you're a Christian you say that i haven't claimed that oh what is this is this Christians versus atheist don't be a smartass either you're a Christian or you're not which one is it you're really quite something you are aren't I but you're really quite nothing right you're not a Christian okay I'm done with him hello there i'm Dr jordan Peterson i'm a clinical psychologist a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto an author a podcaster public speaker and today I'm surrounded by 25 atheists my first claim atheists reject God but they don't understand what they're rejecting [Music] good afternoon Dr peterson how you doing so this claim here that atheists don't know what they're rejecting my background is in studying to become a traditional Catholic priest daily mass daily rosary going on long retreats deep into the magisterium and biblical hermeneutics like I was thoroughly in it and it seems like I do know what I'm missing is there something that I missed over years of study both this issue formally and living out religion so deeply well you obviously feel that you missed something when you were practicing for the priesthood your aim was off then so there's always the possibility that it's still off now what was off about my aim in the first place i don't know that might take a long time to figure out but then it seems kind of like this no true Scotsman type of fallacy in which you're the arbiter of people's aims and how they understand those aims to be how is it that you can claim that people don't know something that you know about their life despite not having met them well it's obviously a generic claim just like the atheist claim that there's no God is a generic claim in your case it would have to be specified more and I'm not claiming to understand what was going on in your mind but my experience with atheists is twofold is that they have a very reductive notion of what constitutes God let's say in the Judeo-Christian tradition and they've often been hurt by someone who was religious or by the religious enterprise or perhaps by God himself so to speak and that's left them with an animous but I think that you have a reductive view of what atheism is you've defined religion so broadly to include any sort of having aim in life any sort of cultural archetypes or having a metaphorical substrate and atheism to you is a very specific type of like three people in the world that are these rcolnikov type of they're they want to get away with a perfect murder seems like you have the reductive view of what an atheist is well let's start with your claim mhm how do you define the God that you're rejecting like what is God to you you studied in the church you found that unsatisfactory how would you characterize what you rejected i think the average Christian believer when they say that they're Christian and they believe they mean some sort of God that is all powerful all perfect is somehow involved in the matters of this world and that we look to them through wisdom and with the logos incarnate in Christ and it also seems like you don't believe in religion in the way that the average Christian says that they believe in religion and there are as many gods out there as there are believers because everybody has mutually exclusive and different views of what God is so it seems like well if everybody had mutually exclusive views of what God is no one could speak to each other you're the mere fact of communication presumes a commonality of assumption and definition and so and it's certainly not the case that I regard any archetypal manifestation whatsoever as equally religious so that's not a that's not a real claim let's let me give you an example for example there's a subnarrative in the story of Moses where Moses is rewarded with a glimpse of God okay and that's one of the ways that God is characterized in the Old Testament stories yes now Moses is a faithful servant of God and a good man at least that's the case within the confines of the story one possible interpretation case within the confines of the story obviously what obviously there when we look at the Bible the Bible can't precisely say anything because there are so many different exoggetical and hermeneutic views of this particular book and that everybody has agreed histo or everybody has disagreed historically on it seems like even the most benign detail about a book this big and it seems like you can only say that the Bible says something if you p first presuppose that it's univocal so your claim essentially is that Moses in the Old Testament plays the role of a villain or is irrelevant because the alternative claim is that he's good no because we can't talk to those authors if you are going to start with the presupposition that there's nothing I can say about any of these stories that you're not going to disagree with from the perspective that there are multiple potential competing claims then I can't speak with you so and we also have a short time here so I'm I want to get to the core of what you're arguing here and I'd love if we could the core of what I'm arguing is that atheists reject God but they don't understand what they're rejecting so I'm trying to give you an example of what's being rejected and its complexity okay so God rewards Moses with a glimpse of the divine so this is a definition of the God that atheists are hypothetically rejecting a possible one i said ah i didn't say 'the' i said ah that is possible yes okay so despite the fact that Moses is a stellar character and he's had a long and difficult life and can withstand a lot of difficulty and travail God puts him between two cliffs so he can just see a crack of what's in front of him and when God walks by he allows him to see his back okay so the implication and implication of that story is that the divine is fundamentally unknowable it's a pinnacle experience and that people in their finitude have to be shielded from a comprehensive vision of the basis of reality well that's not the God that's defined in that manner right is a is not it's not a simple personification it's not a simple old man in the sky it's something that in its essence is unknowable and overwhelming and that isn't in my experience the god that's defined by atheists who are attempting to undermine the story i mean it's the same claim for example that you're a finite creature and that you face something that in the final analysis is unknowable and that you have to establish a relationship with it regardless of your inability to perceive or even withstand perceiving the whole okay is there a problem with that i mean the problem is that when we look at famously when you've been asked do you believe in God the question becomes what do we mean by God and in the Bible it's not even clear if the biblical authors know what God is because Yahweh has historically emerged from an early storm God a deity that doesn't exhaust the category of deity and that has changed over the Old Testament does God have physicality does God not have physicality it seems like yes if you define religion to mean anybody that has an aim anybody that looks at the unknown anybody who wants to go from chaos to order is inherently religious then yes but also in the same way I could define atheist as somebody who doesn't dogmatically believe in a religion or somebody who doesn't regularly attend religious services or belong to a denomination help help especially the audience kind of like boil this down there was a lot of words there that the central claim is that we exist somewhere between the finite and the infinite a central claim as central claim is that we exist somewhere between the finite and the infin infinite no I said that we were finite and we had to establish a relationship with the infinite yeah then in that case then we're all religious but then I can do the same thing and define one particular element of atheism it it seems like we both have reductive view of what the other side looks like to the point where a conversation seems incoherent and not just incoherent but not in the way that the average Christian understands Christianity to be do you have a problem pause there sorry you've been voted out by the majority [Applause] [Music] hey how's it going nice to meet you nice to meet you too David david good to see you tell me everything that you know about the Polynesian deity Lono l N O i don't know anything about the Polynesian deity Lono so you're rejecting something without knowledge of what you're rejecting i'm not rejecting it no more than I'm rejecting do you believe in I don't know anything about Do you believe in Lono i do believe that he is a deity that exists in the world exists in the universe that exists in the existence of everything do you do you believe that Lo I'll answer that question once you answer my question which is do I reject everything that I'm ignorant of because that's your presupposition that undergirds your argument and unless you can prove that that's valid then there's no point pres My question is quite simple yeah but that doesn't mean it's formulated accurately do you believe that lono exists yes or no i'm not going to answer that question for the reasons I just described you already insisted that if I reject something that I that if I'm ignorant of something I reject it do you think that everyone in the world has to know everything simultaneously for that to be valid and true i think in order for your argument to be true in order for it to be true that we atheists don't understand what we're rejecting then you need to also apply that to yourself and to Christians and to Muslims and to any other person on this earth where if you don't understand what you're rejecting the belief in then you can't reject the belief in it that's the implication of your of your I didn't say that I rejected the belief in Lona i said I didn't know who Lono who Lono was i didn't say anything about rejecting that's because I've asked you several times and you haven't but let me get to my even greater point you're saying atheists don't understand what religion is or what God is in order to be able to uh reject it fully or completely we have someone over here who studied it in their own way i've studied religion and I have a degree in religious studies uh specialty in Christianity and Mediterranean traditions and further than that beyond me Pew Research studies suggest that atheists and agnostics actually know more about religion and about religious stories the foundational principles than believers that's because they're more religious than they think they are okay you can there well they're concerned with deep matters and one of the defining characteristics of someone who's oriented in a religious direction is that they're concerned with deep matters okay in fact it's virtually definitional right but they also have to identify with a religious tradition and accept the foundational stories that go along with it well that would mean more that they're sectarian than that they're religious and most people for example for example in the United States deny that they're religious but accept that they're spiritual pause there you've been voted out by the majority [Music] aha hi nice to meet you how are you doing good how are you what's your name i'm Greg nice to meet you greg okay so I feel like you're getting at this idea of polyammy where we have multiple related meanings for a word right like for example a famous painting can be emotionally moving in that it changes my emotional state and when I was on