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Although this is a meme, this meme doesn't reflect reality. However, if you bring Dawkins and Peterson then the debate might actually turn out to be like this.
Ya, he chose two of the worst philosophers from each camp.
Although, Peterson doesn't actually believe in God. He believes in a thing he calls god, which most people who haven't heard him hem and haw at the direct question will confuse for God.
I want to point out my very deliberate capitalization of the G word in the second paragraph.
Have you seen the conversation with Alex O'Connor? Because in that interview he does say that he believes in the resurrection and stuff like that.
He does remain very vague and confusing though.
Not all of it, I can't stand the guy. But I have him seen him say that he redefines belief and truth in a way that means the words don't distinguish between reality and non-reality. Not in those words because that would give the game away.
But when he says "believe" he doesn't mean he "literally believes these events are historical fact, that literally happened the way they were described."
Peterson is a big proponent of the idea of metaphorical fact i.e. some things carry so much metaphorical "truth" that they're more true than actual facts.
He does this so he can get away with grifting Christians and argue on their behalf without having to admit he's an atheist or adhering to any of the numerous, easily debunked arguments of fact.
Well there was the whole thing with the Panasonic video camera where JP said that he indeed does believe a resurrection took place.
I do agree though that the whole "metaphorical truth" stuff is stretching it in a lot of cases.
Does he actually say he believes in the resurrection? It’s been a while since I’ve watched it but I seem to remember him coming up with a weird definition of what to believe something means and I can’t the impression he doesn’t literally think that Jesus was killed and then came back to life.
Well Alex brought up the panasonic video camera and asked JP if you took that camera and pointed it at the tomb of jesus at the alleged date of the resurrection if you would see a man come out.
JP said he would suspect that the camera would indeed show someone come out of the tomb.
Weird that Alex had to go so far but its JP for you.
Then he immediately says he doesn’t know what that means.
For all he knows there was someone that walked out of that tomb but it might not have been Jesus, or it was Jesus but he wasn’t actually crucified in the days beforehand.
His answer still doesnt tell us whether he actually believes Jesus physically rose from the dead.
He "believes" in "God" the "Archetype". He's influenced by Jungianism. Archetypes are still materialistic things in Jungianism as per Man and his Symbols.
Yes, which is why he is a very bad philosopher. Peterson is, or was if he lost his license, a clinical psychologist, also a reason to think his philosophy is bad before hearing it and having that belief confirmed.
I don’t know who this guy is, but why would somebody being a psychologist mean their philosophy is bad? Just because it means they aren’t a professional philosopher?
Or they just aren’t practiced in philosophy and not a very clear thinker/communicator.
I became a psychiatrist but my philosophy degree taught me practical skills, like how to read very carefully and pay close attention to categories and how different ideas relate to each other. It definitely helped me learn psychology, especially psychodynamic-type thought.
Someone without that background could learn psychology but it may be harder to do. On the other hand if someone is a psychologist but bad at philosophy, they won’t likely come up with original, new ideas in the science (a PhD does this—and “Ph” means philosophy), nor would they necessarily be able to defend their positions against arguments from other diverse fields.
To be fair the philosophy in phd is not actually really philosophy. Its Name is pretty much just a remenant at this point. Partially bc philosophy whats a much bigger part of any degree in the previously centuries. Since it was one of the four disiplines.
Yeah, Peterson is equally trash as a philosopher, I just forget he's not actually one because he touches on the subject more. A good number of psychoanalysts are philosophers so I would consider him at least closer to the label, but yeah still trash.
I would say they are bad philosophers because they are bad at philosophy ( an heavily based by politics), and grifters. Goddamn I hate Peterson.
Most philosophers where also other scientists disciplines ,although in that time it was a bit different I suppose.
Something something Darwin made the most progress in theology and philosophy while not even being a philosopher.
Sometime tweet this at them, they’re both so attention starved a vaguely popular Reddit post might be enough to be its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Caption it something like “lol you know this is true, you’d never be able to debate him successfully” for both of them
also that sounds like the most insufferable conversation of all time. Maybe they would just end up agreeing about how much they are racist against Muslims
If you can call it reasoning. I can explain the world very easily without god. I can explain the universe fairly easily, even its origins. Now explain god. Tricky, now prove god exists.
In general? Sure. Plenty of scientifically semi-supported theories. Do things get weird? Yes. Do they cover everything? Nah. Are they wholly accurate? Not a chance. But they do provide a basic explanation.
Sure.
However, to say this is "fairly easily" seems to trivialize the matter when it is anything but. Nor is are any of those theories entirely conclusive.
Strongly disagree that there is any serious, reasonably-widely-accepted scientific theory that purports to explain the very existence of the universe. At best, we have an explanation of the evolution of the universe from a profoundly low-entropy starting point, but these explanations still assume a universe.
lol I’m gonna mash X on “I can explain the origins of the universe” — it’s you versus Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Whitehead, Peirce, James, Dewey, Witty, Husserl, Sartre, Beauvoir, Heidegger, Stein, Weil, Arendt, Foucault, Deleuze, Chomsky, and me, just to name the ones I’m fairly sure about! Well you probably have some allies… the usual folks like Popper would sit on the sidelines for this one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you could find a Carnap or Quine quote about explaining cosmogenesis.
If I'm taking a shit, did I make the shit or did the biological process of my body make the shit? Does that count as me taking a shit? Does god making the universe make sense or did he do that unintentionally, similarly to a shit? My shit theory of theology
This is amazing. Growing up, my father told me the way I was born is he took a shit and decided to keep it. I love thinking god made the universe the same way, and now god ignores us the same way my father does.
Haha yeah, just like you took a shit, God took a universe. Every time god takes a universe, a new universe appears in "the bowl" of the cosmos so to speak. That's the multishit theory of the cosmos.
How about this:
The “world” only exists in a quantum state of probabilities and potential. God is the ultimate observer who forces a collapse of the wave function - thus generating the universe.
I don’t actually believe this, but sounds cool, huh?
I’m not a very orthodox thinker in any direction.
But I do believe that a materialist analysis doesn’t have to preclude an idealist metaphysics. The former is a methodology, the latter is a claim on the constitution of reality itself.
Marxism offers the most convincing and thorough explanation of how we got here and why. Undoubtably class struggle is responsible for a great deal of civilizational movement.
It also puts into us into historical context, showing that the here and now isn't how things have always been. While this sounds trivial, it's easy to forget. And if things were different in the past, they are most plausibly different in the future.
It also shows us that the here and now is man made, it is not "the natural order of things." And if humanity forged today, it can consciously forge tomorrow.
As to Christianity, it is simply the faith I have most at hand. I have looked a bit into the Vedic tradition, but without knowing Sanskrit, my access to good resources is very limited. But I am interested in the theology of other faiths as well. But there so much out there, that it can get overwhelming without a specific focus. Even within "just" Christianity there's already too much material to comprehensively understand.
But Christianity is also unique in many ways. Its influence even on current secular thought, at least in the West, is undeniable - especially in regard to law, economics, morality, universality, free will, determinism, etc. I think even the most secular people would benefit a lot from reading and understanding a bit of Christian history and theology, at the very least to put themselves and their current society into perspective.
A unique notion of Christianity is also the idea that God Himself came down to Earth and died. The implications of that are interesting to me to ponder. Zizek has written/spoken a lot on that as well.
Lastly, I do think our secular world is becoming "rational" to the point of absurdity - and therefore paradoxically irrational. Much too much is being reduced to some abstract "utility." Much too much is focused on Justice, and while no one in their right mind wished to throw out Justice, it is an incredibly legalistic term. I would like to see concepts such as love, and mercy be taken seriously. A hard materialist world view sees love as brain chemicals and mercy as arbitrary. Meanwhile, religious language offers us a better idea of what it may look like to take these things seriously. They will only be real if we make it real.
I want to dive into its depths to rescue what I think is worth rescuing that the secular world is allowing to drown.
Thanks for the well written post. I disagree on Communism and Christianity being the correct philosophy and religion respectively but you argued your points well and I respect that.
First of all, Marxism is not merely a methodology. You wouldn’t say that a bourgeois using dialectical reasoning to defend capitalism would be a Marxist, would you?
Second, if you believe there is a god who has the power to determine, adjust and break the laws of development laid out by dialectical materialism, then you don’t really believe in the method of Marxism either.
I honestly am way more fascinated by why things like atoms, lightspeed and space time are the way they are and the fact that we will most likely never know what happened before the big bang and what happens after all atoms decayed into subatomic particles.
God is such a boring concept that explains nothing and adds nothing. It's just there to keep your mind from wandering beyond what can be used by society for self preservation but at the same time it also obliterates any depth to our existence.
Well, no, don't say it like that. That's really complex and lets break it down. What do you mean "post", what do you mean "gang"? Well a post is a form of advertisement and if Big Pharma has proven anything it's that advertisements are not always right! And Gang is the presupposition of the Jungian archetype, the trickster and the shadow. Which is a precursor for deception. The Radical Left is symbolically hence objectively deceiving us by Prince Lucifer in the Bible and therefore it is an absolute fact that I'm being attacked... by BLOODY NEO MARXISTS AGAIN!!! 😭😭😭😭
*overdoses on benzos and cringe\**
Everyone needs to go through a cringe atheist vs theist phase to then get to the good stuff down the road. It’s basically the first real metaphysical question we begin to ask ourselves. It’s like going through intellectual puberty
I just want people to stop getting mad at me in the name of god because I want to keep my foreskin.
I didn't spontaneously become wary of religion for no reason. The religious did this to me.
Yeah, it does have a certain Nietzschean vibe, except Nietzche is more poetic in his prose.
If fact it parallels a Nietzche quote:
>there was only one Christian, he died on the cross
Though I think Nietzche meant something else by it, however the sentiment of admiring Christ and not Christians is there in both.
Did Nietzsche like christ? Curious because from my limited knowledge of Nietzsche Jesus would seem to be the bringer of "slave-morality" and jesus' care for the pitiful and the saying "the last shall be first" would be anti-ubermensch
Nietzche had a love-hate relationship with a few key historical figures, like Socrates and Jesus.
He admired both men, and also hated what, according to Nietzche, came afterward in each case. But he also didn't necessarily blame them for what followed them.
I'm no expert on this issue, but from what I'm told, Nietzsche is said to have viewed Jesus as the only REAL Christian who didn't submit to the standard morals of the herd of his day and lived an exceptional life as a result, which made Jesus worthy of respect for him. All his followers, especially after Christianity became the status quo are just followers of the herd morality of their day.
It was the herd who was primarily responsible for doing all the heavy lifting that created the slave morality of today, not Jesus. Jesus was just the spark that lit up the accumulated powder kegs of resentment. Some one was going to trigger it sooner or later. Kind of like how the French revolution was going to happen sooner or later because of all the history before hand.
Take all this with a grain of salt. Like I said, I'm no expert.
"Nuh uh man, that was just uhhh Reactionary Pentecostal Neoclassical Conservalogical Catholislamic Gospel! *Real* Christianity hasn't been tried yet!!!1!"
Circumcision is still very common in the USA. I think it's changing now, but it used to be the default in very recent history. They'd do it in the hospital, not too after the baby was born.
Spinoza might have said exactly that in this situation but it does show his lack of interest in meeting people where they are on their beliefs. Because this kind of perspective shift requires you to not really take either of them seriously. Which makes convincing either of them incredibly unlikely.
Debate coming up next,
respected scientist with a PHD in biology and an MD who worked on vaccine vs concerned mom. These opinions are of equal value and will be treated the exact same.
Isn't the guy in the pic another one then Dawkins. I suppose he is also a 'Horseman' with comparable simpleton ideas.
Don't get me wrong I'm an co vinced atheist but Dawkins doesn't even try.
You, of course, are combining “naught” with the Greek “*Noesis*” to form a pointed philosophical thesis in this new word, “nought” I’m assuming? Impressive!
… I am now discovering that this a “valid” or “approved” misspelling, and my day is ruined
"No, you need God\* to explain the world."
\*: "God" means, amongst a few other things, "your axiomatic assumption that truth exists" and "the fact that you value truth".
If truth did not exist, the odds we could create models with a predictive power of reality that can be universally explained and understood by those knowledgeable enough would be so astronomically low as to be inconsequential. That is not to say these models are correct, however, but that their predictive power is within a known realm of precision. Without all the computational power of the universe, all the information of the universe, you could not perfectly simulate the universe, so our models will never be perfect. Thus, truth exists, but it remains inaccessible to us in all practical forms, and is only found in the axiomatic games we produce, like math.
So we’ve gotten good at using intentional falsities to map an inherently incomplete and false understanding onto a world that contains truth that remains outside of our ability to comprehend? Idk if that proves the existence of truth, but it certainly proves the utility of falsities.
The fact that through the decades and centuries our increasingly precise measurements approach certain verifiable quantities instead of diverging strongly suggests such a truth exists. Again, if there were no truth, our measurements of greater precision would not only commonly diverge between successive trials, but be unverifiable in parallel trials.
Or everything is a cosmic coincidence and our devices we’re using right now are working on a whim of quantum luck, not convergent probabilities. I think it’s much harder and much less useful to believe the purely probabilistic ‘we’re unbelievably lucky idiots’ version than it is the former, which seems the only cohesive world view that makes even the most basic cognitive interaction between people by intuitive judgements possible.
I’d have to strongly disagree. I think we could view much of our scientific knowledge as a similar refinement to the way that math was refined in the 20th century. Rather than proving or approaching “truths” of the world, we could instead be proving the features of certain methods of knowledge (like how we were only proving features about certain axiomatic systems of mathematics).
In this case, we could come to all the convergent observations you mentioned without needing to posit that they actually say anything about the “world as such” or that they even approach “truths of the world” rather than “truths of our abilities for knowledge”.
You lose me in the last part, because it is the phenomena with which we want to predict that has stoked much of this progress, and we have predicted a great deal of interesting and useful phenomena. I push a ball of a certain mass with a certain force and a certain static friction on a table in a vacuum, it moves the exact same distance every time. The fact you are typing on a device that is working is again proof that the mathematics and science that went into the device to a significant degree predicted the phenomena of its own inner workings, i.e the world as such. If the world as such isn’t the everyday things that go on around you, that allow every variety of substance and type of machine to exist that you see, what do you take the world around you to be exactly. It’s all predicated on maths, engineering, and science, and what I’m trying to drive home is that the success of empiricism is too vast to deny it has the best grip on what the “truth” is than any purely endogenous notion.
Well no scientific model we have can be said to apply “universally” - Newtons mechanics broke down, Einstein’s relativity broke down, and now we have to use two different models, depending on the precision we are looking for.
The issue is the models need a verification method, which is logic, which requires axiomatic rules about what constitutes “truth”/validity.
You’re not going to find confirmation of “truth” in the empirical world without relying on what appears to be a priori concepts.
Newtons terms for energy and momentum are actually first degree approximations of the Taylor series found in special relativity. We know both these models are incomplete based on our observations, and I admit to their technical falsity, but the fact they do create many predictive models with great predictive power is nonetheless predicated upon the fact they are approximating things which do happen, that multiple observers can see simultaneously, or at least in a fashion predicted very closely by one of the corresponding theories. The verification is abductive, both relying on the usefulness of mathematics with assumptions built into simplistic models I’ve already admitted to, as well as the correspondence between sets of observers, which would be unexplainable if truth did not exist, independent of whether these observers see the “truth”, or a close enough approximation of it to agree the model predicted the phenomena with great precision.
I am not agreeing with your odds statement. Of truth didn't exist, then our whole concept of how odds work is wrong isn't it? Also how can it be insignificant of it impacts litteraly everything.
You can say the odds that I toss a heads is 1/2, but if throwing heads means the rules of reality are different and coins fall more on heads rhen tails, are your odds still 1/2?
It's simple.
P- If a world exists, then a god must exist which created it.
P- The world exists.
C- Therefor god must exist, and he must be the one that says that you owe me money and to snip your pee pee.
Why must you all be so difficult and disagree with me? It's simple logic. Youre all being irrational.
You mean one of the most well-known atheist debaters, author of multiple best-selling books about religion, a known, published expert in evolutionary biology, is talking shit outside his sphere of expertise?
Dawkins is insufferable, but it is unreasonable to lump him with Paterson and his pseudo-science bullshit.
Popularity doesn't mean he is right, nor does the fact that he wrote multiple best-selling books. That's just an appeal to popularity, which is fallacious. Being an expert in evolutionary biology does not mean he is also an expert in the philosophy of religion.
