Jordan Peterson on religious and mythological beliefs

[LogicalFallacy]

 

Jordan has some interesting views on religion. At least part of what he is saying rings true.

 

@Joshpantera what Jordan talks about fits into some of your spirituality thoughts?

[Guest]

4 hours ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

Jordan has some interesting views on religion. At least part of what he is saying rings true.

 

@Joshpantera what Jordan talks about fits into some of your spirituality thoughts?

His basic argument for leaping into his Psychological and Mythological interpretation of religion he calls his version of Evolutionary Epistemology.  Not the kind like you will learn in a philosophy course, Peterson asserts that certain beliefs clearly have evolutionary advantages and disadvantages.  There are certain beliefs if you adopt them in Peterson's mind, that you will put the species in danger.  His example for this is classical Communism, which he says is invalidated by its body count and he adopts a Classical Liberal stance largely on this basis too.  

 

Regarding religion, he integrates modern psychology with Jung and Campbell in order to setup archetypal narratives that he then explores through the Psychological perspective.  It certainly is a valuable take on the Bible, I have listened to most of his long lectures he has made recently on the Bible.  I think certainly a person can be aided by following this outline, but I have read too much of the Pauline Epistles to think this could all be retained if it was boiled down to its archetypal and Mythological parts while getting rid of the historical and theological.  To me, if Jesus didn't rise after dying, then none of it is to be believed and is just another iteration of humans making one of these texts.  This makes it worthy of deep study, but not worthy of basing your existence on.  Christianity also has unhelpful political aspects that still remain with us, and Peterson errs by retaining old outdated perspectives on politics as a result. 

[Joshpantera]

18 hours ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

Jordan has some interesting views on religion. At least part of what he is saying rings true.

 

@Joshpantera what Jordan talks about fits into some of your spirituality thoughts?

 

Yeah, he's covering certain things that I understand from a Campbellian perspective. I follow his usage of the Platonic "logos," which is similar to what Robert Tulip has been articulating. 

 

But I'm looking at more videos, more importantly his beliefs about god: 

 

 

He acts as if god exist, I act as if god does not exist. That's the first issue I see going into the video. I would not act as if a pink unicorn exists, if I had no valid reason to think that a pink unicorn exists. This may outline the problem of trying to straddle the christian label when you know that it's all mythology. He sort of doesn't know quite what to do. He thinks there's sufficient evidence to conclude that Jesus was historical, I'm not so convinced. I've never found any substantial core to the Jesus onion where we can say, ah ha, there he is, the real historical figure behind it all. What most people conclude is the real historical Jesus, is largely nothing more than items from the story which look to be midrash and other things. Like coming from a Nazareth that didn't exist until centuries later, for instance. These are some of the points historicists hang their hats on, I'm not willing to do that. I remain skeptical for the time being. 

 

Watching this video I can make an easy map of how this applies to my own view. 

 

Conservative christianity > Liberal Christianity > Jordan Peterson (spiritual atheism) > Robert Tulip > Myself > (non spiritual Atheism). 

 

I can easily support Tulip's atheistic but socially christian ideas.  

 

Peterson, I can certainly support to some extent, but he represents a very confused ground stretched out between theism and atheism. He's struggling to hang on to things that he shouldn't struggle to hang on to. Granted , some non spiritual atheist's could allege the same down the line from myself, to Robert Tulip, to Peterson. Although out of the three I seem to find more acceptance among non spiritual atheists, because I don't at all try hanging on to a christian label. Nor do I try and apologize for god or Jesus at all. Neither does Robert, but his hanging on to the christian label is enough to put him at odds with many non spiritual atheists. 

 

Below is another interaction between Peterson and Harris: