Dodging the God question. Jordan Peterson earlier this year.
Jordan Peterson is not known for being shy about his opinions. Yet “the most influential Biblical interpreter in the world today” is very coy about saying whether or not he believes in God.
“I don’t like the question” Peterson always replies when put on the spot, acknowledging that he is “obsessed with religious matters”. Several millions of people can attest to that, having watched his fascinating “The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories” YouTube series, which focuses on the book of Genesis. But when it comes to God’s existence, Peterson doesn’t want to declare his hand. Why? “I don’t know, exactly” he replies. “I act as if God exists and I am terrified that He might.” Some think Peterson is being deliberately shifty.
As a result of the professor’s engagement with religion, a full-length study on the question of him and God has been published: Jordan Peterson, God and Christianity: The Search for a Meaningful Life. In it, Christopher Kaczor and Matthew R. Petrusek, a couple of American academics, generously acknowledge all that he has done to draw out the psychological insights of Biblical narratives, while seeking to encourage him over the line, into what they think of as full-blown belief. Both admire Peterson, but just can’t quite get over the fact that he is unwilling — publicly, at least — to make what they take to be the ultimate declaration of faith. His faith, they say, is the sort of thing you might have “in the parking lot, outside the church” – as if he is nearly there, but not quite. You can sense their frustration throughout: is “acting as if God exists” enough to be counted as a believing Christian? Close, they think. But not close enough.
“In the end, the difference between ‘acting as if God exists’, which Peterson says he does, and ‘believing in God and acting accordingly’, which Peterson says he is not ready to do, may seem inconsequential. Yet the difference between the two is as vast and relevant as the difference between reading a great love story and falling in love yourself.”
What is at stake here, though, is something more than wanting to sign Peterson up as a proper member of team Christianity. What is at stake is deciphering what we mean by really believing. And here, even as a priest, I am much more in the Peterson camp. Unlike the authors of this book, I am really not that bothered by Peterson’s apparently indeterminate status.
I remember a terrible moment on the first night at theological college in Oxford. I had unpacked my trunk ready for three years of training to be a priest. I lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, and a terrible thought struck me: did I really believe in all this stuff? Was I now writing the cheques of religious commitment that I didn’t have the intellectual recourses to cash? In other words: was I a fraud?
After a quarter of a century as a priest, I still don’t have a satisfactory answer to this question. And after a great deal of soul-searching on the matter, I have come to a similar conclusion to Peterson: there’s something wrong with the question.
My conversion to Christianity was both instantaneous, and drawn out. As an atheist philosophy student, I discovered a surprising love of the Biblical literature, and of those existentialist philosophers who took it seriously. Writers such as Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard brought it to life for me — much as they did for Peterson. Friends would describe Christianity as my funny sort of hobby; I thought of it as a kind of secular moral philosophy. Then, all of a sudden, I came to the realisation that I wasn’t on the outside of this system of thought looking in. I was on the inside looking out. Something huge had changed, but I was unable to say precisely what it was.
I think Wittgenstein best describes the nature of my conversion. In his Philosophical Investigations he has a little illustration (below) of what is known as a duck-rabbit.
He notes how it is possible to see these lines as the drawing of a rabbit. But then, suddenly, you see them as the drawing of a duck. What were ears become the duck’s bill. The image is not looking right but looking left. Everything about the image looks different. And yet nothing has changed. The lines haven’t moved.
My conversion was remarkably similar: nothing changed about the world; I still thought it contained the same stuff. But the way I looked at it had been turned on its head. This was no longer a tree, but an expression of God’s creation. The people in my life were no longer fleshy units of individual consciousness, but made in the image and likeness of God. Nothing changed, yet everything changed. I suspect that being “obsessed with religious matters” makes this sort of change. And you can build your life around it, as I have.