the highway coming here to the studio I was physically moving i was changing my position if I said "I believe the Mona Lisa is very moving." And you said "You don't really understand what you're saying it's nailed to the wall." I would say that you're the one who doesn't understand what I'm saying not the other way around and the way that relates to this is there are many concepts of God and I'll admit I find a lot of what you say about that interesting i'm familiar with it the idea of this kind of Yian hierarchical thing or as a metaphor or a symbol or the kind of you know atheist materialist literalist idea of a agentic omnipotent omniscient being that intervenes in reality right so when I'm saying that I reject the concept of God I'm aware of these other definitions of God but I think that when we use words we tend to only imply one meaning at a time so the same way that I would say the Mona Lisa is moving emotionally but I would not say it's moving physically i would say I reject the concept of God in this very literal way but what literal way the way that God is this omniscient omnipotent agentic supernatural being that sent his son down and has you know caused miracles and all these things like that the idea of God is like do you think that there's an underlying unity of things could you explain that question well scientists for example believe that science unifies in a comprehensive theory do you yes no or that there are multiple competing truths those are the options either things unify or there are multiple competing truths i think that I know that for example like in physics people are looking for like a theory of everything and why do you think they're doing that it's interesting it's helpful but they also believe that there's an underlying unity to things in a sense yeah like in you mean like the material world and time and space are probably governed by universal laws and principles partly that yes yes but that the same thing might extend to a broader domain that would include imagination and value could you help me connect that to the prompt well I'm trying to define God the God that I don't think atheists do a very good job of defining here's another question for you what do you think guides you in your determination of whether or not what you're saying to me is true can we go back can we stay on what we were talking about we are okay you're just uncomfortable with the question no I I feel like you're just kind of throwing different spaghetti at the wall i'm not okay i asked you a very specific question what is it that you think guides you when you're talking to me to help you determine whether what you say is true uh logic memory reasoning um sensory information how do you distinguish that from being governed by something that's false an interesting question how do you know the difference when you speak between what's true and what's false so you can imagine infer right i I can infer i can from what principles so and what what are you getting at i'm getting at the fact that your conscience guides you is that reasonable conscience is defined by Icience my empathy and my reason are my foundation find it any way you want okay so that's how I'm defining my conscience is my you know my kind of my conscience is my sense of you know right and wrong yeah exactly where does that come from i would say that comes from an evolved capacity to empathize and a recognition of the benefits of engaging with and nurturing that capacity and then that empathy is constrained and guided by reason right like for example I am driving down the highway there's a kitten in the road i'm going to empathetically feel oh my god I want to save the kitten but then reasonably like I'm going to get hit by a car right so that's sort of the process through which I make ethical decisions constrained by reason do you think that people can differ in their response to something empathically yeah is there a mediating principle that can tell you one person who's empathic and another person who's empathic that disagree who's correct interesting yeah i mean I think that's where we'd have to you know talk it out right we do that in real life all the time when we have whether that's a discussion with a friend about the right thing to do in a situation whether that's a policy discussion about law right that's where we can converse with each other think about things explain our perspectives and then kind of reach a conclusion right that that I think we do that all the time so Elijah the prophet Elijah defined God in the Old Testament as the voice of conscience within okay that's a definition so you're you're saying by that definition of God I see this is kind of goes back to where I'm saying initially i'm not defining it elijah defined So as Elijah's as Elijah defines God it's defined that way in Jonah too okay so as Cardinal Newman also defined it that way as as I'm sure you know many people who've defined it that way um and it's impressive you're a very knowledgeable person i'm not trying to be impressive i'm just pointing out to you how God is defined in the Old Testament all right so to respond to that um I do think there are lots of interesting ways to define God and that goes back to my then how do we specify what we're arguing about we use context clues or we spec or we again it goes back to my example defining God as conscience okay so that's interesting but then you're kind of expanding the meaning of God why not that's how it's defined in the Old Testament in Elijah and in Jonah sure so whoever so some not whoever Elijah is one of the major Old Testament prophets right he's equal in stature to Moses okay so it's not arbitrary all right so that um is interesting but it's not relevant to the context with which I am using the term God it's directly relevant atheists reject God but they don't understand what they're rejecting you accept conscience as a guide and conscience is one of the defining characteristics of God in the Old Testament i think you're being intellectually disingenuous in what way because I asked you if you believe that conscience guided you just asked me a question and then you stopped me from answering it in this setting you understand the way I am using the term God and belief not in the least i don't understand how you're using it in the least that's why I'm trying to define it my definition of God is conscience is a lot more precise and oriented than your definition of the God that you hypothetically disbelieve in it's irrelevant to the fault lines of this debate how is it irrelevant because in common parliament when we're talking about atheist God belief not belief i don't care about common parliament i'm trying to get to something fundamental i just I think your point is irrelevant to the way that people tend to use these words your point that there are these polysimus you did yeah well I mean the point that God was associated with consciousness i just I just feel like you kind of retreat into this semantic fog i'm not retreating at all i'm advancing sir you are retreating all right well it was very nice to meet you i appreciate the conversation yeah yeah it's very brave of you to do this thank you surrounded is now a podcast available wherever you listen search Surrounded plug in and stay part of the conversation anywhere anytime my next claim is that morality and purpose cannot be found within science [Music] what is up Mr canada how you doing man i'm doing great what's your name brian i think it's interesting that you say that morality and purpose can't be found in science actually within science within sure sure sure sure purpose I actually grant you because purpose is subjective right unless you want to boil it down to the purpose of life is just to procreate right sure whatever morality is actually something that we do see um we actually have examples of Neanderthalss uh an older individual is found in a tribe missing an arm missing teeth still alive somehow in his 40s 50s right typically uh you're a Neanderthal you can't eat you can't hunt you die right but we know that members of the tribe are taking care of him right so we know that at some level early in our evolutionary history um we actually developed altruism um we have examples of chimpanzees who actually have a basic understanding of fairness right if you give a chimpanzeee two grapes right and uh his buddy gets three right he actually freaks out right but you give both chimps three grapes and they're good um we have examples of parrots except for the greedy chimps except for the greedy chimps they want four grapes they want four grapes you know those do exist right um but we have similar examples uh where we do animal tests right and so morality is intrinsic I think so it precedes science i think that actually a better way to define it would be that social animals which we are right require some level of morality or into what I'm not disagreeing sure why do they require that because it's the only way that social groups can actually survive right that's my point with regards to science thank you very much is that precisely the point that you just made that science has to exist within a moral framework that isn't in itself scientific how's that not scientific well because it's not derived from the scientific process as you just indicated it's not derived from the scientific process it's the fact that we are social animals we need that to exist as a group i agree but you pointed to the morality of Neanderthalss to the morality of chimpanzees they didn't derive that from science they don't need to that's not how that works that's my point science explains it science doesn't explain morality it doesn't explain how social animals would need to be well that that's a complic that's a complicated question but we see it though yeah but explaining the evolution of morality and explaining morality itself aren't the same thing okay so you're asking why does this happen i'm ask I'm Yes that's that's more accurate because we're social animals yeah but there's more to it than that sure sure for example so we're moral animals that have a sense of the future sure okay that makes us unique and that structures our morality oh actually there are other animals that can predict the future or not predict the future no tigers actually there was a tiger at the SF zoo that killed somebody um and no no no no it No kids threw at the tiger the tiger actually plotted its escape and it found the kids i'm saying that animals can't think okay but they can be the future that's what I'm saying voted out by the majority thank you man good man yeah [Music] hey Peterson how you doing how you doing man my name's Luke nice to meet you good to see you Luke so your claim that morality and purpose can only be found in science is a little shaky because I think that your claim is really being framed to be morality and purpose can only be found in religion is that how you're kind of framing it i would say that the domain of religion is the domain of morality and purpose yes exactly and also that science is actually structured at least in part technically to eliminate such considerations from its purview a priority okay right that's why we define science is value free mhm but that has to be wrong because scientists have to prioritize their attention towards something before they can even engage in observation okay and that act of prioritization of attention is a value predicated act and so we ass I can continue there's all sorts of things we have to assume about science