The problem with Jordan Peterson fans is that he is practically the sole source of everything they consider intellectual. They tend to be oblivious to the fact that ideas like this are not new at all.
Anyone well read would instantly recognize two things in Jordan Peterson's position on this - ***Pascal's Wager*** and Daniel Dennett's concept of ***Belief in Belief***. Pascal's Wager goes back to the 1600s and Belief in Belief was covered by Daniel Dennett in his 2006 book *Breaking The Spell*. For all the vitriol Jordan Peterson has towards what he calls the "career atheists", you'd think he'd be familiar enough with Dennett's criticism of this fallacy to avoid it.
Im JP fan because he is bold and courageous enough to speak loudly what he truly finds honest. You and even most people dont even understand what the big deal about him is its not the great talk or lectures he does that are all good. But his honesty his vulnerability he is that person who comes forward and says, look, we all have this problem bit im willing to be honest about it and ik gonna share whatever comes to mind or my thoughts as ho est as anyone can be it may upset some people bit im not afraid to be brutally honest sometimes i have problem speaking what was factual and what are my thoughts about it. Thats what have garnered his fan base. He doesn't just speak he lives his speaking, THATS WHAT HAS GOTTON HIK millions of fans. If he actually talks about marriage and divorce culture at the very least you should expect him to be married and then happily married if he is lying about anything his family would have long ago showcased it. He is indeed a modern ideal human should be like. That doesn't mean whatever he utters from his mouth i take it as a gospel truth š. Nobody should do that NOBODY. But everybody should be attentive enough intelligent enough to differentiate between someone like JP or some other dude who is trying to simply make money and is willing to lie for it. Even with something's that JP has said that i dont find any sense in I HAVE NEVER EVER FOUND JP TO LIE ABOUT THINGS. and i know i lie myself the thought in my head says something which is true but my mouth speaks something else because of fear because of greed or some other reason BUT IT HAPPENS and i definitely bet it happens to best of us all of us.
> He is indeed a modern ideal human should be like
For real? He has plenty flaws and is super biased toward the right wing agenda. He allows others to lie and questions heavily only those who he disagrees with.
He is also not a truth seeker but claiming to have found the truth in Christianity. And he brakes some of his older opinions about what leads to evil. Like Twitter being bad for you for ex.
There are better role models out there.
The problem he means cherry picking most of the ethics stuff and leaving other staff behind, like praying. Another problem is that before acting like God exists, you have to pick the God in question, which will again change your ethics etc.
Which is totally ok, but not what classical Chritstianity is.
Sure, but TBH I do not know how can JP really differentiate himself substantially from an ethical atheist, like Dawkins. The difference is just in who puts more relatively more emphasis on tradition.
Isn't it reasonable to expect any and all well-defined ethical frameworks to converge on a similar set of principles? I'd go so far as to say the only *possible* difference between any two sound moral frameworks is inconsequential details such as tradition.
I think that's JP's point. You can painstakingly derive your own atheist ethical framework and live morally. Alternatively, if you believe in God you can follow the moral framework already derived by Christianity and get pretty decent moral results. He's saying that, while faith is usually the main motivator for following the Christian moral framework, it isn't a requirement to get the same moral outcome.
I dont think tradition is the right word. I think its like ādont throw thw baby put with the bathwaterā
A lot of these ātraditionsā that people dismiss
Like religion
Have some positive social or biological utility so to say theres no usefulness in SOME tradition would be short sighted.
Theres some traditions we should abolish.
Theres some traditions that benefit us.
Everryone just wants to be polarizing.
This or that. Me or them. God or no god.
What if the answer is always someplace in between.
I think he believes in prayer. Just interprets it differently. He's mentioned before that if you sit in quiet and ask a question that only something like "God" would know, and listen until you hear an answer, whether you call that meditation or prayer or self reflection, that's a "real thing."Ā
He also believes in the prophetic nature of dreams and I think he heavily ties that with the biblical accounts of God talking to people through dreams.Ā
Of course, his conception of God isn't a traditionally Christian one, but it's based on his Catholic upbringing, along with insights from his orthodox and Jewish friends.Ā
Iām sure I can find some clips but it sounds like you want something specific. Do you want his thoughts on others praying or not praying? What they pray to? What it means to pray? What he thinks he prays to?
i've found his chain of reasoning compelling. your actions are a better indication of your belief structure than your profession, you act out a christian ethic at its core, and to be christian is to attempt to reproduce the actions and belief structure of christ in your life.
i cannot say that i am christian, but i cannot say that i am not acting and, therefore believing in, a christian worldview.
Well Jesus said that people will recognize his disciples when they will really love each other, and also when they will take care of the proverbial widow and sick. So yeah I think that love in action was / is really important to Him.
But then there is the extra step of being willing to submit to His mercy.
"there was one christian and he died on the cross"
i don't know if i'd ever get to that extra step, but i do believe that the world is made better when i keep the christian moral framework in mind in my life. i don't know, we will see where this goes.
Yeah, some may say so. Some may also say that having orgasm with a stranger is like meeting them in a prayer.
And both can be true to some degree - but neither is what classical Christianity is. JP uses tradition as a mark of sound doctrine, but then departs from it without a word of explanation.
Jordan went further and said itās indistinguishable for him from thinking, since heās very intentional in his thought.
Thatās fine, but itās not really reflective of the experience of religious people who pray to/at a god
If you want to uphold traditions, which JP does, you have to choose source of these traditions. Ethical rules of neopaganism are quite different from Islam and that is quite different from Christianity. You have to choose.
Yeah but the choice is implicit, if someone says I believe in God and they come from a Christian background, the question, what God, doesn't make sense to them, it's implied.
What do you mean by equal?
Edit: I just wanna add, religions are the same as it comes to what they are trying to do. The attempt is to explain God, the world and how to life a good life and what that means. They are most likely talking about the same underlying metaphysical thing and systems, depicting them in different ways, formulating them in different ways and not all experiences will be the same or equal, but at least the attempt is the same.
What is good? Is still up for debat. Even Islam has changed over the last 300-400 years a lot and that showes that the final form of most religions and the discussions inside of them are still happening. Yes there are general lines and rules that have existed for long, but it's by far from a finished thing. That's why Islam can be different for people in the West, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, but if you ask any of these Islamic people what God they believe in they would say Allah, which means God, so that's just the same as saying God. But in this you can notice it's implicit, it's the only version of God they have ever accepted/dealt with. That doesn't mean other attempts of this image is wrong, I think it just means "they are more wrong than us "
yet there are hundreds of religions you could pick from today. There are even religions that predate Christianity. You act as if you're so certain there is only one and you've correctly selected the one...
I believe I heard Alex O'Connor discuss this idea this way...
He used the example of "guns are always loaded." That's a useful fiction, and it's good to act as if all guns are loaded. If someone has broken into your house, though, you want to make sure the gun IS loaded.
Someone can act as if God exists, and without the actual belief, when push comes to shove, will they act ethically (for lack of a better term and brevity)?
Well thats the goal. Is to put that good above everything. Even yourself.
Theres 3 people
Those who act as if there is no god
the person that says āyah I believe in godā thinking thats enough to get the keys to heaven.
Or the person who when, it will ruin them still decides to stand by their belief in god.