But hang on, an observer might say. Surely the lines have changed. After all, you now believe in God, so there must be an additional element to the picture. But it doesn’t work like that. Thomas Aquinas observed that if you decided to embark upon a crazy impossible project of listing all the things that existed in the world — shoes, cars, clouds, stars, atoms, etc — then God wouldn’t be on the list because God is not a created object, He is the creator itself. Which is remarkably close to saying that God does not exist. However, existence is not the right sort of thing to say about God. To talk of His existence is to relegate God to just one more thing about the universe – big and powerful, admittedly, but fundamentally, ontologically, just one more thing among others. And what the great doctors of the church repeatedly say about God is that He just isn’t like that.
The authors of this new book contrast Peterson’s “acting as if God exists” faith with that of CS Lewis, for them a representative of the “really believing” kind of Christian. For them, Peterson’s “faith” is kind of second best.
What they don’t mention, however, is the fascinating exchange when the marsh-wiggle Puddleglum is captured by a witch in CS Lewis’s The Silver Chair and taken to her underground lair. Seeking to disabuse Puddleglum of the idea that he might survive imprisonment, she attempts to convince him that Narnia and Aslan do not exist. It is Lewis’s take on Plato’s parable of the cave.
Puddleglum doesn’t have half the intellectual resources of the nihilistic witch, but he makes a spirited defence that has her infuriated. Yes, he might be a dreamer. Yet his “made up” world feels a lot more important that her “real world”.
“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all of those things. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a great deal more important than the real ones…I am going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I am going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”
This might sound like Puddleglum doesn’t properly believe; something along the lines of: I will believe in God even if there isn’t any God. But in fact, as Rowan Williams put it, Puddleglum “isn’t saying it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. He’s saying I have no means of knowing whether this is or isn’t true…But I know there’s something here that I cannot let go of without letting go of myself.”
To be fair, its not as if the authors of the Peterson book think there is no value in this position — indeed, they include a nifty quote from Fr Richard John Neuhaus that makes another kind of defence of us Puddleglums: “If you would believe,” he said, “act as though you believe, leaving it to God to know whether you believe, for such leaving it to God is faith.” But whereas they think this is not quite up to scratch, I take it that this position is as authentic an expression of faith as one could hope to find.
That’s why I think Peterson’s faith is not in any way lacking some extra element that turns it into the real thing. Aquinas described the authentic religious inquiry as fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. In other words, it is not understanding that comes first. You don’t need to have a fully worked out philosophy of God before you can profess any sort of faith. The understanding bit is always a work in progress.
I am perfectly happy to say that I believe in God, not because I totally know what that means as a kind of intellectual assent (still less proof) to some proposition about the world, but rather because I say it as a kind of existential commitment. This is where I stand. This is how I see the world.
It seems to me perfectly obvious that Peterson is doing something very similar. When Jesus called the fishermen by the sea of Galilee he said “come follow me”. He didn’t offer proofs or even any sort of argument. He didn’t supply any sort of check-list of their metaphysical commitments. He just asked them to follow. In a more metaphysically sceptical world, they might well have explained their actions thus: “I act as if God exists and I am terrified that He might.”
This isn’t being shifty. This is precisely what faith looks like.
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SubscribeWhenever discussions of God or faith come up, I’m reminded of a quotation from the mythologist, Joseph Campbell: “The best things can’t be told because they transcend thought. The second best are misunderstood, because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can’t be thought about. The third best are what we talk about.”
Believe if belief grips you, or even if it whispers to you something greater than yourself might exist.
Well said JB. I recall Jordan Peterson’s response when confronted with “the God question” on an Aussie TV panel show. He elaborates on his belief that these are deeply private issues, that there is something wrong with loudly and publicly proclaiming belief on this matter.
https://youtu.be/UI_QcD030Xw
Although isn’t this a rather modernist affectation? Almost all religions make publically proclaiming belief part of the condition of entry to the religion, not least as a condition to become a member of the religious community and enjoy the mutual benefits thereof. Baptism and confirmation are this, no?