before it can take place okay so what I'm specifically pointing out here is about religion in particular since you yourself are a Christian right that's people debate about that and I generally don't discuss it publicly okay I understand that and me myself I am a former uh young earth creationist fundamentalist oh yeah um so I have experience in this i used to run a Tik Tok channel uh directed about apologetics about the Bible specifically in this type of facet with morality uh evolution and such and going back and forth with that so in the Bible it talks a lot about slavery right uh yes yes so in that it teaches you how to take care of a slave rather than saying slavery is wrong i think it should it says that in the story of Moses it says slavery is incorrect it says it's wrong that's why Moses leads his people away from slavery but why does the Bible predicate and tell people exactly how to take care of a slave isn't that immoral don't Wouldn't you say that culturally we've evolved as a species as he said earlier about empathy yeah I would say that the reason we evolved so to speak away from slavery was because the West was founded on Judeo-Christian morality and the presumption that every person was made in the image of God and so slavery itself became immoral and that was established by Protestant Christians in the UK who then convinced the UK government for 200 years to go to war on you say that this is about the cultural evolution of humans in general rather than just Christian i think it's the flowering of the ideas that were embedded in the biblical texts across long spans of time i feel like this is just humans editing based on the cultural evolution what do you mean by just just yeah just humans well humans editing well based on culture and history right we we get better they did do it based on culture and history but culture and history have their foundations too so well yeah but we we're talking about slavery it so many people bolstered it based on everyone ex based on the Bible they looked at it and they justified it in the United States in the deep south they justified slavery yeah but the main thrust the main thrust of Protestant thought in particular was stringently against slavery and it was about the only movement in the history of the human race that had an anti-slavery direction which was driven by humans and their understanding that's one way of looking well it depends it's the same with women's suffrage i mean women's in in the the patriarch what do you mean it was driven by humans humans drove slavery too yes exactly they they Oh so there's no argument there if slavery and anti-slavery were both driven by humans what what does your claim that they were driven by humans have to do with it evol morality based on the culture that within the society that they live in so with women suffrage as well as a very similar topic in the Bible there are denominations in Christianity such as Pentecostal movement which do bolster women to be pastors right which I I think that's a great thing to do but most like to disregard where do you think the idea that human beings were sufficiently equal to all vote and not be slaves came from humans yeah but so did the idea of slavery so did the idea of God fine but what's your point like you're not making an argument you're just saying all thoughts come from humans regardless of the thought it's not driven by a higher power it's driven on our experiences which is what is best for all people is it driven by conscience it could be which conscience is also something that has evolved over time and I think that's something that does evolve with in morality and empathy okay i I don't understand the point that you're making my point is that God influenced slavery people looked at the Bible and went "This is moral because God says so." Just like woman suffrage there's lots of And just like homosexuality if all human societies were slave owning so you can't blame that on the Bible if humanity decided Oh wait address that first what about human societies were slavers so you can't blame that on the Bible well you can say it bolstered it well not if you look at the broad sweep of history because it was the Protestant Christians based on their interpretation of the Bible it was the Protestant Christian which evolves over time let's pause there you've been voted out by the majority well it was great talking with you sir nice talking to you [Music] dr peterson good to see you man pleasure what's your name brian uh so the first thing I would like to say is I would like to engage in this discussion in a symbiotic manner i would not like to engage where there is one clear winner and one clear loser emotions are activated and it ultimately comes about ego so I'm just saying I'm really trying to understand your position and I would just like you to really try to understand my position deal okay sounds good with that if you're saying that morality and purpose cannot come from science is the opposite of that true that morality and purpose can only come from God that's a way of defining it yes okay that's right that's good so I would say that with regard to the first claim say atheists don't understand what they're rejecting because I would say by definition God is the unity upon which moral claims are based that's a definition right okay if there is a God what is the purpose of life well in in the Christian tradition the purpose of life is to engage in voluntary upward self-sacrifice so that the kingdom of heaven can be established on earth so you're trying to make it to heaven and avoid hell yes that's a good way of that's a good way of thinking about it what is the purpose of heaven do you understand so so here's the deal we can get into the opposite of endless suffering how about that we can Okay and so should we not try to achieve infinite suffering on planet Earth and if we can achieve infinite suffering on planet Earth without God avoiding it if we can do that without God then that does that defeat your claim well yeah except that it doesn't you circumvented my initial definition because I said that by definition God was the unified source of morality and so if we engage in a moral exercise when you're when you're talking about morality though when you really reverse engineer it and you get it down to its root you're a psychologist it really seems like it just has to deal with motivation people are saying there is a god there is it's more specific than that well I so let me ask you this so if there is a god and there is a moral code and It doesn't come at your benefit are you going to follow it it depends on how you define your benefit if it if you define your benefit if it's going to come at your expense would you still follow it if God came down and said "Here is my moral code and you should follow it but even if you follow it you are still going to end up in hell are you going to follow it?" Well that was the question that was put to Job and Christ right because they were required hang on i'm answering your question they were followed they were required to withstand trials that would break anyone and maintain their upward orientation regardless and they did that with the motivation of believing that this omni potent allloving god would somehow turn it into a benefit so they still did it solely for their benefit so well let's define hang on let's define benefit like if I did something for your sister would that be to your benefit like how are you defining your benefit do you mean one of your whims gratified now or do you mean you and everyone you love and know over some reasonable span of time what do you mean by when when you're talking about whims i think you're talking about something that's more dopamine when you're talking about morality you're talking about something that's more serotonin and more ultimately satisfying so you and I agree on a lot i mean when it comes to talking about how men should be masculine and things of that nature you and I are 100% in agreement we just don't agree on the justification that God is the only thing that provides morality it's not a justification it's a definition what's the difference then between a definition and a justification i mean it's ultimately psychologically the same thing well we have to define what we're talking about before we can just debate okay well so I said that God among other things I'm actually a non-theist i'm not an atheist i believe the human condition is one of uncertainty and what that means is that I don't believe that you can conclude there is a God with certainty and I don't believe that you can conclude that there is a God without un um in the same position now with that I don't care i still wake up every day and I have motivation to be a moral person define moral moral what I ought to do okay how do you what I ought to do ultimately it comes down to what not just benefits me but what benefits the entire planet what it benefits the entire system i think that your entire moral perspective comes from linear thinking and when you look at the reality of the universe it's actually more so holistic so when you look at how Aristotle defined God when he said that there had to be an unmoved moved or an uncaused cause he was defining God from a linear perspective and you do the same with morality and you do the same with purpose how do you how does my definition of morality how does my definition of morality hypothetically because because you're saying that there's something that exists in a vacuum that it exists in and of itself and nothing in the universe exists in a vacuum nothing exists in and of itself it's a whole systemsbased morality it's a systemsbased reality that is what the quantum is there a hierarchical structure are some things more important than others are some things I think some things lead to more benefits than others then by your own definition some things are more important than others yes okay pause there you've been voted out by the majority [Applause] [Music] how you doing nice to meet you nice to meet you i guess since you said morality and purpose cannot be found in science um it would just depend on like what you're referencing if you're saying a description of your psychological preferences would be considered within science sure but I don't think that you have to say that it comes from science in order to be like an atheist as an agnostic atheist I don't know if God exists and I don't believe that a god exists and the only ones that I would really reject would be like the all knowing all powerful all good perfect notion of God that plenty of Christians like prescribe themselves so I guess how is that relevant to this claim you're basing a position of morality and purpose in some like notion of God that isn't the same type of notion of God that typical Christians would prescribe your notion of God is what typical Christians yeah typically when I talk to Christians they they say that they believe in an all knowing about Cardinal Newman who defined God as conscience he was a major influence on all of Catholic social theory how about that Christian sure i'm So do you believe in the all knowing all powerful all good notion of God what do you mean by believe you think it to be true that's the circular definition what do you mean believe how is that circular because you added no content to the answer by substituting the word true and believe i said you think it to be true all right so if you believe something you stake your life on it what do you mean by that you