I think Peterson in the past has had important things to say. However, I listened to him on his most recent tour and - my view - Peterson the intellectual has descended into something different. Not quite descended fully and exclusively to the level of media personality or purveyor of talking points. But also not the mind he was ten years ago. Certainly, the man who could credibly ask others to be ‘intellectually honest’ is almost completely gone.
I agree with you Martin. He has changed, and not for the better. But to totally disregard what his presence has actually meant — and what it represents — is to miss the point, hence my response to the original comment.
This. You can't discount the affect the constant villainization has had on the man. However, in "sticking it to his detractors" he's become exactly what they always claimed he was. Very sad. I used to really like Peterson.
Me too. When he taught at the University of Toronto and protested Ontario’s pronoun law I thought he was an important voice pushing back against illiberalism. At his best he was a very sharp and original thinker.
I also agree that in setting himself up as a target for the illiberal left he paid a significant cost. However, I think there were signs even early on that he was vulnerable to speaking truth more easily to the left than to the right. And as the sources of his income increasingly came from his audience of right wingers, I think he became increasingly vulnerable to this kind of ideological capture.
Honestly thought he won by a long shot and I’m not right wing. I don’t see what he was saying to be nonsense at all. And half of the atheists were just bad faith “debaters”. Could you explain? He has a pretty interesting jungian approach to religion and Christianity but I feel like ardent atheist types can’t see past their Christianity/Bible = bad arguments imo
The point is he’s not even having the same argument as those he’s debating with. I don’t even have a problem with his conception of god, it’s how he’s uses it disingenuously to 1)constantly move the goal post in debate so that he always “wins”, and 2) refuses to directly answer simple questions when confronted about it so as not to alienate his right wing meal ticket. Because the conception of god that the majority of his followers believe in is radically different than the one he espouses. Most right wing people who are religious are not worshipping a jungian archetype.
Rather, they are not *knowingly* worshipping an archetype. That God is an archetype does not deprive Him of an ounce of divinity. The theory of archetypes is a difficult one which doesn't lend itself well to black and white thinking. It's more accessible to an artist than a scientist, as it requires open access to intuition. Jung explicitly describes how he is not reducing religion to mere psychology, "psychologizing" it away. Yet that remains probably the most common misconception regarding his theory. This is invariably what happens when you aim to bridge the gap between two ostensible opposites -- science and religion. You catch flak from both sides who would much rather that you stand explicitly with them or against them. Same thing happened to Jung.
God as an archetype may not rob him of divinity to YOU, but the idea that God is not a personified being with likes and dislikes, opinions and dictums for behavior is essentially blasphemous according to fundamentalist and evangelical doctrine, and therefore does rob him of divinity in their eyes. This is the crux of the problem. I don’t even really have a problem with Peterson’s conception of god, and I agree with everything you said about Jung. The issue is that Jordan is intentionally evasive when asked direct questions so as to not alienate his right wing meal ticket. From the perspective of staunch traditionally religious people (perhaps not more intellectual religious types as I’m assuming yourself), Jordan is every bit the atheist that I am. It all comes down to quite differing definitions of god.
This is just restating the point which is framed in the context of the opposites of atheist vs. fundamentalist. That God is an archetype does not preclude the fact that he is "a personified being with likes and dislikes, opinions and dictums for behavior" -- that's absolutely the form that archetypes take. The question would more so be whether or not he is a "real" being. Does he actually exist metaphysically? I follow Jung's Kantian view, we can't have knowledge of the archetype as a thing-in-itself. We only experience the phenomenon of the archetype, i.e. its contents, but not the source. Peterson could absolutely do a better job of this but I think he's frankly got a fair bit of confusion about it himself. But the point about archetypes is that you really can't pin them down with a particular definition like you can with a word. They are multidimensional images which are inexhaustible and interconnected with every other archetype. "A picture's worth a thousand words" kind of thing. Any definition only captures a limited aspect of it. That's my indictment of the fundamentalist and the atheist alike, who I take as being trapped in a doctrinal dyad.
I agree. Christians are not worshipping an archetype.
There is a big difference between stating that the concept of God/Jesus is an abstracted idea and God/Jesus is real.
Peterson has asked about belief (what it means) but I haven't seen him ask what is real. The idea of an archetype can be real without the archetype being embodied (real). Christians believe that the archetype is embodied in a real God. They believe that he acts in the world and interferes with how it goes.
I also love Peterson (although I don't watch his content religiously 😂). This admiration is probably because he was one of the first to call out the woke left and suggest that Christians are not unreasonable.
This isn’t high school. Jordan has done a lot of good for a lot of people, it’s not like he’s as Bond villain. It’s totally legitimate to find a lot of value in one area of someone’s work, while also taking issue with something else they do.
Yes, absolutely! Nobody has a monopoly on truth (except God). There are people who I esteem highly based on what they have taught me but I don't ever assume they are beyond criticism.
(the people I have in mind are Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard, every one of which I think make mistakes in some areas)
Yeah I agree with that. I do struggle with wondering about his motivations despite having found a great deal of insight from him in his lectures. My speculation is that he wants to try to get more big C Christians to realize the archetypal nature of religion by being in their circle and speaking their “language” so to speak. (But no doubt it’s also money so 🤷)
@ Ishmael - "Most right wing people who are religious are not worshipping a jungian archetype."
Are you saying (the obvious) that those right wing believers don't conceive of their object of worship as an archetype, but a the living God? --Or (but how do you know?) that what they believe in is not an "archetype," but the true God?
Eh.... no he didn't. He looked like a fool. If winning is to come across as the most irritable, indignant and angry then sure he won.
But Peterson substitute substance with fluffy language. There is just nothing there. Just lots of pretty words strung together in elegant but meaningless sentences.
No, it means I am not fooled by attempts to cover up dumb arguments by usage of clever words. Jordan Peterson simply doesn’t understand a lot of stuff but use so many clever words that it sounds like he does. I am educated in neural networks and machine learning and for me the most clear case of what he does I saw when he tried to talk about my field. He really didn’t get it but he sure used fancy words. I’ll give him that.
Many other experts on other fields have espoused Jordan Peterson. Also I grew up with this stuff. What few seem to not identify is that Jordan Peterson is a form of conservative New Ager. He is basically another Deepak Chopra. Another man peddling nonsense with “sophisticated” language.
That Peterson is a huge Karl Jung fan ought to set alarm bells ringing.
