Debate Teacher Reacts: Sam Harris vs. Jordan Peterson

Wise Disciple

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But what's amazing to me is so like I have to do some work to figure out what point they think you made

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Zing Welcome back to another debate teacher reacts video my name is

00:26

Nate and let's go ahead and jump right in look y 'all voted this week and you told me that what you want to see in this video is

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Technically not a debate I looked at it for like a split second and I was like, this isn't a debate.

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This is a Gentleman's conversation of disagreement or something, which is actually a really good thing and maybe

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I'll say more on that later Well today we're looking at doctors Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris. This took place back in 2018 in Vancouver British Columbia.

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I've been there many times. I love that city Well, they sat down and discussed their differences on the issues of religion and its effects

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All right now because this is not a technical debate and There's no formal cross -examination to speak of as far as I can tell

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I may or may not declare a winner at the very end Okay, I think it really depends on the interlocutors and whether or not they really push their opponents hard enough

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All right, so we'll see what happens here okay, so so that's a that's a that's a lot of points of agreement, so I also believe that there is a catastrophe of Arbitrary moral injunction and that there's a catastrophe of moral relativism and that that that has to be dealt with and that there are genuine differences between the proper way of behaving morally and and and the improper way of behaving morally and I think that they are grounded in human human universals, even though there's a wide amount of variation

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So that that's a lot of points of agreement, right? So we know that there's two things we want to avoid we

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Conceptually speaking which is the moral relativism and this kind of moral absolutism that's grounded in an arbitrary

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Statement of facts that you identify with religious fundamentalism I would identify that with fundamentalism more generally not not with religious fundamentalism per se because I see it also happening happening in secular states, let's say like Nazi Germany or So it doesn't seem to be religious fundamentalism per se that's crucial to your argument.

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No, it's not I would say so that just to close the loop on that Okay, that's interesting Now, dr.

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Peterson is setting up. Dr. Harris here and dr. Hair note this. Dr Harris just agreed with the point that dr.

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Peterson is making it's it's not just a feature of religions Where we see this kind of fundamentalism going on.

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Okay. Now, let's see where this goes the only reason why I would focus on religion in particular there is that religion is the only language game wherein

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Fundamentalism and dogmatism it what dogmatism is not a pejorative concept the dogma is a good word in specifically within Catholicism and The notion that you must believe things on faith that is in the absence of compelling evidence

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It would otherwise cause a rational person to believe it that In a religious context is considered a feature not a bug elsewhere

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We recognize it to be a bug and that's that's why the the unique focus on religion Okay, so so so it all right so is it reasonable to assume that the associate we've already established at least in principle that there's an association between the

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Totalitarian regimes let's say and dog and dogmatism. Yeah, and the dogmatism that characterizes religious belief yeah, what do you think although at least in principle that the secularist totalitarian states and the

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Religious fundamentalist totalitarian states do differ in one important regard Which is that the religious types ground their axioms in God and the secular?

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Totalitarian types don't and so there's got to be something about totalitarianism per se that's independent of That's associated with religious belief in the manner that you just described, but that's not particularly associated with the belief in God There's something that makes them.

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That's a commonality between them and so do you have any sense of what that might be? well, I would

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I think One has to acknowledge that there's something uniquely pernicious at least

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Potentially about religious beliefs because they have the otherworldly variable the supernatural variable the

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You're gonna get everything you want after you die, so this life doesn't matter Issue that right that allows for a kind of misbehavior.

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That is especially okay Well, so that's not really answering the question, okay, so dr.

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Peterson identified a commonality of fundamentalism between some religious folks and Totalitarians I take it he means like Hitler and Stalin and Mao, you know, and it appears that dr

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Harris agrees that this commonality is not religious in and of itself. So if a problem with some religious folks is that they share a

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Dangerous characteristic with other non -religious folks Well, then that characteristic can't itself be religious since non -religious folks have it too.

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That's what dr. Peterson is saying and dr. Harris agreed Okay, and so the question is what is that characteristic then?

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It's a great question, but dr Harris has not provided an answer yet But let's see if he does seems that so that the claim would be that if you if you put forward

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Axiomatically your claim that God exists then you can use that claim to justify whatever Arbitrary atrocities your system might throw off.

