On the 14th of April, 2018, Pangburn Philosophy
hosted a debate between Jordan Peterson and
Matt Dillahunty, and in my opinion it was
extremely fruitful, because unlike most who
converse with Jordan, Matt didn't let him
get away with the usual ambiguity and sophistry.
Instead, he made him clarify his beliefs,
and in doing so revealed many of them for
what they are – fallacious and vacuous.
Anyhow, during the Q&A segment the fantastic
Ozymandias asked Jordan the following: "What
in your view would a genuine atheist be like?”
“He’d be like Raskolnikov in Crime & Punishment
[…] See, Raskolnikov built himself up to
the murder in part by laying out the rational
case but also by saying 'Well there's no god...
there's no metaphysical reason that's stopping
me from committing this act’.”
This is "Atheists Are Murderers - Debunked".
“My question is for you Dr. Peterson.
You alluded to an important distinction between
someone who would actually be an atheist and
someone who merely professes to be an atheist
(you implied that Matt and others are not
genuinely atheists.”
“I can tell you that I actually don’t
believe in a god, and--” “But you act
like you do!”
“Huh?”
“But you act like you do.”
“They would be afraid of what we would lose
if we lost religion, and I basically said
demonstrate to me any benefit--” “Oh,
you’d lose art and poetry and drama and
narrative--” “Why?
Are there no godless artists and poets?”
“There are artists and poets that think
they’re godless.”
“I’m curious why you think that… is
it just because we have sacred values?
That everyone has sacred values?
What would in your view a genuine atheist
be like?”
“He’d be like Raskolnikov in Crime & Punishment.
And I can’t really come up with a better
answer than that because it’s such a complicated
question that that’s the right answer!”
…No, it’s not “such a complicated question”…
Jordan just needs it to be, because “Mystery
is a convenient excuse for absurdity”.
A “theist” is “Someone who is convinced
that at least one god exists”, and an “a-theist”
(with the prefix “a” meaning “not”)
is “Someone who is not convinced that a
god exists”.
That’s it… or, as Matt put it: “An atheist
is someone who doesn’t believe there’s
a god (I am not convinced there’s a god).
That doesn’t necessarily mean there are
no gods, although that is a subset of ‘Hey,
I don’t believe there’s a god’ and then
there’s a subset ‘I believe there are
no gods’.
This is, as I’ve talked about, independent
of whether I can be a moral being or do good
things.
It’s independent of if there’s awe and
wonder and purpose and meaning in my life.
Anyhow, here’s the explanation that Jordan
gave: It’s so interesting because Dostoevsky…
the last thing Dostoevsky ever did was make
a strawman out of his opponents, let’s say.
What Dostoevsky did in all of his great novels
was make his enemy, let’s say… or make
each of the positions that he was trying to
contend with as powerful and admirable as
he possibly could.
And since he was an absolutely spectacularly
genius he could really do that.
And so Raskolnikov plots to murder this horrible
woman, who’s horrible according to everyone
who knows her (who has also enslaved her rather
mentally feeble niece), and who does nothing
but make people miserable consciously all
of the time.
And he does that in order to save his sister
from a rather sophisticated form of prostitution,
to save himself from starvation so that he
can become a great lawyer and help people.
Right, so Dostoevsky sets up the stage…
here’s the perfect situation for a murder,
and all of the rational choices point in that
direction.
And Raskolnikov, who’s sort of torturing
himself (or sort of tortured) because he’s
kind of hungry and not very well (not thinking
very clearly), he… he undertakes the murder!
And he gets away with it.
And before he does it he berates himself,
in what I would call the negative atheistic
style.
And he basically says ‘Look, there is every
rational reason to split this woman’s skull
with an axe.
Look at all the good I would do.
Look at all the wellbeing I would enhance!
And so he does it.
And then all hell breaks loose.
And what Dostoevsky was… see, Raskolnikov
built himself up to the murder in part by
laying out the rational case but also by saying
'Well there's no god... there's no metaphysical
reason that's stopping me from committing
this act, and there’s all these reasons
that appear perfectly rational pushing me
in that direction, perhaps I’m nothing but
a moral coward for failing to undertake it.
So he does, but what he finds out is that
he broke an inviolable moral law (something
that spoke to his own soul so to speak, and
the rest of the book basically involves his
sequential post-traumatic unravelling.”
Now there’s a fair amount to address here,
and so I’m going to do so one step at a
time.
First off, in response to the statement “The
last thing Dostoevsky ever did was make a
strawman out of his opponents”, while I
won't go so far as to say that Dostoevsky
strawmanned atheism (as the act of strawmanning
requires deliberate misrepresentation), I
will say that because he was insufficiently
vicarious he nevertheless achieved as much…
that is, because of his ignorance, he misrepresented
atheism (and more specifically, the many mindsets
and worldviews of those who aren't convinced
that a god exists).
You see, the religious (be them Christians,
Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans,
or whatever), almost always attribute their
sense of right and wrong (that is, their morality)
to their religious edicts, and thus when trying
to understand the mindset of those who don’t
subscribe to their religion they tend to assume
that such considerations are absent… and
that’s precisely what Dostoevsky did – and,
indeed, what Jordan does too.