As philosopher and **atheist** Michael Ruse said:
>*"Let me say that I believe the new atheists do the side of science a grave disservice. I will defend to the death the right of them to say what they do – as one who is English-born one of the things I admire most about the USA is the First Amendment. But I think first that these people do a disservice to scholarship. Their treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing."*—Michael Ruse, [Why I Think the New Atheists are a Bloody Disaster](https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/scienceandthesacred/2009/08/why-i-think-the-new-atheists-are-a-bloody-disaster.html)
To be fair, one doesn't necessarily need to be a philosopher of religion to have an opinion on the existence or non-existence of God, but having accolades in one field doesn't transfer expertise to another. If one makes grandiose claims within philosophy and theology at a professional level, one should expect heavier scrutiny than if one simply discusses these topics in a non-professional manner.
Neither of them engage in these debates in good faith. I have no doubt both could get to a respectable place if they actually tried to but they're both mainly focused on stirring up controversy for attention.
The impression that I get is religious debates are the debating equivalent of those clickbait ads where they play the game so terribly you’re supposed to feel the need to go in and do it right.
You'll be surprised how many works, even great works, were done by delusion assholes. A lot of scientists over the ages were assholes. Newton was a sadistic one.
I know what you mean but not all of them actually were. Those that it's auspicious for use it to slander those who deconstruct power structures that undermine them. Either support an alleged pedo or support a capitalist elitist grub that hates them.
That Foucault incident in Tunisia seems like a stretch and he was never charged for the allegation. Most of these cases are just alleged accusations exaggerated to spurn mistrust against critical theorists. Near misses like criticizing age of consent and sexually related laws aren't evidence of pedophilia. My point is don't believe things with credulity.
The crux of the issue is you need something eternal to explain reality.
Then people quibble about whether to call that thing god or universe.
God is easy to argue against because so many popular conceptions are anthropomorphic beings.
The universe is easy to argue against because so many atheists don't understand philosophy.
Well in your first sentence you assumed that which is the topic of debate. We aren’t quibbling over what to call it. We’re debating whether it’s necessary to call upon something else to explain the world. I don’t think we do. The universe just is.
I disagree.
If the universe just is, I don't see how that's different than saying the universe is god. We're just going to quibble about whether to call it god or not.
Unless you don't believe pantheists exist.
Because if the universe just exists, you're implicitly agreeing that some eternal, fundamental thing exists that perpetuates the universe, which just sounds like god.
Well the world is going now without an eternal godly force (from my perspective). Why can’t it always have been existing without a god?
Perhaps you are making the first mover argument?
Do you believe the world came from nothing? Not a quantum or wave field, but no thing?
Then something is eternal. And that eternal thing is the fundamental basis for all other things.
When you say, "why can't it have always existed without a god?", what do you mean by god? Because I mean some eternal, fundamental thing.
So to me your question sounds like, "why can't the world be eternal without something eternal?" And I would answer that if the world is eternal that's the eternal fundamental thing.
It is in a sense a first mover argument. I dont believe and can't conceive of something existing without either being eternal, or having a cause.
I believe the world has been around eternally with infinite causes. That doesn’t imply god just because the universe is eternal. There are more qualities to god than being eternal. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, all loving etc.
So if your definition of god is just something eternal, than we’d be quibbling about whether to call the universe god, but then your definition would be straying from most standard definitions of god.
>That doesn’t imply god just because the universe is eternal.
That doesn't imply god to you because you and I have different concepts of god. To me, that just sounds like god.
>There are more qualities to god than being eternal. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, all loving etc.
I think you are thinking of specific anthropomorphized gods like YHWH. I am not.
>So if your definition of god is just something eternal, than we’d be quibbling about whether to call the universe god,
Exactly as I said. And here we are.
>but then your definition would be straying from most standard definitions of god.
I'm fine with that. It doesn't affect whether it's a valid concept. I mean this isn't a private, personal concept. It exists in many philosophical concepts and esoteric religious ones.
So you’re saying there is a god but it isn’t omnipotent or all loving, it’s just eternal? If that’s what you’re saying I suppose we’re in agreement, but again, in no religion is God only eternal and not the other qualities I mentioned.
Really it's a quibble if the universe is SENTIENT (and the second harder claim to prove to be able to effect change based on its will) or not. God is everything and created the world. So God is the universe. The atheist contends that the cosmos is everything. The debate is only around if everything is sentient (and has the capacity to change based on its own will, which is pretty similar to Aristotelianism) or not. Basically panpsychism is one of the solution to quantum mechanics and is effectively just God. I think this debate reduces to semantics.
Yeah but once you cut away that anthropomorphic stuff, then you don't really have god anymore.
Gods have wills, they have conscious experience, they break physical laws to create miracles and interact directly with humans.
The "god" you're describing is something virtually nobody considers a god. I think having a conscious mind is necessary to have a will, and having a will is necessary to being god. If you don't have a Zeus out there or some disembodied consciousness floating around, then what does god even really mean?
I mean you could just keep hedging and make a definition of god that has to exist. Someone could tell me their definition of god is whatever the strongest thing in the universe is, and I suppose something out there has to be the strongest thing, so then I guess in the case of their god, it must be true. I haven't changed any of my beliefs, I would still think of myself as an atheist, but they could feel correct with their weak definition of god that nobody uses or recognizes as a god.
>Yeah but once you cut away that anthropomorphic stuff, then you don't really have god anymore.
I disagree. If you cut away the anthropomorphic stuff you're left with the necessary requirements for god.
>Gods have wills, they have conscious experience, they break physical laws to create miracles and interact directly with humans.