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Look at the look at the genius fingers. Do you see the the genius finger? Look, look, dr. Peterson and dr.

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Harris are both extremely intelligent. Okay in their fields They are rock stars

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And so the the genius fingers you ever notice this when somebody's truly smart and they're like trying to communicate

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Their genius brain in a normal mouth and it just like the fingers come out because they need help with the genius fingers

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I love it. Yeah, I guess the only point I was making there is that not all dogmas are created equal Some dogmas are on their face more dangerous and more divisive, right?

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But what I'm curious about specifically is because it seems to me that the dogmas of the USSR and the dogmas of Nazi Germany Were as pernicious as any religious dog dogmas and and they may also share important features with pernicious religious

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But it isn't clear to me from your perspective what those commonalities would be well, so I Mean in some ways you are recapitulating an argument

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I've made and this is an argument that I would make against you were you to claim as you've had you have elsewhere that that Atheism is responsible for the greatest atrocities of the 20th century the idea that Stalinism and Nazism and fascism were expressions of atheism

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Simply doesn't make any sense. I mean in the case of fascism and Nazism It doesn't make any sense because the fascists and the

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Nazis by and large were not even atheists I mean Hitler wasn't an atheist and he was talking about Executing a divine plan and he got lots of support from the churches and the

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Vatican did nothing to stop him and fascism as you Know aye -aye -aye, you know, I mean you could make the argument that Hitler was not a typical atheist

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But to imply that he was religious is just naive I mean any student of history can see that Hitler was not religious if you read up on his life and the things that he

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Said I mean, especially his private conversations with his inner circle alone You'll see that he hated religions and he particularly thought

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Christianity was an invention of sick minds and you know, completely absurd I mean he was at the end of the day an

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Influential politician and that's where a lot of folks get confused Because a 10 -minute search on Google doesn't give you that full picture of Hitler.

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Maybe dr Harris will get into this but these arguments about totalitarians actually being religious trades on an assumption that religious

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Ideals cause folks to become totalitarian. And so if totalitarians act like totalitarians

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Well, it's because they got it from those religious folks, right? But that in itself is a claim and if that's all you got in this conversation, it'll only be assumed without justification

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Somebody needs to challenge. Dr. Harris on this. Well, let's see what happens. No Co -existed quite happily with Catholicism in Croatia and Portugal and Spain and Italy so but even in the case of Stalin what was so wrong with that situation was

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Were all of the ways in which it's so resembled a religion. You had a personality cult you had dogmatism that held sway to a point where Apostasy and blasphemy were killing offenses, you know,

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I mean the people who who didn't tow the line were eradicated and You know, so to take a more modern example

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North Korea is a religious cult it just doesn't happen to be a one that is focused on the next life or You know supernatural claims.

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So what would magic right? So there it is Okay, all the totalitarian regimes of the world, even though many have said they hate religion

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Many have said they think it's the opiate of the masses, right? They're they're actually religious why well because they act religious

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Okay, but now we have two alternative observations here. Dr. Harris on the one hand implies that totalitarianism comes from religions and dr

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Peterson says well there is a human characteristic that both religious and non -religious folks share that caused them to be

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Totalitarian but this characteristic is not in itself Religious now, this is where the clash lies.

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Hopefully this gets hashed out Okay, so what would be the defining characteristics of a religious totalitarian movement that would make it different from a non -religious totalitarian movement?

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Well, it's just because there's aspects that are similar. Yeah, they may either very similar but the problem is dogmatism the overarching problem is believing things strongly on bad evidence and Be and the reason why dogmatism is so Dangerous is that it is

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It doesn't allow us to revise our bad ideas in real time through conversation. It is dogmas have to be enforced by Force or the threat of force because the moment someone has a better idea

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You have to shut it down in order to preserve your dogma. Okay? Okay, so so the commonality seems to be something like claims of absolute truth at some level that can't be that you're no longer

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Allowed to discuss Yeah, okay And so, okay So that's another point of agreement then I would say because part of the reason that I've been let's say a free speech advocate

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Although I don't think that's the right way of thinking about it Just because I think of free discourse like the discourse that we're engaged in as the mechanism that corrects totalitarian excess or dogmatic excess and so I also think that systems of Governance that are laying themselves out properly have to evaluate have to elevate the process by which

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Dogmatic errors are corrected over the dogmas themselves Which is why I think the Americans are right say with regard to their

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First Amendment is the process of free speech is the process By which dogmatic errors are rectified and so it has to be put at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of values

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Yeah, I think you and I totally agree about the primacy of free speech. Okay. Okay good.