In fact, it’s evidently precisely because
of this that Jordan asserts that Western Civilisation
is Based on Judeo-Christian values, and that
the likes of Sam Harris are actually Christian.
“Harris’s metaphysics is fundamentally
Christian.”
“I can tell you that I actually don’t
believe in a god, and--” “But you act
like you do!”
“There are artists and poets that think
they’re godless.”
Now in most cases this flawed way of thinking
is understandable (all be it insulting), as
most religious people don’t sufficiently
understand the process of evolution by natural
selection (let alone the specific evolution
of social species and social norms)… but
the same can’t be said of Jordan – he
knows better!
In fact, his primary claim about the validity
of religion is nested in Jungian archetypes,
and the primary premise of Jungian archetypes
is that we are not born with a blank slate,
but rather, just as we inherit physical characteristics
(such as eye colour and bone density), so
too we inherit psychological characteristics
(such as the fear of snakes, and, here’s
the kicker, a repulsion to the idea of murdering
another human).
Or to put this another way, just as it was
the case that those who had a genetic predisposition
to fear snakes reproduced more successfully
than those who didn’t, so too it was the
case that those that had a genetic predisposition
to feel disgusted at the idea of murder reproduced
more successfully than those who didn’t,
and thus, just as we are born with a propensity
to fear snakes, so too we’re born with a
propensity not to murder.
Jordan can’t accept psychological inheritance
when it fits his narrative, but deny it when
it doesn’t – that’s not how it works.
And so, when Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky, or Jordan
says “Look, there is every rational reason
to split this woman’s skull with an axe”,
they’re wrong!
Sure, we could say that there's every external
reason, but not every internal.
Dostoevsky failed to consider the biggest
reason of all for Raskolnikov not to bury
an axe in Alyona’s head; that being the
fact that he is a member of a social species
that has evolved an innate, deeply rooted
repulsion of murder – and that because of
this, such an act wouldn’t just hurt Alyona,
but would necessarily hurt him too.
Now, to cover all angles, in the past, Jordan
has said that someone’s psychological inheritance
(or implicit axioms) is their religion “Everything
you act out is predicated on your implicit
axioms, and the system of implicit axioms
that you hold as primary is your religious
belief system”, and so perhaps, because
he’s defining an atheist as someone who
is devoid of psychological inheritance (or
implicit axioms), he’s conflating his definition
of “religion” with his definition of “theist”…
but considering Matt’s profile, character
and clarity, and the context of the conversation,
if Jordan was doing this then I hereby accuse
him of being deliberately obtuse and obfuscating.
In any case, ask yourself, if Ray Comfort
or William Lane Craig asserted that “All
atheists are murders”, how would you react?
Would you allow them to redefine every relevant
word to make such a sentence coherent?
I don’t think so, and so just in case you’re
inclined to allow Jordan such a luxury, please,
consider not.
Anyhow, before wrapping up, I couldn’t do
so without showing Matt’s wonderful response,
and so here it is: “There were atheist fans
that wrote me like ‘Ah, man, I can’t wait
for you to do this conversation with Jordan’,
and I was like ‘cool’, and still, I hope
that we have many more conversations as well,
cos just saying one thing I find irritating
is never going to be enough to get rid of
me.
But I asked them ‘Great, I’m not that
familiar with him – what is it about him
that you like and what are the concerns?’
and they came back with a bunch of things
, um, none of them said anything about agreeing
views on religion (they seemed very confused
on those things), and so the good news for
them is while he think atheists would be murders,
he doesn’t actually think you’re an atheist
– and that is his way of getting around
acknowledging things that conflict with his
worldview.
I don’t get to decide who is or isn’t
a true Christian (I didn’t even get to decide
that when I was a believer).
I definitely don’t get to do it now, and
so when somebody tells me they’re a Christian
I’m going to have to accept that.
I have a model in my head of what that means,
I have a model in my head of what it means
to be a muslim, but I’m willing for them
to explain to me what their model is.
I know…
I know people who identify as Christian atheists
(they really love this stuff this Jesus said,
but they don’t actually believe there’s
a god, you know, Thomas Jefferson famously
cut out the Jefferson bible and removed every
reference to the supernatural and miracles
and things like that because he really admired
the teachings of it – and sure, I think
you can be a cultural Christian if you wanted
to).
It’s strange to me that I’m not sitting
here with somebody like Ray Comfort when I’m
told ‘You’re not really an atheist because
you’re too good to be an atheist’, and
this is what atheists hear all the time when
come out… they’ve been sidelined because
of religious privilege around the world for
years, and then atheists come out to their
family members and friends, or people known
for years and then they’re like ‘You’re
an atheist?
How can that be?
You’re such a good person!
I’ve known you all this time!’ – it’s
because the mindset of what people have about
what an atheist is has been poisoned religious
proclamations.
We have been denigrated from the pulpit, and
it has seeped into every aspect of culture,
right up to the height of intellectual pursuits,
and it’s time for that to end!
As always, thank you kindly for the view,
and an extra special thank you to my wonderful
patrons and those of you who’ve donated
via PayPal.
This month’s patron of the month is Jeremy
Frandsen, and you’ve won Lying by Sam Harris.
Congratulations, and thank you for your support.
Until next time my fellow apes, until next
time!