Jordan Peterson’s individualistic interpretation of religion and religious belief from an existential and Nietzschean perspective that de-emphasises the community of believers does strike me as quite alien from the mindset of most religious believers.
The article seems to ignore that Aquinas spent considerable time demonstrating that God exists (through the famous three arguments) at least as a logical condition of existence, as a platonic ideal like numbers. Aquinas had a more subtle concept of existence and just because he saw multivocal concepts of existence as not touching God directly did not mean he saw it as unimportant or merely instrumental.
What this strikes me as is people who intellectually cannot accept that God exists bit aesthetically want that for the societal and individual virtues ot promotes. I cannot but help but feel leads to an anemic, tendentious and individualistic interpretation of such moral codes whose main emphasis is public facade over geuine humility and righteousness however.
But you don’t really have to ascribe to a religion in order to believe in God.
And if publicly stating that one believes in God is a requirement to belong to a specific religious community, isn’t it time there was more discussion about what this means from thought leaders like Peterson?
I mean have you read the Nicene Creed? The Islamic Shahadah? The Jewish Shema Yisrael? At least in monotheistic religions it is an essential part of membership.
And sure, one doesn’t need to ascribe to a religion to believe in God but without an intellectually coherent dogma how is that any more than an eccentric, indulgent individualist self-delusion similar to people who believe in ‘spirituality’? A commitment that demands no more than that which satisfies oneself and feeds oneself with self-satisfied and undeserved righteousness?
You are confusing ‘religion’ with belief. Religions are simply god-product franchises, which sell you eccentric delusions to prevent you using your own brain. A brain, incidentally, provided by ‘god’, if there is one, to be used. It’s an insult to your god not to do so.
“Religions are simply god-product franchises, which sell you eccentric delusions to prevent you using your own brain.”
Well that is both the stupidest and offensive post I have hit in a wile. But as you obviously know nothing of this issue I will only give one argument to your silly statement.
Taoism and Confucianism are two non-God religions, and very big ones too.
100 of the world’s top philosophers were Christians, as were the founders of the Universities, and many of the greatest scientists and mathematicians.
Atheism as a state religion is merely a death cult – as USSR, Cambodia, China showed by killing more people, mostly their own, than for any other kind of belief in history – and they did it in about 60 years time!
I addressed the membership requirement in my original comment – second paragraph.
As for the contemptuous ‘eccentric, indulgent, individualist self-delusion and etc’ that is spirituality comment – well I am a ‘spiritualist’ as you call them and I consider myself an individualist, but not particularly eccentric, indulgent or self-deluded. Certainly the many hundreds of ‘spiritualists’ I have met include doctors, artists, scientists, corporates, business people, shamans and many more diverse people – including people born from all different faiths.
When I went looking for ‘God’, I approached the exercise with a left brain and some cynicism. I wanted definitive proof and I got it in spades over a couple of decades. Sometimes I was challenged with faith and exercising faith also paid off in spades.
I am not a missionary, so frankly I don’t care to get into long circular conversations about god – I felt though that your naive description warranted an answer.
I agree with what you have written.
I am not sure if, as GA Woolley suggests, you are confusing religion with faith in a particular belief system.
I am a Jewish Christian and know many religious Jews who are agnostic. Faith is surely a dependency on God through belief in Him while religion is jumping through hoops of rituals.
I would only say as a non-believer that the only bit of monotheistic faith that makes any possible sense, is the idea of an abstract God. The other components of faith seem to be a particular sets of arbitrary belief markers, marking out the true believers from outsiders. Obviously in these respects they all contradict each other. And however small those differences the same fanatical, all too human infighting and persecution between the rival adherents occurs.
An abstract ‘God’ is exactly the type of God some physicists, such as Einstein adhere to, as compatible with scientific understanding. However in their case it is pretty much a synonym for the universal but impersonal laws of physics.
