Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and the Problem of Addiction

Jordan Peterson on the Bible as the Foundation of Truth

Non-rockabodas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it. Are you going to bark all day, little doggie? Or are you going to bite?

We're being delusional.

Delusional? Yeah, delusional is okay in your world view. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your world view is perfectly okay.

It doesn't really hurt. She hung up on me.

What? What? What?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage. Go into all the world and make disciples.

Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives. Don't go into the world and make homies. Disciples. I got a bit of a jiggle neck.

That's a joke, master.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea. And for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love,.

Christ in Whom Are Hidden All the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge

To reach all the riches.

To reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That's Colossians chapter 2, everybody.

First couple verses there. Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio, everybody. This is Apologia Radio, the gospel heard around the world. You can get more at ApologiaStudios .com. As always, that's A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A-Studios .com.

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With no cookies.

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Yeah.

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What up?

That's Joy the Girl.

Hello.

I'm Jeff the Commenter Ninja, and we're back for another episode of Apologia. And this is actually interesting. Both Joy and Luke have not seen this clip yet. Many of you guys are aware of Jordan Peterson.

Jordan Peterson has had some interesting moves forward towards the Bible, the Christian faith.

I just looked up. He claims to be a pragmatic Christian.

Yeah, yeah.

He's a Carl Jung, if that gives you any idea.

Pray for him because he's saying some things that's like, that is actually very, very good. Very insightful. I'm glad you're getting closer and closer. But Jordan Peterson, many of you guys have seen.

Did you guys see?

Did you see it? The clip where he starts talking about Jesus and he starts to cry. That was really powerful.

Look it up. Look it up.

Jordan Peterson, Jesus, and crying. I'm sure you'll find it.

He's definitely, for a while, I would say, been grappling with some stuff. And obviously a very intelligent person.

Super.

But, you know, a little more like philosophically leaning as opposed to religious.

Yeah.

But, I mean, I feel like he's continued to kind of get more and more consistent.

Wait till you hear what he says here. It's going to blow your minds. It's like, wow, I'd like to talk to Jordan Peterson.

Very exciting.

Jordan Peterson, if you actually happen to watch this and see this, I'd love to have a conversation with you. I'm intrigued. But Jordan Peterson had a clip where he was talking about Jesus and he starts to cry.

He's talking about Christ. I'm not going to play that right now because we don't have time to do that right now. But in this particular one, he just had a conversation with Joe Rogan on Joe Rogan's podcast, which is blowing up all over the world.

It was already popular, but now it is uber, uber popular.

Did you see?

Sorry.

I think this is hilarious. So, like, two or three days ago, Neil Young said, I'm going to pull my music off Spotify if you don't get rid of Joe Rogan.

If you don't get rid of the number one podcast on your platform.

Bye bye, Neil. They pulled all this stuff. Amazing.

Yeah.

No, I think that's amazing.

Exactly. The first question people asked when they saw that was, who's Neil Young? And the second question was, are you on Spotify?

I knew who Neil Young was.

Of course.

Yeah.

No, I'm teasing. This modern generation is like, people who are using Spotify are like, who's Neil Young?

Who are you?

Cooper's the one that sent me that. And what's funny about that is he was like, his most popular song is Rockin' in the Free World.

There you go.

That is funny.

That is ironic.

Well, it's fascinating to me because you look at, okay, the two particular, I know we're going to get into this, but this probably, well, I think a lot of people, we're probably thinking the same thing.

It's our show, so.

Yeah, it's our show.

We do what we please. We do what we want.

So the two popular people today, kind of cultural icons today that are both not Christians, they are not Christians at all, not even close, is Joe Rogan and Dave Chappelle.

Sorry. Jack Morgan is trolling our thing.

Is he?

And people are thinking he's serious.

Oh, is he messing around?

He said, I don't know why they use red lights. That's the devil's light.

That's hilarious. Jack Morgan's a pastor. Apology, you guys. So two cultural icons. And what's interesting is they exist in the midst of a very strange culture. It's the cancel culture. And most people can be taken down pretty easily through the cancel culture of today.

Like, we'll deplatform you. We're going to take away your ability to work and feed yourself because we don't like what you said. But these two cultural icons, not Christians, are the ones that have been standing up against the culture of, like, you're not allowed to speak about that.

