#1 UNBELIEVABLE Debate on God | Jordan Peterson vs. Susan Blackmore

Yes, those are tragedies going on in the world. My response is, nothing matters. It's all empty and meaningless. This is how the world is. Get used to it. Get on with it, girl.

The first part of that is nihilistic and the second part isn't. So how do you reconcile those two things? Why get on with it, girl?

Why does she seek to put a positive spin on tragedies taking place all around her? Isn't Blackmore stealing from Christianity in order to make sense of tragedy? If you affirm that life is meaningless and then you turn around and act as if it does matter what you do, aren't you choosing a form of delusion?

What is the number one unbelievable debate on God? As it turns out, it happens to be a debate with almost 4 million views as of this recording between Jordan Peterson and Susan Blackmore. The topic centers on whether we need God to make sense of life.

They sat down together with Justin Brierley and hashed it out. As always, we're going to look at who is making the better arguments and who holds the better position. And I'm also just curious as to why this is the most viewed debate on unbelievable.

Maybe you can help me with that. But before we go any further, welcome to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian you were meant to.

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Before I jumped into this ministry 100%, I was a pastor and a debate teacher, and it is from that unique background that I make these videos. Make sure to like, sub, and share this video around, but only if you find it helpful to.

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All right, let's get right into it.

Can you describe religion as a virus of the mind in terms of its memetic

That was Richard's term, but yes, okay, yeah.

Is that a kind of view you would still stand by today?

Yes, but you've got to be careful about what you mean by a virus. I mean, I think if, I often say in lectures, imagine a continuum between what you mean as being a virus of the mind. It's really bad. You know, it's like, like a flu virus or AIDS or something.

Usually we think of a virus in negative terms.

Yes, and they aren't always. So imagine that you think, you know, religion is utterly bad, or you think religion's utterly wonderful and utterly good, and all in between, I think Richard is way down there, and I'm somewhere here.

I think by and large, on balance, the world would be a better place without any religions, but the religions would not thrive if they didn't have within them things which are positive. I mean, we know at a personal level, at a society level, the worst societies are more religious.

At a personal level, there's evidence that people are happier and they have better social connections and so on if they're religious. So I don't think we would be stuck with these horrible memes if it weren't for the fact that they also have some good qualities.

This all makes sense if, and that's a capital I, capital F, right? If there is no God and all religions are false. You have to begin with these particular assumptions first in order to then posit that religions are a mind virus.

And so, you know, anyone looking to rebut this kind of claim coming from Blackmore really should seek to investigate those assumptions.

What do you make of the whole meme theory and the fact that Sue does the ultimate?

I think it's a shallow derivation of the idea of archetype, and that Dawkins would do well to read some Jung. In fact, if he thought farther and wasn't as blinded by his a priori stance about religion, he would have found that the deeper explanation of meme is in fact archetype.

So Peterson has, he's decided to focus on a different angle to Blackmore's claim. But notice he does acknowledge what I just said a moment ago, which is that this claim first begins with some a priori assumptions about religions.

While this is not a formal debate by any stretch, you know, just a much better challenge can be offered by pressing those particular assumptions of Blackmore. Let's see if Peterson does that. Let's see what happens.

I disagree. I mean...

Can you just first of all explain archetype for those who are not perhaps familiar with that particular psychological...

Well an archetype is partly a pattern of behavior that's grounded in biology. So it's the behavior itself. So you could think about that as both the instinct and the manifestation of that instinct. But it's also the representation of that pattern.

So part of what's coded in our mythological stories, for example, are images of typical patterns of behavior. And those are the typical patterns of behavior that make us human.

Which by the way, that right there, what he said, encapsulates the unique interpretive approach that Jordan Peterson takes with the Bible. If you've seen Peterson talk about the Bible and wondered why he focuses so much on the things that he does, why, for example, he comes so close to Christian doctrine and theology, and then it's almost like he slams on the brakes, you know, before reaching the inevitable conclusion that every Christian does, right?