Just because you know neural networks and machine learning doesn’t mean you know about psychology and religion, just in the same way Peterson doesn’t know anything about machine learning but thinks he does based off his knowledge. By your logic, you acting like you know what Peterson understands is the exact same thing. I happen to be a fan of Jung’s ideas and I think they are important in understanding the evolution of the human psyche. It says it all to me that you disregard Jung, that’s the crux of why you don’t understand a damn thing Peterson says. You gotta want to know Jung, religious history, and psychology before you can understand Peterson and that’s ok but that doesn’t make his claims dumb 🤷
Of course not, that is not my claim. I am simply using it as an example of where I can with credibility say that I could easily call his bluff. And people who are experts in other fields and called his bluff in all sorts of other areas. For instance the stuff Jordan Peterson says about lobsters which is just total BS.
Or his suggestion that double helix snakes symbols from ancient times represent DNA is just delusional. Let us not forget the absurd things he said about dragons.
He says incredibly dumb stuff about endless number of topics, but people think he smart because he does it with excessively academic language. He is the embodiment of emperor's new clothes.
If you are a fan of Jung I guess that explains a lot of why you think Jordan Peterson is clever. That is about as credible as a Deepak Chopra fan saying Jordan Peterson is awesome. As if that isn't a self own.
It is part of a trend though. He has gotten increasingly more angry and resentful. To be fair his health problems and crazy treatment in Russia likely made it all worse.
“I should object very strongly to describing God as a ‘fact’. The Supreme Value would surely be a less inadequate description.”
“Do you not even believe that He exists?”
“Exists? What does existence mean? You keep on implying some sort of static, ready-made reality which is, so to speak, ‘there’, and to which our minds have simply to conform. These great mysteries cannot be approached in that way. If there were such a thing, quite frankly, I should not be interested in it.”
-Here we have the Intellectual Ghost (Chapter 5 in CS Lewis’ The Great Divorce), arguing with his heavenly guide, because he does not wish to see the Face of God if it means finally answering the question that has been his mental plaything throughout his illustrious career as a theological thinker. He would rather leave God trapped in his own human mind than let Him be defined in truth. I feel like this is the problem of Jordan Peterson.
Right? I was re-reading The Great Divorce a few weeks ago and when I got to that particular chapter, it was like, Why does this ghost sound so familiar?
The association is an unfortunate one - I think that will stick. Peterson played a consequential role in my taking Christianity seriously. His downfall has felt personal.
Every teacher has their limit. No need for the journey to end with Peterson. I hope you can appreciate him for the valuable role that he has played in your development towards something more.
I've enjoyed these essays, but, respectfully, you're still too kind. You proceed as if there was some earlier, better Peterson who was respectable and who somehow degenerated into the absurd fraud we see today — but he was never any good; he always worked his schtick according to a con-man formula of "intellectualism" (the same one used by L. Ron Hubbard) that exploits the ignorance of vulnerable, lonely and confused people.
If we had better education in this country, people like Peterson — or Malcolm Gladwell, broadening the target somewhat — would never get off the ground. Manipulating cheap jargon to create the impression of profundity is a racket that depends on people never getting near the real thinkers they need to encounter in order to genuinely confront their problems.
He’s Canadian? But he made perfectly coherent arguments, for example the one that propelled him to fame on a University of Toronto campus against a bunch of woke undergrads, that making “misgendering” a hate crime, as Trudeau had done, he had legislated compelled speech:
Then he offered a self help book that a lot of people appreciated, which published early I believe because of his skyrocket to the forefront of the culture war.
He was called a far right misogynist, probably racist, and transphobe (he always said he’d respectfully call someone by their preferred name & pronouns, but such were the times).
Now it’s easy to say what a fool he was, and maybe he said a bunch of foolish things then, but it literally wasn’t so easy to say nearly a decade ago when this platform didn’t exist, the leftist clamp was locked in media—social and legacy— and the biggest platforms of the internet, like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Apple’s App Store, i.e. the platforms upon which what we call platforms rest, would conspire to shut down conversation if someone moved from the mediated centralized networks of Twitter or YouTube.
But I also think it’s some sort of bias at play, perhaps unfamiliarity with him early on or just the natural inclination to forget what was a stifling and genuinely unnerving time to hold any opinions outside of the regulated line they called the truth.
People published books, gave lectures and secured academic reputations for a long time before the internet — for centuries, actually. The rise and fall of any one credentialed authority in the public square doesn’t, and shouldn’t, be regarded as a social media phenomenon, let alone an artifact of any “war” between online factions that essentially started in gaming chat environments. Respectfully you have to broaden your perspective. Books have been getting reviewed and debated and their authors being judged by their peers in colleges and universities since before the Renaissance.
I’m refuting that “he was never any good” and “always worked his shtick according to a conman formula” and I’m saying that you’re mischaracterizing his early years or are unfamiliar with them, perhaps on account of social media—where I imagine you were introduced to Peterson—was so brutally moderated and uncomfortable to speak freely on. Under those conditions, when he was making arguments against anti racism, DEI, and overreaching trans policy: That’s how he garnered tons of respect and appreciation by people early on.
Remember this? No hucksterism, no outlandish ideas, just asserting facts that made him a “misogynist” when that sort of thing mattered. But never backing down.
That's fair; thanks for clarifying. I disrespect all of those arguments (anti racism, DEI, and overreaching trans policy) for both political and intellectual reasons — and I'm not alone in this — but it's certainly plausible that he was better back then and I wasn't aware of it because he had less internet-based notoriety.
I still don't accept what's essentially a "cancellation" argument, meaning, I think he plummeted in stature as his woefully inadequate methodology became more clear to people because his ideas and his tiresome pseudo-sophisticated schtick don't hold up under any real scrutiny and not because of some sort of left-wing "hit job" through social media, but (like I said) I admit that internet fame has mostly been the mechanism of his demise. My opinions of him still come almost entirely from book reviews and straight-press articles about him, but I'm probably not typical.
Oh I am a bit tired and likely wrote something sloppy (the app is lagging today and I can’t load the comments back up) but i didn’t mean to say that he got cancelled or that he’s not descended into worse and lost audience. I truly don’t follow him to know, but what I read in this article sounded pretty brutal.
I’m just saying that he was outspoken in that era. And that he survived was a sign also of how measured he was. They still slandered him and when his book came out and was a smash hit it was game over for the mainstream press of polite society for him, but he did just fine on income.
You should watch his TVO interview on the Agenda or the one linked. It might not be impressive but he is just sheering, in fact the one I linked above he’s the restrained one which is why it went super viral. (He basically did that and the book in short order and he was a rockstar).
You've piqued my interest, so I'll go look; thank you.
My syntax was garbled above so I want to ensure that you understand where I stand politically: I'm a progressive liberal so I generally will hold anyone taking "anti-Woke" positions (and the term is sufficiently vague, by design, that I don't have to elaborate) in low regard. I'm not saying this to pick a fight; it's actually the opposite: I respect where you're coming from in terms of courteous and thoughtful exchanges, so I don't want to be slippery or underhanded. I wish more discussions across ideological lines could go like this.
