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The (cordial) war of words between Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins could soon be reaching its finale. After tweeting out a clip of Peterson claiming that the British biologist was “mostly a Christian”, Dawkins called on the Canadian psychologist to have an in-person conversation with him.
My team sent me the following clips of @jordanbpeterson
He says I’m a Christian, although I don’t know it. Well, I certainly don’t know it. He also says I’m “the last standing avatar of the rationalist spirit.” I’ll take that!
Also, I’m still waiting for the in-person… pic.twitter.com/AOMWJHV1M3
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) April 15, 2024
Peterson responded by saying that he “wants to talk”, adding that both men had a “complex problem to address”. “Can the civilization you and I both admire,” he tweeted, “possibly be sustained without the magic of its underlying metaphysic?” Peterson went on to note that he, unlike Dawkins, did not believe that this was possible but that the pair were “more allied than not”.
“You obviously don’t want what we have to disappear,” he continued. “I also know you’re unhappy about the current state of the universities. You can see, as can I, that the scientific enterprise itself is now on shaky grounds — and not because of the Christians (even the fundamentalists).” After Ayaan Hirsi Ali, will Dawkins end up joining Team Christian too?
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SubscribeClick bait or what?
Wouldn’t call it click bait. It’s a serious question. If we do away with religion can civilisation survive? Seems unlikely given the religious characteristics that even ostensibly secular movements exhibit
Agree. Every candidate to replace religion has been every as religious: communism, fascism, environmentalism, wokism. They simply transfer the worship from God to the state, or the earth, or the oppressed. They all have their devils and damned: be it the bourgeoise for the communist, or the cis-hetero white mail for the woke. They have their priestly caste, they have their rituals.
Survive? We could thrive. Look at the situation in Israel: One side invokes God as it steals land and subjugates powerless people, the other invokes God with asymmetrical retaliatory strikes, and a third faction (US evangelicals) pours fuel on the fire because they believe Jewish control of the entire territory is a precondition for the return of the messiah and the end of the world.
It’s absolute madness, all of it, and yet the people who believe in these fairy tales have dragged the rest of us into perpetual conflict.
Personal belief is fine, the problem is that it’s very easy for any lunatic to say they are in communication with God and He wants X, Y and Z, which invariably involves violence and destruction.
This is a problem with human nature and I’m not sure our species can move past religion. Something in us is hardwired to believe, even as science and tech have mostly eliminated the need for “gods of the gaps” to explain things we don’t understand.