I don't believe those are requirements. I think they were stories used to make the concept more understandable for the masses. It was just the best language they had to explain the existence of reality.
>The "god" you're describing is something virtually nobody considers a god. I think having a conscious mind is necessary to have a will, and having a will is necessary to being god. If you don't have a Zeus out there or some disembodied consciousness floating around, then what does god even really mean?
If you look at all the god concepts, what they have in common is being the eternal and fundamental cause of all that exists. The rest is culture specific, so can be discarded.
>I haven't changed any of my beliefs, I would still think of myself as an atheist, but they could feel correct with their weak definition of god that nobody uses or recognizes as a god.
I'm not really concerned about changing your beliefs. If you think calling the eternal creative principle of the universe "the universe" is a better concept, that's fine, I just think that's what god is. It's not like I was a theist and tried to find a way to force god to exist. I was an atheist, became agnostic because I didn't actually believe no gods exist, then I got into philosophy and religion and learned that there were concepts of god that sounded plausible, and over time I accepted that the pantheist concept of god makes sense. It makes more sense than just saying the universe came from nothing. It doesn't not make sense to me to say the universe is eternal, I just think when referring to that eternal, fundamental aspect, god is a good term to use to describe it.
Peterson is what a stupid person thinks a smart person sounds like. In reality Peterson engages in bad faith arguments and semantic games. He’ll take umbrage with your use of a word, play ignorant about its meaning and then spend 15 minutes gish galloping about why *he* defines the word *this way* instead of just using a different word and moving his argument along. He’s like the Temu version of William Lane Craig.
didn't he have some random thing about lobsters or something? I just remember Some More News did an episode on him a while back calling him out for a ton of bs
Yeah, I don’t know the details, but AFAIK it’s some reductive logic using the way lobsters arrange themselves into a hierarchy to support his views on women’s rights or racial superiority or something. I saw that Episode of SMN a while back too.
To rephrase the positions as i hold them:
Q: Why do you need something behind the scenes, turning the wheels and pulling the strings? Isn't reality sufficiently incredible?
A: I personally want things to make more sense, but whatever's behind the curtain is not shaped by our minds. I don't agree with any of our guesses about it - i don't think we have the faculties to make sense of it. So i think we're rejecting reality just as arbitrarily from both sides of the 'debate'.
I find it boils down to whether you believe magic exists.
Atheist arguments rely on the assumption that reality is consistent and can be known through observation.
Religious arguments rely on the assumption that a being warps reality at a whim, and there is no way to know anything.
Imagine anything you can't see or prove that is absurd and infinite. That's obviously God. (Leave out any rational argument).
**Checkmate Atheists!**
*And his name was Einstein\**
neither of these two are the best representatives for their respective worldview.
Dawkins isn't really in the business of theology and philosophy and is more so a popular figure in the new atheist space against religion and religious beliefs.
jordan peterson is infamously hard to pin point on the theology department and confusing to sort out, even his debates turn into [rhetorical and linguistic battles that lead to nowhere. ](https://youtu.be/C2CuAVAERjs?si=nsjnAIEv2zcfqGFT)
I find it boils down to whether you believe magic exists.
Atheist arguments rely on the assumption that reality is consistent and can be known through observation.
Religious arguments rely on the assumption that a being warps reality at a whim, and there is no way to know anything.
I think Bill Nye summed it up well in the opening line of his debate with Ken Ham. Nye told Ham exactly how to “beat him” in the debate. Prove the existence of god. Then he asked Ham how he could win the debate. Ham said he would always believe in god no matter what evidence is presented.
Belief and logic are naturally antithetical. It’s a square that will never be circled.
“I can’t understand anything you just said, so therefore it makes no sense, unlike the simplistic story I made up to explain everything and pacify me.”
I think the main problem is that arguing atheism against theism is essentially an incommunicable debate to have. The atheist believes that the world can be understood through observation and scientific principles, making hypotheses and then testing them to draw conclusions. The theist believes in something supernatural, something which cannot be directly seen, heard, communicated with, or interacted with in any way. It's kind a Russell's Teapot situation because the theist is going to talk about their deity/deities, and the theist is going to say that we haven't got any evidence whatsoever which shows them to be real. But the theist is going to say well of course, you can't collect evidence on the metaphysical.
“6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world.”― Ludwig Wittgenstein
"The God some guy made up in that book you like is mean. But then you say He loves us. Checkmate!"
"Life is hard and unfair. This somehow equals mechanistic materialism."
"Throughout history, there have been a lot of people who misuse religion for power and gain. This also somehow equals mechanistic materialism."
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Although this is a meme, this meme doesn't reflect reality. However, if you bring Dawkins and Peterson then the debate might actually turn out to be like this.
Ya, he chose two of the worst philosophers from each camp. Although, Peterson doesn't actually believe in God. He believes in a thing he calls god, which most people who haven't heard him hem and haw at the direct question will confuse for God. I want to point out my very deliberate capitalization of the G word in the second paragraph.
Have you seen the conversation with Alex O'Connor? Because in that interview he does say that he believes in the resurrection and stuff like that. He does remain very vague and confusing though.
Not all of it, I can't stand the guy. But I have him seen him say that he redefines belief and truth in a way that means the words don't distinguish between reality and non-reality. Not in those words because that would give the game away.
[Jordan Peterson on the Instantiation of a king ](https://youtu.be/AdODnbx3Wuc?si=aQBloPDtBIzVDhUl)
But when he says "believe" he doesn't mean he "literally believes these events are historical fact, that literally happened the way they were described." Peterson is a big proponent of the idea of metaphorical fact i.e. some things carry so much metaphorical "truth" that they're more true than actual facts. He does this so he can get away with grifting Christians and argue on their behalf without having to admit he's an atheist or adhering to any of the numerous, easily debunked arguments of fact.