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Okay, so that's another fine. Yeah Okay, so then we could think there's there's one point that we should just lock in our games here it sounds like what you're saying is that the reason to fear

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Religious dogma is really on the dogma side and not the religion side which at least leaves open the possibility

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That something could exist over on the religion side that doesn't have that characteristic right that often they travel in Tandem, but that the thing to fear is not the religious belief.

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It is the dogmatic nature of the way it is The other way to say that is the only thing that's wrong with religion is the dogmatism

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If you get rid of the dog, I've got no problem with the buildings and the music and the and the paintings and wait

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Wait, no that way to win it. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. That's not a trivial. That's not a trivial point

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And it's right. So it sounds like for dr. Harris the problem with religion is dogmatism. Okay, but here's the question

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What does he mean by dogmatism? What is he talking about are we all just gonna talk around this term

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I've heard this term several times now in this conversation, but nobody has asked for a definition. What does dr.

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Harris mean by it? You know, how do we know that when I'm talking about dogmatism you mean the same thing?

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Right if what we mean by dogmatism is expressing certain beliefs arrogantly and not allowing challenge or discussion about these beliefs

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Then you'll find a lot of religious folks saying well, that's not what we do Religions contain certain dogmas, but holding to and expressing certain religious dogmas is not dogmatism

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Okay, that's like that's like saying science is scientism They're not the same thing but more than that holding to and expressing certain religious dogmas is not totalitarian

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So what dr. Harris still needs to show is the road from holding to and expressing certain dogmas to totalitarianism

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And he hasn't done that yet. It looks like he's just assuming that it always happens Now here's the thing

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I can give you one clear example right now of expressing certain dogmas without totalitarianism

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Jesus Christ, you don't have to be a believer Just look at the history Jesus claimed to be

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God and he allowed those who disagreed with him to kill him for it and he taught his followers to Have the same attitude as him, which means if his followers are following him wrong that leads to Totalitarianism, right?

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See this is what needs to be fleshed out in discussion I've been really interested in the commission of atrocity in the service of belief and It's tempting to pin that say on on Dogma and then to associate that with religious dogma.

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I think that's all tempting but the fact that chimps do it Shows that it can't be a consequence of something like religious belief unless you're willing to say that the reason that chimps commit atrocity in the service of their

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Troop and their territory is because chimps are religious and so they're not religious and they don't really hold a secular

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Totalitarian viewpoint, but they act out they still act out the the atrocity element that's characteristic of human behavior

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And so to me that makes the problem deeper than one of mere Let's say surface statements surface statements.

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Yeah So here's dr. Peterson fleshing out his argument, right?

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Okay, so the Totalitarian bent that we see as a feature of societies is based not on ideology, but on our creatureliness you know, it's a base nature that expresses itself that we must overcome in other words and Because of that it expresses itself in both religious and non -religious context

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So there's this argument and he's provided evidence for this with his observations about chimps. Okay, so let's see how dr.

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Harris responds the problem of primate Aggression which we've inherited along with the chimps is deeper or at least different than the problem of religious violence or totalitarian

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Political structures that get the worst out of people So I mean we have we have these primate capacities that we have to correct for and we're busily trying to correct for almost everything that we've been evolved to do and We're not

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You know, we don't like the state of nature for good reason and virtually everything that's good about human life is born of our

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I would argue culture based and and you know, highly intelligent and necessary effort to To mitigate what is in fact natural for us and naturally there's nothing more natural than tribal violence

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Which of the sort that you're describing in terms? Okay, so right so but wait a second. Okay, so this is where Formal cross -examination would really help.

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Okay, dr. Harris. Do you now agree with? Dr. Peterson's alternative explanation right because you're speaking as if you do you you just said that our creaturely tendencies are deeper than Religion.