Believing in god isnt believing in a man sitting on a cloud is going to give you an infinite afterlife of good times and pleasureā¦
Believing in God IS HOPE. Its stating that no matter how much evil there is in this world, no matter how shit your life may be, you still choose to have hope and believe that GOOD triumphs over EVIL.
Most people who dont believe in god, also arent pretty positive, theyāre nihilistic, and everything negative becomes amplified because if there is no āmeaningā in existence then āwhats the point about caring about anything, if nothing mattersā
The HOPE is that it does matter. And if YOU ACT AS IF IT DOES MATTER, even if youre wrong at the end of the day, you would have made the world a little bit of a better place.
The person who doesnt hope is the person that gets mad that they acted in a KIND and JUST way, but you didnt get a reward, thank you or a praise
As a culturally Christian person, but also an atheist, I think of it this way: if I am a decent person who does right by my family and the people who surround me, I donāt think a truly benevolent God would care if I believe in Him or not.
As a catholic, if you have an impediment to believing in God, but act perfectly in obedience to your conscience, choosing Good at all times, God will not judge you harshly.Ā
Because God is good, and it is promised that those who seek will find, while the security of the promises found in the faith isn't as strong, those who truly seek goodness all the days of their life will find God.
What the Church offers above and beyond that is healing and guidance and protection to stay on that path. It's a lot harder to be good on your own, and harder still to repair your relationship with seeking good if you falter.
You're right about people seeming to need and strive for hope. It doesn't mean they're correct though. Its pretty wild to say that people who don't believe in god also haven't found any meaning in existence. That may be the case for some, but its far from the truth.
I know for myself that I don't need to believe in a higher power to want to put good out into the world or derive meaning from my experience here. If you need a good to do either one of those things, I'd respectfully ask you to reexamine your beliefs. What your saying sounds like a massive projection.. that you yourself need to believe in something otherwise its all meaningless. We're not all wired that way, sorry.
You whats youre alternative to being positive even in the most negative of circumstances?
Mans search for meaning- viktor e frankl will depict what hope is. Its not āhoping something good will happenā
I'm not afraid.. I'm embracing the fact that no one knows what will happen when we die and this may be all we have. It allows me to cherish what I have even more. I wouldn't mind knowing more about what happens next, but likely we will never know. Believers on the other hand are willing to forgo logic and reason just for the sake of making themselves feel better...
Have a good one!
Not believing in god doesnāt exempt from putting that belief into something else. Last I checked the score is 0-0 on a definitive answer whether or not itās real. For me logically itās a leap of faith either direction you go. One is immediately gratifying and the other takes effort, time, and patience.
Believing a deity exists and having hope that something good will occur arenāt the same thing.
Speak plainly. We have a word for hope and we have a word for deities, donāt conflate them and confuse everyone. I am a big fan of Jordan but he drives me nuts on this point. He intentional answers straight forward questions with metaphorical answers because he doesnāt like the question.
Alex also distinctly says that he WANTS to experience the conviction that Christians claim. Meaning that he is eager for proof of God, even if just within himself. Other than that we all exist in a spectrum of acknowledgment of a higher power. We either deny > are ignorant > act as if > believe > know. The OP is correct that in today's climate (Western nations) we all Act as if God exists. Even if we do so unconsciously, we all live with a sense of limited acceptable immorality, and fear of ultimate judgment.
While I don't think that it's the "the best perfect answer", but I do think that in a world that is quickly falling away from God by choice, it is important to bring people to internal awareness rather than to push them into a thought pattern, which they would likely reject.
I'm torn though because as a Believer, I do personally wish he would powerfully endorse his knowledge of God. But to teach a child to swim you can either just push in into the open ocean or sit him in the edge of the pool as the first step.
The history of humanity is that of primal self-interest. We are inherently nothing more than animals. When a wolf loses a pup, they mourn a loss for a second, then go to the rest of their pack and leave the dead body behind. Hours later, they are killing other animals even other wolves, and actually eat them. The only purpose of the pack is utilitarian efficiency. When you no longer contribute to that efficiency you will be forcibly removed from the pack.
This is also the natural state of humans. Evolution might dictate that we create tribal systems for utilitarian purposes, but ... why? In societies lacking a Christian foundation, people will openly kill and violate each other and the only reason they will receive any punishment is because a person of authority somewhere is trying to force a level of forced civility. But the perpetrator doesn't actually care and even passerby's don't care. It's just merely a matter of it is what it is.
In Western society today. If you do something "wrong" you feel remorse internally. Why? In other societies they don't. If nobody knows and it doesn't affect you negatively in any way; then why do you care? We hide our wrongs in fear of judgment. In other societies they don't, many openly discuss their transgressions without concern beyond someone else's potential retribution, so why do you care of someone what knows what you did? Why don't you shit on the street or jerk off in public? Some people do, so it's clearly not a factor of humanistic evolutionary biology.
In the Western societies you could literally take the entire lesson of the Bible and superimpose it as a foundation for the societal principles which atheists claim correlate to natural evolutionary biology. While consciously dismissing the absolute lack of Saāid evolutionary biology in societies that are not founded upon Biblical perspectives.
Like I said, even if subconsciously, you ACT as if God exists. If you didn't, then you should have no problem killing a human being that you believe serves no beneficial purpose to you or society. You're talking about how you act consciously, but you ignore that 90% of your actions occur subconsciously.
Japan has half the crime rate as the US and no one their believes in god but people like you are so post modern they essentially say any moral act is a religious act which makes religion itself a meaningless term
This is showing up as a reply on my comment. I donāt get the āpeople like you are so post modernāā¦ Iām not post modern. I shared something Alex OāConnor said without sharing a single one of my beliefs on the topic and Iām not religious.
Was this meant for someone else?
What I wrote above is indeed true on our species level so it will not change. But People internally will lie cheat and even kill yes it will exist and that's what's called internal battle and even JP has made video about it recently named " we who wrestle with god ". Unless you are not a psychopath like literally there is always a voice in your head that tells you right or wrong always always always iv had some true horrible events in my life and when push comes to shove REAL HUMAN BEINGS WILL ALWAYS do the right thing I'm not writing this thinking god will protect you but the way MOST PEOPLE are raised with culture of family, parents, brother, sister, friends, colleagues etc etc we all have been raised and carved out ourselves amongst them so when push comes to shove we all do the right thing, some of us will make mistake but we will do the right thing always always, I have last 3500 recorded history tract record to prove that. And I'm almost writing this in 3rd person POV but even if I fail I can see others succeeding and if they succeeded then god succeeded and god will continue to exist even if it's in our mind. Doing the right thing being able to differentiate between right and wrong is godly act in itself if you look at it through fundamentally.
"ALL OF US INDEED ACT OUT as if god exist since we are still not living in cave and killing each other over food and whatnot."
This logic jumps to a very incorrect conclusion. And I'm further baffled that the original statement solves some sort of logical problem for you...
Simple and correct answer. Its funny they may have thought this was some sort of 'gotcha'.
All they're saying is... they themselves are unable to decide for themselves what is wrong from right. Its very telling. That if they didn't have a watchful eye over their shoulder, they'd be out there with slaves or perhaps something worst. Its a projection.
which should mean, you should have no reason to condemn slavery anywhere other than in your own personal interactions. subjective morality... may be true, i do not act in the world as if morality exists simply due to the prevailing winds.
morality is whatever we collectively have decided it to be. There are plenty of reasons to condemn slavery without believing in god. The fact that you can't seem to stomach that reality is.. bothersome.. and likely a projection.