You're not allowed to talk about that. You will not say these things. And what's amazing about it is that they can't be canceled. They can't be canceled because they are too good at what they do and too interesting to everybody.

They can't actually be canceled. Like, for example, this guy Neil Young is saying, you know, I'll pull my stuff off of Spotify. And he's got a history.

He's popular.

He's famous. Neil Young is actually famous.

As much as we tease.

Yeah, tease because the younger generation is like, who the heck is Neil Young? But he's got some clout. And he says, well, you know, I'll pull my stuff. And it's like, well, Joe Rogan is the one with, like, he's getting the most views and ratings of, like, anybody.

Like, he's beating Fox News and everybody else. So bye, Neil Young. And like with Dave Chappelle, like, he comes against the culture. He says things he's not supposed to say. And they're like, we're going to cancel you.

But he's too dang good at what he does. And so he can't be canceled. So I just find that fascinating. But what is irritating to me about it is that both Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan are the ones standing against the establishment in many ways, saying the things that are the blasphemous things of the day.

You're not allowed to say these. That's blasphemy. That's cultural blasphemy. They're saying it. They're doing it courageously. They're standing against what people do to try to shut you down. And they're not Christian.

So that is the thing that irritates me, is that where are the other courageous men and women who are going to stand up like these men are and do it for righteous causes? Not that some of the things they've done is not a righteous cause.

It in many ways is. But so Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan. I'm going to play the clip. We'll play through it. It's about four minutes long. But I want you to hear some of the things that Jordan Peterson says because it's amazing.

It's like, yeah, that's actually really insightful and good. And you're right, Joe. He comes from a very philosophical perspective. He's thinking a lot in terms of categories and worldview and justification and all those things.

So he has that mindset already. And I was so intrigued that he actually caught a very, very important aspect of, like, even what I read at the beginning of the show, that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

If you want knowledge, if you want truth, then Christ is the very foundation of it. He's the reference point. And it's interesting because Jordan Peterson, he sees that. He sees that. And what's amazing is he's saying it to Joe Rogan.

That's what you're going to love about this, is that here's Jordan Peterson who's saying it across the table to Joe Rogan. And I just want to say a final thing. I think one of the reasons that people appreciate Joe Rogan's podcast so much is that when he has people on that he even disagrees with, he lets them talk and share.

He's very fair to him. He lets them talk and share.

Yeah, I think Joe Rogan has conversations that he wants to have, and I think he's a good conversationalist. He's good at what he does. That's why he's pretty much number one.

That's why he's the most popular right now, for sure. If you guys, by the way, haven't seen the two I won't even say it because if I say it right now, this is going to get shadow banned or something.

He did two particular shows with some doctors and scientists that you really need to see. You really, really need to see. It will raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Very important stuff.

Very important stuff. So here we go. This is Jordan Peterson's realization about the Bible, if you guys want to look it up for yourselves later.

Here you go.

The Joe Rogan experience.

If categories dissolve, especially fundamental ones, the culture is dissolving because the culture is a structure of category. That's what it is. In fact, culture is a structure of category that we all share.

So we see things the same way. Well, that's why we can talk. I mean, not exactly the same way because then we'd have nothing to talk about. But roughly speaking, we have a bedrock of agreement. That's the Bible, by the way.

Wow.

Good start.

Good start. One of the things that's interesting about this is just what he's saying there is something that you've actually heard us saying quite a bit. Now, we'll say it with a little bit more of a biblical explanatory power in terms of saying, you know, things like you're in the image of God, right?

It's inescapable that you're in the image of God. You know the true God. And the problem is not like a lack of light or evidence about the true God. It's that we're all made in the image of the same God, but we suppress the truth because we don't want to know God.

Because we're sinners. We rebel. We go the other way. We'd rather worship and serve the creature, the creation itself, rather than the true God. So the fundamental issue in all of human experience in terms of our broken relationship with God, our estrangement in terms of our creator, is that we know the real God, but we don't want to know him.

We don't want him in our knowledge. Romans 1 says we don't want him in our knowledge. And so what we do is we switch him for something else. We go to substandard gods, and we try to distort even the nature of creation itself.

