Last week I responded to an exchange between Jordan Peterson and a Lafayette College student,
and this week I’m going to continue where I left off, because the same student that
got Jordan to assert that everyone is religious (“Religious is what you act out”) also
got him to assert the likes of Harris and Dawkins haven’t addressed the religious
fundamental thinkers (“He doesn’t address the fundamental thinkers”).
This is Atheists Haven’t Addressed the Heavy Hitters – Debunked.
“As one final thing – so when you and say, Sam Harris, argue about religion you’re
arguing about fundamentally different things, it sounds like.
His conception of what is religious is very different from yours.”
“Yeah well he tends to think of religious thought the same way as a smart thirteen year
old atheist thinks about a fundamentalist Christian.
It’s like yeah, okay, that just… you’re just not getting to the heart of the matter.
You know, and I just finished reading all of Sam’s books in the last couple of weeks,
and as far as I’m concerned he doesn’t ever get to the bottom of the issue.
He doesn’t address the fundamental thinkers.
There’re some profound thinkers - Dostoevsky’s one.
Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Jung, it’s like they’re completely absent, and it’s the same with
Dawkins.
It’s completely absent.
All of that conceptualisation is completely absent from their corpus of works.
They don’t even have an understanding for the psychological utility of religion – and
it’s a big problem.”
“You know, you don’t get to be an atheist when the people you attack are fundament--
like, naive fundamentalists.”
Actually, you do… if you’re not convinced that a god exists then you’re an atheist,
and this is true whether you’ve addressed all of the heavy hitters or none whatsoever…
that is, unless Jordan’s redefining the word “atheist”: “What in your view would
a genuine atheist look like?”
He would be like Raskolnikov (Crime and Punishment) […] Raskolnikov built himself up to murder
in part by laying down a rational case but also by saying well there's no god, there's
no metaphysical reason that's stopping me from committing this act”.
And just like that I have another video to make…
So before I address Jordan’s assertion, here’s how he put it (in greater detail)
to Matt Dillahunty: “Well, it’s a complicated problem, and I don’t think we take it with
due seriousness.
I specifically don’t think that the celebrity atheists types (who I actually have a fair
bit of respect for by the way) take it with due seriousness.
So I don’t think that they take it with due seriousness from a biological perspective,
or a phenomenological perspective, or a literary perspective, or a metaphoric perspective…
that’ll do for starters […] Okay, so, so, one of the issues that I have, and you
can respond to this, is that the… the… let’s say the celebrity atheist types (cause
I actually like that phrase), um, they don’t seem to me to be contending with the real
issues.
They seem--” “What are the real issues?”
“Dostoevsky – he’s a real issue; Tolstoy – he’s a real issue; Carl Jung – twenty
books and maybe fifteen seminars, he’s a real issue; Mircea Eliade… like there are
some serious heavy hitters in the religious phenomenology domain and my sense so far (I
just finished reading all of Harris’ books for example) he doesn’t content with them
at all!
And it’s like for me that’s like being an evolutionary biologist and not being aware
of Darwin.
It’s actually a big problem!
It’s not something you can hand-wave away.”
So there's the claim – as far as Jordan's concerned, the “celebrity atheists” (such
as Harris and Dawkins) haven’t contended with any of the fundamental religious thinkers
(such as Jung and Nietzsche), and therefore, their perspective of religion (and specifically
Christianity) is that of a thirteen year old: “The Christianity that Dawkins criticises
is the Christianity that a smart thirteen year old boy objects to.”
So I’ve considered several different ways to approach this, and I’ve settled on two;
one in which I explain precisely why the prominent critics of religion (or celebrity atheists)
haven’t contended with Jordan’s heavy-hitters, and one in which I succinctly explain why
Jordan’s assertion is potentially fallacious.
So, to begin, have you ever heard (from anyone other than Jordan) of Saint Dostoevsky’s
Crime and Punishment Argument for God?
No?
What about Reverend Jung’s Archetypal Proof of the Existence of God?