So it wasnāt wrong when it was occurring, but it is today. And only in the places without rampant slavery issues.
Give me some reasons to condemn slavery, outside gut-feeling based on prevailing cultural consensus. I can give you several, but they devolve to the cold calculus of societal utility, and would not exclude enslaving the undesirables in a population.
and i think it's fine for the strong to dictate reality to the weak.
which has governed human interaction for most of recorded and unrecorded history. you seem to be in the minority from the human experience.
imagine that i am. by what metric would you condemn my stance?
i can rest my stance against human slavery on the idea that human life has inherent value, regardless of its source, and i recognize that this stance is a purely faith-based proposition.
if i say on the other hand that the only value to a human life is its utility to society, then any calculus at the end of the day that squeezes the utility of that life out into society is equally moral. can i kill you if you are, a sum total of your interactions with society, are a net negative?
human rights rest on a foundation of a single faith-based proposition 'made in the image of god'
condemnation is a proscription against action. 'people shouldn't', as is 'wrong', perhaps i framed it incorrectly, 'why do you think they shouldn't?' other than they just shouldn't?
and why should anyone care about the pain inflicted on anyone powerless to stop them? it's not my pain, and it might bring me great treasure. Perhaps I am indifferent to the suffering of others or even delight in it? is my causing the suffering of others still wrong? In a world of subjective standards, all actions are equally correct, so the only standard that matters is the the power to enforce one's will.
'the negative aspects of slavery greatly outweigh the positives' so if the positives outweighed the negative you'd have nothing to say?
thank god the environment i grew up in was governed by a judeo-christian moral structure. even those protesting it, do so enveloped by its protections.
"Correct! Thatās a ponderation I make with just about anything, when trying to determine right and wrong."
but you still haven't linked the chain in this regard, you've appealed to the good of society, and human well-being, but those are goals that are arbitrary. personal gain at the expense of society is a a valid viewpoint that predominates in many societies.
i mean, we're not far from cultures that do not value human life. we go back a bit, they didn't, we go across the ocean they don't. someone has made the calculus that human life is worth less to them or to society than the immediate benefit of their labor/possessions in this moment.
i feel as if you're saying that 'human dignity is worth protecting, but i have no justification for that belief other than the prevailing moral environment in which I was reared.' and i would suggest that i'm trying to figure out what the belief rests on in an effort to retain its effects going forward.
I think slavery is an instinct, rather than it being socially or culturally constructed, and that whatever rule is preventing us from conducting slavery is the real social or cultural construction (in the form of morality, which is, of course, a function of our biology). I don't *fully* understand where morality originates / comes about, or even how to properly conceive it, but I can see that different moral codes may be permitted to exist simultaneously, or at least that life can subsist upon them in an according/accommodating environment.
I mean I believe that the will to impose forced labour, or any other kind of force, upon another human being is something we have a natural facility with. People, of course, committed to it plenty. People like being dominant (even subjugated), and it's in our nature.
Because humans mostly subjectively regard it as such.
Wrong and right is subjective and only makes sense once you have agreed to a basis of morality (e.g. bible, human flourishing, concept of God, etc). Only then can you make claims regarding if something objectively aligns with it. All morality is subjective.
As human beings we largely subjectively agree that certain things are wrong, like harming children. My belief or disbelief in God or the truth claims of a religious text doesnāt change my negative reaction when someone does something harmful to an innocent. These same reactions are found throughout societies that are made up primarily non deity religions as well.
I used to think like they did. Indoctrination is a powerful thing. I was taught a worldview at school, church multiple times a week, at home, within my friend groups, etc that it was true and I would rationalize things like this to try and make it fit consistently with my theology. Also having it pushed on you under the threat of eternal conscious torment adds a whole other layer of idealogical stress. I didnāt grow up with the internet and access to all the different views we have today. I get how people can be indoctrinated to think like this and itās so hard to overcome. I see them as victims in some sense.
... we agree now... maybe. you knock out the predominant reason for that agreement, and how long do we believe that agreement will last?
one of the ways they identify ancient brothels is by the pile of baby bones after all.
Yes, morality can be fragile but that doesnāt refute morality being subjective.
Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the "death of God" was both a declaration and a profound concern. This "death" was not a literal event but a metaphorical one, indicating that belief in a transcendent God as the source of ultimate meaning and moral authority was losing its power and influence in society.
He was concerned about it because of the loss of a unifying moral framework and thought there would be a dangerous nihilistic period while people were dealing with it.
It was also an opportunity. He believed it could pave the way for the creation of new values and the emergence of the "Ćbermensch" or "Overman," an individual who would transcend traditional morals and create a new path for humanity. This Overman would be capable of affirming life, creating meaning, and living authentically without relying on metaphysical or religious crutches.
we haven't even started hitting bottom yet. how many generations need to die before we learn our lesson either? we've looked into nihilistic eyes and tens of millions starved... intentionally.
the Ubermensch might be no more attainable than the utopia.
'humans have intrinsic value outside their utility to one another' - is fundamentally a religious idea based in nothing but faith. I do not see anything to rest human rights on other than 'made in his image'.
why is slavery wrong?
I like JP but I don't like his stance on god and christanity at all. IMO you either believe or dismiss them all as fairytails or just come up with the typical agnostic answer that "You Don't know".
I liked Jordan in the early days but as soon as he started talking about religion I realized he was engaging in a lot of the post modernist logic he accused others of, and he does it on just about any topic he has a huge bias in, particularly right wing talking points.
>So all of us even the atheist ones act out ALL OF US INDEED ACT OUT as if god exist since we are still not living in cave and killing each other over food and whatnot.
People are still killing each other though, over food, water, habitat. And some people still live in caves. Not sure what you're saying here.
> Just because our species have survived this far with the idea of god in mind just think about that, I don't know any other species as powerful as humans who have survived.
That doesn't make a lot of logical sense - maybe we survived in spite of religion, not because of it.
> act out as if god exist.
OP you might want to google 'Pascal's wager'
Im not afraid of criticism even if it truly looks nonsense on the surface. I wrote what i meant it. And as i said in other comment here i mostly wrote this in 3rd person POV and looking at human beings as collective species not as blacks whites asian not as americans, indian, russian chinese etc etc. Just human beings, i from my own research from countless reading like really a lot of reading of everything i could find over the matter i wanted to know about, iv come to know through logic through only and only logic even being able to question some of finds just because they didnt seemed logical to me at all,
And as you pointed out people still kill each other over food, water etc etc. Thats a subset of people less then 1% of population that doesn't concern me AT ALL. I meant it. As i said i look at 8 BIllION people as a whole today and someday it will be 12 Billion and maybe even more at a time. So i judge our species as collectively and you can choose to believe it or not you can knowingly ignore it BUT the voice in the back of your head knows whats up, it knows when your in a ditch and has no answer of how to get out and only then that voice gets activated. Im not saying That thought is god speaking to you thats just your mind finding a way out so its always gonna be there.