The Nicene creed was a hammered out compromise, all too human in, origin, under huge pressure of the secular power of the Roman Emperor, who didn’t want messy infighting between fanatical rival interpretations of Christianity in his newly Christian state. (He got it nonetheless but at least then there was a state defined orthodoxy).
The problem with Aquinas’s three (or is it five) arguments for the existence of God is that while they provide comfort for believers, or those who want to believe, they are unconvincing for non-believers and point to their own counter arguments.
By definition of an unbeliever, Aquinas’ arguements would be unconvincing to them. If the arguments were convincing those people would become believers.
Just go with Anselm’s Ontological Argument
Easy, and thus God exists.
I think points 2 and 3 are dubious. First, it requires us to distinguish what exists in the mind from what exists in ‘reality’, and to elevate the latter above the former. That’s not only entails a dualist assumption vis-a-vis the mental and material worlds, it privileges the material world when the psychological world is actually much more ‘real’ to us.
An alternative might be to say that there’s no difference between existing “in the mind” and existing in “reality”. For human beings, psychological reality is simply reality.
“Almost all religions make publically proclaiming belief part of the condition of entry to the religion, …” Actually, only two: Christianity and Islam. A declaration of faith is really the minority in world religions, as most religions do not do it. There is no creed to recite in Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Daoism, Shintoism, etc., they’re not concerned. Rather, it’s about vows you make to take on certain practices. Even Judaism doesn’t have a creed, and the more orthodox faithful will try to drag a fellow Jew to temple even if he’s an atheist. ‘Belief’ is a modern affectation, and it’s completely unnecessary.
Jordan Peterson’s views seem entirely consistent with his contention of the psychological ‘values’ of myth – whether the myths are true or not. Perhaps just as Jung’s archetypes have a shady half real/half social construct nature.
Maybe Jordan Peterson worries that if he ‘came out’ as believing in a god various people would then move on to asking whether it was their god? The whole debate would then be wrenched away from improving individual psychological attitudes into the numbers of angels dancing on a pin head.
Isn’t it easy to shoehorn every myth from every culture into archetypes if one makes them vague enough? Like horoscope messages. And neither Freudian nor Jungian psychoanalysis has ever really revealled much about the human mind except to spoilt upper middle class female dilettantes.
What I see is that cultures develop myths and social moral systems radically different across time and space: both Modern India or the Romam empire had mythological and ethical communities vastly different to the Christianised West. They can’t all be true from a matter of consistency. And even if as Nietzsche suggests they are all false but the important thing is the creation of one… well one has to pick to do that!
Archetypes and myth really do convey reality
I think he cannot ‘come out’ as being a true believer as then the entire secular world would disregardful his thinking as the ramblings of some religious loon.
I am so happy to have read this article because I have come to Christianity and to “faith” in the same way as described by the author. I don’t have proof, I don’t have an unshakable certitude, and I sure don’t have a deep understanding of the ineffable. But there is SOMETHING here, some way of looking at the world and my place in it that continues to pull me and continues to make sense.
I was towards the atheism end of the agnostic spectrum until somewhere in my early thirties when my thoughts kept turning to whether God exists and whether Christianity is true. One day I had some heavy thoughts and felt that anyone’s belief in God was certainly a delusion—why was I even wasting my time seeking the non-existent? It was illogical, it was stupid, it was empty babble. And what did this unwelcome thought mean for me?
But then I did arrive at a complete certitude, an absolute truth. I realized that I would still conduct my life as though there were a moral duty imposed on me. I would never believe that there was no point to my conduct, inner thoughts, and duty to others. This was Truth. The realization then hit me that here was my evidence of God.
That’s lovely Sheryl, it doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
Thank you David! I’m glad my comment made some sense; it’s very hard to put these experiences into words.