I am Canadian. The bill in question passed 8 years ago.
I can give you details if you want them but long story short: Peterson lied.
It propelled Peterson to fame because his false claims appealed to people who view the government/the LGBT/the left/etc. as wanting to victimize them but 8 years is well past the time to recognize that for this particular bill, the victim narrative Peterson spewed was not true.
Wow I’m Canadian too and you’re wrong. Just because charges were not brought, in a country with courts and police overwhelmed by violent crime offences and where that provision being enforced is dubious in terms of popularity, does not mean that Canada’s Human Rights Code and Criminal Code weren’t amended to allow for it.
Look buddy, if Peterson claims that a bill will result in people being arrested for misgendering trans people, and then 8 years go by without a single person being arrested for misgendering a trans person, then Peterson is simply wrong. Full stop. Was he deliberately lying? Was he mistaken? We can only speculate but the bottom line is that the claim he built his whole career around was soundly proven incorrect, and no amount of mental gymnastics will change that fact.
I disagree. A dozen years ago he was an engaging and interesting speaker and thinker. He wasn't meant to become a superstar though, or even famous. Being a well-liked professor at a middling school in Canada was probably about the right level of fame for him. He went insane and turned into this current emotionally disturbed version bc of too much fame and too much Twitter.
Hard disagree. I’ve spent plenty of time exploring the “real thinkers” (whatever the hell that even means) and yet there was a, sadly brief, period of time where Peterson was approaching the difficulty of life in a way that no other public intellectual has in decades. Your sentiment is an insult to the enormous number of people whose lives were made better by their encounter with Peterson and his ideas.
"Lives were made better" according to whom? People believe their lives are being improved by Scientology, or the Catholic church, or any repressive system or self-help trend or book. I judge Petersen by the fatuity of his puerile ideas ("clean your room"; the lobster etc.) not by how many fans he had at whatever time.
According to the people themselves who have been leaving comments on his videos for years. Unless you want to disregard everyone who openly states “I’ve listened to your advice and my life has improved dramatically”, which I think would be a remarkably cynical and pretentious position to take.
Look, even if his ideas seem puerile to you, at bare minimum we can say that he served as a gateway to many so called “real thinkers”. How many people were turned on to Jung, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, etc. because of him? Maybe million. He undoubtedly improved the education of those “ignorant” people that you apparently look down upon.
Though to be fair, you expressed everything I need to know about you by snarking dismissing idea that someone’s life could be improved by the Catholic Church. Yeah man, there’s just no possible way that exposure to 2000 years of philosophy and art and ritual could make someone’s life better, they’re clearly just all brainwashed! Ironically you are guilty of every single intellectual failing that you try to pin on Peterson.
I don't look down on anyone — I am concerned that we live in a society where education is weak and underfunded enough that people only get to legitimate philosophy by means of this kind of pathway.
Personally, I judge Jesus of Nazareth by the fatuity of his puerile ideas ("turn the other cheek", "let him that is without sin cast the first stone", "be as a little child"), not by how many followers the movement he started may or may not have had at a particular historical period. I'm just such a deep thinker and so insightful, as well as funny, I can't help it.
As much as I dislike what's happened to Peterson you can immediately tell the people who write this shit have spent almost no time mulling over Peterson. At worst, his early lectures are a solid introduction to Jung, Eliade, Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky and others, and that's giving him no credit for his synthesis of their ideas.
Peterson is at his best lecturing about psychology, or psychological/Jungian interpretations of concepts. As a lecturer, he has a strong ethos. He's also vaguely existentialist/Nietzschean. Combine that with his interest in great literary texts, like the Bible, and viola: An interesting, engaging intellectual--perfect for the times.
Peterson was just right for the times because he acted Socratically against a pervasive sense of meaninglessness and naive scientism. And Socratic discourse is his strength.
The problem, as you pointed out, Matt, is that he's simply not a Christian. Now, I feel he's been forced to take stances rather than thinking and speaking in free flowing ways--and he can't hold up. In short, his ideas are genuinely interesting, but not rigorous. In fact, his ideas about God are so unrigorous, that lay atheists can easily undermine them.
Peterson‘s claim to be a Christian necessitates a statement of faith that’s universally Christian grounded. From my perspective, that would be acknowledging the first commandment and the Apostles‘ Creed. His apparent inability to make a simple statement, leaves him on the outside, looking in.
It honestly feels like a troll to have selected him to represent the "Christian" side. This is a guy who, if asked "Are you a Christian?" would respond by blowing squid ink at you for three hours, leaving you not knowing what he believes, how he even defines Christianity, etc. The idea that he could debate a bunch of atheists on this topic is ridiculously absurd.
If I had been one of the atheists, that would have been my approach: Simply ask Peterson "Are you Christian?" And then win the debate by leaving him to tie himself and the listeners into conceptual knots.
"While the format isn’t that great..." I really dislike Jubilee's schtick, they create ridiculous gladiator scenarios and sell it as building empathy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeDoXLTuPoA
Great work on your part. I really appreciate your critiques, they make me feel sane.
Yeah I agree, I found with the Alex O'Connor one the voting off thing is just people wanting a turn which means whenever the discussion is about to get interesting people vote them off, it adds a silly musical chairs element that makes it kind of bad spirited by nature.
As an agnostic atheist, I wasn’t really interested in this debate from a content perspective. For me, it's pretty clear by now that Jordan Peterson often shifts definitions mid-conversation and avoids saying anything truly substantial. There’s just not much left to engage with on that level, and I don’t think that needs to be debated anymore.
What I do find genuinely interesting, though, is how he engages from a psychological standpoint. It seems to me that he’s projecting his own inner conflict onto others. He appears deeply unsettled, as if he cannot fully grasp or admit his own disbelief, and that frustration gets displaced onto his conversation partners. That might be why he reacts with so much intensity even in normal discussions. One example that stood out to me was when he refused to answer a simple hypothetical question. His anger seemed disproportionate and telling.
I'm not trying to diagnose from a distance, but it really struck me when Danny said something like "you are really nothing." In that moment, it looked like something hit him deeply, like there was a flicker of something vulnerable behind his eyes. It was unsettling but revealing.
What also stands out is his style of arguing, which I would describe as quite narcissistic. He seems unable to concede even small points, as if admitting anything might cause his whole belief system to crack. Instead, he becomes overly verbose. I think he knows his definitions don't need to be that complicated. I speak English fluently but not natively, and I often only understand half of what he says on the first listen. But when I unpack it, the underlying ideas are rarely that complex or original. It's as if he uses his obviously high verbal intelligence more to overwhelm or confuse his discussion partner than to clarify anything.