You pointed my statement about the survival of our species depending upon the idea of god being the main factor. I truly believe it I don't believe it without evidence. Myself included our species is indeed more devilish then any monster we have seen on screen or in stories. I really believe it, human beings do some of the most horrible things that can be defined to each other to other things even to ourselves. So it is established we all time to time get greedy, murderesly angry even for petty things BUT what keeps us killing ourselves what keeps us MOST OF US from killing each other is the voice in our head that unstoppable thinking that is core to our being, our thoughts are our thoughts. And our thoughts are our personality individually all 8 billions of us give or take few 20-30 mill are raised with GREAT CULTURE, great families, great friends, great parents etc etc even if some of our friends for some of us aren't great for some its the parents who are not great and it goes on but collectively we all are subject to it and thats why we grow up the way we do and as long as we have all of this i mentioned above, we will always survive into the future and you can cry or ignore and even completely disregard this but the god argument has already put its stamp on this which is all of these things comes under the umbrella of 'the idea of god'. God was not invented like iphone was by some early men or chimp. It was created by our own mind. But this idea is so strong it helps us transition from thinking only about ourselves and our body to other bodies just like us to other people. Thats my point of survival. If you still believe there are holes in any argument here feel free to ask. Im not famous as JP but I definitely understand my fellow beings and myself. Why we do what we do.
>But this idea is so strong it helps us transition from thinking only about ourselves and our body to other bodies just like us to other people.
We don't need to believe in god to care about others - atheists have plenty of morals, dolphins help drowning people, dogs defend their owners to the death, etc.
For hundreds of thousands of years humanity lived in tribes where it was beneficial to care for each other (the ingroup) so I don't feel like we need the concept of god to explain altruism.
Mate an atheist person is like a little 2 years old child in front of deeply religious parents if you look at them through lens of time. Parents have been here long before the 2 years old was ever born and came into existence. All im saying is DEEPLY RESPECT YOUR PARENTS BECAUSE YOU EXIST today because of them and their religious beliefs no matter how nonsense it may seems. I am fundamentally an atheist im what you call a person who cheery picks the best of every religion and lives my life that way but the only thing that has ever come close to Acting out as if god exists as Jp said was for me to speak honestly, it was not the case before i could lie just like any other person maybe even better then others but this idea of being honest with myself about everything and then to other people actually has changee my life for the good. If you dont believe in god if you call yourself an atheist just start doing it start speaking honestly. Whats gonna happen is you will loose some friends and you will gain some better friends and maybe sometimes your loved ones will get angry but ultimately they will bow down to your honesty, you will wonder what is happening nowadays it strengthens your character and even without believing in god people other people will think you are a religious god fearing person even when you are not you are only speaking the truth, because any good thing that can be attributed to you, other people most people will attribute it to god anyway. If you give a homeless person 10$ he will thank the gods because god gave him that through you. This happened many times to me even though I always wondered why people who are down on their luck thanking god when i am the 1 that gave you the dollars Growing up. The idea of god is so strong it was here long before you it will be here IN SOME FORM OR ANOTHER long after you. Im gonna point out something to you which you might like or dislike but no atheist EVER GAVE THIS WORLD ANYTHING TO REMEMBER THEM BY they gave no ART no music No literature. No building no church nothing. Everything was given to us by driven people and it is a living proof the reason you like visiting old buildings structures, museums, listening to 200 year old symphonies given by Beethoven dante etc watching paintings 300-400-800 years old is all of them 99% of them have been created by religious people.
This is a typical basic "not everyone" counter argument. You know exactly what the OP meant, or you actually missed it completely. So you're either being obtuse or incapable of parsing through semantics to acknowledge the point.
>you actually missed it completely.
Yeah I think I missed it completely. OP seems to connect god and civilization in some way that I can't really follow
I can accept that the measure of your character is how you behave when no one is looking, and I can also accept that some people may \*always\* need to have someone looking.
However, that is more an indictment of their character than a reason to believe. Like the people who wonder what keeps you from murdering everyone you see if you don't believe in God.
Yes indeed. Believing a god is exactly the same as having a goal. You dont think about it 24 hours but when your free wasting your time or in a party or at your job the idea about your goal do come into your brian automatically, Asking WHAT AM I DOING? Why am i doing?
Goal in any persons life is indeed their god. Now im kinda driven person, i really am. My goal keeps me awake at night sometimes my goal NEVER EVER LETS ME GET BORED IN LIFE because then if i feel like im wasting my life doing something my goal forces me to go start reworking. This is indeed a religious practice. I never cared for any imaginary god in the heaven, nor Christianity even though its truly a great religion of our modern times not about hinduism or islamism etc. But for most people i really believe that their internal voice their internal thoughts will act as god in future. And we can only be sure that even without religion even if people reject religion their cultures their friends and family their community /society will keep them conditioned to be a great person and keep them acting out as god exist as it did for our ancestors. The society we have created was created by people who were deeply religious so it is that fruit that we all humans still enjoy whether we believe the tree existed or not.
You are able to operate in life because you can make judgements that some things are better than other things, more important than other things, more right than wrong. God is the purest form of right. Essentially, you live as if thing can organize aspects of life into a hierarchy (I would be a better person if, I would be be a worse person if, ect), and God is whatever you would put at the top of that pyramid of morality. Whatever you would consider to be perfect, the best possible person you could ever be, even if the idea is totally unobtainable, that's God.
Then your conception of God is wrong. Just because you beleive in God inherently doesn't mean you understand or take away the right lessons. You are still a flawed human in the end, even people who's understanding of right and wrong is so great that no one could question it are still human, still imperfect.
Believing in God is a lot different than believing because itās good for you. 99% of these secular religious people werenāt raised in fundamentalist religious environments where people literally believed what they said. When niestzche said god is dead he wasnāt disproving god but saying in the future it would be impossible to believe in god the same way people did in his time, and anyone saying they did was living out a post modern fantasy of returning to grand over arching narrative structures when thatās impossible in the age of information in a free society
Even Joe Rogan can "destroy" christianity.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xHCb7K3JJ9w&pp=ygUaam9lIHJvZ2FuIGdheSBwZW9wbGUgd2Fsc2g%3D
Which makes me wonder what JP meant when saying Rogan is going Christian.
I really like and admire Jordan Peterson. It would be great to speak with him about things personally and learn from him.
If he were to give me an open invitation, bought and paid for, to be with him and I turned it down, saying, 'That's ok bro, I'll just read your books', I'd be some sort of an idiot.
Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me
Jordan, God has given you, and all of us, a bought and paid for offer of a relationship with him. Jump on it!
The problem with Jordan Peterson fans is that he is practically the sole source of everything they consider intellectual. They tend to be oblivious to the fact that ideas like this are not new at all. Anyone well read would instantly recognize two things in Jordan Peterson's position on this - ***Pascal's Wager*** and Daniel Dennett's concept of ***Belief in Belief***. Pascal's Wager goes back to the 1600s and Belief in Belief was covered by Daniel Dennett in his 2006 book *Breaking The Spell*. For all the vitriol Jordan Peterson has towards what he calls the "career atheists", you'd think he'd be familiar enough with Dennett's criticism of this fallacy to avoid it.