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So for the record, do you agree or disagree with? Dr Peterson's position because if you agree then you have to recant your own position

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I mean, that's how this works and what most worries me about religion. I would say that obviously religion can channel these

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Primate urges in unhappy ways so you can get tribal violence He gets amplified by religious dogmatism and that should trouble everyone, but it's not unique to religion

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It's also nationalism and it's racism and it's all other kinds of dogmatism but What most worries me are those cases where?

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clearly good people Who are not necessarily captured by? tribalism per se

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Are doing the unthinkable? Based surely on religious

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Doctrines that they believe wholeheartedly with without good evidence So you have the person who joins

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Isis who wasn't even Muslim before they converted, you know 16 months ago and they go all the way down the rabbit hole to the the most doctrinaire most committed most

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Uncompromising view of just how you have to live in this world if you're gonna be Muslim and they join

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Isis Based on the idea that salvation only goes one way and the dying and defense of the one true faith is

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The best thing that can happen to you. There's no question that there are individuals who have made that journey in fact, there are individuals by the thousands who have made that journey and There are far more benign versions of that.

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There are people who just waste their lives I would argue converting to whatever the belief system is and just wasting a lot of time worrying about hell or worrying about the fact that their

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Child is gay and the you know, the creator of the universe doesn't approve of that What's and so they're all kinds of suffering that strike me as truly unnecessary born not of again ape -like urges but ideas that any rational person

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Would if believed would would follow to that that same terminus I mean the thing is if you buy if you buy the fact again to take

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Islam as as a current example if you buy The claim that the

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Quran is the perfect word of the creator of the universe never to be superseded by anything Humanity does now or a thousand years from now that commits a

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Rational per that then then the exercise of human reason is bounded by this. I would argue pathological frame

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Which leads to certain outcomes that should really worry us So, yeah, this was a verbose exercise in not answering the primary challenge

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Okay, and what helps dr. Harris is ethos here because ethos pathos and logos matters in Discussions debates all that stuff, right?

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What helps his ethos here is his calm demeanor and his erudite use of language

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Okay, but the bottom line is he is not disagreeing with dr. Peterson at all. It's as if dr.

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Peterson is saying well You know, maybe the explanation for all home appliances working is that electricity is running throughout the home, right?

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And then Sam Harris says well, I see that and I don't dispute that but what bothers me is this one particular outlet in the corner

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Over here, you know where the electricity is coming out of that's the real Explanation that's not an explanation.

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That's not an answer to the primary issue of Electricity running into all the appliances and this guy just spent three minutes going on and on About not answering the primary challenge

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So you tell two stories you tell a story about someone who has an absolutely terrible life

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They're in a in a in a jungle where nature is trying to kill them all the time And well, they're trying to be killed by nature while nature is trying to kill them all the time

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Horrible barbaric thugs are making their life miserable in every possible way. Okay, so that's one

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Pole, let's say and then another pool you identify and these are hypotheticals.

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So I guess they're fictions That's one way of thinking about it, even though they're extracted from real situations. They're they're they're meta fictions.

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They're meta truths That's another way of thinking about it. You contrast a good life And you know That's a life where the person has enough to eat and enough shelter and you know

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They have the things that you would expect people to want you say this is a bad life and you say this is a good

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Life and so and then you say that's and then you make a side move Which I would say is that that's an objectively verifiable fact

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I would say I don't think it is an objectively verifiable fact I think it's a fundamental moral claim and I think that's where you put your stake in the ground

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Right, I would say when I read that I thought well, if you take your jungle story which you've extracted from a bunch of horrors and compiled and you take your positive story, which you've extracted from a bunch of horrors or a bunch of Quasi utopias, let's say and compiled you're two -thirds of the way to a landscape of hell in heaven

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Right. Well, so then why not continue the abstraction and say look what we're really trying to avoid here is hell

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Oh, yeah, we're really trying to move towards this heaven. Yeah, but oh, yeah But well, no, I don't do that. You're in a religious landscape.

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Nope that's a very complex and Verbose way of making the claim that dr.

