The Sad Demise of Jordan Peterson
Angry, deranged and lost, Peterson's "1 Christian vs 20 Atheists" appearance feels like rock bottom.
A while ago I reviewed Alex O’Connor’s appearance on YouTube channel Jubilee’s 1 Atheist vs 25 Christians video, and in spite of being a believer expressed my admiration at O’Connor’s respect, openness and formidable ability to debate politely and seriously at the same time. While the format isn’t that great, his appearance was enticing and interesting and turned over some difficult questions. Sometimes in these kinds of debates as much “victory” is achieved in how you come across as a person and thus a representation of your position as the arguments themselves, many of which all of us might have heard before and all of which are likely to be seriously undermined if you engage in bad spirit.
Contrast then an incredibly depressing video that Jubilee posted today of Jordan Peterson, the video somewhat tongue in cheek-ly titled “1 Christian vs 20 Atheists,” since as is clear it remains ambiguous as to whether Peterson is a Christian at all. Within a few minutes of the first debater Peterson is angry, antagonistic, vague and irritable. Since apparently commenting on Peterson’s gradual descent from obscure and fascinating intellectual to Daily Wire crackpot is what I do now, let’s take a look at what he claims.
Within a few minutes you see precisely why Jordan Peterson has failed over recent years as an advocate of religion. Peterson has a pragmatic view of religion, that rather than interpreting “God” as Christians generally have, or as theologians generally have, Peterson looks at it through a psychological lens and comes up with things that we might “mean by God,” with mixed results. The fundamental reason his results are so mixed is because his own definitions are so vague and self-indulgent that they meander from the objectionable to the meaningless. Pre-2020 breakdown Peterson may have dealt with objection to this by engaging more, post-2020 Peterson deals with this by getting angry.
You might ask the question at the outset why Peterson is even doing videos like this. It has become clear over recent years that when it comes to religion he is personally not able to believe or practice in any meaningful sense, I recently had a conversation with his friend Jonathan Pageau and even he admitted that Peterson is “lost” when it comes to actually adopting any practical religious belief, so why is Peterson brazenly and increasingly forthrightly selling himself as an advocate of it?
When in 2017 Peterson started his lecture series on the biblical books of Genesis he had the luxury of not having to hold any positions. The basic premise of the lectures was that stories are the emergent result of evolutionary learning and so have psychological things to tell us about our behaviour, and his view of God remained ambiguous but with the exceptions of the occasional insinuation, naturalistically pragmatic. This was fine, and for many it re-opened the door to engaging with religious texts. But now Peterson is marrying that ambiguity with a forthright certainty and confrontational attitude. Telling atheists what they do and don’t believe, as one of his claims in the debate states, requires him taking some form of stance, which he is seemingly incapable of doing.
Peterson’s first claim is that “atheists who reject God don’t know what they’re rejecting.” Already you see why Peterson is so infuriating: as becomes clear, Peterson’s view of God is basically so general that he can essentially argue that almost everyone “believes” in God in some form, and that anyone who “says” they don’t believe in God, actually does, because they believe in his definition of God, which is a moving target. After Peterson has irritably dispensed with the first guest, the second laudably argues that while he understands there can be many ways of understanding what God is, he knows that and he as an atheist is consciously rejecting the omnipotent agential God who causes miracles and so on. Which is fine and fair enough, but Peterson then responds with “do you believe there is a unity? Either things are a unity or there are multiple truths.”
Peterson appears to be arguing that there is an abstract “truth,” which may seem fine except he then insists that your conscience guides you in conversations about truth, which is kind of true, although Peterson was asking about science and now we’re on moral truth. After a while of circling Peterson says “I’m defining God as conscience.” To which more confused conservation ensues.
This has been Peterson’s strategy for some time. He has a genuine critique of atheist literalism, and has genuinely reintroduced the idea of pragmatism into the religious discussion, but whenever someone turns to him and says “Ok, what do you mean by God?” Peterson deals with it by kicking verbal sand in their face. Naturally, when someone disagrees or observes that there was a naturalist definition of conscience, Peterson will change his definition. So as for this first claim, the first guest who simply pointed out it was a “no true Scotsman” argument was right. You can’t accuse atheists of not believing in something you get to define at any moment. The second guest, who genuinely seemed polite and open, ended up so frustrated he called Peterson “intellectually disingenuous.” Depressingly, he was right.
There is a more important question here though. What does Peterson expect people to do about this? His belief seems to essentially be that the definition of God is such that atheists already believe in him, but that they don’t know that they believe in him and are rejecting something that isn’t really what God is.
So does it matter? If they already believe in it, and can’t help if they do believe in it, what’s the point? Unless Peterson is arguing they would be more honest if they admitted they believed in God and went to church, which he can’t be because he doesn’t admit it and go to church, what does he expect them to do? Admit belief in his personal interpretation of God that he comes up with, even if it’s different from what theologians or Christians actually believe? This is just egotistical pointless wordplay.
