The Peterson Principle

In an hour-long interview with Dennis Prager, Jordan Peterson nicely pinpointed the true roots of atheism. In doing so, being Jordan Peterson, he made it more complicated than it is. But he caught the essence.

Trying to explain why he always resists answering the question “Do you believe in God?” Peterson said:

"Who would have the audacity to claim that they believed in God if they examined the way they lived? Who would dare say that?"

To believe, "means that you live it out fully and that's an unbearable task..."

The problem is not that there is any real dispute over whether God exists. That’s a dodge. Peterson sees that. It is that acknowledging God’s existence imposes moral obligations that people hate to accept.

Where that logic fails is in supposing that, by pretending God does not exist, we escape these moral obligations. That is the typical atheist thinking, I have no doubt, and it makes no sense. It is, again, hysterical denial. It is like trying to cure your cancer by denying cancer exists. It is whistling past the graveyard.

Accepting the existence of God of course does not require never having sinned. Peterson, as he often does, has that upside down. Accepting the existence of God requires admitting that one has indeed sinned. One is not God.

That, for so many mortals, is the sticking point.

Apparently it is for Peterson as well. He is just more honest about it and with himself than others.

But simply by being this honest, he seems necessarily to be circling very close to this divine flame. During the Prager interview, he burst into tears. He expressed a very dark view of human nature without God. And he said:

“I think that Catholicism — that's as sane as people can get."

He followed this with observing that the Catholic doctrine is "eerie, complex and surreal." “Eerie” here is a giveaway. It means, in effect, something in it speaks to him. “Surreal” seems to be a Petersonism for “supernatural.”

In sum, JP says he is not a Catholic, and so long as he is not a Catholic, he is insane.

What does that suggest, and where does that leave him?