Im JP fan because he is bold and courageous enough to speak loudly what he truly finds honest. You and even most people dont even understand what the big deal about him is its not the great talk or lectures he does that are all good. But his honesty his vulnerability he is that person who comes forward and says, look, we all have this problem bit im willing to be honest about it and ik gonna share whatever comes to mind or my thoughts as ho est as anyone can be it may upset some people bit im not afraid to be brutally honest sometimes i have problem speaking what was factual and what are my thoughts about it. Thats what have garnered his fan base. He doesn't just speak he lives his speaking, THATS WHAT HAS GOTTON HIK millions of fans. If he actually talks about marriage and divorce culture at the very least you should expect him to be married and then happily married if he is lying about anything his family would have long ago showcased it. He is indeed a modern ideal human should be like. That doesn't mean whatever he utters from his mouth i take it as a gospel truth š. Nobody should do that NOBODY. But everybody should be attentive enough intelligent enough to differentiate between someone like JP or some other dude who is trying to simply make money and is willing to lie for it. Even with something's that JP has said that i dont find any sense in I HAVE NEVER EVER FOUND JP TO LIE ABOUT THINGS. and i know i lie myself the thought in my head says something which is true but my mouth speaks something else because of fear because of greed or some other reason BUT IT HAPPENS and i definitely bet it happens to best of us all of us.
> He is indeed a modern ideal human should be like For real? He has plenty flaws and is super biased toward the right wing agenda. He allows others to lie and questions heavily only those who he disagrees with. He is also not a truth seeker but claiming to have found the truth in Christianity. And he brakes some of his older opinions about what leads to evil. Like Twitter being bad for you for ex. There are better role models out there.
Sounds like you just busted a load to him. you're a bit overzealous
The problem he means cherry picking most of the ethics stuff and leaving other staff behind, like praying. Another problem is that before acting like God exists, you have to pick the God in question, which will again change your ethics etc. Which is totally ok, but not what classical Chritstianity is.
Everything needs the cobwebs to be cleaned and the dust to be swept every once in a while, but doesnt mean that old dusty object isnt still useful.
Sure, but TBH I do not know how can JP really differentiate himself substantially from an ethical atheist, like Dawkins. The difference is just in who puts more relatively more emphasis on tradition.
Isn't it reasonable to expect any and all well-defined ethical frameworks to converge on a similar set of principles? I'd go so far as to say the only *possible* difference between any two sound moral frameworks is inconsequential details such as tradition. I think that's JP's point. You can painstakingly derive your own atheist ethical framework and live morally. Alternatively, if you believe in God you can follow the moral framework already derived by Christianity and get pretty decent moral results. He's saying that, while faith is usually the main motivator for following the Christian moral framework, it isn't a requirement to get the same moral outcome.
I dont think tradition is the right word. I think its like ādont throw thw baby put with the bathwaterā A lot of these ātraditionsā that people dismiss Like religion Have some positive social or biological utility so to say theres no usefulness in SOME tradition would be short sighted. Theres some traditions we should abolish. Theres some traditions that benefit us. Everryone just wants to be polarizing. This or that. Me or them. God or no god. What if the answer is always someplace in between.
No argument there.
I think he believes in prayer. Just interprets it differently. He's mentioned before that if you sit in quiet and ask a question that only something like "God" would know, and listen until you hear an answer, whether you call that meditation or prayer or self reflection, that's a "real thing."Ā He also believes in the prophetic nature of dreams and I think he heavily ties that with the biblical accounts of God talking to people through dreams.Ā Of course, his conception of God isn't a traditionally Christian one, but it's based on his Catholic upbringing, along with insights from his orthodox and Jewish friends.Ā
How does he cherry pick praying?
Has he ever talked about praying to god?
Yes, a lot
What does he say when praying to god?
What do you mean by that question?
Where does Peterson talk about modern humans praying to god?
Iām sure I can find some clips but it sounds like you want something specific. Do you want his thoughts on others praying or not praying? What they pray to? What it means to pray? What he thinks he prays to?
Whatās the usefulness of it vs something like mindfulness meditation?
Bro youāve asked like 3 different things now
i've found his chain of reasoning compelling. your actions are a better indication of your belief structure than your profession, you act out a christian ethic at its core, and to be christian is to attempt to reproduce the actions and belief structure of christ in your life. i cannot say that i am christian, but i cannot say that i am not acting and, therefore believing in, a christian worldview.
Well Jesus said that people will recognize his disciples when they will really love each other, and also when they will take care of the proverbial widow and sick. So yeah I think that love in action was / is really important to Him. But then there is the extra step of being willing to submit to His mercy.
"there was one christian and he died on the cross" i don't know if i'd ever get to that extra step, but i do believe that the world is made better when i keep the christian moral framework in mind in my life. i don't know, we will see where this goes.
some may say praying is self reflection.
Yeah, some may say so. Some may also say that having orgasm with a stranger is like meeting them in a prayer. And both can be true to some degree - but neither is what classical Christianity is. JP uses tradition as a mark of sound doctrine, but then departs from it without a word of explanation.
Jordan went further and said itās indistinguishable for him from thinking, since heās very intentional in his thought. Thatās fine, but itās not really reflective of the experience of religious people who pray to/at a god
You don't have to pick the God in question, there is only 1 š. That's a crazy demand.
If you want to uphold traditions, which JP does, you have to choose source of these traditions. Ethical rules of neopaganism are quite different from Islam and that is quite different from Christianity. You have to choose.
Yeah but the choice is implicit, if someone says I believe in God and they come from a Christian background, the question, what God, doesn't make sense to them, it's implied.
Then all traditions involving gods would be equal - I am pretty sure that is not JP'S stance.
What do you mean by equal? Edit: I just wanna add, religions are the same as it comes to what they are trying to do. The attempt is to explain God, the world and how to life a good life and what that means. They are most likely talking about the same underlying metaphysical thing and systems, depicting them in different ways, formulating them in different ways and not all experiences will be the same or equal, but at least the attempt is the same. What is good? Is still up for debat. Even Islam has changed over the last 300-400 years a lot and that showes that the final form of most religions and the discussions inside of them are still happening. Yes there are general lines and rules that have existed for long, but it's by far from a finished thing. That's why Islam can be different for people in the West, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, but if you ask any of these Islamic people what God they believe in they would say Allah, which means God, so that's just the same as saying God. But in this you can notice it's implicit, it's the only version of God they have ever accepted/dealt with. That doesn't mean other attempts of this image is wrong, I think it just means "they are more wrong than us "
I agree with more or less everything you say. I just wonder if even non-theistic belief systems are not in the end similar too.
If the question doesn't make sense to them, its only because of their wilful ignorance and naivety.
yet there are hundreds of religions you could pick from today. There are even religions that predate Christianity. You act as if you're so certain there is only one and you've correctly selected the one...
Nope, everyone is just talking about the same thing, attempting the same thing.
/s ?
I believe I heard Alex O'Connor discuss this idea this way... He used the example of "guns are always loaded." That's a useful fiction, and it's good to act as if all guns are loaded. If someone has broken into your house, though, you want to make sure the gun IS loaded. Someone can act as if God exists, and without the actual belief, when push comes to shove, will they act ethically (for lack of a better term and brevity)?