live for it and you die for it that's what I mean by that it isn't something that you say it isn't something that's associated with logical consistency it's not declarative it's not propositional it's not a figment of your imagination it's the presupposition of your attention and your action and you're either fragmented in which case you worship multiple gods or there's some unity at the bottom of it that makes you an unstoppable force okay okay so you're saying that you don't believe something if you wouldn't die for it no really no okay so then how would you define belief something you say i explain like I could believe it is the case that this pen exists but if someone like threatened my life right i would lie in order to be able to save my life right like I I think you would do that too you wouldn't lie to save your life be so sure you you wouldn't lie to save your life how much do you know about me i didn't lie to save my career i didn't lie to save my clinical practice would you lie lie to like save your children your mom your dad i don't think lying would save them no can there ever be a circumstance logically that lying could save someone yeah and if you're steeped in sin you're likely to live in circumstances like that i'll give you an example if you're like in like Nazi Germany and it is the case that there's like Jewish people in your attic and you're trying to protect them would you lie to like the Nazis if I would have done everything I bloody well could so I wouldn't be in that situation to begin with it's a hypothetical and it's not answer hypotheticals no I can't answer a hypothetical like that because it's Look don't play games i'm not playing games i'm just saying if you present me with an intractable moral choice that's stripped of context and you back me into a corner you're playing game i just told you I would do everything that I could to make sure that I'm never in that situation by the time you've got there you've made so many mistakes that there's nothing you can do that isn't a sin being born in Nazi Germany and in trying to protect people that you care about like there could be a Jewish friend that you have and you want to protect them that line of questioning give up on just like trying to clarify your position cuz it you don't like are you like uncomfortable with me asking this question it's just a basic hypothetical like I could ask you that's just a basic hypothetical where where you're you put Jews lives at stake in Nazi Germany that's just a basic obviously you would lie in that scenario to save their life but you're like not trying to answer this question for some reason I just told you Why are you anti-fascist like so you're anti-fascist why are you asking that i was just asking just clarifying but like okay again you're not answering this hypothetical because you know it shows that you clearly would lie to someone answering it in find acceptable obviously because I care about truth i wouldn't be in that scenario obviously right logically because that's already happened like that's in the past you don't have a time travel device we're bringing this logical hypothetical up to show you that in some circumstances that do happen within the real world you would lie to save people's lives so your definition of truth isn't actually how we're typically using it so what you're trying to do is you're trying to muddy the waters when I ask you like "Do you believe this do you think this to be true?" So you don't actually have to answer the questions and plenty of Christians don't like that because they clearly see that you don't really like want to be associated with Christianity imagine that I was in a situation where the best I could do as a consequence of my previous mistakes was to tell the least amount of lie I could manage but that would likely indicate that I had made all sorts of catastrophic catastrophic errors on my way there so so you would lie to save someone's life so again you do believe it to be true in that circumstance even though you like lied in that scenario so clearly without the context that I put it in you were not willing to die for it you were not willing to let other people die for it so that's not what you see to be true then seemingly you're doing exactly what I said you were doing at the beginning of the conversation you're generating an impossible restricted hypothetical with no precursors to back me into a How is it possible is there something contradictory about it nice to meet you yeah nice to meet you too great conversation my next claim is that everybody worships something including atheists even though they might not know it hi good work thank you hi there i'm Zena so I want to start off with like defining terms um yeah how do you define worship prioritize prioritize so almost like having a preference over something rather than the other it's a hierarchy of preferences yeah and you use it to direct your attention right so whatever you're attending to you're worshiping right so I've kind of become a little bit familiar with your idea of like this value laden hierarchy right and you kind of posit that at the bottom of this hierarchy or you could call it top or bottom i suppose at the bottom of this hierarchy this this foundational priority in your life is going to be considered God that's correct yes right i'm trying to imagine a situation in which could there be that someone has a priority at their foundation that is different from someone else's oh definitely right so we can have different conceptions of God that's why we fight right so essentially there is no there's not one god but there are multiple gods and these gods exist in some realm of truth like like it's true that this person has one god and it exists yeah probably better to think about it as multiple values but that there's a hierarchy of values with something at the bottom right but the at the bottom is God and there that's a definition yeah yeah so at the bottom is God and every there can be multiple people with different conceptions of God and they are each valid and being called God so there are multiple gods that exist it depends on what you mean by valid so far so good but it depends on what you mean by valid because I would say that some foundational conceptions don't play out when they're implemented so if you put the wrong thing at the foundation you end up in hell for example that's what happens in totalitarian states okay so you're saying so they're not all equal like all foundational principles are not equal even though they might be equally foundational right right so what makes one kind of foundational tenant like better than another one that's an excellent question um iterability imagine that you play a game with someone and you're a kid and it's fun so you play again and again and again so repetition it's Yeah it's playability across multiple iterations so then you have a friend and a friend is better than having a game right so that's one breadth of application is another so if it's just for me now it's not as good as something that would be benefit to both of us across time right so we're explaining like characteristics that can be applied to like these types of like foundational values but why is it that that this iterability makes it better and what does better mean well one hallmark of better is likely to be selected voluntarily so it's invitation another descriptive kind of quality so we're talking about characteristics that in some type of system with a goal an output being like we could maybe say happiness right or or some some type of harmony harmony right yeah that's better not happiness precisely because it's too short term exactly so as someone who is an atheist right I can explain that within a system there are things that we can see as better or worse to meet this goal or meet this output but when what I what we're interested in though is what could make these things regardless of any system right well imagine that you set up a system and you implement it and it produces the opposite results to which you intend okay that's not a good system exactly right so the foundational principles are lacking because when you implement them the game degenerates instead of moving towards the aim right so we're talking about within a system though when we talk about something being moral right just absolutely moral it means that without a system right this thing is is simply moral with no reason like stance independent this thing is good so I'm trying to figure out if such thing can exist and if so do you believe that these things are moral be in of themselves like self-evidently moral or are they moral in in accordance with the system I can't define them any more accurately than I already did really okay in regards to morality when we talk about the divine when we talk about God and religion these moral tenants and religion right and God exists as good because it is God right so it's self-evident right without any kind of goal or output this thing is good so I so I want to figure out how there's an element of that that's true in so for example in the story of Job Job is unfairly tortured in consequence of a bet between God and Satan so Job is emblematic of someone who's being hurt for no apparent reason okay so Job's response to that is that he refuses to lose faith in himself and he refuses to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of being okay and those are like those are axiomatic decisions they're not exactly evidence- dependent because he is suffering there is an arbitrariness in that that's reminiscent of what you claim so I'm essentially trying to figure out do you believe that something can be good like stance independently something that can be good i don't know what you mean by stance independent you mean independent of people independent of people we can use that or or more so I want to be more specific something that can be good right regardless of any end goal it's just good no I think good is tied up with goal goal okay i completely agree so in a sense this is why that's why the religious goal in Christianity is the establishment of the heaven the kingdom of heaven on earth it's goal dependent okay right or it's in it's in reference to a goal so or the goal would be the imitation of Christ someone's goal right can be something that doesn't encompass being in congruence with God or being with God no the thing that they want to be inong That's right that's right that's good that's great the the thing they want to be in congruence with is fundamentally equivalent to their God so what makes someone a Christian and what makes someone not a Christian what makes like that's what I'm trying to figure out because that's a good question yes yeah well probably the deepest answer to that is willingness to shoulder your cross voluntarily and trudge uphill regardless of circumstances okay so someone can believe in someone can have a god because in your definition your first preference that is God right so someone can believe in God right and not be a Christian right yeah well there's a statement that Christ makes in the gospels he says "Not everyone who says Lord Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven so not that that they're even saying that they believe in God but they just I No no but that's why I'm saying this to you is that Christ himself points out that there's a difference between people who say they believe and people who act it out and the fundamental issue is the action rather than the stated belief but he