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Harris is essentially that you know What he's doing with his book the moral landscape is he's guilty of doing the same thing that a religious person does

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Okay, he's trying to describe morality without God or religion But he's sometimes utilizing the same format as the

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Bible to do so and so he's sometimes using the same terms He's he's telling stories and he's talking about good and evil.

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So really he's doing the same thing as a Christian I mean, that's a very weird thing to say and and maybe dr.

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Peterson is setting up. Dr. Harris for something later But it seems to me that this is easily dealt with You know in terms of a response

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I mean just because two teachers use illustrations and shared terminology when they teach doesn't mean they're teaching the same content

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I mean you could say that dr. Peterson is using terminology that I would use But not with the same definitions that I'm using and all dr.

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Harris has to do is point out that he's well He's simply using a methodology in language to communicate because it's effective because that's what's expected in today's culture

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Not because somebody else who said something antithetical to him also used the same methodology and language.

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I Feel like if dr. Peterson had a point to make he stopped short of making it it's very interesting because like We're talking about this at dinner we're talking about this at dinner and how the the overlap or lack of overlap between our audiences and so like I just heard from your audience there and You might have heard from the odd convert but but what's amazing to me is so like I Have to do some work to figure out what point they think you made

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Zing and then I said if you're gonna produce a fiction why not go right to the end? Okay, so did produce a fiction it's

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You you can tell stories by way of communicating certain ideas I mean, that's obviously

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I'm not saying stories aren't right credibly powerful and useful and Inevitable, right?

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It's like we you wait. I think you are you know I'm not saying you might not be saying that they're that they're they're not they're not inevitable

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But you are debating their utility and power because you don't you said that you don't need the story as an intermediate

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So now we have a few doors open. Well, I don't know again was the

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I think the point is just falling flat You know, dr. Harris isn't using illustrations that trade on familiar categories to a religious person

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He's using illustrations and shared terminology to communicate an anti -religious message, which by the way agree or disagree with dr

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Harris, but he is a good writer I don't know if you like if you go back and read his books like he's a great communicator and he's doing what

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I think He has a podcast too or something, but he's doing what I would do if I wanted to be effective today. He's drawing from Culturally shared references and language and using it to make his own unique point and there's nothing wrong with that So, I don't know plus two.

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Here's the other thing like I'm not familiar with dr. Peterson enough, but it sounds like He views the

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Bible as merely stories Okay So in this sense he breaks from traditional Christians who understand the

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Bible to be more than a mere narrative that the Bible is actually an historical record of God interacting with humanity and it's just a series of Stories that are communicating something this whole branch of conversation is just a weird use of time

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I would not have gone down this road this route at all I'd be seeking to poke holes in the greater arguments that dr

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Harris makes by asking the right leading questions, you know Which means centering on those greater contentions and then fleshing that out and trying to find true clash and cross -exam

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That's what I would be doing. This is what happens in the moral landscape I think tell me how to tell me why I'm wrong because I'm really trying to understand it

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See, I think you dealt with GE Moore's problem of infinite regress By by staking a moral proposition and your moral proposition was look.

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Here's a way things can be horrible and Here's the way things can be good Can we accept that this is horrible and this is good and that we should move towards good and if the answer is yes

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We can accept that then we can proceed and maybe we can even proceed with extracting values from facts

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But we have to accept that a priori presupposition first Yeah, and you insist that we have to accept it because it's objectively true and I don't think that's correct

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So dr. Peterson is pointing out that in order for dr. Harris to make his arguments in his book the moral landscape which is essentially a materialist explanation for objective morality

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And that explanation is grounded in the well -being of humanity Ultimately in order to do this.

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Dr. Harris has to begin with an assumption that well -being is morally good and dr

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Peterson is right, even if you redefine morality to mean something more like functional flourishing, you know or survivability whatever promotes physical well -being and discourages harm if you do that and You take seriously the notion that God does not exist

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Which means the universe is cold and indifferent to life, which is what Richard Dawkins says Well, then you still have to begin with a smuggled -in morality that physical well -being is morally good

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And so therefore whatever harms that is bad or else you have no moral obligation

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There is no responsibility for humanity to obey if you don't smuggle in that moral good and that moral ought

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Then you are left with the true diagnosis of human existence with no God that we are here and there is no ultimate rhyme or reason

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To it whether we live or die These are all just facts of history and the universe is indifferent to it all and that's not me saying that I'm paraphrasing the famous Atheists of our time and dr.