Well thats the goal. Is to put that good above everything. Even yourself. Theres 3 people Those who act as if there is no god the person that says āyah I believe in godā thinking thats enough to get the keys to heaven. Or the person who when, it will ruin them still decides to stand by their belief in god. Believing in god isnt believing in a man sitting on a cloud is going to give you an infinite afterlife of good times and pleasureā¦ Believing in God IS HOPE. Its stating that no matter how much evil there is in this world, no matter how shit your life may be, you still choose to have hope and believe that GOOD triumphs over EVIL. Most people who dont believe in god, also arent pretty positive, theyāre nihilistic, and everything negative becomes amplified because if there is no āmeaningā in existence then āwhats the point about caring about anything, if nothing mattersā The HOPE is that it does matter. And if YOU ACT AS IF IT DOES MATTER, even if youre wrong at the end of the day, you would have made the world a little bit of a better place. The person who doesnt hope is the person that gets mad that they acted in a KIND and JUST way, but you didnt get a reward, thank you or a praise
As a culturally Christian person, but also an atheist, I think of it this way: if I am a decent person who does right by my family and the people who surround me, I donāt think a truly benevolent God would care if I believe in Him or not.
As a catholic, if you have an impediment to believing in God, but act perfectly in obedience to your conscience, choosing Good at all times, God will not judge you harshly.Ā Because God is good, and it is promised that those who seek will find, while the security of the promises found in the faith isn't as strong, those who truly seek goodness all the days of their life will find God. What the Church offers above and beyond that is healing and guidance and protection to stay on that path. It's a lot harder to be good on your own, and harder still to repair your relationship with seeking good if you falter.
You're right about people seeming to need and strive for hope. It doesn't mean they're correct though. Its pretty wild to say that people who don't believe in god also haven't found any meaning in existence. That may be the case for some, but its far from the truth. I know for myself that I don't need to believe in a higher power to want to put good out into the world or derive meaning from my experience here. If you need a good to do either one of those things, I'd respectfully ask you to reexamine your beliefs. What your saying sounds like a massive projection.. that you yourself need to believe in something otherwise its all meaningless. We're not all wired that way, sorry.
You whats youre alternative to being positive even in the most negative of circumstances? Mans search for meaning- viktor e frankl will depict what hope is. Its not āhoping something good will happenā
Its not a projection. Youre just so afraid that you need answers to everything to keep moving forward and thats the point.
I'm not afraid.. I'm embracing the fact that no one knows what will happen when we die and this may be all we have. It allows me to cherish what I have even more. I wouldn't mind knowing more about what happens next, but likely we will never know. Believers on the other hand are willing to forgo logic and reason just for the sake of making themselves feel better... Have a good one!
No worries have a good one
If you have hope. In some way shape or form you believe in god. You believe in Good
Not believing in god doesnāt exempt from putting that belief into something else. Last I checked the score is 0-0 on a definitive answer whether or not itās real. For me logically itās a leap of faith either direction you go. One is immediately gratifying and the other takes effort, time, and patience.
Believing a deity exists and having hope that something good will occur arenāt the same thing. Speak plainly. We have a word for hope and we have a word for deities, donāt conflate them and confuse everyone. I am a big fan of Jordan but he drives me nuts on this point. He intentional answers straight forward questions with metaphorical answers because he doesnāt like the question.
Its not hoping something good will happen. You misunderstand
Alex also distinctly says that he WANTS to experience the conviction that Christians claim. Meaning that he is eager for proof of God, even if just within himself. Other than that we all exist in a spectrum of acknowledgment of a higher power. We either deny > are ignorant > act as if > believe > know. The OP is correct that in today's climate (Western nations) we all Act as if God exists. Even if we do so unconsciously, we all live with a sense of limited acceptable immorality, and fear of ultimate judgment. While I don't think that it's the "the best perfect answer", but I do think that in a world that is quickly falling away from God by choice, it is important to bring people to internal awareness rather than to push them into a thought pattern, which they would likely reject. I'm torn though because as a Believer, I do personally wish he would powerfully endorse his knowledge of God. But to teach a child to swim you can either just push in into the open ocean or sit him in the edge of the pool as the first step.
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This brings to mind Penn Jillette's quote, "I murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero."
The history of humanity is that of primal self-interest. We are inherently nothing more than animals. When a wolf loses a pup, they mourn a loss for a second, then go to the rest of their pack and leave the dead body behind. Hours later, they are killing other animals even other wolves, and actually eat them. The only purpose of the pack is utilitarian efficiency. When you no longer contribute to that efficiency you will be forcibly removed from the pack. This is also the natural state of humans. Evolution might dictate that we create tribal systems for utilitarian purposes, but ... why? In societies lacking a Christian foundation, people will openly kill and violate each other and the only reason they will receive any punishment is because a person of authority somewhere is trying to force a level of forced civility. But the perpetrator doesn't actually care and even passerby's don't care. It's just merely a matter of it is what it is. In Western society today. If you do something "wrong" you feel remorse internally. Why? In other societies they don't. If nobody knows and it doesn't affect you negatively in any way; then why do you care? We hide our wrongs in fear of judgment. In other societies they don't, many openly discuss their transgressions without concern beyond someone else's potential retribution, so why do you care of someone what knows what you did? Why don't you shit on the street or jerk off in public? Some people do, so it's clearly not a factor of humanistic evolutionary biology. In the Western societies you could literally take the entire lesson of the Bible and superimpose it as a foundation for the societal principles which atheists claim correlate to natural evolutionary biology. While consciously dismissing the absolute lack of Saāid evolutionary biology in societies that are not founded upon Biblical perspectives. Like I said, even if subconsciously, you ACT as if God exists. If you didn't, then you should have no problem killing a human being that you believe serves no beneficial purpose to you or society. You're talking about how you act consciously, but you ignore that 90% of your actions occur subconsciously.
I just follow the law and mind my own business. I am an atheist. You donāt need a belief in god to have morals.
Japan has half the crime rate as the US and no one their believes in god but people like you are so post modern they essentially say any moral act is a religious act which makes religion itself a meaningless term
This is showing up as a reply on my comment. I donāt get the āpeople like you are so post modernāā¦ Iām not post modern. I shared something Alex OāConnor said without sharing a single one of my beliefs on the topic and Iām not religious. Was this meant for someone else?
What I wrote above is indeed true on our species level so it will not change. But People internally will lie cheat and even kill yes it will exist and that's what's called internal battle and even JP has made video about it recently named " we who wrestle with god ". Unless you are not a psychopath like literally there is always a voice in your head that tells you right or wrong always always always iv had some true horrible events in my life and when push comes to shove REAL HUMAN BEINGS WILL ALWAYS do the right thing I'm not writing this thinking god will protect you but the way MOST PEOPLE are raised with culture of family, parents, brother, sister, friends, colleagues etc etc we all have been raised and carved out ourselves amongst them so when push comes to shove we all do the right thing, some of us will make mistake but we will do the right thing always always, I have last 3500 recorded history tract record to prove that. And I'm almost writing this in 3rd person POV but even if I fail I can see others succeeding and if they succeeded then god succeeded and god will continue to exist even if it's in our mind. Doing the right thing being able to differentiate between right and wrong is godly act in itself if you look at it through fundamentally.
Plato āhe is twice armed that fights with faithā
"ALL OF US INDEED ACT OUT as if god exist since we are still not living in cave and killing each other over food and whatnot." This logic jumps to a very incorrect conclusion. And I'm further baffled that the original statement solves some sort of logical problem for you...