That God is a real being. Jesus is God in human flesh. He actually died and actually rose again on the third day for our sins. You know, the traditional teaching of the church. This is why he does that.

It's because he's primarily concerned with ancient archetypes and how it shapes and informs human behavior.

I think you're being unfair to memes. I would make this response here about the difference between memes and archetypes. So archetypes are there whether we have memes or not. All of that history of evolution is there.

So we have, you know, ideas about sex differences or ideas about dominance is a very good example that don't require memes. They can then become memes. And a meme by definition, as Dawkins started it out, is that which is imitated or that which is copied from person to person.

So the idea of dominance hierarchies can be a meme and all the ideas we build on top of that as long as we pass it from person to person.

Now, this is a much longer conversation, but what Blackmore is talking about is Richard Dawkins claim that the concept of religion is a meme. And as she already said, a meme is an idea or a behavior that is passed on from person to person.

A meme in that sense can just spread to whole societies and cultures, whether it's based on anything rooted in fact, doesn't matter. That's not the point. The point is that a meme spreads. That's why she uses the word virus.

And it continues to spread through imitation and cultural reinforcement, right? So Peterson is saying, no, wait, hold on a second. Memes are not an adequate explanation for religion. There's something deeper going on with us.

And that's the archetypes within which we understand our own selves. An archetype simply refers to an original pattern that it deeply resonates with people across time and culture. And obviously because, you know, we see archetypes appear over and over again, right?

A hero and the hero's journey is an archetype, you know, good versus evil is an archetype. I used to go over these things a lot as a literature teacher in the classroom, but the difference between like a meme and an archetype, it's like the difference between a copy of a document and the original document.

And I think the point here, or at least I hope this is going to get explored, is let's talk about the true nature of religion. Is religion simply a meme as Blackmore and Dawkins suggests? Or is religion, and in this case, for me, it's Christianity, a description of something ancient and true because God exists.

That's where the conversation should go.

You can certainly think of hierarchies of memes from, you know, from ones that are no more than fads that wash across the culture to ones that are permanent in your journey.

But you were kind of trivializing memes. And I think the power of the idea of memes is this. We have the first replicator, genes, on the planet, and we know the consequences of that producing all these organisms.

But the idea about memes is that they are a second replicator. So genes are copied by chemical processes in bodies. Memes are copied by imitation and other kinds of interactions between human beings and very little in any other species at all.

And that's what gives rise to culture.

Yeah, but again, notice the wave of the Jedi hand over her own unspoken assumptions. Right. Oh, don't pay attention to those a priori assumptions that I'm making about religion. These are not the assumptions that you're looking for.

Right. Right. But no, wait a second. That's exactly what we should be looking for. She's assuming that religion is explained by your genes. So somebody should press her on that, you know, if Peterson doesn't do it, I mean, maybe Briarley should do it.

Right. So the whole theory about memes is one of many ways of trying to understand the evolution of culture. And in that way, I say it's not trivial at all.

Quick response, and I want to move on to talking about the 12 rules, Jordan.

Well, the issue is what happens when a meme is so widely distributed that it becomes a determining factor in evolution itself?

Because it translates. Ah, meme, gene, co-interaction.

Yes, exactly. That's where I think, well, that's where I think the religious that's for me, that's the grounds of the essential religious instinct. It's a meme gene interaction and it goes back forever.

Yes. And then so I'll finish with this. See, because once you see that there's a meme gene interaction and that there's selection in favor of a certain meme, let's say, then then you open up the entire question of what constitutes the underlying reality.

Because one, this is something I tried to have a talk with about Sam Harris, and we augured in very rapidly. You could say that reality is that which selects. Now, it's not exactly a materialist viewpoint.

It's more of an evolutionary viewpoint. And if reality is that which selects, then what's selected by that reality is in some sense, correct. Now, that's not well, this is why you're adding on.