also says that you know to be saved right you must believe God has has died for your sins or or that God has resurrected in some way so it's like I don't necessarily think that we can take from the Bible and say that like acting in accordance with God necessarily means or acting in accordance with you know the principles of God like for example sacrifice like you talk about means that you are Christian i don't see how you can get that from the that interpretation and then you know kind of justified as I don't think that the fact that you sacrifice is sufficient to make you Christian so can we repeat once again what you believe makes someone Christian there's many things but one of the most fundamental is that you believe that the cosmos itself is founded on the principle of voluntary self-sacrifice best founded let let me offer you a contrary example so I could assume that power rules and so that my assumption would be if I can make you do it I win right and I can found a whole society on that that happens a lot by the way and that's also whole societies tend to degenerate and so that would be a society that was founded on the principle that you get to sacrifice and I don't have to right now the the contrary to that would be something like you give up voluntarily and with courage all the things you need to situate yourself properly in relationship to the future and other people right right so then there's a there's a harmony that's why I talked about harmony earlier so you navigate your life right in accordance kind of to this principle of self-sacrifice can I can I say it in that way yes you can definitely say it that way that's exactly right and navigate is the right term someone does not have to have any awareness of Christ of the story of of of Jesus and they but let's say 60% of their actions right or more whatever kind of metric you want to use um are in line with this self so the Yeah yeah yeah the Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages dealt exactly with that problem when they were talking about the pre-Christian philosophers for example and they noted the similarity let's say between pre-Christian Greek thought and later Christian thought and presumed that there were moral actors outside the Christian domain right christian though is that person well to some degree again that's a matter of definition because they wouldn't be proclaiming Christian propositions but they're acting out the pattern right yeah so you imagine that full Christianity would involve a dozen things and you can imagine someone who knows nothing of Christianity say acting out eight of them right right so then they'd be 81 12ths Christian or something like that Christian but to be like a full Christian how can someone say I am Christian like I am Christian not 82s but Christian well I I hesitate to do that personally because I think it's the kind of goal that you be very careful about proclaiming the technical but belief is not necessarily to be mostly Christian belief is not necessary 812s or you know right well depends on what you mean by belief see because I would say that acting out the pattern is the deepest form of belief now you could add to that what you say so you know maybe in the optimal situation how you act and what you imagine and what you say they're the same right but you can imagine a hypocrite who says all sorts of wonderful things and does nothing and you could imagine another person who acts in a very positive manner but proclaims nothing so what I'm kind of seeing is like a descriptive a really a really um comprehensive but descriptive analysis of human action human thought and by by which we can characterize people and put people in boxes but I don't see why in boxes when I say in boxes I mean like I can categorize you based on your actions not based on necessarily what you say but based on your actions that you are more so or less so Christian right things like that right so we can categorize people as Christian well I would say more or less voluntarily self-sacrificing that yeah but but that's also what we came to though is that someone can be like 60% or 70% Christian based on simply just acting in that way richard Dawkins is like that i I watched that debate let's pause there we've been voted out by the majority very good thank you so much really very thoughtful [Music] hey Dr peterson how are you doing danny nice to meet you what's your name danny danny you're saying atheists worship things or people or places whatever um can you be very clear about your definition of worship again attend to prioritize and sacrifice for okay that's it that's your understanding of worship well I could flesh it out but that'll do for the time we have okay do Catholics attend to Mary well yes okay so do they fit that description of worship yes so you would say Catholics and other people that rever Mary like the Eastern Orthodox tradition worship Mary well they might not put her in the highest but you would put it that way no you just said it now you're taking it back there's still a hierarchy okay there's a hierarchy but in within the There's something at the top all right you can worship mary is quite a ways up the hierarchy but not at the top let's Let's go over your definition of worship again what's your definition of worship attend to attend to do prioritize do Catholics sacrifice for what do Catholics attend to um do they prioritize Mary over all other human beings no I didn't say overall did I i didn't add that to my You understand i said there was a hierarchy as well you you attend to that so you can attend to something trivially or you can attend to it deeply and now you're adding stuff to the definition but your original definition i added the hierarchy part at the beginning are you understand are you familiar with the immaculate conception why is that relevant because you go to a Catholic church don't you or you've attended recently you're interested in Catholicism aren't you sure all right are you familiar with their doctrines somewhat okay you're you're familiar how do they regard How do they regard Mary why are you asking me that because you're a Christian you say that i haven't claimed that oh what is this is this Christians versus atheist i don't know you don't know where you are right now don't be a smartass and I mean either you're a Christian or you're not talk to you if you're a smart ass oh either you're a Christian or you're not which one is it i I could be either of them but I don't have to tell you you You don't have to tell me i was under the impression I was invited to talk to a Christian am I not talking to a Christian no you were invited to I think everyone should look at the title of the YouTube channel you're probably in the wrong YouTube video you're really quite something you are aren't I but you're really quite nothing right you're not a Christian oh yeah i'm done with him hi there hi nice to meet you what's your name gerard hello Gerard nice to meet you sir so you've said that worship is when you prioritize and sacrifice for something right okay there's a hierarchy in there sure so I prioritize and sacrifice for my wife more than I would prioritize and sacrifice for a random person on the street right probably yeah presumably do I worship i don't know i've seen some pretty bad pretty bad marriages assuming a good marriage are you saying I worship my wife i'm trying to define worship that's what I'm asking so prioritizing sacrifice i do the higher it is in the hierarchy the more what you're doing is akin to worship but even in your trivial acts of attention you're prioritizing and partaking in worship even if you don't know it so I am partly well with regard to your wife say so why do you value your wife you do value your wife i love her so I prioritize and I sacrifice for her right right so that's within the confines of love let's say what else does it serve what else does what serve your love in your marriage i mean I'm married to my wife because I love her that's also why I prioritize and sacrifice for her i certainly wouldn't think I worship her and I don't think anyone else would make that argument trying to make a definition okay yeah that that there's a hierarchy of attentional priority and as you move up it or down it depending on whether you think about it as a pinnacle or a foundation you move more towards worship right so even the small things I'll give you an example imagine you go on a date mhm well and imagine that your aim is a long-term relationship like a marriage okay now imagine that your aim is short-term sexual gratification your pattern of attention is going to vary during the date depend on your ultimate end that's the hierarchy the way that you attend to your wife is dependent on your ultimate aims even if you don't know it so at what point is it worship because it sounds like you're saying worship is almost a spectrum right it's it's not a binary it's not a It's kind of like That's a good question when when is when is it worship as opposed to just I love my wife the closer you get to the top or the bottom the more it's like it's more like how close to the top because I don't think I worship anything and if you're saying I have to hit a certain threshold for it to be worshiped it is possible I don't worship anything then right it's not possible that you don't worship anything what do I worship because you wouldn't attend well love so you think I worship love do you attend in consequence of love see I'm trying to define something what do you mean worship i told you what I meant what do you mean so I mean it a wor something you worship is something that you have a reverential view for in a manner in which you believe it to be above and beyond normal things you like like you you have that attitude towards your wife I have that attitude do you privilege her to compared to other women I of course I privilege her compared to other women but I don't worship her nor does she worship nor does she worship me by the definition you just offered yes you do cuz we tal you just offered a definition that involved prioritization and elevation well and thinking that she is divine above and beyond what a normal natural phenomenon can be not other women no beyond any human being could ever be i will prioritize her over other she is making the assumption that the only the thing at the top or the bottom has anything to do with worship and I'm saying that's not true it's a hierarchy of prioritization and there's something there's either something at the top or the bottom depending on the metaphor or you're fragmented and confused those are the only options so let's either going in many directions okay or you're going in one direction so let's suppose I'm fragmented and confused then you agree I don't worship anything no then you'd worship multiple things how but so what's the threshold when it's worship right i prioritize a lot of stuff i said that the closer you get to the pinnacle or the closer how close can you quant you give me some sort of metric how close do I got to get to this pinnacle do you know the difference between cheap literature and deep literature yes okay that's the same issue and how do you how do you distinguish between them what's the difference between cheap and deep i mean it's really an opinion based thing right i mean so it's just an opinion that Frosty is better than a porno magazine well I've spoken to people who think To Kill a Mockingbird's cheap it's one of my favorite books so I mean people will differ on opinion well