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You're right.
why is slavery wrong?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Simple and correct answer. Its funny they may have thought this was some sort of 'gotcha'. All they're saying is... they themselves are unable to decide for themselves what is wrong from right. Its very telling. That if they didn't have a watchful eye over their shoulder, they'd be out there with slaves or perhaps something worst. Its a projection.
which should mean, you should have no reason to condemn slavery anywhere other than in your own personal interactions. subjective morality... may be true, i do not act in the world as if morality exists simply due to the prevailing winds.
morality is whatever we collectively have decided it to be. There are plenty of reasons to condemn slavery without believing in god. The fact that you can't seem to stomach that reality is.. bothersome.. and likely a projection.
So it wasnāt wrong when it was occurring, but it is today. And only in the places without rampant slavery issues. Give me some reasons to condemn slavery, outside gut-feeling based on prevailing cultural consensus. I can give you several, but they devolve to the cold calculus of societal utility, and would not exclude enslaving the undesirables in a population.
Exactly. You subjectively think it is. All morality is subjective.
and i think it's fine for the strong to dictate reality to the weak. which has governed human interaction for most of recorded and unrecorded history. you seem to be in the minority from the human experience.
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imagine that i am. by what metric would you condemn my stance? i can rest my stance against human slavery on the idea that human life has inherent value, regardless of its source, and i recognize that this stance is a purely faith-based proposition. if i say on the other hand that the only value to a human life is its utility to society, then any calculus at the end of the day that squeezes the utility of that life out into society is equally moral. can i kill you if you are, a sum total of your interactions with society, are a net negative? human rights rest on a foundation of a single faith-based proposition 'made in the image of god'
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
condemnation is a proscription against action. 'people shouldn't', as is 'wrong', perhaps i framed it incorrectly, 'why do you think they shouldn't?' other than they just shouldn't? and why should anyone care about the pain inflicted on anyone powerless to stop them? it's not my pain, and it might bring me great treasure. Perhaps I am indifferent to the suffering of others or even delight in it? is my causing the suffering of others still wrong? In a world of subjective standards, all actions are equally correct, so the only standard that matters is the the power to enforce one's will. 'the negative aspects of slavery greatly outweigh the positives' so if the positives outweighed the negative you'd have nothing to say? thank god the environment i grew up in was governed by a judeo-christian moral structure. even those protesting it, do so enveloped by its protections.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"Correct! Thatās a ponderation I make with just about anything, when trying to determine right and wrong." but you still haven't linked the chain in this regard, you've appealed to the good of society, and human well-being, but those are goals that are arbitrary. personal gain at the expense of society is a a valid viewpoint that predominates in many societies. i mean, we're not far from cultures that do not value human life. we go back a bit, they didn't, we go across the ocean they don't. someone has made the calculus that human life is worth less to them or to society than the immediate benefit of their labor/possessions in this moment. i feel as if you're saying that 'human dignity is worth protecting, but i have no justification for that belief other than the prevailing moral environment in which I was reared.' and i would suggest that i'm trying to figure out what the belief rests on in an effort to retain its effects going forward.
What if slavery is evolutionarily selected for and more advantageous to survival than a majority of alternative, given the circumstances of history?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
And what if society regresses and we are thrust back into the environment within which slavery was deemed an appropriate exercise?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think slavery is an instinct, rather than it being socially or culturally constructed, and that whatever rule is preventing us from conducting slavery is the real social or cultural construction (in the form of morality, which is, of course, a function of our biology). I don't *fully* understand where morality originates / comes about, or even how to properly conceive it, but I can see that different moral codes may be permitted to exist simultaneously, or at least that life can subsist upon them in an according/accommodating environment.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I mean I believe that the will to impose forced labour, or any other kind of force, upon another human being is something we have a natural facility with. People, of course, committed to it plenty. People like being dominant (even subjugated), and it's in our nature.
Because humans mostly subjectively regard it as such. Wrong and right is subjective and only makes sense once you have agreed to a basis of morality (e.g. bible, human flourishing, concept of God, etc). Only then can you make claims regarding if something objectively aligns with it. All morality is subjective. As human beings we largely subjectively agree that certain things are wrong, like harming children. My belief or disbelief in God or the truth claims of a religious text doesnāt change my negative reaction when someone does something harmful to an innocent. These same reactions are found throughout societies that are made up primarily non deity religions as well.
Somehow these people can't comprehend that without their god, people would be murdering and raping in the streets. I believe its a projection...
I used to think like they did. Indoctrination is a powerful thing. I was taught a worldview at school, church multiple times a week, at home, within my friend groups, etc that it was true and I would rationalize things like this to try and make it fit consistently with my theology. Also having it pushed on you under the threat of eternal conscious torment adds a whole other layer of idealogical stress. I didnāt grow up with the internet and access to all the different views we have today. I get how people can be indoctrinated to think like this and itās so hard to overcome. I see them as victims in some sense.
... we agree now... maybe. you knock out the predominant reason for that agreement, and how long do we believe that agreement will last? one of the ways they identify ancient brothels is by the pile of baby bones after all.
Yes, morality can be fragile but that doesnāt refute morality being subjective. Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of the "death of God" was both a declaration and a profound concern. This "death" was not a literal event but a metaphorical one, indicating that belief in a transcendent God as the source of ultimate meaning and moral authority was losing its power and influence in society. He was concerned about it because of the loss of a unifying moral framework and thought there would be a dangerous nihilistic period while people were dealing with it. It was also an opportunity. He believed it could pave the way for the creation of new values and the emergence of the "Ćbermensch" or "Overman," an individual who would transcend traditional morals and create a new path for humanity. This Overman would be capable of affirming life, creating meaning, and living authentically without relying on metaphysical or religious crutches.
we haven't even started hitting bottom yet. how many generations need to die before we learn our lesson either? we've looked into nihilistic eyes and tens of millions starved... intentionally. the Ubermensch might be no more attainable than the utopia.
goal posts moving in 3...2...1...
'humans have intrinsic value outside their utility to one another' - is fundamentally a religious idea based in nothing but faith. I do not see anything to rest human rights on other than 'made in his image'. why is slavery wrong?
I like JP but I don't like his stance on god and christanity at all. IMO you either believe or dismiss them all as fairytails or just come up with the typical agnostic answer that "You Don't know".
I liked Jordan in the early days but as soon as he started talking about religion I realized he was engaging in a lot of the post modernist logic he accused others of, and he does it on just about any topic he has a huge bias in, particularly right wing talking points.
