhere at the end of it (you know you're going to
be worried about it), and he came up with this phrase (I love this phrase), he says
Jesus smuggling… Jesus smuggling is, you're gonna follow all the way, yes, yes, and then
the worry is that when you get to the bit that you're not so good on that's when they're
gonna smuggle in Jesus.” “Yeah.” “My suspicion is that you have a reservation about
some of what Jordan is saying (on substructures, on stories, and much more) because you're
worried that at some point either on this stage or off it, at some point, when you're
not looking--” “No, no, or when I am looking.” “He’s going to Jesus smuggle you.” “Yeah,
yeah. That’s it.” *Applaud.* “Is that okay?” “Yeah.” “I was thinking that
I’d just carry him in on a cross.” *Laughter* During the third and fourth live-debates between
Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, Douglas Murray featured as the third participant, and on
both occasions he emphasised Eric Weinstein’s term of Jesus Smuggling… which I have to
say, is not only hilarious, but very apt (“Well that is an all to apt analogy”). On the
third night, as just seen, Douglas expressed suspicion of Sam believing Jordan guilty of
Jesus Smuggling, and Sam confirmed it (“It is what worries me”), but by the fourth
night, both Douglas and Sam had changed their perspective in a subtle, but crucial way.
This is Jesus Smuggling.
Before we ask whether Jordan is guilty of Jesus Smuggling (“He’s going to Jesus
smuggle you!”), I’d like to really nail-down the term and give some solid examples – and
believe me, I’m not in short supply. The term is quite simple: Jesus Smuggling occurs
when someone sneaks Christianity into an otherwise valid argument, or tethers Christianity to
an otherwise valid premise. Take, for instance, the entire epistemic lobotomy that is presuppositional
apologetics. “Have you ever engaged a Christian presuppositionalist?” These apologists start
with the relatively simple rules of inference (“Logic is universal.” “You're gonna
follow all the way, yes, yes”), then they delve into a variation of the hard problem
of induction (“It's called induction… the principle of induction. You assume the
future will be like the past.” “And then the worry is that when you get to the bit
that you're not so good on), and at that point, amongst the tides of ambiguity, they add a
just a little drop of Jesus juice (“Every word out of your mouth assumes God.” “That’s
when they’re going to smuggle in Jesus”). Indeed, they drag you down into the murky
depths of epistemology, and then boastfully beg the question as if it’s not a logical
fallacy (“God is a necessary precondition for intelligibility”). It’s Jesus Smuggling
alright, but it’s not exactly smuggling (there’s nothing subtle about it) – it’s
more like Jesus Jamming. Or to give another example, take the Kalam Cosmological Argument:
"Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause." "Premise 2: the universe began to
exist." "Therefore, the universe has a cause." As I’ve said in the past, the Kalam is spectacularly
mundane. Even if it were valid, it wouldn’t even get us to a first, uncaused cause, let
alone a conscious entity. Now some proponents, of course, recognise this, and consequently
use the Kalam as a mere stepping stone, but many don’t – they simply act as if the
Kalam proves the existence of their god. "At the very least, this argument goes to show
that a spaceless-- spaceless--, timeless-- timeless-- timeless-- uncaused-- uncaused,
and immaterial entity-- immaterial-- imaterial being-- with the power to create the universe
did in fact create the universe-- much like... God.” Now to be fair, in the case of the
Kalam, proponents tends not quite to Jesus Smuggle, but rather God Smuggle. But the principle
is the same: They erroneously tether their theological presuppositions to an otherwise
valid argument. Or to give just one more example, take your nan. As lovely as I’m sure she
is, when you go with her for a leisurely stroll through the gorgeous botanical gardens during
a warm sunset, and she speaks of all the beauty – the colours, the smells, the unison of
the birds and the bees – you follow along just fine (“Yes, yes”) but when she slows
her pace to a halt (“At some point”), takes a big breath (“When you’re not looking”),
and looks at you as though she’s just had the greatest fart in her life (“[S]he’s
gonna Jesus Smuggle you”), you know… you just know, that the next few words out of
her mouth are going to be absolute bollocks (“And then… trust me-- “There’s Jesus.”
“There’s Jesus!”). *Smile* Okay, so now that we have a clear definition and examples,
let’s ask the big question: Does Jordan Jesus Smuggle? Well, here’s an abridged
version of his primary argument: “But I’m going to try something a little different
tonight. I'm gonna try a little direct God smuggling. We won't bother with Jesus. Let's
go right to God. Why not?” Jordan begins with Jungian archetypes (that is, universal,
archaic patters and images that manifest in our unconscious mind, courtesy of evolution
by natural selection). To be clear, these archetypes are not universally accepted by
psychologists, neurologists and anthropologists, but we can certainly grant them tentatively
– and for what it’s worth, I’m personally convinced of their exist. “I’ve been thinking
a lot about the idea of, let's say, God the Father, because that's a very common archetypal
representation of God.” “You watch your father across multiple contexts and you abstract
out something like a spirit of the Father, and then when you're a child you implement
that spirit of the father in your pretend play and you come to embody that deeply.”