Of course, the religious titles are irrelevant (and I’ve only included them for the purpose
of rhetoric), but my point is that throughout history (and indeed still today) the most
prominent “heavy-hitters” and arguments favoured by theists have been (and still are)
the likes of Aristotle (and his Unmoved Mover), Thomas Aquinas (and his Five Ways), Anselm
of Canterbury (and his Ontological Argument), Al-Ghazali (and his Kalam Cosmological Argument),
William Paley (and his Watchmaker Analogy), Blaise Pascal (and his Wager), and Immanuel
Kant (and his Transcendental Argument), and that is why the critics of religion haven’t
contended with Jordan’s “fundamental thinkers” – it’s because they’re not the fundamental
thinkers.
If theists heralded Archbishop Nietzsche’s God is Dead Argument as proof that their god
exists (and used it to claim jurisdiction over the experience others) then Jordan would
have a point – but they don’t, and so he doesn’t.
The vast majority (and I really do mean the vast majority) of Christians (let alone theists)
do not believe in Jordan’s god, and thus do not share his religious views, nor, most
relevantly, do they venerate the same thinkers.
However, with this said, if by “fundamental thinkers” Jordan means those who’ve thought
considerably about the psychological evolution of religion, then his heavy-hitters are arguably
among them, but criticising Harris and Dawkins for not addressing them is as far-removed
as criticising the critics of bloodletting for not addressing the psychological evolution
of humorism.
Most critics of religion don’t care about its psychological origin (just as most critics
of bloodletting don’t care about its psychological origin), what they care about is zealots claiming
jurisdiction over their experience: I hope I've made it clear that I'm perfectly happy
for people to have their toys, and to play with them at home, and to hug them to themselves,
and so on, and share them with other people who come round and play with the toys – that’s
absolutely fine.
They're not to make me play with these toys.
Okay?
I will not play with the toys […] enough with clerical and religious bullying and intimidation!
Is that finally clear?
Have I got that across?
Thank you!
So to reiterate, critics of religion have confronted (and utterly destroyed) the religious
heavy-hitters, but they haven’t sufficiently confronted the psychological evolution of
religion because the religious are not oppressing homosexuals, repressing women, or flying planes
into buildings because of their conviction in Jung and Dostoevsky, they're doing these
things because of their conviction in Anselm and Al-Ghazali.
Though, with this said, due precisely to Jordan bringing his interpretation of these thinkers
into the spotlight, many critics of religion have (and are right now) contending with them.
Sam Harris, for example, has personally told Jordan what issues he has with Jordan’s
interpretation of Jungian archetypes: “I will grant you that there are means that would
amount to a kind of internal costume party […] but again, the crucial bit is that in
doing that, I'm not making claims to knowledge about the ethereal existence of archetypes
- there's no, you know, Akashic record or collective unconscious...
I’m not making claims of that kind at all in order to find this way of thinking useful.”
Anyhow, moving on, the fallacy that Jordan’s committing is the No True Scotsman (which
is otherwise known as the Appeal to Purity fallacy).
In a nutshell, he’s hand-waving away thousands of years of damning criticism against Christianity
by redefining it in such a way as to only apply to his personal (and woefully undersubscribed)
interpretation.
Or to put it another way, he’s asserting “Atheists haven’t addressed the theological
fundamental thinkers” and when someone says “That’s not true.
From Aristotle to Anselm, atheists have addressed the fundamental thinkers” he’s retorting
“Yes, but they're not the real fundamental thinkers.”
They’re not true Scotsman!
Either this, or, again, he’s doing the equivalent of criticising critics of bloodletting for
not addressing the psychological evolution of humorism.
Anyhow, before wrapping up, I want to ask you all a favour – I have several more critiques
of Jordan’s assertions in the pipeline, but if any of you have an instance of him
making a fallacious assertion then please send it to me via email, Facebook or Twitter.
I appreciate that my channel has of late become quite Jordan-heavy, but since he’s arguably
the current most influential apologist, and since not nearly enough of my comrades are
exposing his flawed reasoning, I feel all the more inclined to do so.
As always, thank you kindly for the view, and an extra special thank you to my wonderful
patron and those of you who’ve donated via PayPal.
You are the bow from which the arrow of me is launched – hahaha.
But seriously, I couldn’t do this without you – thank you.
Until next time my fellow apes, until next time!