just because people are stupid about things doesn't mean that their opinion is valid that's certainly true i agree with that okay well do you think there is a hierarchy in literary quality i think that there is a hierarchy to an extent in literary quality but I think once you get to a certain threshold it is just opinion like I agree Doyki is better than a porno mag but is F scott Fitzgerald better than Ernest Hemingway i don't know yeah fair enough why why do you think that because of what a book is what literature is doyki he follows what literature is the purpose of more than the porno magazine okay good good well so it's about purpose yeah sure sure let me give you an an analog then the depth of worship is analogous to depth of literary significance and the closer you get to what's deep the more religious and worshipful your practice and maybe you don't know what's at the bottom but something needs to be or you're confused well so to use your analogy then how deep do I have to go for it to be worshiped do I have to be catcher in the ride do I have to be war in peace or It depends on what you're seeking for i'm seeking to know whether I worship something you've claimed I worship something and I want to if you want to have a deep and meaningful life then you have to go all the way to the bottom or the top and in so far as you're capable of doing that because otherwise you'll be fragmented and miserable and anxietyridden and hopeless so I have to worship something to have a meaningful life and if I there's no difference between those two things okay they're the same thing so if I don't worship anything my life will not be meaningful correct well that's the definition of nihilism okay so if I'm a nihilist I don't worship anything that's true and then you okay you just said everybody worships something i think you just agreed there is a class of people that doesn't well they're incoherent in their worship and hand gestures like that aren't going to help all right okay if you're incoherent and fragmented and aimless which is what happens if your objects of worship are unstructured and chaotic then you're going to be anxietyridden and without hope that happens that's a technical argument but there's happy nihilists oh there are how do you explain that there are happy nihilists then because you just said they the mere fact that you state that there are happy nihilists doesn't make it true like what's your evidence that how do you measure nihilism and how have you associated with happiness and what's your definition of happiness and have you compared them to religious people because if you do by the way it's clearly the case that religious people over the long run have better mental health it's a well doumented fact in psychological literature so your your claim is just a claim it doesn't stand on anything so you disagree with the claim claim that there exists even one happy nihilist you didn't say that okay would you agree there exists at least one happy nihilist in the universe i have it's not a question that has any meaning as far as I'm concerned because it depends on what you mean by happy and it depends on the duration that you're trying to calculate over now and then there's probably some deluded soul who thinks he's a nihilist who's momentarily pleased with himself but as a long-term strategy to deal with the future to get along with yourself and with others it's sadly lacking that's why Nin re warned that when God died as he announced in 1850 that people would be flooded with pointless anxietyridden hopeless nihilism and that was what would attract them to example for example to the false gods of totalitarianism which is exactly what happened because everybody worships something even atheists who think they don't aren't there unhappy Christians or devoted believers so worshiping something is neither sufficient nor necessary for happiness then well terrible things can come your way regardless and that does happen but it's the case that even when circumstances become deeply troublesome that how you're oriented makes a big difference so I'll give you an example so the book of Job deals with the issue of unfair suffering so Job is a good man who has everything taken away from him in the most painful possible way to settle a bet right with Satan yes and so He makes the axiomatic presumption that he won't lose faith in himself or in the spirit of being itself and that helps him remain calm and forwardlooking through his time of trial doesn't he absolutely curse God no his wife tells him to do that thank you thank you my final claim is that atheists accept Christian morality but deny the religion's foundational stories [Music] hi there it's very nice to meet you i'm Ian i'm Ian hi yes uh so God says that you can own people as property he says that you can beat them with a rod too uh he commands genocide and Deuteronomy in uh in Numbers and in Samuel i mean they have a goddamn baby barbecue in Numbers like is is all of this in line with Christian ethics no so then God doesn't fit within Christian ethics well the biblical library is a continuing story and everything writen in it has to be contextualized by the entire text there's 65,000 hyperlinks in the biblical text and you can take pieces of it out out of context and criticize them and that's what you're doing but that's a mistake i think it's an analytic mistake because you're putting the cart before the horse i really don't think so i think that if we if we say that something is Christian ethics then I think that all of the books essential to Christianity would fit with it especially if it's like the main character when we're talking about how do you deal with the morality of war how do you think you should deal with the morality sure sure sure sure because I feel like the the morality like I feel like Christian ethics like this is kind of I I guess I just think it's like kind of an absurdity to say that God doesn't fit within Christian ethics but sure well we can go on my ethics that's totally fine i don't know what you mean by an absurdity what game are you playing with that i just think that it's an absurdity to say that the Christian God doesn't fit within Christian ethics that like the Christian God isn't like Christian ethical you said that the specific statements that you made don't take the context of the stories into account and so that your analytical approach is faulty don't put words in my mouth sure then let's go through the example yeah so oh and I apologize so let's go through the example so in 1st Samuel 15:3 God says "Go and and slaughter the Amalachites slaughter the men the women the children the infants what's the justification for that is that within Is that in line with That's a good question that's a good question i don't really know what to do with the terrible blood soaked saturated history of the human past i don't know and I don't think anybody knows i mean what you try to do in your own life as far as I can tell is to conduct yourself in a manner that makes such things much more unlikely i totally agree we're all saddled with the problem of the catastrophes that got us here aren't we yeah this one was commanded by God that's the problem that's what differentiates it from anything else is that this one it's God saying "Go and do this atrocity." Do you think that there's ever such a thing as a righteous war i'm skeptical i'm not sure i It would probably be situational well right right fair enough this certainly wasn't a just war the context for the Amalachite slaughter is that 400 years earlier they fought one battle which they lost and God says "That's it i'm going to wipe them off the face of the goddamn earth." And then 400 years later he commands the Israelites to genocide their great great great great great grandchildren that's not a just war at all and also a genocide is not a war well a genocide can be a war but absolutely not the genociding of the Amalachites the men the women and the infants that's not a war the infants aren't combatants look I already said that it's very difficult to look at blood soap past and to know exactly what to do about it the answer I gave to the gentleman who was sitting here before you is that it's necessary to read a text like the Bible at all of its levels of analysis simultaneously and there is a directional morality that emerges across time that has its roots in the Old Testament for example with its restrictions against murder specifically that makes itself manifest in the Christian texts as the insistence on voluntary self-sacrifice as the foundational belief that's a profoundly antiviolence ethos do you have the belief in your theology what do you think of that wait a sec now redress what yeah yeah so I'm I'm about to address it but I'm addressing it with a question do you think that God is by his very essence perfect uh you'll have to provide more sure just like maximally great and all like the great qualities yeah like flawless yeah so does a flawless thing change does a flawless thing reveal like more and better information over time or would a flawless thing say here's what's good here is the the absolute good thing to do at all circumstances in time well we know some of that that's one that's totally fine but presumably No no no you don't get to state over that with Totally it's a strong man of my position it's a strong man of the argument so the argument is wait a sec you find one maxim that's transcendent across situations i didn't say any of those words i'm not sure what conversation you're part of don't be a smartass i'm sorry seriously I mean it if we're going to have a serious conversation conduct yourself properly okay okay rephrase your question so that because I must have missed it i tried to answer it so in my mind I I guess by my lights a perfect being doesn't change a perfect being if they're maximally good maximally moral does our understanding of the perfect being change our understanding might but I agree how do we distinguish between that though at the human level how do we distinguish between whether between our transforming understanding of perfection and perfection itself yeah well we can only presumably a perfect being would be revealing all of these aspects all the time especially if God's outside of time i don't know how a God who's outside of time revealing different things at different times that just seems like incoherent to me imagine something that's perfect sure and complete sure okay and it's trying to communicate with creatures who are anything but that well they're going to get it wrong sure okay now do you wait a sec do you blame that on the interpreters or the phenomena itself uh so like for example are you perfect in attending to your conscience hold on at the point in time when God is literally the one who created us he could have created us in a way where we would always be receptive to these principles where we don't have to go across like a learning curve where you know maybe we'll understand thousands of years thousands of years in the future maybe we'll do it also if you believe in an all- knowing God then free will free will is impossible uh because if let's not wait because you you threw you threw free will into the mix i Well that was the answer to your question yeah why would God Well you know thousand years of deep thinking philosophers would disagree with you but and a thousand years of or at least like the last 50 years of philosophers would disagree with you these analytic philosophers people like Graham Oppy