That’s what I find fascinating. He clearly has intellectual capabilities, but they’re often directed in ways that obscure rather than reveal, perhaps to guard against something unresolved within himself.
Excruciating watch. The only explanation I can think of for why he would agree to do this is that his brain is too fried to realize that his brain is too fried to do this.
It saddens me to imagine what Peterson's legacy is going to be. Maybe something like Wilhelm Reich's or other thinkers who lost their minds in later life but whose early work is still recognised as influential. That may be the best he can hope for at this point.
I would say it's fried from becoming famous for having politically unorthodox opinions in the era of Twitter and constant dunking and hatred and polarization online. He's not the only one, there are several such cases. The benzos were to calm his anxiety about feeling like he was daily going to war in an abstract realm of screens with anons screaming hatred at him. And now he's just fully broken his brain.
I think you underestimate the value/strength of Christianity. It increased 40,000 fold over 400 years from 0 AD to basically rule the world, and it's been the main religion of the greatest civilizations since then.
It's really difficult to work out everything that goes into that, and everything that will come out of it, but just to say that it's not philosophically strong is missing everything interesting/significant about it.
You say Christianity is weak, but Christianity ruled and shaped your world for the past 2000 years, and you need to account for that.
I think you've made your point, again. There's no gas in Peterson's tank. But as long as people use him to refute Christianity, he will continue giving them reasons. And as long as he's available, no one else need apply.
Some of your points are valid but for Christians to just toss him out tells me that some of yall just don't like him for other reasons. I have seen some of his other videos so my take isn't based on just this one.
My take:
1. I wonder if HE has even been discipled. If he hasn't, he needs to humble himself, get out of the ivory tower and wrestle with his faith...with others.
2. He should have stepped away from his public platform to start some spiritual formation.
3. As someone said, his strength is debating psychology, not religion.
4. Much of what I have heard from him in other videos makes me think he may be spending time with Orthodox or Catholic theologians who tend to be intellectual and draw from various secular disciplines to make the case for God. If so, this is not the first place to start a walk with Jesus.
There are way too many ppl in the Bible who did not get it right and God called them anyway. Ive written ppl off in my past only to be embarrassed by what God did in someone's life. So, my hope is that he gets out of the public eye and wrestles with what he is claiming.
I watched an interview with Jordan Peterson and Pastor Greg Laurie. Throughout the conversation Greg brought Jordan up to the explanation of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. Every time Jordan said that he couldn't understand the concept of God existing in a physical realm and at the same time, spirit outside of our time domain. Jordan would go off on a intellectual path that was clearly evasive. Greg Laurie did not push the issue. So I agree with you. Jordan Peterson must become a seeker or continue to be lost.
That makes sense. His struggle seems to be epistemological...trying to comprehend the nature of God through knowledge instead of through Jesus Christ. I've seen this before and it often happens to educated believers. They started where the Greeks started (philosophy and knowledge) and not where the Jews started (faith and experience).
“The aim of the wise is not knowledge but action.”
Aristotle.
I fully agree, and this seems to me to be a major hurdle faced through most of human history. Getting caught in a cycle of theorising, and not acting. It's fair, it's easier to think than to move. Essentially the opposite of embodied experiential reality that naturally self-corrects, and draws truth from fruit.
Fully agree Peterson is lost in an epistemological neurotic thought spiral, it's not an easy place to come back from. When you speak of gaining knowledge through Jesus Christ, what do you mean? How does that offer an experiential path?
Good question. If Jordan is interested in being a follower of Jesus Christ, he must start with learning about and understanding what Christ did, does and will do. Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me. So I used the word 'knowledge' in my last post believing a person can know the Father through Christ in a faith based (way), observational (truth) and actively spiritual (life) way.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I'm always struck by the deep faith Christians have, and how much direct value they profess to have received in relationship with Christ. So, I guess I'm not really asking for Peterson. More so my own curiosity.
I believe I know what you mean when you say 'knowledge', it's more of a direct knowing than a theoretical knowledge - that wonderful feeling to not believe but just know?
As I say though, I'm mostly curious about the mechanism through which this knowing becomes embodied.
So, when you say Way/Faith, you mean like a form of hope, commitment & perseverance to the path of Christ?
By Observation/Truth, you mean lived, experienced knowing gained through personal revelation?
By Active-Spiritual/Life, you mean committedly practicing you faith and engaging with the congregation?
You explained it way better than I did. Very insightful.
The theoretical form of knowledge doesn't go over well when I sit with suffering and discouraged people. Although there is room for intellect, it should aid but never should supersede the love and compassion of Christ. Otherwise, only smart ppl with no problems would follow Christ. Thk you for asking thoughtful questions.
Jordan Peterson is the new Constantine. He’s using religious imagery and symbols to build his own empire, all the while trying to convince confessing Christians that he is their saviour because he is apparently an advocate for religious freedom.
Some might believe him for a while, but, as Jesus himself says, we must “judge a tree by its fruit.”
'Peterson’s first claim is that "atheists who reject God don’t know what they’re rejecting."'
He's got me there. I don't know "God" from a hole in the ground. Fortunately atheism isn't contingent on anyone's definition of God: it's simply life without reference to the supernatural. If God is proposed to be chance, or destiny, or common humanity, or the sun coming up in the morning, then that's fine; I might not see the point, but it's perfectly compatible with atheism.
“This is just egotistical pointless wordplay.”
The entire Jordan Peterson phenomenon in a nutshell.
I wouldn’t dismiss this phenomenon so glibly.
I think Peterson in the past has had important things to say. However, I listened to him on his most recent tour and - my view - Peterson the intellectual has descended into something different. Not quite descended fully and exclusively to the level of media personality or purveyor of talking points. But also not the mind he was ten years ago. Certainly, the man who could credibly ask others to be ‘intellectually honest’ is almost completely gone.
I agree with you Martin. He has changed, and not for the better. But to totally disregard what his presence has actually meant — and what it represents — is to miss the point, hence my response to the original comment.
This. You can't discount the affect the constant villainization has had on the man. However, in "sticking it to his detractors" he's become exactly what they always claimed he was. Very sad. I used to really like Peterson.
Me too. When he taught at the University of Toronto and protested Ontario’s pronoun law I thought he was an important voice pushing back against illiberalism. At his best he was a very sharp and original thinker.
I also agree that in setting himself up as a target for the illiberal left he paid a significant cost. However, I think there were signs even early on that he was vulnerable to speaking truth more easily to the left than to the right. And as the sources of his income increasingly came from his audience of right wingers, I think he became increasingly vulnerable to this kind of ideological capture.
Totally agree. I was also a great admirer, listrened to most of his early talks. Admirable intellect and erudition!
It was gone after his medical emergency and being fired from his job finished turning him into an angry mean old guy.