I definitely agree that “you don’t need to have a fully worked out philosophy of God before you can profess any sort of faith” but I think there is a difference between the statements “I act as if God exists” and “I think that God exists therefore I act as if God exists”. While the actions that result from our beliefs are ultimately what will matter, I think those actions are affected by whether you believe in a God that is independent of us and prior to us. I think that’s where Peterson is missing something, because his impression of God seems to be tied to human psychology in a way that suggests that God is a product of our minds rather than our minds being a product of God.
Peterson being unwilling to say “I believe in God” puts him in a different place to your statement (and mine, and Puddleglum’s, and Rowan Williams’) that “I choose to believe in God. This is where I stand. I know there’s something here that I cannot let go of without letting go of myself.“
Yes, I think you have nailed it. The product of our psychology though, is put forth in the Mesopotamian myth of Marduk and the ancient Myths of Horus, Osiris, Seth and Isis and also in the Hebrew biblical narratives according to Peterson.
Love this thought provoking essay.
It misses the BIGGY though.
Peterson’s main shtick is on Post Modernism, how that evil, wicked, depraved, Wrong, illogical, philosophically invalid, doctrine is killing all universities outside of STEM, and thus all industry and government, MSM, and education as they draw on the output of brainwashed undergraduates and post graduates of universities to staff them – and to set policy and activity. And so the West is being destroyed, and so the people.
Check out any of his youtubes on Universities
I find Dr. Peterson a fascinating individual, but I have not yet heard him speak about Jesus Christ. The author only mentions Jesus in the last paragraph, yet goes on about Puddleglum.
It is completely understandable why Dr. Peterson takes this position of not wanting to proclaim his belief in God because, absent of Christ’s redemptive power, he is entirely ashamed that he has no way of living up to the task. The fact is, no one does. This is Old Testament thinking. It was impossible for the ancient Jews to live up to God’s requirements.
But when God brought Christ into the world, he brought redemption for anyone who truly believed. (John 3:16) And that changed everything.
Here’s a couple of short but compelling clips for you Warren, JP on Christ.
https://youtu.be/mZvjZoqhiuw
https://youtu.be/fcudKSvH058
Was it St Anselm who said you should believe in order to understand, not seek to understand in order to believe? Or something like that. However, my intellectual pride tells me that the only honest belief can be agnosticism, albeit in my case of a devout kind. Complicated isn’t it?
YES.
One cannot force faith on yourself. So one goes through the acts and words, and eventually Faith will slip in – or if not, you tried, and that counts too.
I imagine Jordan Peterson can’t quite affirm that “there’s something here that I cannot let go of without letting go of myself”.
He’s terrified that’s true, which is wholly appropriate, because that’s the letting go of all he assumes is himself, which is in turn the step before that which is truly himself – and myself, and yourself, and all-self – showing up. Though it is then seen as present all along, which Paul put rather well as “God is all in all”.
The word “belief” doesn’t much help, as Giles says, because this is not adding one more thing, but seeing more clearly. It’s about perceiving – hence duck-rabbits – which action may well facilitate.
I am not sure where I read this phrase, but always made sense to me as an atheist: You may not believe in God, but you should act as if God exists. Human behaviour changes markedly (and for the better, imho) if you believe your life has a greater purpose and that you would be judged for your actions, not by some imaginary hellfire but merely by your status in your own eyes
Pascal’s Wager perhaps!
This is really good and heartfelt but I wish that it had drilled down on the second part of what JP said — “I am terrified that He might.” This goes to authenticity in belief. Your faith is not authentic if you think that you can just pal around with God, w/o being knocked on your ass by Him/Her.
Good point, but how do we combine the two aspects (of belief)? And what was the first part again, the second being being terrified?
To get a more nuanced understanding of Peterson’s ideas on this subject, his synthesis in Maps of Meaning is a requirement. It delineates what Peterson means when he uses the term ‘god’, for it is an expression of a psychological organising principle for existing and moving in the world. This principle, he contends, was wrestled with and delineated initially in story throughout history in various cultures – Mesopotamians, ancient Egyptians, Hebrews etc, and the principle was given personified form.