I mean, that's a big claim you're adding on.

I know it's a big claim. I understand it's a big claim, but it's also the central claim of pragmatism.

Let's move it on.

Hey. Lost the thread, right? Lost the thread here. OK, he had a chance to push back on the unjustified assumptions about religion and ended up actually finding a point of affirmation instead with Blackmore.

Remember, the question is right there. Do we need God to make sense of life? And what are they talking about? Genes as the ultimate source of our understanding. Genes out of which arises memes and archetypes.

Right. And maybe not necessarily in that order. This this is where Peterson took off his boxing glove to like shake Blackmore's hand. Like he should have kept his glove on. You know what I mean?

All that leads me to gratitude for all that we have. I mean, I recognize that. I recognize that nothing to do with any religious basis at all. I recognize that I could not come on the train here, have a really interesting discussion, meet Justin again, have a nice glass of cool water, you know, without a load of other people doing it for me.

That gratitude, which is one of the things that you quite rightly put in into your book, it gives gives good place to it. And it's a very important that doesn't come from anything religious unless you say because I was brought up a Christian.

It came from there. But I don't base it on that anymore.

I what?

That that that doesn't come from anywhere unless you say it came from my religious upbringing, in which case I would say. Well, it doesn't come from that anymore. Is that is that what she just said? Which is it?

Does gratitude originally come from a God who designed humans to express these emotions towards specific objects, or does it originally come from some gene?

What do you think it comes from?

I think it comes from a recognition that I've done a lot of meditation. I meditated every day for 30 years, and I think this has something to do with it. But it's observing the inner consequences of different ways of confronting the world.

And I'm much more in recent years in the habit of waking up in the morning, even if it's raining in January in England, and looking out and going, oh, and it's it's a feeling of gratitude, not gratitude towards God or towards anybody or anything, just free floating gratitude.

That seems to.

What is gratitude that is not directed at anything? What does that even mean? How can you even do that? I mean, think about that. Try try to use the word gratitude, grateful. In a sentence, what's the next word that comes to mind after grateful?

Isn't it for? Right. I mean, you see what I mean? Like, what are you grateful for? That's because gratitude is directed at an object that is that is ultimately good. I mean, whether that's people or things or ultimately God, who is the one behind all things.

To be grateful for something suggests that there that there is something objectively good that has been given to you. But you see how already we're heading down the path, even to simply saying those things and acknowledging them, we're heading down the path towards objective moral terms, which culminates in a transcending God who is the standard for objective morality.

I hope somebody is going to point this out.

Have a positive consequence. I set the day up better and it's kind of self-perpetuating. It pops up again and again.

Do you think you can just have gratitude in general or must gratitude always be given towards something and ultimately?

Well, that's a good question that that that that that goes back to our discussion about acting things out like. Gratitude is something you feel towards something and you can say, well, I don't feel it towards anything in particular.

And I would say, all right, well, the diffuse nothing that you feel it towards serves in your psychological hierarchy as your equivalent of God.

No. What?

Let me hear that again. Well, the diffuse nothing that you feel it towards serves in your psychological hierarchy as your equivalent of God.

I don't I don't even know what he's trying to say. Look. This conversation has lots of potential and I have a lot of respect for Jordan Peterson, but I think he somehow got invited to take a seat that is probably better filled by someone like John Lennox or William Lane Craig.

You know, it just seems like Peterson's got too many things in common with Carl Jung that he can't give proper pushback here to Blackmore. I don't know, that's that's my take so far. How do you think it's going?

Let me know in the comments. We are actually about to hit the most rewatched moment of the number one unbelievable debate on God. Let's let's see what happens.

No, but it's gratitude. This morning, for example, I looked out and it was so green. We've had frosts and it's been white the last few days and it was green this morning and it was just gratitude to the universe, if you like.

It's not really God because it's not a creator. It's not anything I can pray to.

It's I mean, I know I feel gratitude towards.