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Peterson is right to push back on this It's a smuggled -in morality if we agree that there is some way in which religious texts carry some kind of Value because they allow people to figure out how to navigate their lives in ways that might reduce

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Suffering reduce the complexity of the choices that they have to make presumably You will agree that that would be consistent with an evolutionary interpretation that the fact that the stories themselves

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Are yes functional would provide an advantage to those who were deploying them.

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Yes, so here's the problem Isn't it then also true that those stories are responsive to past environments

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And so the claim that these things might be timeless would be suspect and in fact you would expect a spectrum of Durability some stories would be right in a brief moment and yes, okay all that's true all that's true so far so good

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Well so far so good. This is this is actually I think quite excellent then because what we have is a

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Recognition that there is something to these belief systems that has to do with practical realities in the past and we also have an acknowledgement that we cannot trust in these things based on simple faith because even if they are can be

28:41

Certain to have worked at some point in the past. We don't know what their relevance is to the present, right?

28:49

No Okay, so this question is interesting Because it takes a small but important leap

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All right, and this leap is a mistake if stories that happen in time are Situational and therefore they are not timeless that doesn't mean that what follows from that is that there are no timeless truths embedded in the

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Temporal historical stories. So for example, if I told you a story about you know the time I was late to school

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Well, I went to school in the 80s and early 90s. All right, so my story about how school worked and The particular clothes

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I was wearing at the time and the specific car that took me to school and all that It's not gonna hold up 50 years from now

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But the fact that being late has consequences is a timeless idea that will hold up 50 years from now

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Time waits for no man that was the old saying back in the day, right and that's true now Just as much as it was 2 ,000 years ago and it'll still be true in the future

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So to point out that the historical situations change over time It doesn't undercut the timelessness of the divine revelation that is expressed within them.

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That's that's two things about that That's exactly why we're having this discussion and You see what happens in the most profound of such texts is the idea that the process by which your knowledge is updated has to occupy a position in the hierarchy of values that Supersedes your reliance on dogma is the fundamental claim

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That's why for example in Christianity The notion is is that the word is the highest of values and that's the embodied word

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And that's the thing that mediates between order and chaos and everything else has to be subject to that and I would say that's not a claim

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That's unique to Christianity. So for example, you know, I think I think just another thought about what? Dr.

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Weinstein said just a moment ago, you know Just just because these timeless revelational truths existed and worked in the past That means we have no way of knowing how they work today.

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I mean, that's false. That's what Christians call hermeneutics You know the idea that there are revelational truths that are universal across time and they are expressed

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Situationally in history in order to glean how these truths apply to the 21st century or whatever time period we're in is

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Exactly what pastors theologians and Christians do all the time every day. It's called hermeneutics.

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You say you believe in God You have been no, I say I act as if he exists you say what

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I say I act as if he exists, which is a much more precise claim.

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Okay, so so then what what but in this case what? But So you act as though God exists.

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Yeah, and in addition I've heard you say that I act as though God exists that I'm I can't really

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So far it's yeah We'll see that the night is young So in that sense,

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I'm not really an atheist I've heard you say this so that Some of you is well If I were really an atheist,

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I would be far more poorly behaved than in fact I am right. I would be like Raskolnikov committing murders and and assuming there was nothing wrong with it more

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It would be more likely. Yes. Yeah. Okay, so So that's a big distinction What was that it's a big distinction well

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Raskolnikov was I mean as is probably Up there as wicked as you get that you would is very different than it would be more likely taking the safety off the gun

32:27

It's not the same thing as shooting it, right? Yeah, the temptations laid open to Raskolnikov would be more at hand

32:33

Okay, just as they were to him. So What in that so in what sense do you mean?

32:41

What is the God that you act as though? He she it exists and what is the gut what what is the

32:50

God shaped thing? I must have in my life to prevent me from being a quote real atheist.