It's sad to see because he did have a lot of important facts and he was a real scientist.
And I would dismiss it glibly.
What relevance to anything?
His descent into complete nonsense is sad. The only thing sadder is fans of his who still think he’s winning these arguments.
Honestly thought he won by a long shot and I’m not right wing. I don’t see what he was saying to be nonsense at all. And half of the atheists were just bad faith “debaters”. Could you explain? He has a pretty interesting jungian approach to religion and Christianity but I feel like ardent atheist types can’t see past their Christianity/Bible = bad arguments imo
The point is he’s not even having the same argument as those he’s debating with. I don’t even have a problem with his conception of god, it’s how he’s uses it disingenuously to 1)constantly move the goal post in debate so that he always “wins”, and 2) refuses to directly answer simple questions when confronted about it so as not to alienate his right wing meal ticket. Because the conception of god that the majority of his followers believe in is radically different than the one he espouses. Most right wing people who are religious are not worshipping a jungian archetype.
Rather, they are not *knowingly* worshipping an archetype. That God is an archetype does not deprive Him of an ounce of divinity. The theory of archetypes is a difficult one which doesn't lend itself well to black and white thinking. It's more accessible to an artist than a scientist, as it requires open access to intuition. Jung explicitly describes how he is not reducing religion to mere psychology, "psychologizing" it away. Yet that remains probably the most common misconception regarding his theory. This is invariably what happens when you aim to bridge the gap between two ostensible opposites -- science and religion. You catch flak from both sides who would much rather that you stand explicitly with them or against them. Same thing happened to Jung.
God as an archetype may not rob him of divinity to YOU, but the idea that God is not a personified being with likes and dislikes, opinions and dictums for behavior is essentially blasphemous according to fundamentalist and evangelical doctrine, and therefore does rob him of divinity in their eyes. This is the crux of the problem. I don’t even really have a problem with Peterson’s conception of god, and I agree with everything you said about Jung. The issue is that Jordan is intentionally evasive when asked direct questions so as to not alienate his right wing meal ticket. From the perspective of staunch traditionally religious people (perhaps not more intellectual religious types as I’m assuming yourself), Jordan is every bit the atheist that I am. It all comes down to quite differing definitions of god.
This is just restating the point which is framed in the context of the opposites of atheist vs. fundamentalist. That God is an archetype does not preclude the fact that he is "a personified being with likes and dislikes, opinions and dictums for behavior" -- that's absolutely the form that archetypes take. The question would more so be whether or not he is a "real" being. Does he actually exist metaphysically? I follow Jung's Kantian view, we can't have knowledge of the archetype as a thing-in-itself. We only experience the phenomenon of the archetype, i.e. its contents, but not the source. Peterson could absolutely do a better job of this but I think he's frankly got a fair bit of confusion about it himself. But the point about archetypes is that you really can't pin them down with a particular definition like you can with a word. They are multidimensional images which are inexhaustible and interconnected with every other archetype. "A picture's worth a thousand words" kind of thing. Any definition only captures a limited aspect of it. That's my indictment of the fundamentalist and the atheist alike, who I take as being trapped in a doctrinal dyad.
The opposite of atheism is theism, not fundamentalism.
I agree. Christians are not worshipping an archetype.
There is a big difference between stating that the concept of God/Jesus is an abstracted idea and God/Jesus is real.
Peterson has asked about belief (what it means) but I haven't seen him ask what is real. The idea of an archetype can be real without the archetype being embodied (real). Christians believe that the archetype is embodied in a real God. They believe that he acts in the world and interferes with how it goes.
I also love Peterson (although I don't watch his content religiously 😂). This admiration is probably because he was one of the first to call out the woke left and suggest that Christians are not unreasonable.
He does have a temper though.
This isn’t high school. Jordan has done a lot of good for a lot of people, it’s not like he’s as Bond villain. It’s totally legitimate to find a lot of value in one area of someone’s work, while also taking issue with something else they do.
Yes, absolutely! Nobody has a monopoly on truth (except God). There are people who I esteem highly based on what they have taught me but I don't ever assume they are beyond criticism.
(the people I have in mind are Karl Popper, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard, every one of which I think make mistakes in some areas)
Yeah I agree with that. I do struggle with wondering about his motivations despite having found a great deal of insight from him in his lectures. My speculation is that he wants to try to get more big C Christians to realize the archetypal nature of religion by being in their circle and speaking their “language” so to speak. (But no doubt it’s also money so 🤷)
I don't think the money argument holds much water. He lost his university position. He lost his practice.
Its a rather cheap attack that doesn't make any argument. It's like crying bias, racist, etc.
I think he's being genuine for the most part but doesn't want people to force him to argue positions he doesn't hold.
All his current motivations are Zionism.
I didn't wash my balls before Jordan Peterson so I still respect him for that but the Zionism is cringe.
@ Ishmael - "Most right wing people who are religious are not worshipping a jungian archetype."
Are you saying (the obvious) that those right wing believers don't conceive of their object of worship as an archetype, but a the living God? --Or (but how do you know?) that what they believe in is not an "archetype," but the true God?
He clearly did win tho? Did you watch the video?
Eh.... no he didn't. He looked like a fool. If winning is to come across as the most irritable, indignant and angry then sure he won.
But Peterson substitute substance with fluffy language. There is just nothing there. Just lots of pretty words strung together in elegant but meaningless sentences.
Literally just means you don’t understand those parts
No, it means I am not fooled by attempts to cover up dumb arguments by usage of clever words. Jordan Peterson simply doesn’t understand a lot of stuff but use so many clever words that it sounds like he does. I am educated in neural networks and machine learning and for me the most clear case of what he does I saw when he tried to talk about my field. He really didn’t get it but he sure used fancy words. I’ll give him that.
Many other experts on other fields have espoused Jordan Peterson. Also I grew up with this stuff. What few seem to not identify is that Jordan Peterson is a form of conservative New Ager. He is basically another Deepak Chopra. Another man peddling nonsense with “sophisticated” language.
That Peterson is a huge Karl Jung fan ought to set alarm bells ringing.
Just because you know neural networks and machine learning doesn’t mean you know about psychology and religion, just in the same way Peterson doesn’t know anything about machine learning but thinks he does based off his knowledge. By your logic, you acting like you know what Peterson understands is the exact same thing. I happen to be a fan of Jung’s ideas and I think they are important in understanding the evolution of the human psyche. It says it all to me that you disregard Jung, that’s the crux of why you don’t understand a damn thing Peterson says. You gotta want to know Jung, religious history, and psychology before you can understand Peterson and that’s ok but that doesn’t make his claims dumb 🤷
Of course not, that is not my claim. I am simply using it as an example of where I can with credibility say that I could easily call his bluff. And people who are experts in other fields and called his bluff in all sorts of other areas. For instance the stuff Jordan Peterson says about lobsters which is just total BS.