I don't know. But I find it. I know that you tackle in this book that that happiness is not an ultimate good. And I know this is not an ultimate goal.

OK. All right. It wasn't an ultimate.

All right. All right. OK.

There's a big difference.

Yes, you're right. You're right. You picked me up correctly on that. Nevertheless, we are happiness seeking creatures. And I have found through practice and growing older that acting gratitude, thinking gratitude, feeling gratitude makes me happier and seems to rub off on other people.

So ginning up. Emotion, because it gives you some kind of evolutionary advantage that doesn't cheapen gratitude for her. You know, I mean, like imagine a lonely person going out to the store and buying a cake, buying some balloons and buying presents and then going home, decorating the whole house for the for this birthday party and then sitting alone, just eating the cake and unwrapping presents that they wrap for themselves.

And then just trying to like gin up this emotion, calling up the emotion of gratitude because they know it actually provides some kind of evolutionary benefit. Does that sound absurd to you? Doesn't that cheapen real gratitude?

I don't think we are happiness seeking creatures, and I think it's a low goal, not because there's something wrong with being happy, because, you know, thank God if you get to be happy now and then. But I don't think that that's what we seek.

I think we seek a meaning that's deep enough to sustain us through tragedy.

And that is. Ah, and that's Viktor Frankl. Viktor Frankl said that everything we do is explained by our search for meaning. He came up in the the time of Freud, Adler, and he actually challenged Freud's approach to psychoanalysis.

I mean, Frankl is an amazing character. He actually survived the concentration camps in the Holocaust. But anyway, I think Frankl is right. And it looks like Peterson agrees with Frankl. We are meaning seeking creatures.

But guess what that means for us? If we do not find what we're looking for in our search for meaning, we're going to feel deeply unsatisfied. That's why we need God, ladies and gentlemen. He is not only the source of our existence.

He is what we are all ultimately looking for, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. God provides objective meaning in our lives. But many reject this truth and then seek fulfillment in other things that make no sense, like like like having free floating gratitude for nothing at all.

Right.

It's way different.

Do you know when I hit some, tragedy is too strong a word. I think that I'm but when I when I when horrible things happen to me or I feel or I read some terrible thing going on in the world. Yes, those are tragedies going on in the world.

My response is nothing matters. It's all empty and meaningless. This is how the world is. Get used to it. Get on with it, girl.

That sounds like a very Zen Buddhist way of dealing.

I guess. I guess it is.

Well, it's a paradoxical way, though.

It is a paradox.

The first part of that is nihilistic and the second part isn't. So how do you reconcile those two things? Why get on with it, girl?

Because, oh, oh, well, it.

Uh. Yeah, that is that is the most replayed moment. I can assure you that I did not wake up this morning thinking to myself, you know what I need today? I need to hear Jordan Peterson say, get on with it, girl.

Nevertheless, that that right there, what he just asked is the six million dollar question. Blackmore lives in two different camps, you know, she lives in a nihilist camp and then like an optimist camp.

You know, why does she choose optimism and positivity in light of her nihilism? Why does she seek to put a positive spin on tragedies taking place all around her? Is this not an example of her trying to make meaning out of a meaningless universe?

Right. And also from our perspective, is this not what a hopeful Christian who trusts God would do? Isn't that what she's acting like? Again, remember the whole it's right there in the title. The whole point of the discussion is to answer the question, do we need God to make sense of life?

Isn't Blackmore stealing from Christianity in order to make sense of tragedy?

Here's another thing I've often done this with my students. Let's suppose you become nihilistic. Nothing matters. There's no point in doing that. I mean, I think we live in a pointless universe. What are you going to do?

And I say to them, like William James in his wonderful thing about getting up in the morning. But that's a slightly different point that he makes there. But I say to them, OK, tomorrow morning when you wake up, think it's all pointless.

