“What is the God that you act as though he, she, it, exists- and what is the God shaped
thing I must have in my life to prevent me from being, a quote- ‘real atheist’.”
“Well, okay.
First of all, I have to point out that there’s no possible way I can answer both those questions
in two minutes.”
Jordan Peterson’s approach to religion has intrigued millions of people, including myself,
and many of us see great value in what he’s brought back into the limelight, such as Jungian
archetypes, the need for an objective morality, and the appreciation that religion isn’t
just a failed science… it’s also a very successful community, and it acts as a cure
to existential dread.
But others feel as if he’s done much more – they claim that by having a more nuanced
and complex interpretation of scripture (that’s almost entirely metaphorical), Jordan has
somehow reconciled the infamous divide between science and faith; that he’s found a way
for us to have our cake and eat it too.
That is, that we can reject the literal story of genesis, the literal resurrection of Jesus,
and the literal existence of a transcendent conscious being, and yet somehow still call
ourselves “Christian” (let alone religious).
Now in previous videos I’ve made quite clear that I think this is little more than sophistry
– it’s a semantic trick, and I think Jordan’s doing it, understandably so, to save what
he perceives is the baby in the bathwater (or his ‘father from the belly of the beast’)
– that being, an objective morality.
But while I see the need for an objective morality, I think that Jordan’s approach
is counter-productive, and that his manipulation of religious language is disingenuous at best.
Anyhow, I’ve already addressed his definition of ‘truth’, ‘religion’, and ‘Christian’,
and now I want to address his definition of ‘god’.
On the 23rd of June, in a debate with Sam Harris, Jordan explained exactly what he means
by god, and if I’m honest, it gives New Ager’s a run for their money in terms of
vagueness and vapidity…
I mean ‘nuance and complexity’… this is Jordan Peterson’s God – Debunked.
“Okay- well, I’m…
I’m going to read some things that I wrote- because it’s so complicated that I’m not
sure that I can just spin it off the top of my head- and so you’ll have to excuse me.
So, and what I’m going to do is sort of paint a picture, by highlighting different
things.
So now, I already made one point here.
I made the point that part of the conception of God that underlies the Western ethos is
the notion that whatever God is- is expressed in the truthful speech that rectifies pathological
hierarchies, and that isn’t all it does, it also confronts the chaos of being itself,
and generates habitable order- that’s the metaphysical proposition, and that that’s
best conceptualized as, at least, one element of God.
And so, I would think about it as a transcendent reality that’s only observable across the
longest of time frames, the longest of iterated time frames- to your point.
So, so… okay, so here’s some propositions, and they’re complicated, and they need to
be unpacked, so I’m just gonna read them- and that’ll have to do for the time being.
So, God is how we imaginatively and collectively represent the existence and action of consciousness
across time, as the most real aspects of existence manifest themselves across the longest of
time frames, but are not necessarily apprehensible as objects in the here and now.
So what that means, in some sense, is that you have conceptions of reality built into
your biological and metaphysical structure, that are a consequence of processes of evolution
that occurred over unbelievably vast expanses of time, and that structure your perception
of reality, in ways that it wouldn’t be structured if you only lived for the amount
of time that you’re going to live.
And that’s also part of the problem of deriving values from facts, because you’re evanescent
and… and you can’t derive the right values from the facts that portray themselves to
you in your lifespan, which is why you have a biological structure that’s like 3.5 billion
years old.
So, God is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the pursuit of higher being and
truth (that’s a fundamental element of hero mythology).
God is the highest value in the hierarchy of values – that’s another way of looking
at it.
God is what calls, and what responds, in the eternal call to adventure.
God is the voice of conscience.
God is the source of judgment, and mercy, and guilt.
God is the future to which we make sacrifices, and something akin to the transcendental repository
of reputation.
Here’s a cool one, if you’re an evolutionary biologist, God… god… god is that which
selects among men in the eternal hierarchy of men.
So, you know, men arrange themselves into hierarchies, and then men rise in the hierarchy,
and there’s principles that are important that determine the probability of their rise
– and those principles aren’t tyrannical power, they’re something like, the ability
to articulate truth, and the ability to be competent, and the ability to make appropriate
moral judgments.
And if you can do that in a given situation, then all the other men will vote you up the
hierarchy, so to speak, and that will radically increase your reproductive fitness- and the
operation of that process across long expanses of time, looks to me, like it’s codified
in something like the notion of God, the Father.
It’s also the same thing that makes women-- men attractive to women, because women peel
off the top of the male hierarchy – and the question is what should be at the top
of the hierarchy – and the answer right now is tyranny, as part of the patriarchy,
but the real answer is something more like the ability to use truthful speech in the
service of let’s say well-being.
And so, that… that’s something that operates across tremendous expanses of time, and it
plays a role in the selection for survival itself, which makes it a fundamental reality--"
“Jordan, if I can just cut in here with one question?”
“I’ll stop with that for now.”
So there’s Jordan’s many definitions of god: in a nutshell, he’s stuck the word
‘god’ onto several things – that being ‘good’, ‘existence and consciousness’,
‘evolution’ and ‘action’.