Or his suggestion that double helix snakes symbols from ancient times represent DNA is just delusional. Let us not forget the absurd things he said about dragons.
He says incredibly dumb stuff about endless number of topics, but people think he smart because he does it with excessively academic language. He is the embodiment of emperor's new clothes.
If you are a fan of Jung I guess that explains a lot of why you think Jordan Peterson is clever. That is about as credible as a Deepak Chopra fan saying Jordan Peterson is awesome. As if that isn't a self own.
I had never seen Peterson that rude and hateful with younger people who clearly had thought about their beliefs.
It is part of a trend though. He has gotten increasingly more angry and resentful. To be fair his health problems and crazy treatment in Russia likely made it all worse.
What do you mean the the word sad?
“I should object very strongly to describing God as a ‘fact’. The Supreme Value would surely be a less inadequate description.”
“Do you not even believe that He exists?”
“Exists? What does existence mean? You keep on implying some sort of static, ready-made reality which is, so to speak, ‘there’, and to which our minds have simply to conform. These great mysteries cannot be approached in that way. If there were such a thing, quite frankly, I should not be interested in it.”
-Here we have the Intellectual Ghost (Chapter 5 in CS Lewis’ The Great Divorce), arguing with his heavenly guide, because he does not wish to see the Face of God if it means finally answering the question that has been his mental plaything throughout his illustrious career as a theological thinker. He would rather leave God trapped in his own human mind than let Him be defined in truth. I feel like this is the problem of Jordan Peterson.
Great reference. CS Lewis nailed
"The madman is not the man who has lost his reason; the madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason."
G K Chesterton
I did not recognize the quote at first and assumed you were quoting Peterson himself. Nail on the head
Right? I was re-reading The Great Divorce a few weeks ago and when I got to that particular chapter, it was like, Why does this ghost sound so familiar?
The association is an unfortunate one - I think that will stick. Peterson played a consequential role in my taking Christianity seriously. His downfall has felt personal.
Every teacher has their limit. No need for the journey to end with Peterson. I hope you can appreciate him for the valuable role that he has played in your development towards something more.
Oooh, very good connection 👌
Amen my friend!
I've enjoyed these essays, but, respectfully, you're still too kind. You proceed as if there was some earlier, better Peterson who was respectable and who somehow degenerated into the absurd fraud we see today — but he was never any good; he always worked his schtick according to a con-man formula of "intellectualism" (the same one used by L. Ron Hubbard) that exploits the ignorance of vulnerable, lonely and confused people.
If we had better education in this country, people like Peterson — or Malcolm Gladwell, broadening the target somewhat — would never get off the ground. Manipulating cheap jargon to create the impression of profundity is a racket that depends on people never getting near the real thinkers they need to encounter in order to genuinely confront their problems.
He’s Canadian? But he made perfectly coherent arguments, for example the one that propelled him to fame on a University of Toronto campus against a bunch of woke undergrads, that making “misgendering” a hate crime, as Trudeau had done, he had legislated compelled speech:
Then he offered a self help book that a lot of people appreciated, which published early I believe because of his skyrocket to the forefront of the culture war.
He was called a far right misogynist, probably racist, and transphobe (he always said he’d respectfully call someone by their preferred name & pronouns, but such were the times).
Now it’s easy to say what a fool he was, and maybe he said a bunch of foolish things then, but it literally wasn’t so easy to say nearly a decade ago when this platform didn’t exist, the leftist clamp was locked in media—social and legacy— and the biggest platforms of the internet, like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Apple’s App Store, i.e. the platforms upon which what we call platforms rest, would conspire to shut down conversation if someone moved from the mediated centralized networks of Twitter or YouTube.
But I also think it’s some sort of bias at play, perhaps unfamiliarity with him early on or just the natural inclination to forget what was a stifling and genuinely unnerving time to hold any opinions outside of the regulated line they called the truth.
People published books, gave lectures and secured academic reputations for a long time before the internet — for centuries, actually. The rise and fall of any one credentialed authority in the public square doesn’t, and shouldn’t, be regarded as a social media phenomenon, let alone an artifact of any “war” between online factions that essentially started in gaming chat environments. Respectfully you have to broaden your perspective. Books have been getting reviewed and debated and their authors being judged by their peers in colleges and universities since before the Renaissance.
I’m refuting that “he was never any good” and “always worked his shtick according to a conman formula” and I’m saying that you’re mischaracterizing his early years or are unfamiliar with them, perhaps on account of social media—where I imagine you were introduced to Peterson—was so brutally moderated and uncomfortable to speak freely on. Under those conditions, when he was making arguments against anti racism, DEI, and overreaching trans policy: That’s how he garnered tons of respect and appreciation by people early on.
Remember this? No hucksterism, no outlandish ideas, just asserting facts that made him a “misogynist” when that sort of thing mattered. But never backing down.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54
That's fair; thanks for clarifying. I disrespect all of those arguments (anti racism, DEI, and overreaching trans policy) for both political and intellectual reasons — and I'm not alone in this — but it's certainly plausible that he was better back then and I wasn't aware of it because he had less internet-based notoriety.
I still don't accept what's essentially a "cancellation" argument, meaning, I think he plummeted in stature as his woefully inadequate methodology became more clear to people because his ideas and his tiresome pseudo-sophisticated schtick don't hold up under any real scrutiny and not because of some sort of left-wing "hit job" through social media, but (like I said) I admit that internet fame has mostly been the mechanism of his demise. My opinions of him still come almost entirely from book reviews and straight-press articles about him, but I'm probably not typical.
Oh I am a bit tired and likely wrote something sloppy (the app is lagging today and I can’t load the comments back up) but i didn’t mean to say that he got cancelled or that he’s not descended into worse and lost audience. I truly don’t follow him to know, but what I read in this article sounded pretty brutal.
I’m just saying that he was outspoken in that era. And that he survived was a sign also of how measured he was. They still slandered him and when his book came out and was a smash hit it was game over for the mainstream press of polite society for him, but he did just fine on income.
You should watch his TVO interview on the Agenda or the one linked. It might not be impressive but he is just sheering, in fact the one I linked above he’s the restrained one which is why it went super viral. (He basically did that and the book in short order and he was a rockstar).
You've piqued my interest, so I'll go look; thank you.
My syntax was garbled above so I want to ensure that you understand where I stand politically: I'm a progressive liberal so I generally will hold anyone taking "anti-Woke" positions (and the term is sufficiently vague, by design, that I don't have to elaborate) in low regard. I'm not saying this to pick a fight; it's actually the opposite: I respect where you're coming from in terms of courteous and thoughtful exchanges, so I don't want to be slippery or underhanded. I wish more discussions across ideological lines could go like this.
