Jordan Peterson's answer to the question, how do you define religion?

It is a hierarchy of values based upon axioms.
Most people act out a Judeo Christian ethic and get very offended if they're not treated with that ethic.

So when you and Sam Harris argue about religion, you're arguing about very different things, because he defines religion very differently than you.

"He tends to think about religious thought the same way a smart 13yo Atheist thinks about a fundamentalist Christian. It's like, yeah, OK, you're just not getting to the heart of the matter. He doesn't ever address the profound thinkers on the subject, Dostoyévskiy is one, Tolstoy, Neitzsche, Jung,
It's the same with Dawkins, it's like all that conceptualization is completely absent from their corpus of works. They don't even have an understanding of the psychological utility of religion. And that's a big problem. You don't get to be an atheist when the people you attack are like naive fundamentalists. And i have some sympathy for the naive fundamentalists. What they're saying is basically this, "Look we have an ethos that's valuable. You scientist types are casually dismantling it. What the hell are we supposed to do?"
Well the fundamentalists don't know what to do about that. So they say "creationism is science". It's like, No it's not. But that doesn't mean they don't have a point! Their point is there's something valuable here! Don't break it casually! What are you going to replace it with? The New Atheists want to replace it with this wish that everybody becomes rational. It's like, sure, that's gonna happen!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-2-KGsIVNs

It seems like Peterson doesn't give people enough credit for being able to govern themselves without a bronze age moral code, using their executive functioning, like empathy, reason and compassion of their pre-frontal cortex.

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
- Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930

It is likely that many Jews throughout history have actually been atheist (or else were actively on the way to becoming atheist, with Spinoza probably a member of this group), but the modern Jewish answer to this is:

Create your own atheistic denomination--which Jews did, beginning in 1963. It is called Secular Jewish Humanism, and it is one of many different Jewish movements (from atheistic on the left, to the very most scrupulously Orthodox on the right).

Today, Secular Humanistic Judaism is considered by most Jews to be equal (as a Jewish movement) with Reform Judaism, or Conservative Judaism, or Jewish Renewal.

SJH is successful, with its own rabbinical training at university level, and has proved that--at least where there is a strong, underlying, pre-existing culture--this can be done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanistic_Judaism

That being said, I cannot imagine a similar group within Christianity, or within Islam (Judaism's Abrahamic "cousins").

>> If you debunk a religious ethos, what do you replace it with?

The knowledge it was false. Then you go from there.

When a child realizes his favorite teddy bear is just a stuffed toy and nothing more, they don't go pick another stuffed toy to replace it so they can regain their comfort. They quit using stuffed toys as security mechanisms and go from there.

Usually the knowledge that teddy bears aren't actually contributing to their safety and security is enough, and that is the replacement....knowledge.

Roy G Biv Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The knowledge it was false. Then you go from
> there.

The content (or a good portion of the content) may be false, but the culture isn't necessarily. For almost all human beings, the culture they were born into, or alternatively, the culture they later voluntarily choose, is very important.

I, as a born and raised American, can discover all kinds of things in American history that are not true [*], but my accepting a new reality doesn't change even an atom's worth of my cultural identification as an American. I did not stop identifying with American culture when I learned that Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy didn't exist, nor did learning some hard truths about American history affect my identification as an American.

[*] See: "I LOVE PAUL REVERE, WHETHER HE RODE OR NOT," by Richard Shenkman...."LEGENDS, LIES, AND CHERISHED MYTHS OF AMERICAN HISTORY," by Richard Shenkman...."DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Everything You Need To Know About American History But Never Learned," by Kenneth C. Davis--not to mention the many reliable histories and analyses of American slavery and the subsequent decades after slavery was abolished.


> When a child realizes his favorite teddy bear is
> just a stuffed toy and nothing more, they don't go
> pick another stuffed toy to replace it so they can
> regain their comfort. They quit using stuffed
> toys as security mechanisms and go from there.

On the contrary, immigrants to the USA often do (and did) EXACTLY this when those immigrants became part of this country, starting in colonial times, through the California Gold Rush, and right up to this very moment in this country.


> Usually the knowledge that teddy bears aren't
> actually contributing to their safety and security
> is enough, and that is the replacement....knowledge.

Religion can be dispensed with, and knowledge is very important, but culture LIVES.

A person cut-off from the culture s/he identifies with is just an updated version of Robinson Crusoe.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2019 05:41PM by Tevai.

I've known a number of first-generation immigrants who are lost between cultures.

Their parents are stuck in the old one and gradually lose the ability to communicate openly and effectively with their children, who live in a very different world. Those kids are caught between the two systems without a clear set of social rules. It isn't easy for them although their children, the second generation, are more likely to adopt the mores of their adopted culture.