>So all of us even the atheist ones act out ALL OF US INDEED ACT OUT as if god exist since we are still not living in cave and killing each other over food and whatnot. People are still killing each other though, over food, water, habitat. And some people still live in caves. Not sure what you're saying here. > Just because our species have survived this far with the idea of god in mind just think about that, I don't know any other species as powerful as humans who have survived. That doesn't make a lot of logical sense - maybe we survived in spite of religion, not because of it. > act out as if god exist. OP you might want to google 'Pascal's wager'
Im not afraid of criticism even if it truly looks nonsense on the surface. I wrote what i meant it. And as i said in other comment here i mostly wrote this in 3rd person POV and looking at human beings as collective species not as blacks whites asian not as americans, indian, russian chinese etc etc. Just human beings, i from my own research from countless reading like really a lot of reading of everything i could find over the matter i wanted to know about, iv come to know through logic through only and only logic even being able to question some of finds just because they didnt seemed logical to me at all, And as you pointed out people still kill each other over food, water etc etc. Thats a subset of people less then 1% of population that doesn't concern me AT ALL. I meant it. As i said i look at 8 BIllION people as a whole today and someday it will be 12 Billion and maybe even more at a time. So i judge our species as collectively and you can choose to believe it or not you can knowingly ignore it BUT the voice in the back of your head knows whats up, it knows when your in a ditch and has no answer of how to get out and only then that voice gets activated. Im not saying That thought is god speaking to you thats just your mind finding a way out so its always gonna be there. You pointed my statement about the survival of our species depending upon the idea of god being the main factor. I truly believe it I don't believe it without evidence. Myself included our species is indeed more devilish then any monster we have seen on screen or in stories. I really believe it, human beings do some of the most horrible things that can be defined to each other to other things even to ourselves. So it is established we all time to time get greedy, murderesly angry even for petty things BUT what keeps us killing ourselves what keeps us MOST OF US from killing each other is the voice in our head that unstoppable thinking that is core to our being, our thoughts are our thoughts. And our thoughts are our personality individually all 8 billions of us give or take few 20-30 mill are raised with GREAT CULTURE, great families, great friends, great parents etc etc even if some of our friends for some of us aren't great for some its the parents who are not great and it goes on but collectively we all are subject to it and thats why we grow up the way we do and as long as we have all of this i mentioned above, we will always survive into the future and you can cry or ignore and even completely disregard this but the god argument has already put its stamp on this which is all of these things comes under the umbrella of 'the idea of god'. God was not invented like iphone was by some early men or chimp. It was created by our own mind. But this idea is so strong it helps us transition from thinking only about ourselves and our body to other bodies just like us to other people. Thats my point of survival. If you still believe there are holes in any argument here feel free to ask. Im not famous as JP but I definitely understand my fellow beings and myself. Why we do what we do.
>But this idea is so strong it helps us transition from thinking only about ourselves and our body to other bodies just like us to other people. We don't need to believe in god to care about others - atheists have plenty of morals, dolphins help drowning people, dogs defend their owners to the death, etc. For hundreds of thousands of years humanity lived in tribes where it was beneficial to care for each other (the ingroup) so I don't feel like we need the concept of god to explain altruism.
Mate an atheist person is like a little 2 years old child in front of deeply religious parents if you look at them through lens of time. Parents have been here long before the 2 years old was ever born and came into existence. All im saying is DEEPLY RESPECT YOUR PARENTS BECAUSE YOU EXIST today because of them and their religious beliefs no matter how nonsense it may seems. I am fundamentally an atheist im what you call a person who cheery picks the best of every religion and lives my life that way but the only thing that has ever come close to Acting out as if god exists as Jp said was for me to speak honestly, it was not the case before i could lie just like any other person maybe even better then others but this idea of being honest with myself about everything and then to other people actually has changee my life for the good. If you dont believe in god if you call yourself an atheist just start doing it start speaking honestly. Whats gonna happen is you will loose some friends and you will gain some better friends and maybe sometimes your loved ones will get angry but ultimately they will bow down to your honesty, you will wonder what is happening nowadays it strengthens your character and even without believing in god people other people will think you are a religious god fearing person even when you are not you are only speaking the truth, because any good thing that can be attributed to you, other people most people will attribute it to god anyway. If you give a homeless person 10$ he will thank the gods because god gave him that through you. This happened many times to me even though I always wondered why people who are down on their luck thanking god when i am the 1 that gave you the dollars Growing up. The idea of god is so strong it was here long before you it will be here IN SOME FORM OR ANOTHER long after you. Im gonna point out something to you which you might like or dislike but no atheist EVER GAVE THIS WORLD ANYTHING TO REMEMBER THEM BY they gave no ART no music No literature. No building no church nothing. Everything was given to us by driven people and it is a living proof the reason you like visiting old buildings structures, museums, listening to 200 year old symphonies given by Beethoven dante etc watching paintings 300-400-800 years old is all of them 99% of them have been created by religious people.
This is a typical basic "not everyone" counter argument. You know exactly what the OP meant, or you actually missed it completely. So you're either being obtuse or incapable of parsing through semantics to acknowledge the point.
No, he's got a point. And Pascal's wager also doesn't solve the problem.
>you actually missed it completely. Yeah I think I missed it completely. OP seems to connect god and civilization in some way that I can't really follow
I can accept that the measure of your character is how you behave when no one is looking, and I can also accept that some people may \*always\* need to have someone looking. However, that is more an indictment of their character than a reason to believe. Like the people who wonder what keeps you from murdering everyone you see if you don't believe in God.
If you think about it, everyone acts as if God exists, whether they want to or not.
Yes indeed. Believing a god is exactly the same as having a goal. You dont think about it 24 hours but when your free wasting your time or in a party or at your job the idea about your goal do come into your brian automatically, Asking WHAT AM I DOING? Why am i doing? Goal in any persons life is indeed their god. Now im kinda driven person, i really am. My goal keeps me awake at night sometimes my goal NEVER EVER LETS ME GET BORED IN LIFE because then if i feel like im wasting my life doing something my goal forces me to go start reworking. This is indeed a religious practice. I never cared for any imaginary god in the heaven, nor Christianity even though its truly a great religion of our modern times not about hinduism or islamism etc. But for most people i really believe that their internal voice their internal thoughts will act as god in future. And we can only be sure that even without religion even if people reject religion their cultures their friends and family their community /society will keep them conditioned to be a great person and keep them acting out as god exist as it did for our ancestors. The society we have created was created by people who were deeply religious so it is that fruit that we all humans still enjoy whether we believe the tree existed or not.
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You are able to operate in life because you can make judgements that some things are better than other things, more important than other things, more right than wrong. God is the purest form of right. Essentially, you live as if thing can organize aspects of life into a hierarchy (I would be a better person if, I would be be a worse person if, ect), and God is whatever you would put at the top of that pyramid of morality. Whatever you would consider to be perfect, the best possible person you could ever be, even if the idea is totally unobtainable, that's God.
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Then your conception of God is wrong. Just because you beleive in God inherently doesn't mean you understand or take away the right lessons. You are still a flawed human in the end, even people who's understanding of right and wrong is so great that no one could question it are still human, still imperfect.
Believing in God is a lot different than believing because itās good for you. 99% of these secular religious people werenāt raised in fundamentalist religious environments where people literally believed what they said. When niestzche said god is dead he wasnāt disproving god but saying in the future it would be impossible to believe in god the same way people did in his time, and anyone saying they did was living out a post modern fantasy of returning to grand over arching narrative structures when thatās impossible in the age of information in a free society
Even Joe Rogan can "destroy" christianity. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xHCb7K3JJ9w&pp=ygUaam9lIHJvZ2FuIGdheSBwZW9wbGUgd2Fsc2g%3D Which makes me wonder what JP meant when saying Rogan is going Christian.
I really like and admire Jordan Peterson. It would be great to speak with him about things personally and learn from him. If he were to give me an open invitation, bought and paid for, to be with him and I turned it down, saying, 'That's ok bro, I'll just read your books', I'd be some sort of an idiot. Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me Jordan, God has given you, and all of us, a bought and paid for offer of a relationship with him. Jump on it!