So like when he talks about categories, well that's in Romans 1. The category of maleness and femaleness is in Romans chapter 1. And what happens is, and this is right in line with what he's saying here, when he talks about culture breaking down because we're no longer sharing the same categories.

That's exactly what Romans 1 is essentially saying, is that the men exchange the natural use of the women for other men, and the women do likewise. And then there's the description of the breakdown that Romans 1 says in terms of disobedience to parents, enemies of God, and all of the different sins that show the breakdown of the image of God in Romans 1.

I think that's, this was so beautiful about this conversation, is that's essentially what Jordan Peterson's getting at. But he's doing it in a way by talking about we all share these categories. I think what he's really getting at is worldview.

Like we all share the same worldview platforms, whether it's human dignity and that experience and human dignity, whether it's value of life, whether it's, you know, I'd say probably, I don't want to speak for Jordan Peterson.

But I assume he's talking about categories of like the big no-nos we all agree on. We all agree that these are no-nos. These are immoral. You ought not do this. This is the basic structure of all of our thinking that we share.

Well, we would say that's the image of God in people. And of course, it comes downstream from the biblical worldview changing the world, the Bible changing the world. So we're supposed to all be holding to these same categories.

And I think what Jordan Peterson is saying is now the cultural breakdown is because now we're dismissing all those categories that we all had sort of as a bedrock. And he's saying, and that came from the Bible.

And he's right. He's 100 right. Now watch him explain a little more. By the way, you guys jump in any time.

I'm just going to say I'm surprised Canada hasn't banned him yet.

Yeah. Good point.

One of those things, if someone has a certain amount of a following, they already have their audience intact. So it's harder to cancel. It's the same thing with Joe and Dave Chappelle.

Yeah. Good point.

You already have that sort of intact, that brand intact, then it's harder to take you down.

Right.

Because you have loyalty.

Yeah.

You have loyalty and you've established yourself and people say I respect you and trust you. So you're not getting taken down.

That's good. Here we go.

So I just walked through the Museum of the Bible in Washington. That was very cool. It's a very cool museum.

So the structure, that's what the Bible provides.

Yeah, that's what I figured out. I just figured this out this week. So it was a cool thing to walk through because it's chronological. They have one floor, which is the history of the Bible. But it's not exactly that.

It's really what it is, is the history of the book. Now, in many ways, the first book was the Bible. I mean, literally. Because at one point, there was only one book. As far as our Western culture is concerned, there was one book.

And for a while, literally, there was only one book. And that book was the Bible. And then before it was the Bible, it was scrolls and it was writings on papyrus. But we were starting to aggregate written text together.

And it went through all sorts of technological transformations. And then it became books that everybody could buy. The book everybody could buy. And the first one of those was the Bible.

And what he's referring to here is, and this is true, in history, it was the Christians that essentially innovated and created the technology of a book.

Reformed Christians.

Right.

So the book.

Just throw that in there.

Yeah.

So the book is, of course, an innovation from the Christian church. And he's right. Historically, it's not that people didn't tell stories and write stuff down. You didn't have scrolls and things handed out.

You had your own personal libraries at home in terms of the things you could carry around. But we're talking about papyrus and vellum, animal skins, and things that are rolled up and passed along like that.

But when we talk today about, hey, I'm holding this here. And it's just a collection of books and letters and put together nice and neatly in this format. Well, that's an innovation of the Christian church.

Like the Bible is what inspired the book and books. And so this was an innovation of the Christian church, doing it like this. And so that's what he's getting at. And so when you talk about the innovation of making books, well, it started somewhere with an innovation of the book.

It was the first. And so if you go to libraries today and you're secularist, looking for your book and pulling it off the shelf and opening it up and everything else, it's like, well, you can thank a Christian for that.

So that's where it came from.

So came all sorts of books that everybody could buy. But all those books in some sense emerged out of that underlying book and that book itself. The Bible isn't a book. It's a library. It's a collection of books.

And so what I figured out was partly because I was talking to my brother-in-law, Jim Keller, who's the world's greatest chip designer and has now designed a chip that's as powerful as the human brain, which is optimized for artificial intelligence learning, by the way.

And so I talked to him about that. He said, you heard of the Internet? I said, yeah, Jim, I've heard of the Internet. He said, this is way more revolutionary than that. So in any case, we were talking about meaning in text because we were talking about translation and the problem of understanding text.