Indeed, he’s not asserted that these things are evidence FOR god, he’s asserted that
they ARE god.
To make this clearer, let’s take another listen, but this time organise his definitions
into the aforementioned categories, starting with ‘God is good’: “God is the highest
value in the hierarchy of values.”
“God is the source of judgment, and mercy, and guilt.”
“God is the voice of conscience.”
“Part of the conception of God that underlies the Western ethos is the notion that whatever
God is- is expressed in the truthful speech that rectifies pathological hierarchies.”
“It also confronts the chaos of being itself, and generates habitable order.”
Secondly, let’s look at his definitions that fall under ‘God is existence and consciousness’:
“God is how we imaginatively and collectively represent the existence and action of consciousness
across time.”
“God is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the pursuit of higher being and
truth.”
Thirdly, let’s look at his definitions that come under ‘God is evolution’: “God
is that which selects among men in the eternal hierarchy of men.”
“You have conceptions of reality built into your biological and metaphysical structure
that are a consequence of processes of evolution that occurred over unbelievably vast expanses
of time, and that structure your perception of reality, in ways that it wouldn’t be
structured if you only lived for the amount of time that you’re going to live.”
“It’s also the same thing that makes women-- men attractive to women, because women peel
off the top of the male hierarchy.”
“Something that operates across tremendous expanses of time, and it plays a role in the
selection for survival itself, which makes it a fundamental reality--" And finally, let’s
look at his definitions that fall under ‘God is action’: “God is what calls, and what
responds, in the eternal call to adventure.”
God is the future to which we make sacrifices.”
Okay… so looking at these definitions, you might notice that they have one thing in common…
they’re not god!
(“I’m not hearing a god… a personal god who can possible hear anyone’s prayers,
much less answer them”).
Jordan has taken the better angels of our nature and labels them god; he’s done what
apologists have always done – he’s called that which is good ‘god’.
To quote Matt Johnson, a renowned journalist: “Peterson’s definition encompasses everything
from our most fundamental moral axioms to the psychological forces that compel us to
assume greater responsibility for ourselves and our fellow human beings.
In other words, his idea of God is too VAGUE AND EXPANSIVE to be useful: He might as well
just add an ‘o’ to the word.”
But what’s the problem – some of you might be wondering?
What’s wrong with Jordan redefining god from “A conscious being that literally created
the universe” to “the future to which we make sacrifices”?
Well, on a technical level, nothing… there’s nothing wrong with him doing this, but on
a sincere level, there’s everything wrong – it’s a semantic trick!
Or as Sam put it: “You could do the same thing with the ideas of ghosts… so people
have traditionally believed in ghosts, it’s an archetype, you might say (the ghost…
survival of death is certainly an archetype), and we know what most people most of the time
mean when they say they believe in ghosts, and I say ‘I don’t believe in ghosts’,
and you say ‘No no, you do believe in ghosts – ghosts are your relationship to the unseen
– that’s a ghost’.
So you have a new definition of ghost that you’re putting in the place provided…
which I have to say ‘Yes, of course I have a relationship to the unseen, so, yeah, I
guess I do believe in ghosts.
You know, you win that argument.”
*Applaud* “But that simply isn’t what more people mean by a ghost!”
… To approach this from another angle, I, like most of you, am genuinely, 100% interested
in the truth.
If there’s a god, I want to know about it, and that’s why I spend an almost unjustifiable
amount of my time discussing with believers their various arguments and supposed evidence
for their religion.
And so when someone like Jordan comes along and not only asserts that Christianity is
true, but that I'm a Christian (“You're Christian- Judaeo-Christian, let's say, to
the core”), he's got my attention.
But when it turns out that after months of vague rhetoric, countless word salads, and
incessant evasion, all he's done is redefine EVERY DAMN WORD of importance in order to
make his position coherent, I find this incredible disingenuous.
“If it’s true enough so that you act it out or hold it, that increases your chances
of survival and reproduction over long spans of time.
That’s true.”
“Everything you act out is predicated on your implicit axioms, and the system of implicit
axioms that you hold as primary is your religious belief system.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re an atheist or not.”
“God is that which selects among men in the eternal hierarchy of men.”
I've said this before and I'll say it again, Jordan is no doubt a very intelligent and
insightful man, but when it comes to philosophy and religion, he’s abysmal…
Before wrapping up, let’s go back to the comparison between Jordan’s god and the
god of New Age.
When I first called Jordan the Deepak Chopra of Christianity I got a lot of backlash, but
I still maintain my words.
Jordan’s god is as vague and vapid as Deepak’s, and here’s a compilation to demonstrate
it: “God is the mystery of our origin, and therefore god is our highest instinct.”
“God is the highest value in the hierarchy of values.”
“We are a drop in the ocean that we call god.”
“God is how we imaginatively and collectively represent the existence and action of consciousness
across time.”
“Devine intelligence that permeates every aspect of the cosmos, the whole universe.”
“God is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the pursuit of higher being and
truth.”
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 PayPal and merchandise.
Until next time my fellow apes, until next time.