The second claim, that science can’t explain morality, follows similar lines. Whenever Peterson’s own position is questioned he kicks sand, one guest directly asks: “do you believe in the all powerful all knowing notion of God?”
I know you already know the answer, wait for it: “what do you mean by believe?”
The guest tries again, “do you think it to be true?”
Peterson objects that it’s circular, and goes on about how believing means you live for something and you die for it, which is kind of true except it would sound a lot more sincere if it wasn’t for the fact that the guest is perfectly polite and Peterson is saying all this angrily through bared teeth while leaning over the table like he’s yelling at a child who’s just punched his friend. They go on a tangent about whether you should ever lie to someone, and the guest presents a hypothetical about lying to protect Jews hidden in the attic in Nazi Germany, to which Peterson gets annoyed and says he doesn’t answer hypotheticals. Which means a) he’s completely avoided the first question, and b) has been cornered in the tangent he tried to take the guest on and just deals with it by being irritable. Again, Peterson badly loses with a kind of angry man yelling at a child style indignity.
Claim three is that “everybody worships something including atheists even though they might not know it.” This is an apologetic/theological point as old as Christianity, that everyone has a “highest thing” that their lives are oriented towards, but naturally Peterson has his own way of understanding it, Peterson’s definition is that there is a hierarchy of attention and whatever you’re attending to you’re “worshipping.”
This in theory might be the nearest Peterson has to making a pragmatic argument for God, that if you combine it with a neoplatonic idealism, we are best pragmatically oriented when we direct all that we do towards the good. This is a view I hold in some form, but again Peterson is more evasive than clarifying, the first guest is interesting but it doesn’t really go anywhere, then with the second guest we have probably the worst exchange in the entire debate.
The second debater, Danny, points out that Peterson’s definition of worship, attention, prioritisation and sacrifice means that by that definition Catholics worship Mary, they quibble a bit, Peterson asks why he’s asking:
“Because you’re a Christian.”
Danny then pushes Peterson on whether or not he’s a Christian, at which point Peterson seems to snap: “You’re really quite something aren’t you?” he says angrily, then brilliantly, Danny responds “aren’t I, but you’re really quite nothing aren’t you? You’re not a Christian…”
“I’m done with him.” Peterson says angrily.
I don’t know about you, but if I was asked to be on a YouTube debate of that nature and someone was pushing for clarification on something that seems perfectly reasonable to push for clarification on and I scolded them and told them I was “done with him” I’d feel that I’d made a fool of myself. Peterson has at this point spent nearly an hour telling atheists what they think, and why their atheism is or isn’t legitimate, and if a guest isn’t entitled to get slightly heated when Peterson won’t remotely clarify his own perspective, all it does is show Peterson as having descended into an arrogant and disingenuous curmudgeon. Again, why is he doing this show. The title of it was clearly "1 Christian vs 20 Atheists,” it’s what the video is titled and from what Danny said everyone knew that was the title, how is “are you actually a Christian then?” not a perfectly fair question?
The rest of the debate carries on in similar fashion, Peterson changing definition and kicking sand whenever the discussion isn’t going his way. Amazingly at the end Peterson is giving a kind of post-match comment and he says “I don’t like talking to win, but there were portions of all the conversations that were truly productive and it’s important for people to see the distinction between a debate that’s aimed at local victory and dominance, even of ideas, and a discussion that’s predicated on mutual exploration and the establishment of a harmonious understanding and peace.”
For lack of a better way of putting it: LOL. Hilariously, this is then followed by several of the guests pointing out he was disingenuous and changed his definitions constantly. And to any viewer there was only one person not interested in “mutual exploration” or “a harmonious understanding and peace” and that was the angry, irritable shell of an intellectual that is Jordan Peterson. The only exception to the guests who mostly became frustrated with him was one of the female guests, and while she called him one of the better people who believe in God, she also commented that he engages in word play. Most of the others, even those who seemed nice at the outset became frustrated.
But perhaps more significantly, it’s hard to really know who Peterson thinks he represents. As the comments under the video indicate, Peterson’s egotism and mad definitions means a lot of Christians don’t want him as an advocate, one of the top comments “i am a christian but jordan peterson is not the person for this conversation. do this again with alex o’connor playing the christian, and you might have my attention.”
Quite, it’s a depressing fact that a popular atheist is doing good spirited public discourse better than a Christian. Or is he a Christian? it depends on what you mean by Christian because you see the thing about belief is…
Oh shut up.
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Thanks for reading, for a breakdown of Peterson’s academic trajectory, see my previous in depth articles on his work:
Why I Have Issue with Jordan Peterson’s ‘Religious’ Teaching
“This is just egotistical pointless wordplay.”
The entire Jordan Peterson phenomenon in a nutshell.
His descent into complete nonsense is sad. The only thing sadder is fans of his who still think he’s winning these arguments.