And Jim said, the meaning of words is coded in the relationship of the words to one another. And the postmodernists make that case that all meaning is derived from the relationship between words. That's wrong because, well, what about rage?

That's not words. And what about moving your hand? That's not words. So it's wrong. But part of it's right because the meaning we derive from the verbal domain is encoded in the relationship between words.

So now then you think, well, let's think about the relationship between words. Well, some words are dependent on other words. Some ideas are dependent on other ideas. The more ideas are dependent on a given idea, the more fundamental that idea is.

That's a definition of fundamental. So now imagine you have an aggregation of texts in a civilization. You say, which are the fundamental texts? And the answer is the texts upon which most other texts depend.

And so you'd put Shakespeare way in there in English because so many texts are dependent on Shakespeare's literary revelations. And Milton would be in that category. And Dante would be in that category, at least in translation.

Fundamental authors, part of the Western canon, not because of the arbitrary dictates of power, but because those texts influenced more other texts. And then you think about that as a hierarchy, okay, with a Bible at its base, which is certainly the case.

Now imagine that's the entire corpus of linguistic production, all things considered. Now how do you understand that? Like, literally, how do you understand that? The answer is you sample it by reading and listening to stories and listening to people talk.

You sample that whole domain. You build a low-resolution representation of that inside you. And then you listen and see through that. And so it isn't that the Bible is true. It's that the Bible is the precondition for the manifestation of truth, which makes it way more true than just true.

Wow. I've never heard it explained that way, but that was incredible.

That was a really fascinating way to get at what historically Christians have said, in particular the school of Van Til, Bonson. The thinking behind transcendental apologetics or presuppositional apologetics is really the thinking that is in accordance with a revelational epistemology.

In other words, how do I know something, anything at all? How do I know something, anything at all? How do I know about human dignity? How do I know anything about ethics? How do I know anything about human experience, about the world, about value, beauty, truth, goodness, anything at all?

Which is the one thing most people aren't taught now.

Right. It's just what to think. And here's what you're to believe. Rather than getting at, well, how is that possible? And how do you know that that's actually true? Because it's amazing. People will always make claims, knowledge claims.

I know this is wrong. I know this is right. I know this is beautiful. I know this is not. I know this about humans, whatever. And you ask a question, how do you know that? How do you know that that's true?

And if you push and push and push and push and push, and you don't start with something that's the very precondition necessary for knowledge at all, then you'll find that that person, the secularist, the atheist, the agnostic, whatever, the humanist today, will simply say, well, I guess I really don't know.

Maybe we are just in a simulation. Maybe human beings don't have any real value or dignity. Maybe, maybe rape is not really wrong. Right? Like, I personally feel like it is, but I don't know that.

Well, they certainly won't live, I mean, especially with the very, most people in instances of like murder or rape won't be consistent with that. But they'll say it, I guess, if it comes to that.

Right. They'll say, because they're in the image of God, they'll say, you know, rape is wrong. We ought not to do that. Right? And you push them on their worldview and ask them how they know that that's true.

And then they're going to ultimately say, well, it's not really wrong. How many times have we heard that on the show?

But we shouldn't do it. It's not really wrong, but we shouldn't.

I don't think you should do it. I don't think you should do it.

Which is just a knowledge claim.

Right. I guess I don't really know with certainty that it's wrong. But what Peterson's getting at, and that was a really fascinating way to get at it, was that the word of God is the very precondition.

Not just that it's true, it's the precondition for all truth. And that's coming from Jordan Peterson.

And I like how he talked about the low resolution. What he was saying was the lens, that's how we describe it, is the lens which you view life, which is your worldview. He just said it in a very philosophical way.

He said it in a very fascinating way. But what's amazing is at the beginning of the show, I quoted from Colossians 2, and what Peterson is saying there is something that the Apostle Paul said about 2 ,000 years ago, that he's the foundation of wisdom and knowledge.

And in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So if you want to know something, if you want to know something is true, if you want to know how to live, it starts with God, it starts with Christ.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And Jesus' claim about himself in John 14, 6, popular verse, Christians all know this, is I am the way, the truth. He's not just something that is true, he's the grounding of truth.

