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Religion And New Atheists

Altfish

Veteran Member
Grief not him again; the man who redefines words like "Religious" so that in his Peterson's mind Sam Harris is religious. Crazy.
Peterson is a very good speaker, another like William Lane Craig, who uses phrases and words that no one can understand and by the time his co-debater has worked out what he's talking about he has already moved on to another point and claims to have won the debate.
 

icehorse

......unaffiliated...... anti-dogmatist
Premium Member
I don't always agree with Peterson, but sometimes he's brilliant. In this case, I think he's got a good intuition, but he's struggling to figure out how to put it in words. That situation is more common than most people realize. We are all largely operating on expert intuitions that make us skillful and capable, but that we cannot really put into words.

But the idea that our salvation lies with people who speak the truth, seems like an extremely important idea.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
But the idea that our salvation lies with people who speak the truth, seems like an extremely important idea.

Is that truth as in "that which is true in accordance with fact or reality."

or "Truth" as in "a belief that is accepted as true."?
 

icehorse

......unaffiliated...... anti-dogmatist
Premium Member
Is that truth as in "that which is true in accordance with fact or reality."

or "Truth" as in "a belief that is accepted as true."?

Well this could get real philosophical real fast, but I'd say more or less doing our best to speak what's in accordance with fact and/or reality. Of course I understand that this is often tricky, but a person can try to speak and debate in "good faith", and I think what we see a lot of from the media and our "leaders" is speech that's not uttered in good faith.
 
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ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
New atheism is old atheism that does not risk prison nor being roasted by calling out nonsense or ridicolous claims. And that is why old theists do not like that,
They are not used to it.

Yet.

Ciao

- viole

Must be terrible for them to treat a whole group of people like dirt for 2000 years then things change.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
Jordan Peterson is clearly a very confused person.

This video is nonetheless interesting and has some nuggets of wisdom.

I particularly recommend the part between 2m27s and 3m, where he correctly points out that what he calls "god" is in reality the main motivational directive of each person.

Of course, he then goes on, rather incredibly, to blame "new" atheists for "not taking matters seriously".

A far better case can and arguably ought to be made that calling such directives "god" is a much more grave lack of seriousness.


Edited to add: I watched the whole video.

It is remarkably confused. Jordan Peterson comes across as struggling with his own conscience something fierce. There is some obvious anxiety there, but he is helpless at expressing it.

Here are some highlights.


"Worship of the rational mind"
"falling in love with its own creations"
"Intellect raised to the status of the higher god"
"highest ideal conscious or unconscious - raised to god"
playthings of the gods

2m27 - he points out that what he calls "god" is actually the main motivational directive of each person.

3m02 - complaint that christianity is dismissed as a bunch of superstitions
4m10 - Israel rises to proeminence
4m22 - Lack of respect for the "supernatural principle"

5m28 - utopia of the perfect state

5m50 - naivete of hoping for a perfect state to solve all our problems
6m05 - the new testament offers the idea that salvation must come from individual perspectives, not from the state
6m15 - specifically, truthful individuals are in some sense the salvation
6m43 - strong societies collapse because they lose sight of the supernatural principle
6m46 - true stability arises from truthful individuals
6m52 - which is one goal of postmodernism
6m54 - anti-fellow-logocentrism?
7m00 - motivates those postmodernists to hide behind ideology because they fear being perceived for the contentless persons that they are
7m12 - we need to take the Bible into account because it "is the foundation of Western civilization"
7m28 - Nietzsche was regretting that "god was dead", because everything would collapse into chaos
7m43 - Jung advised reconnection with the supernatural principle
8m28 - it is hard to create our own values
8m50 - therefore we need to go back to the myths
9m35 - Peterson has a desire to ressurrect the dormant logos
10m00 - somehow truth and responsibility are a discovery
10m43 - superheroes are popular because they appeal to craving for polytheism

After that there is a confused attempt at claiming the need to elect a chief god in order to ward off chaos.




It is all quite confused and almost directionless. There are some recurring elements that he basically urges us to trust his perception of being important and worth of attention (the Bible, some sort of instinct of seeking supernatural guidance which he sometimes calls the Logos, and the damage that he believe will arise from neglecting the pursue of that Logos) but not much in the way of an actual message or even a claim.

All that I can make of it is that he is in some sense a theist that appears to sincerely perceive atheism and even laicism as a serious mistake.

Ultimately, his appeal comes across as not only very arbitrary and unsupported, but also very oblivious, even in denial of its own arbitrariness.
 
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Altfish

Veteran Member
I particularly recommend the part between 2m27s and 3m, where he correctly points out that what he calls "god" is in reality the main motivational directive of each person.
This is what really annoys me about him.
He redefines all the important things. If you are talking about Atheism you shouldn't redefine God.
 
This is what really annoys me about him.
He redefines all the important things. If you are talking about Atheism you shouldn't redefine God.

He's really saying that this is, in some regards, the functional equivalent of god: the point from which all subsequent reasoning follows.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
He's really saying that this is, in some regards, the functional equivalent of god: the point from which all subsequent reasoning follows.
Which is precisely why he is shooting his own message into uselessness and worse.

Oh, you and @Altfish may want to recheck my previous post. I added considerably to it.
 
But that is not what God means to 99.95% of the population

Words exist as they are used in context, not in some normative dictionary sense. When football fans call their star player 'God' it doesn't mean the same as it does to 99.95% of the population either. Still makes sense though.

Let's call the axioms that underpin someone's entire belief system 'capstones' then. God is a capstone. Whatever you underpin your Secular Humanism with is a capstone.

The are subjective 'truths' that are functionally equivalent, and equally necessary to sustain a belief system.
 
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