Jordan Peterson on God

 

I am not a fan of Jordan Peterson. I respect his political stands, but as a thinker I find him incoherent.

Whenever he makes a statement, he tags on the phrase “in a sense.” And then does not explain further. Without defining the sense in which he means the statement, this just makes everything both irrefutable and trivial. There is a sense, after all, in which the earth is flat, and the moon is made of green cheese. It breaks Aristotle’s Law of Non-Contradiction: either a thing is so, or it is not so. Since this is the foundation of all logical thought, no conclusions can now be drawn. All we know is what Peterson, personally, is feeling. This is not of any intrinsic interest, unless Peterson is otherwise special in some way. Maybe you feel the same, maybe you don’t.

I fear this might even be the kernel of some bizarre personality cult, like the Nazi leadership principle. It makes Peterson the centre of the universe.

As for his “Twelve Rules for Life,” to be fair, I have not been inspired to read it. But it seems obvious to me that he has no authority to lay down rules for life. No doubt he claims it is based on his experience with patients in clinical psychology. But any such clinical evidence is necessarily third hand, involves far too small a sample to be meaningful, and too may possible variables to draw any conclusions. All we are really getting, in Peterson’s case or in that of any other clinical psychologist, is his personal opinions and the conclusions he has drawn from his personal experience. This necessarily being so, on what grounds can we value his perspective on life over that of the next man we meet on a street corner?

More disturbingly, what sort of personality feels justified in setting down general rules for life based on their own experience? He might be leading anyone down a primrose path, and must know this.

He is, in other words, necessarily a narcissist. And the eagerness with which so many follow his commentary on every conceivable issue is an illustration of how co-dependency works. Too many want someone else to think for them.

Consider now his responses to the question whether he believes in God.

He asks, “Does saying I believe in God mean that I believe in God?” One might lie, but this is true of any response to any legitimate question. Why raise some special difficulty here? He is doing exactly what he insists he is not doing, and transparently: he is dodging the question. And he thinks he insulated himself from the charge simply be denying he is doing it. A typical narcissistic stance. “I’m not lying.”

The underlying problem is that Peterson thinks that if he admits God exists, this implies moral obligations. He says, incoherently, “what you believe is what you act out.” It is not. These are two separate issues. But it implies the incoherent thought that, so long as he does not consent to God’s existence, he can avoid these obligations.

This is a childlike error, like the baby playing peekaboo who thinks you cannot see him if he closes his eyes. If God exists, you cannot escape the implications by telling yourself he does not. Any more than you can fly by telling yourself that gravity does not exist.

Nevertheless, this is just how denial works. It is how narcissism works, and why you cannot ever get through to them, even with obvious facts and truths. They will not accept what they find it inconvenient to believe.

Peterson is not the man to listen to.