He's the very embodiment of truth. And so what Peterson aimed at there was something actually fascinating. He said the word precondition. It's the precondition for truth, not just true, it's the precondition for truth, period.

And so I love how he did that, because he's pointing out to Joe Rogan something very fascinating, is that you have all these things that you're holding onto, they're not just suspended in midair. We exist downstream from something, and what is that something?

It's the biblical worldview. It's the word of God. It's what many atheists today just take for granted, right?

Absolutely.

It's like a while back, I did a show with Provoked, with Zach and Desi, and they had an atheist come on, right? And as I'm talking to the atheist, you guys can look this show up, it's somewhere in our feed.

As I'm talking to the atheist, I was just trying to press him on his worldview, and we brought up the question of whether or not it's okay to kill, to mutilate, kill, and eat another human being, right?

And I'm challenging him on that. Now, he, of course, lives here in this nation that was so influenced by God's word and God's revelation and the gospel itself. And so, of course, he thinks that that's wrong and icky.

But as I pressed him, I was like, well, but in other cultures that still presently exist today in the world, there are cultures, there are tribes who think that it is absolutely moral and good to kill and eat another human being.

And as I pressed him on his worldview, like, now, you're living in a Christian nation in, sorry, I can't say that anymore. You're living in a nation that's so been influenced by Christianity. So, of course, you don't want to do that.

You do think it's immoral.

But what about them?

Is it actually wrong? And what did he say? It was so refreshing to have somebody just say this. He finally, like, came to terms with, oh, yeah, that's true. It's just their tribe and it's their society determining what's right.

That's how we do this, right? Yeah, I guess, you know, it's not really wrong. And I guess just so long as you clean your plate, it's not immoral. That's essentially what he said. Well, that is what he said, as long as you clean your plate.

So as long as you, you know, you kill him, dispatch him, and you don't waste anything, I guess it's fine. It's just like you take it for granted as an atheist that you exist downstream from the influence of the Word of God in the world and how it so blessed the world.

And what Jordan Peterson is pointing out is the cultural breakdown in the West today is because it is a destruction of the categories that came from the foundation of the Bible. And that's why we're imploding.

And I love how he just says that. It's not just true.

It's a precondition.

Yeah, so I was going to say, too, because I've seen some comments. We're not at all approving of whatever theology Jordan Peterson has at this point in time. And we realize this was taken from a four-hour show.

We're just simply responding to this one point and dissecting that scripturally.

I'm glad you brought that up. It's interesting how oftentimes, and I don't want to talk down to anybody, but Christians can tend to have some pretty severe knee-jerk reactions based upon assumptions.

In an instance like this, we're just saying, Jordan Peterson, pray for him. I hope that God opens his eyes to the truth and he comes to Christ. I'm just glad to hear him saying true things. Just because somebody is an unbeliever—I don't know, maybe this is a good discussion to have for a moment here.

Just because somebody is an unbeliever doesn't mean that the image of God has been erased in them. And it doesn't mean that they have nothing to offer. Like, for example, you might have an unbeliever who doesn't believe in Jesus, doesn't trust in Christ, but they actually are an incredible artist.

An incredible artist that I can admire and respect and appreciate and try to, of course, evangelize. But just because they're not a Christian doesn't mean I need to—. Okay, for example—.

You're talking about Neil Young?

Yeah, right. So, yeah.

I'll say it like this.

And I think this is something that is important, at least in my own mind. You have, say, an unbeliever, still made in the image of God, doesn't know Jesus, want to evangelize and want them to know Jesus, want to aggressively evangelize them so they know Christ.

They may actually be a better artist and storyteller than the Christian artist and storyteller. I may actually want to appreciate their gifts that are given to them by God, whether they acknowledge Him or not, more so than the Christian.

And this is expressed, I think, so well with Christian media and film. Have you ever seen a movie that was made by a Christian? Like, I'm talking about, like, we're going to make a Christian film. You know, something that goes on Pureflex.

Have you ever seen one that you liked, that was done well? Good cinematography, good sound, good story, good acting. Have you ever? I'm asking. My answer is no.

Do Darren Doan films count?

You're talking about, Darren does, like, documentaries and stuff. So, that's just a different category. I'm talking, like, a film with a storyline and characters and acting and, like, you know what I'm saying?