32:56

Well, okay Wow What a missed opportunity when you say what is this

33:02

God you're referring to and what is this God shaped hole that you think? I have that is a question without nearly as much teeth as you know can you unpack your argument that I'm not really an atheist that I would be more like Raskolnikov if I were a true atheist by the way,

33:17

Raskolnikov in crime and punishment is a brutal killer a murderer and a thief so God is how we imaginatively and collectively represent the existence and action of consciousness across time as The most real aspects of existence manifest themselves across the longest of time frames

33:35

But are not necessarily apprehensible as objects in the here and now so what that means in some sense

33:40

Is that you have conceptions of reality built into your biological and metaphysical structure that a consequence of?

33:47

processes of evolution that that occurred over unbelievably Vast expanses of time and so that's that's something that operates across tremendous

33:55

Expanses of time and it plays a role in the selection for survival itself, which makes it a fundamental reality

34:01

Jordan if I just cut in here with one question Stop with that for now what?

34:08

So this is Observation maybe for another video. Okay, but again,

34:14

I'm not very familiar with Jordan Peterson. It's very interesting to hear him speak about God He speaks about God very much.

34:23

So using foundational archetypes and categories That's not what Christians do

34:29

Christians speak about God more anthropomorphically, you know, I mean

34:35

Christians recognize the grounding of God as the foundation for transcending categories, so to speak but God goes beyond these things and is expressed personally as well.

34:46

Dr. Peterson doesn't talk about God in that way At least not in this conversation So, I don't know what you can do with that observation what you will

34:55

Maybe somebody in the comments can help me better understand why that is the case but anyway, so I was not hearing in that list of attributes a

35:03

God who could care if anyone masturbated I Was not hearing a

35:10

God who depends on what else is stopping you from doing Sam Well, I'm sorry, but I miss that.

35:16

Well, I said it depends on what else it's stopping you from doing Well, okay, so it's

35:24

It's important to do something other than masturbate. Yes Yes, which is which which actually constitutes a problem which is which is harder than it sounds

35:35

I I'm not hearing a God a personal

35:42

God there. It is who can Possibly hear anyone's prayers much less answer them.

35:48

So so and and good for dr. Harris he's noticing what I just noticed and So perhaps dr.

35:55

Peterson has set himself up for some defeaters if he somehow Invalidates the personal aspect of the

36:02

God of the Bible. Okay, but I mean, let's see how this plays out I'm wondering what percentage of religious people who would say?

36:09

Oh, yeah, I believe in God and it's the most important thing in my life What percentage of those religious people do you think have in mind a

36:17

God of the sort you just described? I don't know Sam It's a good question because when I go talk to people

36:22

When I when I talk to people online and use exactly this terminology millions of people listen

36:27

So it's not so obvious which what percentage of people see it this way It's maybe that they have the intuitions, but they haven't been articulated

36:34

Well, I mean this is this is the problem. This is what worries me about this. So I mean you you you could do the same thing with The idea of ghosts, right?

36:48

So people traditionally have believed in ghosts It's a it's an archetype. You might say the ghost survival of death is certainly an archetype so and we know what most people most of the time mean when they say they believe in ghosts and I say

37:03

I don't believe in ghosts and you say no. No you you do believe in ghosts ghosts are your relationship to the unseen

37:12

That's a ghost So you have a new definition of ghosts that you're putting in the place provided which

37:18

I have to say Well, of course, I have a relationship to the unseen. So yeah, I guess I do believe in ghosts, you know, you win that argument but that Simply isn't what most people mean by a ghost most people mean use that simplified argument about my

37:37

Conception of ghosts as an analogy for the propositions that I just put for this is what I see you do I mean, maybe you have more to say on the topic of God, but this is what

37:44

I hear you doing with God You have defined the God that most people believe in and we know this is the

37:51

God that most people I was asked what God I believed in yes. No, I'm asking you what percentage? Yes, but you you by shifting the definition you have robbed the the noun the traditional noun of its

38:05

Traditional meaning and you're giving you're imparting to people Wait a second.

38:11

Wait a second. I'm not so what do you mean by traditional meaning? Look, it's one of the one of the elemental claims in the

38:18

Old Testament Is that you're not even supposed to utter the name of God because by defining it too tightly you lose its essence

38:24

And so let's not be talking about what the classical definition of God is here. Okay, it's a historical non -starter

38:30

Okay, there's plenty of religions. Can I check in with the audience? There is an element here where they're both, right?