Mormons sometimes experience some of that. Young people grow up in the LDS church with LDS families, then go away to college or to work. Their experiences gradually alienate them from their childhood networks and leave them unable to communicate easily with their parents while also feeling somewhat removed from their new communities. Betwixt and between.

Culture, as you note, is real. It can be a force for good or a force for evil. But it is always a mistake to underestimate its importance.

I'm not sure what your talking about actually. I'm not talking about culture. I'm talking about dropping one thing, only to replace it with another. Like if you don't have one thing, then you need another

If I quit smoking (I don't smoke), I don't have to pick up a new habit to replace it with. I just stop and continue with life as a non-smoker.

If my religion is debunked and I accept the debunking, I don't have to replace that religion with anything. I just continue with life as a non-believer.

Both are based on knowledge.....knowledge that smoking is bad for you and you feel better without it, and knowledge your religion is bunk and you're better off without it.

Peterson is fun to listen to because he’s so evangelical, but he sure is cocky. Old time preaching in new clothes, but why not? Our religious mythology worked very well for a long time. The recent popularization of rational thought downplays the value of the irrational. Peterson does well at discussing the importance of deep archetypes in our mythology that reveal truths about ourselves that science can’t answer. However, he does it without metaphysics. Given his profession, maybe that’s the only way he can do it. Avoiding the woo is just good business. There are already plenty of woo people anyway.

My takeaway from Mormonism is that God really doesn’t care what you believe. If that was okay, what could possibly be off the table?

We live in a different time now. All the information you could want about the religious and spiritual ideas of all of the world’s religions are a mouse click away. You could just pick and choose what resonates with you. Nobody has to be wrong because right is just a convention.

The cheap answer is: what would you replace cancer with? Or some variation on that theme.

The honest answer is: everyone has to figure that out for themselves. I'm on that journey myself.

I'll probably always be on that journey.

honklermaga Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The cheap answer is: what would you replace cancer
> with? Or some variation on that theme.
>
> The honest answer is: everyone has to figure that
> out for themselves. I'm on that journey myself.
>
> I'll probably always be on that journey.

I don't think of an ethos as a cancer. It seems like religion codified the morals and ethics we all inherited biologically to aid in our survival, and convinced us we were born evil and could only become good by accepting the authority of whatever religion we were born into.
Every species has its own set of rules they follow in order to survive. Humans are just the only species to codify those rules by writing them down and making axioms out of so that they could be sold, when they were free all along,

> It seems like religion
> codified the morals and
> ethics we all inherited
> biologically to aid in
> our survival.

I personally don't believe that most of what we 'know' on a biological level exists in words and phrases.

With regard to the urge to survive, we will pretty much do anything. When living vs. dying is on the line, I believe the majority of human beings would literally eat their young for another day in the sun.

And not even the "will to live" is inherited by all of us.


I do not enjoy this Koriwhore flapping-of-the-gums; seeing the same ol' same ol' splattered on the walls of RfM. Isn't there a forum somewhere for Recovery from BeatingYourHeadAgainstTheWall?

RfM will censor language and preaching, and if this isn't preaching, my uncle is a monkey.

So leave. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Nobody will miss you.
Nobody forces you to read anything I write, much less add your incoherent ramblings.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2019 09:10PM by schrodingerscat.

Thank you for that. I feel better now.

on the basis of immature or shallow thought is the height of irony. I have said before and will say again, Peterson is the personification of "The First Rule of Dunning-Kruger Club is you don't know you're *in* Dunning-Kruger Club."

You can't be serious.

I get the feeling you yell at the TV during football games when professional athletes don't compete to your standards. LOL!

And if you actually think Jordan Peterson is a deep thinker, you might just have the intellectual depth of a car park puddle yourself.

I guess I have the intellectual depth of a car park puddle.

What do you have to offer? How is the world better because you exist?

Countless peoples' lives are better because of Dr. Peterson. I think you're probably just drinking the Channel 4 Cathy Newman kool-aid. Good luck with that.

How the Hell is the world better off for the sake of Jordan Peterson??? He says NOTHING new, only repackages vague aphorisms in four times as many words as necessary.

Just because he's a right-wing culture warrior doesn't make it mandatory for you to worship his poxy buttocks. Choose your heroes better.

As far as the world being better off because I exist, dear old Dr. Peterson (how the hell did that mental cypher ever get a bloody doctorate?) couldn't compete with my efforts. Publicized does not mean superior. You are dismissed.

As you know, I couldn't agree more about Peterson.

That said, Honklermaga may surprise you. When he first showed up I thought he was shallow and intransigent but he has subsequently listened to people, engaged and, I think, learned. He strikes me as a young and somewhat naive person of goodwill and intelligence.

He may not agree, but he'll listen.

Thank you, Lot's Wife!

I find it odd that anyone could think that not saying something novel = not a deep thinker.