The other rendition Peterson has recently touched upon involved his wife’s near death experience with cancer and her christian faith and prayer allowing for her recovery. At present I would say Peterson is still with the former domain.
There is also very good discussion between Peterson and Susan Blackmore on YouTube that touches on this subject.
What a beautifully written article.
Actions speak louder than words.
I felt exactly the same way when I became an atheist. At first, at the age of 21, having been brought up (and was) a Christian I thought my increasing doubts meant I should become an agnostic. But then I realised that although I could not possibly prove the non existence of God, I was going to act like I had – so I called myself an atheist. And I have happily lived like that for the last 45 years.
Atheism is a more logical stance than agnosticism as the latter assumes the possible existence of a god that doesn’t matter which is surely a nonsense! When I changed my beliefs I became a Jewish Christian; rather different from your change but also a joy for the last 45 years!
It’s not that it doesn’t matter, we just don’t know
Thank you for your reply. I meant that if one doesn’t know then one of the possibilities is a god that doesn’t matter. If that were not possible, agnostics would be searching rather than accepting not knowing.
Why would they be searching? There is no meaning to life. Why do our lives have to be worthwhile. It is all beyond our ken.
Apologies for being off-topic, but what happened to your excellent Confessions podcast, Giles? It was one of the best things about Unherd.
It does seem interesting to me that, although like stones, plants, and dogs, we couldn’t understand a level of being “above” us even if it exists, we *are* able to understand that there are “levels”, and that there might be one “above” us that we can’t sense the nature of any more than a dog can sense the nature of us.
Given that, it therefore seems to me that there are really only two reasons to be religious, both characterised by a question. “Is it beautiful to act as though God exists?” (an aesthetic strategy) or “Is it helpful to act as though God exists?” (a pragmatic strategy).
The Church understood perfectly well the utility of the first question, and invented sublime music in answer to it.
The second question is much more problematic to answer. The older I get, the more I’ve come to value the reason for which conservatism (with a small “c”) came about — recognition that the universe is dangerous, survival is not guaranteed, and depends on learning and applying solutions to problems that may have taken generations to discover, and are not even obvious. Perhaps that is where the answer to whether or not it is helpful to act as God exists lies — not for God, but for a structure that lends coherence to societies, without which they are more vulnerable to chaos. This certainly seems to be consistent with Peterson’s ambiguous stance, and mine.
What a fascinating piece. I don’t have the brains to join in the discussion, but a treat to see hard questions posed with humility, and replies to match. Whether to agree or disagree. A wise old priest once told me that the main purpose of religion was to make us think. Asking the questions is more important sometimes than finding the answers.
Is the Pope a Catholic? Oh, wait…
Some might not think so…
We’re creatures of belief. It’s built in. But then we learn. And learning is phenomenally difficult because the belief heuristics we have are so strong and influence everything we look at. However, belief doesn’t make the heuristics right (or the learnings right at times).
But equally, no-one should disparage someone for believing something if that belief is positive and life-affirming – belief is in our nature. And perhaps the truth or falseness of a heuristic doesn’t matter so long as it helps us do the right thing.
Thank you, this was light in the dark of my current struggle to understand my faith and how wrapped it is in my life such that my life loses meaning without it.
I never cease to be amazed at the mental gymnastics and contortions ‘believers’ have to resort to to prop up their belief, while avoiding the key questions of ‘which ‘god’?’, and why not one or more of the others? Instead, they hide behind the catch-all term ‘God’. Giles, if there really was a god in a religious sense, then his/her/its/their revelation and message would have been the single most important event in human history, and not exactly a trivial event in that god’s plans. Whichever of the numerous supposed revelations and messages you subscribe to, they didn’t represent a roaring success, did they?