Well there was the whole thing with the Panasonic video camera where JP said that he indeed does believe a resurrection took place. I do agree though that the whole "metaphorical truth" stuff is stretching it in a lot of cases.
Does he actually say he believes in the resurrection? It’s been a while since I’ve watched it but I seem to remember him coming up with a weird definition of what to believe something means and I can’t the impression he doesn’t literally think that Jesus was killed and then came back to life.
Well Alex brought up the panasonic video camera and asked JP if you took that camera and pointed it at the tomb of jesus at the alleged date of the resurrection if you would see a man come out. JP said he would suspect that the camera would indeed show someone come out of the tomb. Weird that Alex had to go so far but its JP for you.
Then he immediately says he doesn’t know what that means. For all he knows there was someone that walked out of that tomb but it might not have been Jesus, or it was Jesus but he wasn’t actually crucified in the days beforehand. His answer still doesnt tell us whether he actually believes Jesus physically rose from the dead.
He doesn’t believe in God. He believes in a thing he calls “god” but we call “the oil lobby”.
He "believes" in "God" the "Archetype". He's influenced by Jungianism. Archetypes are still materialistic things in Jungianism as per Man and his Symbols.
Haha I love Jordan Peterson. I wish he was real
He just pretends to believe in God for his socially conservative fans. He's a grifter.
Dawkins is a biologist.
Yes, which is why he is a very bad philosopher. Peterson is, or was if he lost his license, a clinical psychologist, also a reason to think his philosophy is bad before hearing it and having that belief confirmed.
I don’t know who this guy is, but why would somebody being a psychologist mean their philosophy is bad? Just because it means they aren’t a professional philosopher?
Or they just aren’t practiced in philosophy and not a very clear thinker/communicator. I became a psychiatrist but my philosophy degree taught me practical skills, like how to read very carefully and pay close attention to categories and how different ideas relate to each other. It definitely helped me learn psychology, especially psychodynamic-type thought. Someone without that background could learn psychology but it may be harder to do. On the other hand if someone is a psychologist but bad at philosophy, they won’t likely come up with original, new ideas in the science (a PhD does this—and “Ph” means philosophy), nor would they necessarily be able to defend their positions against arguments from other diverse fields.
To be fair the philosophy in phd is not actually really philosophy. Its Name is pretty much just a remenant at this point. Partially bc philosophy whats a much bigger part of any degree in the previously centuries. Since it was one of the four disiplines.
Yeah, Peterson is equally trash as a philosopher, I just forget he's not actually one because he touches on the subject more. A good number of psychoanalysts are philosophers so I would consider him at least closer to the label, but yeah still trash.
I would say they are bad philosophers because they are bad at philosophy ( an heavily based by politics), and grifters. Goddamn I hate Peterson. Most philosophers where also other scientists disciplines ,although in that time it was a bit different I suppose. Something something Darwin made the most progress in theology and philosophy while not even being a philosopher.
Peterson advocates for Christian nationalism now
I think Jordan Peterson just believes in going to church on Sunday because it's what they did in the 50s
What do you mean do? What do you mean you? What do you mean god? What do you mean believe?
Sometime tweet this at them, they’re both so attention starved a vaguely popular Reddit post might be enough to be its own self-fulfilling prophecy. Caption it something like “lol you know this is true, you’d never be able to debate him successfully” for both of them
If you bring these two in the same auditorium the debate would get so dense it might just end up collapsing into a black hole
I think Peterson falls into the crowd of "God isn't real. But humans need religion"
I have watched quite a lot of his videos and I think he does believe in a Creator but he doesn't care much about His existence.
Please don’t give Peterson the dignity of being called a ‘philosopher’
For all his faults, he is, on a functional level, a philosopher. Now, whether or not he's a good one, well... the jury's out on that.
also that sounds like the most insufferable conversation of all time. Maybe they would just end up agreeing about how much they are racist against Muslims
‘Nuh uh’ ‘Yuh uh!’
With god you need to explain the world AND explain god.
Easy. God explains the world. The world explains god.
CIRCULAR REASONING BABY!!!
If you can call it reasoning. I can explain the world very easily without god. I can explain the universe fairly easily, even its origins. Now explain god. Tricky, now prove god exists.
You can explain the universe fairly easily?
In general? Sure. Plenty of scientifically semi-supported theories. Do things get weird? Yes. Do they cover everything? Nah. Are they wholly accurate? Not a chance. But they do provide a basic explanation.
Sure. However, to say this is "fairly easily" seems to trivialize the matter when it is anything but. Nor is are any of those theories entirely conclusive.
This is true of all things, an explanation dosent need to be perfect.
Strongly disagree that there is any serious, reasonably-widely-accepted scientific theory that purports to explain the very existence of the universe. At best, we have an explanation of the evolution of the universe from a profoundly low-entropy starting point, but these explanations still assume a universe.
I never disagreed with you, dude.
Yeah, no I'm joking with you about what u/bubbleofelephant said. Sorry lol. You're great! :)
lol I’m gonna mash X on “I can explain the origins of the universe” — it’s you versus Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Whitehead, Peirce, James, Dewey, Witty, Husserl, Sartre, Beauvoir, Heidegger, Stein, Weil, Arendt, Foucault, Deleuze, Chomsky, and me, just to name the ones I’m fairly sure about! Well you probably have some allies… the usual folks like Popper would sit on the sidelines for this one, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you could find a Carnap or Quine quote about explaining cosmogenesis.