make arguments about the the incompatibility of of omniscience uh and free will that if God created this world if he chose this world instead of that world then he makes it causally inevitable every single action that you were going to make if he made a world where we were just electrons in love then none of this would have happened but by making us in this world knowing exactly what's going to happen in the future it makes all of those events inevitable which means that they're all causally determined which means that we have no free will if you believe in an all good God or an all knowing God that made everything well have it your way okay cool so then the Odyssey fails well it fails for you that doesn't mean you've disproved it i mean you argument yes you tried to make a case for a causally deterministic universe i don't think there's any evidence for that at all do you think that God could have created a different universe than the one that he created i have no idea okay so then there's going to be a double bind right so either he couldn't have done it in which case he lacks a power or he could have done it in which case we don't have free will because he chose this world instead of that world making the the events of this world instead of that world inevitable with his infallible knowledge i don't understand where you're headed well it just means that the free world defense fails like all this like and under your view if you want to have it fail no problem i don't know why it's relevant to the issue do you acknowledge that under your view free will doesn't exist no oh then do you want to respond to the argument you'll have to phrase it more clearly so that someone like me can understand it yeah i got you so so God already knows in advance everything that's going to happen which means that by making this world instead of that world everything is inevitable which means that God's act of causing this world instead of that world doesn't mean determined it's causally inevitable if God chooses this world instead of that world causally determined causally inevitable means determined no it doesn't absolutely yes it does well have it your way okay that's not the case you've been voted out by the majority please return to your seat [Music] jordan nice to meet you very zippy what's your name i'm Liam hi Liam how are you doing um I'm doing well how are you not too bad i'm surrounded by atheists um my my question to you let me scoot in would be what does it mean to accept Christian values precisely or Christian morality it means to aim up as hard as you can no matter what happens to you okay okay so I think that I think that that's a very broad definition of what Christian but it'll come in handy at some point in your life right but I think that many different like disciplines and theologies Well you asked for a truncated answer i mean there's other ways of representing the situation but I wanted to give you something that was kind of foundational briefly yeah that makes sense doesn't mean it's you know exhaustive yeah yeah yeah i could you know I could say that you you would have to believe that Christ is God and he died for your sins right but that's in a very difficult way to understand that's the same claim yeah yeah if there are other theologies and disciplines that have similar types of values Yeah how how then is that definition mean like wouldn't those also be Christian values under your definition that's a good question i spent a lot of time studying different religious systems from all over the world and found multiple interesting layers of concordance so for example in ancient Egypt their god Horus who was the reviving god of the totalitarian state the correct total he was the god of attention right and the Jews hypothetically came out of Egypt and there was cross talk between Egyptian and Jewish mor foundational morality and then that bled into Christianity mean human beings all over the world have come up with moral systems that fit roughly into a pattern and and they're they're very usefully studied you know I learned a lot about Christianity by studying Dowoism for example like a lot so I think you can make a case that Christianity formalized the landscape of good and evil more comprehensively and in more detail than any other religious system and I think that that's part of the reason that it defeated paganism and spread so broadly across the west and is still dominant still understructures our culture for example the way you feel about Horus or Dowoism or something is how I feel about Christian morals I think yeah but how do I feel about them well that you you took inspiration from them you learned from them maybe that's a good start you know cuz I would say that actually constitutes belief uh you know like you said well look look right right right in Noah in the story of Noah right Noah is inspired by the apprehension that all hell is going to break loose okay he regards that inspiration as God okay right and when God comes to Abraham he comes to Abraham as the spirit of adventure it's inspiration one of the definitions of God in the Old Testament unsurprisingly given the derivation of the word is inspiration and so if you take inspiration from Christian ideas then in so far as you do that you are in fact a believer which was my point with regards to atheists not understanding but have you taken inspiration from Daoism or from studying Egyptian mythology definitely so then you believe them under that definition yeah but I've incorporated them into something I think that's more comprehensive it is it possible to to take inspiration and to appreciate the teachings without being a believer in their truth claims i I it dep No I don't think so but I think you see you're you're there are different kinds of truth claims right there's propositional truth claims which are the truth claims of what you say and then there's embodied truth claims which is the truth claims of what you do that should be prioritized optimally what you say and what you do would be brought into harmony but I would say if you had to prioritize it should be what you attend to and what you act first and that's what Christ actually says in the gospels because he points to the Pharisees for example who say all the right things but don't do any of the right things and points out very clearly that that's not acceptable i I just I don't know I don't know that the Christian morality those those principles originate in Christianity because you brought up other uh other things that predate Christianity that you can like very closely tie connections to well I don't think they do originate precisely i mean I don't think the Christian claim is exactly that they originate in Christianity so if I'm living those values how is it that I'm living the Christian values and maybe not the Egyptian values or or something else there you've been voted out that was good that was good yeah hi hello there how are you doing i'm good how are you good what's your name i'm Kumari so I was curious about this like Christian morality that you're talking about because a lot of my issues of Christianity have to do with the base morality of it specifically with like the idea of like the rapture and how we see people that aren't going to come up with us with the rapture and that concept of heaven and hell i don't really agree with that morality but if you could explain that to me and how I do agree with that I would love to like hear well I I can't explain the rapture to you because that isn't something I concern myself with and that's more of a sectarian belief than something that's central to Christianity now there's all sorts of evangelical Protestants who might disagree with that but that doesn't have anything to do with me you asked a more a deeper question with regard to let's say heaven and hell and judgment yeah yeah well that's a tough one right i mean sin you could put it this way sin is what puts you in hell right and so then you might ask well how do you know you're in hell ha how about you do anything to get out of it can I ask you how about you know that you put yourself there do you think is sin like a part of Christian morality what what do you mean exactly sin as a part it's it's derived from an archery term and it means to miss the target right and so it presumes that there's such a thing as a central target and that you can miss it in many ways and the consequence of that will be your life will be ridden with anxiety your life will be pointless people will turn against you don't believe in sin at all well do you believe in error have you made any mistakes what if I believe that the mistakes that you make that they're fixable and so that no sin is finite and that the idea that's a Christian belief of the idea of hell i don't believe that's also a Christian belief by the way a Christian belief is hell know that there's no sin that well there's one the sin against the Holy Ghost is unforgivable but that's really the sin against the process that would enable you to learn but is the there's a Christian belief that hell does exist and if I commit sin I'm going to go there correct yes so what if I don't I don't believe in that like I think that when you can I explain a little bit okay thank you I think that when you commit sin that it's because of a lot of environmental factors in your life like where you were born and who you were raised by and so there are certain things that lead you down a dangerous path and once you are dead I think you're kind of removed of that person there's no like there are no factors of the earth what happens after death so I would ask you in these times that you've suffered terribly in ways that you thought would never end do you believe that you had any causal role in that like did did you play a part in that in my own suffering maybe sometimes I would say that there was a part that I played a thing to find out i think that maybe it's like a concept of free will that I don't really believe in somewhat of free will that I think that there are certain things in your life that lead you to do certain behaviors and so when you commit those sins you go to hell I'm not too sure why you would still be reaping the consequences of that I like I said I can't address that do you believe that you can change i do do you believe you can change for the better i do do you believe that when you change for the better you abandon the things you've done in the past that weren't good i think that you can okay then that's very much in keeping with Christian doctrine believe can you explain to me how that's in keeping with Christian doctrine you would go to hell for those things believe you can you believe you can improve right and you believe that if you improved you would let go of things that were impeding you that's a sacrifice you believe that improvement would be upward and you believe that you have agency in that yeah those are all Christian presuppositions i guess I dis maybe we have different opinions of what Christian morality is yes sounds like I think that my opinion of Christian morality is something that I don't really agree with and maybe you would define that as like the foundations of Christianity let me give you an let me give you an example so if you want to atone which means to unify yourself and unify that with the world then the first thing you have to do is figure out what you did wrong and admit it that's a confession that was good thank you yeah nice to meet you too i picked Zena because I think she asked