Quite. On the one hand we have the intellectual contortions of some physicists, who deny the existence of a deity while postulating all kinds of ludicrous things including Big Bangs and singularities at the heart of black holes, as though these are somehow less unlikely than a deity, and all resting on pure faith.
On the other hand we have the ineluctable fact that all societies that reach a certain size either invent religion or perish. They then never give it up.
It changes in aspect – Marxism and environmentalism are clearly crypto-religions, albeit evil, murderous ones, like mesoamerican death cults – but they’re still plainly persistences of similar irrational belief. They create an in-group and an out-group, and give the former permission to scold, hate, or liquidate the latter.
It’s hard to explain the universe without a deity, but it’s harder to say how religions explain anything. Giles believes in God, I don’t, but that just means I believe in one fewer God than he does. We completely agree that none of the thousands of Gods previously described by humans exists either, even though they all existed on the same evidence that his does.
Big Bang postulated by Catholic monk at the Vatican Observatory. It lead to Fred Hoyle’s Steady State theory because it made creation more likely rather than less. That is neither good scientific argument or reasonable theology. Creationism, the literal interpretation of Genesis 1, only about a hundred years old. It ignores Genesis 2, which does it the other way round. Mendel, the father of genetics, also a monk.
You seem confused. Scientists use evidence to theorise about cosmology; the less the evidence, the more the doubt, so they go through the steps of conjecture, hypothesising, postulation, theorising, etc as more evidence is gained. There is zero evidence for any ‘god’, but instead of accepting greater doubt, believers claim greater certainty; enough, in far too many cases, to hate, oppress, and kill. Doubt introduced by the Reformation, and then the Enlightenment, drew the teeth of Christianity. Al Ghazali’s influence on Islam, banishing all doubt and demanding utter certainty, is the reason for the Muslim world’s intolerance and backwardness, and its inability to evolve in the light of reality.
I’m not persuaded that scientists in general are any less partisan or objective than priests. There have simply been too many scandals over the years and they are still happening.
You’re right about Islam. It has never had a Reformation so it can never mature or cede ground. It is unreformable and incorrigible.
You are right that science is treated as a religion by many these days but surely science answers the questions that start ‘how?’ while religions answer questions that start, ‘why?’
I agree with you overall, but your first paragraph was ignorant.
You are assuming that the God thing can/would overwhelm our human psyche to get over a clear message etc. The God thing might be doing this all the time if we would get over our dominant ego trips and listen – read a ‘course in miracles’ for some fascinatingly possible ‘revelations ‘.
The litmus test is: ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ (Handel’s Messiah). I doubt either Peterson or Fraser could sing this with conviction.
The tribes need their witch doctors. I often use the term ‘Christian’ to mean decent behaviour and I think that exists. That quite clever people cannot rid themselves of the superstitious belief there is a higher being who actually has a claim or responsibility for humanity has been a mystery to me since I was eleven. We are animals and not very nice ones at that.
It took me many years to come to terms with how really intelligent people could also believe in deities.
I eventually learnt that many people can clearly wire their brains into almost completely separate compartments – in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance.
I can’t do this, and it’s fascinates me that others can ….
Maybe Jordan Peterson has a small pesky connection hanging around …
Which cognitive dissonance is this?
You seem to be avoiding the point this article makes. If faith is merely assent to the truth of the proposition “God exists,” then you are correct. Intelligent believers who generally accept the scientific framework would have to hold contradictory propositions as true—they’d be in a state of cognitive dissonance. They’d have to believe that “You shouldn’t believe things for which there is no adequate evidence’ and ‘God exists even though I have no evidence.’ But this article is a discussion about why that isn’t quite right and why many believers don’t conceive of the existence of God in those terms (which I won’t bother repeating because Giles already expressed it better than I could).
As somone who did a bit of maths and physics I have faith in the concept of the square root of minus numbers. I also have faith in God. Understanding who God is something else entirely. Like the nature of the human brain which Oxford neuroscientists say is too complex for humans too understand, so is life, the universe and everything. What I do find difficult is that there is often an assumption that I am a creationist who abhors science.