I am Canadian. The bill in question passed 8 years ago.
I can give you details if you want them but long story short: Peterson lied.
It propelled Peterson to fame because his false claims appealed to people who view the government/the LGBT/the left/etc. as wanting to victimize them but 8 years is well past the time to recognize that for this particular bill, the victim narrative Peterson spewed was not true.
Wow I’m Canadian too and you’re wrong. Just because charges were not brought, in a country with courts and police overwhelmed by violent crime offences and where that provision being enforced is dubious in terms of popularity, does not mean that Canada’s Human Rights Code and Criminal Code weren’t amended to allow for it.
Take care.
Look buddy, if Peterson claims that a bill will result in people being arrested for misgendering trans people, and then 8 years go by without a single person being arrested for misgendering a trans person, then Peterson is simply wrong. Full stop. Was he deliberately lying? Was he mistaken? We can only speculate but the bottom line is that the claim he built his whole career around was soundly proven incorrect, and no amount of mental gymnastics will change that fact.
It defies believability that you would use a "They've let crimes go on for 8 years" argument.
Tell me, the bill in question being a page long, how was the Criminal Code amended to "allow it" and what "it" is exactly?
The Criminal Code. Because the Canada’s Human Rights Code is not a criminal code.
I disagree. A dozen years ago he was an engaging and interesting speaker and thinker. He wasn't meant to become a superstar though, or even famous. Being a well-liked professor at a middling school in Canada was probably about the right level of fame for him. He went insane and turned into this current emotionally disturbed version bc of too much fame and too much Twitter.
Hard disagree. I’ve spent plenty of time exploring the “real thinkers” (whatever the hell that even means) and yet there was a, sadly brief, period of time where Peterson was approaching the difficulty of life in a way that no other public intellectual has in decades. Your sentiment is an insult to the enormous number of people whose lives were made better by their encounter with Peterson and his ideas.
"Lives were made better" according to whom? People believe their lives are being improved by Scientology, or the Catholic church, or any repressive system or self-help trend or book. I judge Petersen by the fatuity of his puerile ideas ("clean your room"; the lobster etc.) not by how many fans he had at whatever time.
According to the people themselves who have been leaving comments on his videos for years. Unless you want to disregard everyone who openly states “I’ve listened to your advice and my life has improved dramatically”, which I think would be a remarkably cynical and pretentious position to take.
Look, even if his ideas seem puerile to you, at bare minimum we can say that he served as a gateway to many so called “real thinkers”. How many people were turned on to Jung, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, etc. because of him? Maybe million. He undoubtedly improved the education of those “ignorant” people that you apparently look down upon.
Though to be fair, you expressed everything I need to know about you by snarking dismissing idea that someone’s life could be improved by the Catholic Church. Yeah man, there’s just no possible way that exposure to 2000 years of philosophy and art and ritual could make someone’s life better, they’re clearly just all brainwashed! Ironically you are guilty of every single intellectual failing that you try to pin on Peterson.
I don't look down on anyone — I am concerned that we live in a society where education is weak and underfunded enough that people only get to legitimate philosophy by means of this kind of pathway.
Aside from your use of the word “legitimate”, I agree.
Personally, I judge Jesus of Nazareth by the fatuity of his puerile ideas ("turn the other cheek", "let him that is without sin cast the first stone", "be as a little child"), not by how many followers the movement he started may or may not have had at a particular historical period. I'm just such a deep thinker and so insightful, as well as funny, I can't help it.
100%. Hard agree from me.
As much as I dislike what's happened to Peterson you can immediately tell the people who write this shit have spent almost no time mulling over Peterson. At worst, his early lectures are a solid introduction to Jung, Eliade, Solzhenitsyn, Dostoevsky and others, and that's giving him no credit for his synthesis of their ideas.
Big fan of Gladwell. Peterson is an bottomless pit of pointless words.
Never cared for him.
Brilliant observation. It's true, it is a racket of sorts.
Peterson is at his best lecturing about psychology, or psychological/Jungian interpretations of concepts. As a lecturer, he has a strong ethos. He's also vaguely existentialist/Nietzschean. Combine that with his interest in great literary texts, like the Bible, and viola: An interesting, engaging intellectual--perfect for the times.
Peterson was just right for the times because he acted Socratically against a pervasive sense of meaninglessness and naive scientism. And Socratic discourse is his strength.
The problem, as you pointed out, Matt, is that he's simply not a Christian. Now, I feel he's been forced to take stances rather than thinking and speaking in free flowing ways--and he can't hold up. In short, his ideas are genuinely interesting, but not rigorous. In fact, his ideas about God are so unrigorous, that lay atheists can easily undermine them.
Great essay!
Peterson‘s claim to be a Christian necessitates a statement of faith that’s universally Christian grounded. From my perspective, that would be acknowledging the first commandment and the Apostles‘ Creed. His apparent inability to make a simple statement, leaves him on the outside, looking in.
It honestly feels like a troll to have selected him to represent the "Christian" side. This is a guy who, if asked "Are you a Christian?" would respond by blowing squid ink at you for three hours, leaving you not knowing what he believes, how he even defines Christianity, etc. The idea that he could debate a bunch of atheists on this topic is ridiculously absurd.
If I had been one of the atheists, that would have been my approach: Simply ask Peterson "Are you Christian?" And then win the debate by leaving him to tie himself and the listeners into conceptual knots.
Thats exactly what happened
"While the format isn’t that great..." I really dislike Jubilee's schtick, they create ridiculous gladiator scenarios and sell it as building empathy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeDoXLTuPoA
Great work on your part. I really appreciate your critiques, they make me feel sane.
Yeah I agree, I found with the Alex O'Connor one the voting off thing is just people wanting a turn which means whenever the discussion is about to get interesting people vote them off, it adds a silly musical chairs element that makes it kind of bad spirited by nature.
Is it really sad though?
If he sold his soul to the Daily Wire to basically do hasbara, this is deserved and inevitable.
As an agnostic atheist, I wasn’t really interested in this debate from a content perspective. For me, it's pretty clear by now that Jordan Peterson often shifts definitions mid-conversation and avoids saying anything truly substantial. There’s just not much left to engage with on that level, and I don’t think that needs to be debated anymore.
What I do find genuinely interesting, though, is how he engages from a psychological standpoint. It seems to me that he’s projecting his own inner conflict onto others. He appears deeply unsettled, as if he cannot fully grasp or admit his own disbelief, and that frustration gets displaced onto his conversation partners. That might be why he reacts with so much intensity even in normal discussions. One example that stood out to me was when he refused to answer a simple hypothetical question. His anger seemed disproportionate and telling.