Okay, so far, so good (“Yes, yes”). The archetype of God the Father has indeed emerged
incessantly throughout history, and just as our monkey linage has embedded in us the archetype
of the tyrannicidal spider and snakes (“Glad we’re out of there!” “Screech”), so
too has our patriarchal hierarchy embedded in us a wise, powerful, father figure. “There's
a cumulative development of the Spirit of the Father across time.” Indeed, the archetype
of God the Father has evolved over time, going from a physically strong, dominating force
(which very much would’ve helped us in our once stationary, arboreal habitat), to one
of intelligence, charisma and mercy (which very much would’ve helped us as we migrated
across the savannahs to new, volatile lands and challenges). “That selective spirit
of the Father has been part of the process that's generated our very being, and it's
certainly possible that that collective spirit of the father reflects something metaphysically
fundamental about the structure of reality itself.” “Ehh… wait.” *Small laugh*
Yeah… hold up. We could go so far as to say that it’s a fact that the archetype
of God the Father predicates, in part, our psyche, but we can’t say that the archetype
constitutes some metaphysically fundamental structure of reality itself. Look, if you
throw a cucumber at a cat, the cat is likely to flee in a manic panic. Why? Because snakes
have been their predators with aeons, and the archetype of the vicious serpent makes
them go from zero to a hundred instantaneously (for obvious evolutionary reasons), but while
we can say that it’s a fact that this archetype resounds within the cat’s psyche, we can’t
say that it constitutes a metaphysical structure of reality itself – that is, unless you
redefine these terms… which, I have to say, Jordan is notorious for doing… he’s the
archetype of the linguistic juggler (“You’re changing the noun in important ways”). Now
you might be thinking, as I once did, that it’s within these moments of ambiguity that
Jordan Jesus Smuggles, but you’d be wrong. Let me play again his words (“It’s certainly
possible-- It’s certainly possible-- It’s certainly possible). You see, he never said
that God the Father is a metaphysical foundation of reality itself (“I never said that”),
he said it’s possible, nothing more. Thus, he didn’t, and so far as I can recall, he
doesn’t, Jesus Smuggle. He gets close alright. He even pries open a gap between valid premises
and dangles Jesus just above it, but he never actually drops Jesus in. He cocks the gun
and points it at your chest, but he doesn’t pull trigger… he let’s someone else do
that for him! “One of the things I realized from Dublin was, although I think you may
not think that Jordan himself is going to try Jesus smuggling on you, you fear that
somewhere down the line from what he's saying somebody else will do that trick.” Indeed,
while Jordan doesn’t Jesus Smuggle himself, he facilitates an environment that makes it
incredibly easy for others to do so. He’s not the ant that carries the foliage, but
he is the ant that clears and protects the path. He doesn’t hate certain people because
of who they are, but he clears the path for those who do so that they can enthrone and
maintain their bigotry in law. Now if we combine this with his needlessly verbose language,
his lack of transparency, his reluctance to distinguish himself from actual Christians
(you know, people who actually believe that Jesus literally resurrected), and his remarkably
long-winded answers (which give ample opportunity for others to smuggle in theological concepts),
then it becomes very easy to see why Jesus Smuggling can be so easily associated to Jordan.
So, I originally intended to wrap up here, but while relaxing last night – feet up,
playing Pit People, with Johnny Walker in hand (but not really, because no one actually
likes Walker… we just pretend we do in a contorted attempt to honour God the Father,
Hitchens), I did what I normally do while gaming – I listened to YouTube videos, and
in this specific case I listened to Destiny, and interestingly, he essentially voiced the
criticism of Jordan Jesus Smuggling but in reference to politics. Here’s a clip: “The
problem with what Jordan Peterson does is Jordan Peterson makes a lot of descriptive
claims but he never makes any normative claims. So, Jordan Peterson will say things like ‘women
are not as happy today as they used to be’, ‘women and men don't get along in the office’,
‘men tend to be better at this thing’, and then that's all he ever says. He never
goes- -he never takes a step further to make a prescriptive claim, to say like what should
we do about something, and the problem is a lot of people will take the things that
he says and then they like jump to very bad places, kind of obviously. It's what you would
expect someone to go based on what he said but then he never takes responsibility for
any of the kind of normative leaps people make off of his descriptive ones, and that's
kind of the annoying thing with dealing with Jordan Peterson.” And here Destiny is, as
he often is, bang on the money. Jordan Peterson doesn’t necessarily smuggle bad ideas himself,
but he facilitates an environment that makes it incredibly easy for others to do so. He
doesn’t say that women should fulfil the role of looking after children, but he clears
the path for those who do. Given this, the question is, how responsible is Jordan for
damage done by his rhetoric? How much responsibility is on the cross on his back? Truth be told,
I don’t know. I’d like to hear your thoughts, so you can let me know in the comments, but
what is for sure, is that Jordan has some responsibility. Jordan Peterson is not a Jesus
Smuggler… but he is a Jesus Smuggler Smuggler. Anyhow, I’m Stephen Woodford, 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 supported the channel via other means. “Yes, it's worse than that.
I actually know that the people who are clapping are doing that. I hear from those people on
a daily basis, right? So that the segment of Jordan's audience that is that is very
happy to be told they can stay on the riverbanks of their traditional, Christianity, for the
most part and they don't have to get into the stream of totally modern rigorous rational
thinking about everything from first principles, right? That there's something that the Iron
Age scribes got right, and it's right for all time, those are the applause I'm hearing,
and however consciously or not, Jordan is telling them it's okay to stay stick right
there with a with a shard of the Cross.”