A few facts about Jordan Peterson:

1) Nothing he says is new.
2) Nothing he says is profound.
3) He is a condescending prig, and never actually engages his opponents.
4) His debate style is to set up outrageous strawmen and knock them down. When he's not actually spouting complete gibberish (flip a coin; it's about half the time), he makes assertions about things that literally NO ONE is claiming or supporting.
5) While Peterson's vocabulary is impressive, he's much like Dennis Miller, insofar that while he uses big words, the construction of his speech makes it obvious he doesn't really understand them.

So while honklermaga may be somewhat bright, he still has extremely poor judgement.

(Goes to Youtube, clicks on Meaningwave)

Well, that's just like, your opinion man.

Can't wait to see what novel and profound deep thoughts you have to share with the world. Literally on the edge of my seat.

Jordan Peterson's answer to the question, how do you define religion?

It is a hierarchy of values based upon axioms.
Most people act out a Judeo Christian ethic and get very offended if they're not treated with that ethic.

COMMENT: Religion is much more than a mere commitment to some value structure, of whatever source. Religion, by definition, involves faith in a transcendent Being and to that extent involves metaphysical commitments, which moral values of themselves may or may not encompass. After all, the golden rule is an "axiom" supported by utilitarian considerations that seem devoid of any obvious religious significance.

Human beings are moral agents with complicated moral intuitions, particularly when faced with real life moral dilemmas. The fact that we can abstract intuitive general principles that underlie such values ("axioms")is also just part of being human. The suggestion that this is all just a cultural "Judeo-Christian ethic" implanted in us by environmental happenstance is quite debatable. After all, there is much about that J-C tradition that has been rejected by modern moral thinking--even from one generation to the next. Speaking personally, I was raised in that tradition, and rejected its most fundamental moral commitment; i.e. belief in God!
______________________________________________

"It seems like Peterson doesn't give people enough credit for being able to govern themselves without a bronze age moral code, using their executive functioning, like empathy, reason and compassion of their pre-frontal cortex."

COMMENT: O.K. So you want to criticize Peterson's cultural relativism and replace it with neurological determinism? Both are ultimately nihilistic because they both deny legitimacy to morality by associating it with some, extra-humanist, materialist cause, removed from human consciousness and agency; which is what morality is ultimately about.

And, by the way, there is no empathy, reason, or compassion, in the prefrontal cortex; there are only neurons.

Apparently with bigfoot, UFOs, and Illuminati paranoia.

"It seems like Peterson doesn't give people enough credit for being able to govern themselves without a bronze age moral code,"

But that's just it, right? people don't behave unless they have that bronze age moral code (old time religious foundation). If we want examples there are too many to list so I'll focus on just a couple.

1) consider the rise in mass shootings. In the 1950s there wasn't much if any. Were young men less disturbed in the past? Compare that with the large number in 2018. There was 307. Now what do these shooters have in common?... It isn't more guns, Americans have always had their guns... What it is is that they don't value life, they aren't christian, and absent fathers.

2) consider the great societies of the 20th century that decided to replace religion and capitalism. When they got rid of Christianity they replaced it with the State, with Lennin and Stallin. Millions were killed, because they didn't value human life. People become expendable to further advance the State.

3) consider the rise in abortions.... Oops I just checked that one out and they are actually on the decline for some reason? So that throws a wrench in my assertion. I'll have to research that one more.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/11/21/number-abortions-us-hits-historic-low/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.af67bed2b501

koriwhore Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...this wish that
> everybody becomes rational. It's like, sure,
> that's gonna happen!"


And Peterson's doing his part to fulfill that prophesy.

When a surgeon cuts a cancer out of your body does he ask what to replace it with ?

No, but when performing a heart transplant there better be something better to replace it with or the patient will die.

For people who see religion as cancer, there's nothing to replace it with.

For people who see religion as an evolved survival mechanism, there should be something better to replace it.

It's all in your perspective, I think.

koriwhore Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> It seems like Peterson doesn't give people enough
> credit for being able to govern themselves without
> a bronze age moral code, using their executive
> functioning, like empathy, reason and compassion
> of their pre-frontal cortex.
>

Alternately, perhaps those bronze-age moral codes have endured because they serve an evolutionary function that's good for the species overall.

given the hundred million people slaughtered in the 20th Century by nations with official policies of state atheism, I wouldn't be so quick to assume any moral superiority for the irreligious.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: when my mother was dying in a nursing home, exactly zero volunteers arrived from the Secular Humanist League and helped feed people with Parkinsons who'd lost control of their hands. None came from the Atheist Association and layed checkers with residents in wheelchairs. Nobody came to help from the We Don't Need A Bronze Age Moral Code to Be Good People Society to deliver large-print books.

All the volunteers were associated with churches.

All of them.

Common sense?

In my case, the square root of SFA. Religious ethos has zero to do with how I live my life.