I'm not trying to diagnose from a distance, but it really struck me when Danny said something like "you are really nothing." In that moment, it looked like something hit him deeply, like there was a flicker of something vulnerable behind his eyes. It was unsettling but revealing.
What also stands out is his style of arguing, which I would describe as quite narcissistic. He seems unable to concede even small points, as if admitting anything might cause his whole belief system to crack. Instead, he becomes overly verbose. I think he knows his definitions don't need to be that complicated. I speak English fluently but not natively, and I often only understand half of what he says on the first listen. But when I unpack it, the underlying ideas are rarely that complex or original. It's as if he uses his obviously high verbal intelligence more to overwhelm or confuse his discussion partner than to clarify anything.
That’s what I find fascinating. He clearly has intellectual capabilities, but they’re often directed in ways that obscure rather than reveal, perhaps to guard against something unresolved within himself.
Might write a separate article about this 🤔
I am a dream specialist. Read his "grandmother dream" from a Jungian perspective and you see a man in terrible conflict with his feminine.
Excruciating watch. The only explanation I can think of for why he would agree to do this is that his brain is too fried to realize that his brain is too fried to do this.
It saddens me to imagine what Peterson's legacy is going to be. Maybe something like Wilhelm Reich's or other thinkers who lost their minds in later life but whose early work is still recognised as influential. That may be the best he can hope for at this point.
Is his brain “too fried” because of his use of benzodiazepines?
I would say it's fried from becoming famous for having politically unorthodox opinions in the era of Twitter and constant dunking and hatred and polarization online. He's not the only one, there are several such cases. The benzos were to calm his anxiety about feeling like he was daily going to war in an abstract realm of screens with anons screaming hatred at him. And now he's just fully broken his brain.
Wonder why Jubilee didn't bring an actual Christian who knows how to navigate debates like Trent Horn or Michael Jones
Trent Horn would wipe the floor with 20 atheists.
I think you underestimate the value/strength of Christianity. It increased 40,000 fold over 400 years from 0 AD to basically rule the world, and it's been the main religion of the greatest civilizations since then.
It's really difficult to work out everything that goes into that, and everything that will come out of it, but just to say that it's not philosophically strong is missing everything interesting/significant about it.
You say Christianity is weak, but Christianity ruled and shaped your world for the past 2000 years, and you need to account for that.
They changed the title to "Jordan Peterson vs 20 Atheists"
I think you've made your point, again. There's no gas in Peterson's tank. But as long as people use him to refute Christianity, he will continue giving them reasons. And as long as he's available, no one else need apply.
Some of your points are valid but for Christians to just toss him out tells me that some of yall just don't like him for other reasons. I have seen some of his other videos so my take isn't based on just this one.
My take:
1. I wonder if HE has even been discipled. If he hasn't, he needs to humble himself, get out of the ivory tower and wrestle with his faith...with others.
2. He should have stepped away from his public platform to start some spiritual formation.
3. As someone said, his strength is debating psychology, not religion.
4. Much of what I have heard from him in other videos makes me think he may be spending time with Orthodox or Catholic theologians who tend to be intellectual and draw from various secular disciplines to make the case for God. If so, this is not the first place to start a walk with Jesus.
There are way too many ppl in the Bible who did not get it right and God called them anyway. Ive written ppl off in my past only to be embarrassed by what God did in someone's life. So, my hope is that he gets out of the public eye and wrestles with what he is claiming.
I watched an interview with Jordan Peterson and Pastor Greg Laurie. Throughout the conversation Greg brought Jordan up to the explanation of what it meant to be a follower of Jesus. Every time Jordan said that he couldn't understand the concept of God existing in a physical realm and at the same time, spirit outside of our time domain. Jordan would go off on a intellectual path that was clearly evasive. Greg Laurie did not push the issue. So I agree with you. Jordan Peterson must become a seeker or continue to be lost.
That makes sense. His struggle seems to be epistemological...trying to comprehend the nature of God through knowledge instead of through Jesus Christ. I've seen this before and it often happens to educated believers. They started where the Greeks started (philosophy and knowledge) and not where the Jews started (faith and experience).
“The aim of the wise is not knowledge but action.”
Aristotle.
I fully agree, and this seems to me to be a major hurdle faced through most of human history. Getting caught in a cycle of theorising, and not acting. It's fair, it's easier to think than to move. Essentially the opposite of embodied experiential reality that naturally self-corrects, and draws truth from fruit.
Fully agree Peterson is lost in an epistemological neurotic thought spiral, it's not an easy place to come back from. When you speak of gaining knowledge through Jesus Christ, what do you mean? How does that offer an experiential path?
Good question. If Jordan is interested in being a follower of Jesus Christ, he must start with learning about and understanding what Christ did, does and will do. Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me. So I used the word 'knowledge' in my last post believing a person can know the Father through Christ in a faith based (way), observational (truth) and actively spiritual (life) way.
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I'm always struck by the deep faith Christians have, and how much direct value they profess to have received in relationship with Christ. So, I guess I'm not really asking for Peterson. More so my own curiosity.
I believe I know what you mean when you say 'knowledge', it's more of a direct knowing than a theoretical knowledge - that wonderful feeling to not believe but just know?
As I say though, I'm mostly curious about the mechanism through which this knowing becomes embodied.
So, when you say Way/Faith, you mean like a form of hope, commitment & perseverance to the path of Christ?
By Observation/Truth, you mean lived, experienced knowing gained through personal revelation?
By Active-Spiritual/Life, you mean committedly practicing you faith and engaging with the congregation?
You explained it way better than I did. Very insightful.
The theoretical form of knowledge doesn't go over well when I sit with suffering and discouraged people. Although there is room for intellect, it should aid but never should supersede the love and compassion of Christ. Otherwise, only smart ppl with no problems would follow Christ. Thk you for asking thoughtful questions.
Jordan Peterson is the new Constantine. He’s using religious imagery and symbols to build his own empire, all the while trying to convince confessing Christians that he is their saviour because he is apparently an advocate for religious freedom.
Some might believe him for a while, but, as Jesus himself says, we must “judge a tree by its fruit.”
🎯
'Peterson’s first claim is that "atheists who reject God don’t know what they’re rejecting."'
He's got me there. I don't know "God" from a hole in the ground. Fortunately atheism isn't contingent on anyone's definition of God: it's simply life without reference to the supernatural. If God is proposed to be chance, or destiny, or common humanity, or the sun coming up in the morning, then that's fine; I might not see the point, but it's perfectly compatible with atheism.
Jordan should just stick to the "12 rules for life" but I guess he has bills to pay.
Those benzodiazapines don't come cheap
He did have some health issues -- probably stress related.