There's no point in doing anything. Now, what are you going to do? Well, actually, you're going to need to go to the loo. You're going to get out of bed and you're going to go to the bathroom. And when you're there, you'll think, well, actually, I'm hungry.

I think I think I want to go down to the kitchen. Oh, I probably should put my slippers on. Why don't I get dressed? You're going to have something to eat. And then you think, I'm bored. And you go to university and go into your lectures.

And, you know, we are not creatures who will just not do anything to me to go through that process, which I've done in the past a lot. And it's just natural now is it is a very positive way of living to accept the meaningless and ultimate emptiness of everything and accept that this creature here, this thing, this evolved creature just will get on with life.

But is that not simply to choose to live as if you are existentially delusional? I'm trying to find a nicer way to say that. I mean, but but isn't that what that means? If you affirm that life is meaningless and then you turn around and act as if it does matter what you do.

Aren't you choosing a form of delusion? I mean. Isn't that an unbiased take on what's really going on with folks like Blackmore? Set aside whether you're a Christian or not. I mean, like. Isn't that the case?

Let's see how Peterson responds and then we'll close.

You're not accepting the meaninglessness of it, even by going through those actions that you don't think so, because you're because you're acting as if those things are meaningful.

Yes, I am.

I'm acting as though they're meaningful.

Pardon?

Are you pretending that they're meaningful?

I'm not pretending. I'm I'm my way of putting.

No. So then you're deluded. So, right. Like, if you're not pretending on purpose, that means you're deluded. I mean, look, that sounds really harsh. I'm just struggling to find a nicer word to identify what's going on here.

I think it would be that those meanings are constructed by myself and others.

They're personal.

And they're because of the kind of creatures we are, because of the meme plexus.

I'd like to hear your response to this. Neither is your desire to use the loo. None of that's constructed.

No, no.

But the fact that there is a loo is part of the culture.

Yeah, well, thank God for that.

But see, you see.

Oh, thank God. Would you do that?

Sorry, that's a poor joke.

Well, you see, so imagine this. You have the proximal meanings that you described that are sort of a priori, right? They're handed to you. You might consider them as needs or drives, although they're not.

They're personalities. That's not the right way of conceptualizing them. But then there's the intermingling of all those needs and drives, let's say. And that constitutes a new layer of structure, because it isn't just that you have to eat and that you have to use the washroom and that you have to have something to drink and that you have to be warm enough or cool enough to survive.

It's that you have to do all those things at the same time in a situation where you're going to have to propagate that across time. And you're going to have to do it with a bunch of other people. And it's always been like that.

And so what that means is that out of those proximal meanings, higher meanings arise. And you might say, well, yeah, so he's back on.

I don't know what that has to do with God. Look, I think I've seen enough. OK. OK, so let me let me put my debate teacher hat on for a moment. This was not a formal debate. It was not even close. Unbelievable.

This this show is called The Big Conversation. I think it's not designed for that kind of a thing. So I'm hesitant to say like who actually won here. However. I will say that Peterson had a huge moment when he asked the question about the origin of Blackmore's optimism.

I thought that was a great question to ask. Most of the time, though, in this conversation, he didn't really press her very hard. And as it turns out, a lot of this discussion was missed opportunities to press Blackmore, which, you know, you can make the argument that Peterson didn't go in there to do that kind of a thing.

That wasn't his. He wanted to have a more free flowing dialogue. And that's probably true. But those missed opportunities don't produce the type of clash that could have been had at that table. OK, now, as I take that hat off, put on my Christian and pastor hat, I think it's obvious that Blackmore has no justification for her claims.

She begins with assumptions that she provides no sufficient explanation for and then just tries to build the rest of her arguments from there. But her assumptions are precisely what should be investigated, because if she has no justification, then it doesn't matter what else she says.

Right. Anyway, those are my thoughts, but how about you? OK, what did you think of the number one unbelievable debate on God? Who had the upper hand and why? Let me know in the comments below. Also, if you are British, why call it a loo?

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