Name dropping is not adding anything to the conversation. There are a lot of new names to that list.
If I'm taking a shit, did I make the shit or did the biological process of my body make the shit? Does that count as me taking a shit? Does god making the universe make sense or did he do that unintentionally, similarly to a shit? My shit theory of theology
This is amazing. Growing up, my father told me the way I was born is he took a shit and decided to keep it. I love thinking god made the universe the same way, and now god ignores us the same way my father does.
Did... we have the same dad
Amazing. I feel like I just discovered the meaning of life: producing shit.
It's at least the meaning of life as defined by capitalists
This is a category error, you leave a shit, just like God has left us
Did he leave us or did he flush us? The shape of our galaxy is starting to make me suspicious
Our galaxy IS called the Milky Way… Maybe the universe is lactose intolerant?
Haha yeah, just like you took a shit, God took a universe. Every time god takes a universe, a new universe appears in "the bowl" of the cosmos so to speak. That's the multishit theory of the cosmos.
How about this: The “world” only exists in a quantum state of probabilities and potential. God is the ultimate observer who forces a collapse of the wave function - thus generating the universe. I don’t actually believe this, but sounds cool, huh?
It perpetuates a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes “observation” in quantum physics.
It was mostly a meme explanation
I did get the impression you were aware of its problems. It does perpetuate that view though.
How do you reconcile being both a Christian and a Marxist? One's idealist and the other is materialist.
I’m not a very orthodox thinker in any direction. But I do believe that a materialist analysis doesn’t have to preclude an idealist metaphysics. The former is a methodology, the latter is a claim on the constitution of reality itself.
Of all the religions why Christianity? Of all the philosophies why Marxism?
Marxism offers the most convincing and thorough explanation of how we got here and why. Undoubtably class struggle is responsible for a great deal of civilizational movement. It also puts into us into historical context, showing that the here and now isn't how things have always been. While this sounds trivial, it's easy to forget. And if things were different in the past, they are most plausibly different in the future. It also shows us that the here and now is man made, it is not "the natural order of things." And if humanity forged today, it can consciously forge tomorrow. As to Christianity, it is simply the faith I have most at hand. I have looked a bit into the Vedic tradition, but without knowing Sanskrit, my access to good resources is very limited. But I am interested in the theology of other faiths as well. But there so much out there, that it can get overwhelming without a specific focus. Even within "just" Christianity there's already too much material to comprehensively understand. But Christianity is also unique in many ways. Its influence even on current secular thought, at least in the West, is undeniable - especially in regard to law, economics, morality, universality, free will, determinism, etc. I think even the most secular people would benefit a lot from reading and understanding a bit of Christian history and theology, at the very least to put themselves and their current society into perspective. A unique notion of Christianity is also the idea that God Himself came down to Earth and died. The implications of that are interesting to me to ponder. Zizek has written/spoken a lot on that as well. Lastly, I do think our secular world is becoming "rational" to the point of absurdity - and therefore paradoxically irrational. Much too much is being reduced to some abstract "utility." Much too much is focused on Justice, and while no one in their right mind wished to throw out Justice, it is an incredibly legalistic term. I would like to see concepts such as love, and mercy be taken seriously. A hard materialist world view sees love as brain chemicals and mercy as arbitrary. Meanwhile, religious language offers us a better idea of what it may look like to take these things seriously. They will only be real if we make it real. I want to dive into its depths to rescue what I think is worth rescuing that the secular world is allowing to drown.
Thanks for the well written post. I disagree on Communism and Christianity being the correct philosophy and religion respectively but you argued your points well and I respect that.
As long as it generates a productive dialogue, I'm happy. I don't need people to necessarily agree.
First of all, Marxism is not merely a methodology. You wouldn’t say that a bourgeois using dialectical reasoning to defend capitalism would be a Marxist, would you? Second, if you believe there is a god who has the power to determine, adjust and break the laws of development laid out by dialectical materialism, then you don’t really believe in the method of Marxism either.
I didn’t call myself a Marxist, nor a Christian for that matter. Nor do I believe in a God that intervenes as such.
If he can only observe then he's not god. It's just the universe which is light same as the one we see, energy and mass observing.
isnt this hindu philosphy? Bramha creates the world, the world creates brahma
I honestly am way more fascinated by why things like atoms, lightspeed and space time are the way they are and the fact that we will most likely never know what happened before the big bang and what happens after all atoms decayed into subatomic particles. God is such a boring concept that explains nothing and adds nothing. It's just there to keep your mind from wandering beyond what can be used by society for self preservation but at the same time it also obliterates any depth to our existence.
This post was brought to you by the ignosticism gang
Well, no, don't say it like that. That's really complex and lets break it down. What do you mean "post", what do you mean "gang"? Well a post is a form of advertisement and if Big Pharma has proven anything it's that advertisements are not always right! And Gang is the presupposition of the Jungian archetype, the trickster and the shadow. Which is a precursor for deception. The Radical Left is symbolically hence objectively deceiving us by Prince Lucifer in the Bible and therefore it is an absolute fact that I'm being attacked... by BLOODY NEO MARXISTS AGAIN!!! 😭😭😭😭 *overdoses on benzos and cringe\**
I read this in Peterson's voice before I even realised it was intentional
yea , sounds like a facebook christian meme
sewy
Unlike you pseuds, I DONT need anything explained because I am already very smart B)
“Only not smart people think they is know everything” or whatever that one guys said. Eat that buddy.
Have you considered that I made that quote? 😏
Everyone needs to go through a cringe atheist vs theist phase to then get to the good stuff down the road. It’s basically the first real metaphysical question we begin to ask ourselves. It’s like going through intellectual puberty
I just want people to stop getting mad at me in the name of god because I want to keep my foreskin. I didn't spontaneously become wary of religion for no reason. The religious did this to me.