Deities? Plural? How many really intelligent pagans have you found in contemporary society. The Deity, the Ground-of-All-Being, which in some improper sense can be analogized to a person or mind, and thus is spoken of as Who, rather than which, has a lot of believers among really intelligent people down the ages. And why should there be cognitive dissonance? That the world is intelligible (via the scientific method, and the codification of natural laws in mathematical form) to us speaks to an analogy between the ground-of-being and the human mind, the old texts speaks of this in the poetic terms, “Come let us make Man in Our image and likeness…”
You might consider the meditation on the dictum of St. Gregory the Theologian (St. Gregory of Nazianzus to you Westerners), “If God exists, we do not exist. If we exist, God does not exist,” offered by Fr. MIchael Gillis here: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/prayingintherain/2012/05/god-does-not-exis/ )
I was taught to pray by my mother and became a Confirmed Christian in my teens. At University, I lapsed rather …
It was when my marriage broke down that I found psychological strength from prayer and hymns. The daily prayers of looking forward and thanking for the day just gone were crucial to my mental health.
I feel that God the Creator has his loving spirit pulsing thru the Universe which I can access.
Interesting views on faith, belief which makes me reflect more on this topic. I remain an agnostic. I just don’t know. However, I’m interested in the viewpoints of people of faith.
I lived in South America (Argentina) for a year many years ago and have visited that region again a couple of times. Spiritual belief is part of many of the cultures there. Interesting how in indigenous societies their church angels are different to the European ones.
No serious human being would believe in a deity.
Many serious people believe in a deity, I often wish I did as well. Believing that we go somewhere else after death is a lot more comforting than thinking you get chucked in the ground and eaten by worms quite frankly
What if you end up in hell?
…but is there really a set ‘binary’ re: hell & heaven ?
If you want to believe it, then it exists for you. When evidence is provided for the existence of God, heaven and hell then I will believe.
Obviously a human creation – hell/heaven appears to be what happens to us as we intensely relive all the good or bad we have done – nothing to do with a God edict” etc
I have no problem in being returned to the nitrogen cycle. Nor do I fear oblivion. I do have a nagging suspicion however that there might be something else. Agnosticism is the only honest position, but I like to bear in mind Pascal’s wager
Peoples that have survived have always invented Something Inexplicable to explain the inexplicable. They update the Something, but it never goes away.
If a star gets big enough its escape velocity exceeds light speed so that nothing can escape. It then sucks in all surrounding matter and light, spins at the speed of light, warps space-time, reaches temperatures of trillions of degrees and collapses to a singularity of infinite density and infinite smallness.
Physics currently has no answer to where the mass inside such a singularity actually goes. The obvious answer would appear to be that it emerges into a new universe, with different dimensions and physics that permit all that mass to explode again. In that new universe, a further infinity of new black holes forms and begets a further infinity of new universes.
It is quite a brave assumption that all that just happens because it just does. Can you address its creator through your thoughts? I doubt it, but yes, Pascal was onto something.
But agnosticism allows the possibility of a god who exists but does not matter which seems nonsensical. Pascal’s wager is a better bet!
It’s not comforting at all unless you are certain you have lived a thoroughly blameless life.
. . . which no-one has!
No serious human being would make a comment like yours.
. . .well, no thinking person!
The human brain can clearly allow both of these scenarios …
Belief in a deity is one thing, but evidence of the deity’s existence is another.
Slopmop have you not been reading this discussion ?? do you think we are not serious people ??? wakey wakey …..
To know God through logic and reason is comparable to a blind person trying to perceive a rainbow by hearing about it, a deaf person trying to appreciate Mozart by reading about it, an anosmic trying to experience the smell of a rose by feeling the flower, an ageusic person trying to experience the flavor of coffee by listening to its description or trying to know a person by reading her biography.
George John