genuine questions and wasn't trying to win okay well hello again hi there my claim is Jordan Peterson's framework for understanding Christianity is probably not the one that the Bible intended us to use in regards to the way that you interpret the Bible I don't see you have said in some circumstances that there's not a way to kind of say whether or not ontologically the historical claims made by the Bible are true like for example the story of Cain and Abel you've said that this story is like a metatruuth in the sense that it is it exists all throughout time culturally and the way that you define metatruuth I don't see the distinguish uh a distinction between that and like a metaphor right but if and you also say that you cannot say whether this story was true you can say that it exists eternally you know metaphorically but it is you can't say that it's true and if you can't say that there are historical facts being said in the Bible as stories that haven't that weren't really said with much ambigu ambiguity how can we say that we can understand the Bible in the way that it's meant to be interpreted like how if you cannot make any claims about these stories right you don't know the true true or false how do you know that your interpretation is the correct way see that's why I picked you you ask intelligent questions thank you yeah that was good what do they say by their fruits you'll know them okay right well so one of the things I look at is the impact of what I'm doing right and so I know a lot of evangelical Christians a lot of Catholics a lot of Orthodox Christians a lot of people from other faiths and they've told me like many of them that they found my interpretations very helpful and that it deepened their faith and so that's interesting because I wouldn't have necessarily expected that to be the case and I've also talked to thousands of people who've told me that they came to understand the foundational stories of their culture better as a consequence of listening to me and that they did everything they could to sort out their lives and that it worked that's many different pieces of evidence that all converge on something like the practical and conceptual utility of my approach now is it the same there are a lot of there is a lot of approaches to biblical interpretation historically and what I'm doing is possibly less new than you think yeah i want to make a claim on whether this evidence is enough right to substantiate whether or not your interpretation is going to you know be more plausible right be the most plausible because in regards it's an open question yeah right you bet so in regards to how we interpret the Bible and how we see the Bible something can add value to someone's life an interpretation can add value to someone's life interpretation can connect you to your conception of what your faith is but if it's the quote unquote interpretation that God does not intend that can lead to a plethora that's certainly the case that's why the medieval Christians were so concerned about heresy exactly yeah because they felt and that's why the Catholics objected so much to the Protestant Reformation because they believed that the fractionation of Christianity would result in an indefinite fractionation right well and that's exactly what's happened right so yeah that's definitely a problem i think one of the foundational principles for example there's a foundational principle in the Old Testament of hospitality right so what you want to do if you set up your local environment properly is to make it welcoming to people voluntarily and so one of the ways you could judge the validity of the interpretation of a classic story is that whether is whether or not that interpretation might be regarded by someone as welcoming does that represent something you'd actually like to have if you were acting in your own interest in the long run right and we we can talk about that like like do protect you from fear might be another one exactly so we can talk about like how these interpretations of the Bible like if they kind of resonate with us and but I do and I think that that can in some case be some kind of like evidence oh this might be true but I think we need to ask is this evidence damning right is this evidence certain right so but I do want to look at again the consequences and our understanding of this interpretation once more so we look at again the story of Cain and Abel and we say yeah so I believe this is a metatruth I believe that this story is resonant throughout cultures that is all and Danny and I'm sure that there is some in some way the story was put in here for the reason right to to tell us about you know fights between brothers but also you can't say I do know or I don't know that this story is false or true in an ontological historical sense as a historical fact were there two people like like that were specifically referenced okay I don't think that's knowable but I'm not sure why it matters to you so the reason why it matters to me is because we need to know how we should interpret the things that the Bible says and the the the any ways right right but like if we interpret sometimes poetry sometimes history sometimes facts metaphor the reason why it's important right very important is because for example we can talk about something like God says I believe it's like 1 Corinthians 15:17 something about how belief in God specifically a as someone who resurrected or as someone who died for our sins is important right but we have to look at if we can interpret that as just like you have to believe that God is a symbol of sacrifice that is different from believing that there was an actual person named Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our sins true so if you believe one and not the other that can be the difference between you going to hell and you going to heaven so if we cannot make like we cannot say that we know whether or not certain historical facts in the Bible happen like even as just like events like because the events matter because again God dying for our sins on the cross was an event if we can't say that we know these things happen these things did or didn't happen this then leads us to kind of like the conundrum of how do we know what we are meant to believe what the Bible intended for us to believe and this can be very very important to like our fate do you see that i've got no disagreement with any of that what sort of response do you want from that he pushed me beyond the limits of my knowledge really well I think that's there's so many things you can't know i'm struggling i know that the biblical stories are the foundation of Western culture mhm i know that the consequence of those stories has been the genesis of a society that is in the main freer and more abundant than any societies have ever been i don't exactly understand the relationship between those stories and that outcome but it's not nothing right but I don't know I don't know the answer to the questions that you're asking you know it's it's the case that forever when people have been interpreting religious stories they wrestled with exactly the question that you just described when is it fact when is it poetry when is it music when is it metaphor when is it ritual when is it time bound but what I'm saying is that your interpretation of the Bible if you cannot tell us again if these historical events happened or not that can be deciding factor if someone is like damned to hell for eternity or if they go to heaven right so that's why I'm what I don't concern myself so much with that particular question you know like that that would be something that would stem more from an evangelical viewpoint and I'm not putting that down by the way i don't You're asking me a question I really can't answer okay i'm not claiming even that my interpretations are canonically correct i can only tell you the consequences of having released them into the world let's say right so I guess we've kind of come to a conclusion about that which I've kind of wrestled with your your framework and pushed it kind of to its kind of to its end at least in the way that you can answer my question so I don't know that we can more wrestle with that see I don't I guess the problem is you see I don't exactly understand I don't think anybody does the relationship between fact and destiny you know well they're they're different realms in a way because knowing what the world is made of doesn't help you navigate through it not really it doesn't provide you with a foundation for navigation but knowing the facts of the world is obviously useful and the relationship between those two things part of that's the mystery of Western civilization and the continued competition between science and religion to bridge this kind of understanding between fact and destiny is like an important question that it the burden is on Christianity to answer and specifically interpretations of Christianity and if we can't do that why is the burden on Christianity because it posits right the interpretation right is going to be a way to understand God but if it's faulty right that can what evidence would you s what what evidence would you accept that would be an interesting question because I haven't met I've seen people try to answer the question and I've never really been moved because I can always attack and then against kind of gets to this point where the answer is I don't know well here's an answer pause there I'm sorry that's time all right well thank you so much for the rest well I definitely picked the right person that was very good so much very good I don't like talking to win but there were portions of all the conversations that were truly productive and that it's instructive for people to see the distinction between a debate that's aimed at local victory and dominance let's say even of ideas and a discussion that's predicated on mutual exploration and establishment of like a harmonious understanding and peace jordan Peterson out of all of the kind of theists that are on the internet he is one of the better ones in regards to just like being genuous as a person but I do feel like he does a lot of I I guess word play that can make it a little bit difficult and kind of just muddies the waters in regard to what we define as Christianity and atheism jordan Peterson I credit to turning me into an atheist i had a blast talking to him today i think if the average person followed what Jordan Peterson said they'd realize that fundamentally Jordan Peterson is not a Christian in fact uses many atheistic principles and operated under bad faith by seeming to forget what basic words meant when he didn't want to answer a question his definitions can kind of shift a little bit depending on the moment and I think that he wasn't afraid to flex that definitional muscle and I felt really good about our conversation i thought that it highlighted some some key issues in Jordan Peterson's theology i hope he reflects on these issues and maybe deepens his perspective on them in the future with Zena she was able to build up such a rapport that he chose her in the end and they were able to have an extended dialogue which is something I had hoped for so uh maybe I learned a little something from Zena about being more cordial it's extraordinarily useful to be able to model productive debate and conversation for people and see how my thoughts were landing with people who are particularly skeptical and to put that in front of a large audience and to assess the consequences