38:36

I mean, obviously what dr. Harris is trying to do is he's trying to pinpoint a more what everybody would understand to mean

38:43

God Even though this line of questioning was probably not the way you should have gone at all in the first place in that sense

38:49

Dr. Peterson is not really helping matters with his own specific definition of God But what dr.

38:54

Harris doesn't understand is that this is kind of like the spaghetti monster problem, right? Like it's a category error to assume, you know that God is some kind of floating teapot in the universe

39:06

And so therefore if there's no evidence of this floating teapot in the universe We can safely say that there is no God the problem with that is that God is the ground of reality

39:14

He's the ground of being and so when you make the Transcendental Argument like the cosmological argument that is a valid argument to make because there must be some

39:25

Explanation that is the ground of existence in the first place. That's what the cosmological argument seeks to identify

39:31

And so in that sense, dr. Peterson is corrected to sort of zoom out and show that God is greater than you know

39:38

Just simply talking about his anthropomorphic facets. Let me say

39:43

Sam I Do not believe in a supernatural God, but the

39:49

God that I heard Jordan just described. I Do not have any difficulty understanding why he might care if you masturbate and I also don't have any trouble

40:00

Figuring out how he might answer prayers Well, well tell me more then well

40:08

I I can tell you I can tell you I can tell you how a prayer might be Here's the problem with this conversation because now it's just way off the rails, you know what

40:17

I mean? Like dr. Harris wants to pinpoint some flaws and errors and dr. Peterson's view

40:24

I mean, even though this is a gentleman's conversation That's ultimately what's going on here. And so the first problem with all this is he's not asking direct questions to get dr

40:34

Peterson to justify his claims. He's going the long way around and wasting a lot of time The other problem is dr

40:40

Peterson is also taking the long way around in his response and from my vantage point is probably Partly because maybe he doesn't want to be intellectually pinned by dr.

40:49

Harris This is why you should ask way more direct questions in cross -examination

40:54

You know you you made this claim now justify it you made that claim. Do you have any evidence for it?

41:01

How do you hold to your argument over here when this evidence over here appears to undercut that? That's more like what you know cross -examination and debate should be but on top of everything else

41:12

I don't think dr. Harris has thought about this if God exists Then he is the archetypes and categories that dr.

41:20

Peterson says he is well, maybe not all of them So it's not that dr.

41:25

Peterson is changing the subject. He's He's just answering a different question that dr Harris is not asking and that's why you need to be way more direct about your questions

41:33

Especially when it comes to these kinds of conversations Okay You need to make your opponent clearly identify their claims and reasons to support them in order to then attack these

41:42

Components for everyone to see wow, this is hard I I would say that there there is no clear winner here because at the end of the day

41:51

I don't think the goal was to win in this conversation, even though there are disagreements and some of those disagreements were very

41:58

Vociferous the goal was to fully communicate two different viewpoints while seeking to come to agreement Okay, that was stated at the beginning of this conversation, that's not the goal of a debate the goal of a debate is clash

42:09

Okay, the goal of the debate is to best your interlocutor and defeat their contentions

42:15

All right That's why I would argue that you need to go back and watch this conversation again and again and again

42:21

Okay, because this is what your conversation should look like your conversations on the street should not look like formal debates

42:28

All right, you need to go back and take notice particularly of how dr. Peterson Frames of the discussion right like in the first few minutes.

42:36

He's trying to affirm. Dr Harris as much as he possibly can he tries to identify points of agreement to even restate dr

42:43

Harris's own contentions in such a careful manner that dr Harris agrees and he does agree and then he asks questions about areas of disagreement why to come to an agreement

42:54

All right. This is first date evangelism I mean if you haven't taken a look at my signature method of communicating the

43:00

Christian faith It comes directly from the Bible comes directly from the rules of formal debate

43:06

It comes from the proper order of persuasion. You have to check out that series. It trades on exactly what dr

43:11

Peterson did in this video. Well, thanks very much for watching and subscribing as always if you have a particular apologetics debate that you want me to Take a look at and react to definitely let me know

43:22

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43:30

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