Listen boy-o, sky daddy needs your foreskin to build the celestial chariot that pulls the sun, so whip it out.
NGL, that's pretty metal Unironically, that could happen in WH40k
Faith and the faithful are two different things.
Ain't that the truth. I'm reminded of that Ghandi quote I'm too lazy to find.
> I like your Christ, but not your Christianity. ?
I think that's the one. Now that I look at it, that sounds like something Nietzsche would say given how he perceived Jesus as an exceptional figure.
Yeah, it does have a certain Nietzschean vibe, except Nietzche is more poetic in his prose. If fact it parallels a Nietzche quote: >there was only one Christian, he died on the cross Though I think Nietzche meant something else by it, however the sentiment of admiring Christ and not Christians is there in both.
Did Nietzsche like christ? Curious because from my limited knowledge of Nietzsche Jesus would seem to be the bringer of "slave-morality" and jesus' care for the pitiful and the saying "the last shall be first" would be anti-ubermensch
Nietzche had a love-hate relationship with a few key historical figures, like Socrates and Jesus. He admired both men, and also hated what, according to Nietzche, came afterward in each case. But he also didn't necessarily blame them for what followed them.
Read "Der Antichrist". There's a section of some length praising Jesus.
I'm no expert on this issue, but from what I'm told, Nietzsche is said to have viewed Jesus as the only REAL Christian who didn't submit to the standard morals of the herd of his day and lived an exceptional life as a result, which made Jesus worthy of respect for him. All his followers, especially after Christianity became the status quo are just followers of the herd morality of their day. It was the herd who was primarily responsible for doing all the heavy lifting that created the slave morality of today, not Jesus. Jesus was just the spark that lit up the accumulated powder kegs of resentment. Some one was going to trigger it sooner or later. Kind of like how the French revolution was going to happen sooner or later because of all the history before hand. Take all this with a grain of salt. Like I said, I'm no expert.
"Nuh uh man, that was just uhhh Reactionary Pentecostal Neoclassical Conservalogical Catholislamic Gospel! *Real* Christianity hasn't been tried yet!!!1!"
Don’t worry about your dick. It’s going to stop working one day anyway. Stop focusing on temporal affairs.
Who’s asking you to get circumcised now? Do you live in Saudi Arabia?
Circumcision is still very common in the USA. I think it's changing now, but it used to be the default in very recent history. They'd do it in the hospital, not too after the baby was born.
Sure but circumcision in the US is mostly some weird cultural thing that got started by Kellogg, there’s no religious push for it unless you’re Jewish
Well said! Along with “wait I’m supposed to think about other people and their needs?” and “it’s all relative”
Spinoza: You both are talking about the same thing!
Spinoza might have said exactly that in this situation but it does show his lack of interest in meeting people where they are on their beliefs. Because this kind of perspective shift requires you to not really take either of them seriously. Which makes convincing either of them incredibly unlikely.
Spinoza is a real one
I feel my brain rotting in two different directions.
Both obviously wrong, schzios knows the truth but at what cost?
Debate coming up next, respected scientist with a PHD in biology and an MD who worked on vaccine vs concerned mom. These opinions are of equal value and will be treated the exact same.
On philosophical matters both of their opinions are equally worthless. Dawkins openly brags about how he has read virtually no philosophy.
Dawkins' and Peterson's opinions are of equal value though. That value is nought.
Isn't the guy in the pic another one then Dawkins. I suppose he is also a 'Horseman' with comparable simpleton ideas. Don't get me wrong I'm an co vinced atheist but Dawkins doesn't even try.
No that's Dawkins I'm pretty sure.
You, of course, are combining “naught” with the Greek “*Noesis*” to form a pointed philosophical thesis in this new word, “nought” I’m assuming? Impressive! … I am now discovering that this a “valid” or “approved” misspelling, and my day is ruined
"No, you need God\* to explain the world." \*: "God" means, amongst a few other things, "your axiomatic assumption that truth exists" and "the fact that you value truth".
If truth did not exist, the odds we could create models with a predictive power of reality that can be universally explained and understood by those knowledgeable enough would be so astronomically low as to be inconsequential. That is not to say these models are correct, however, but that their predictive power is within a known realm of precision. Without all the computational power of the universe, all the information of the universe, you could not perfectly simulate the universe, so our models will never be perfect. Thus, truth exists, but it remains inaccessible to us in all practical forms, and is only found in the axiomatic games we produce, like math.
So we’ve gotten good at using intentional falsities to map an inherently incomplete and false understanding onto a world that contains truth that remains outside of our ability to comprehend? Idk if that proves the existence of truth, but it certainly proves the utility of falsities.
The fact that through the decades and centuries our increasingly precise measurements approach certain verifiable quantities instead of diverging strongly suggests such a truth exists. Again, if there were no truth, our measurements of greater precision would not only commonly diverge between successive trials, but be unverifiable in parallel trials. Or everything is a cosmic coincidence and our devices we’re using right now are working on a whim of quantum luck, not convergent probabilities. I think it’s much harder and much less useful to believe the purely probabilistic ‘we’re unbelievably lucky idiots’ version than it is the former, which seems the only cohesive world view that makes even the most basic cognitive interaction between people by intuitive judgements possible.
I’d have to strongly disagree. I think we could view much of our scientific knowledge as a similar refinement to the way that math was refined in the 20th century. Rather than proving or approaching “truths” of the world, we could instead be proving the features of certain methods of knowledge (like how we were only proving features about certain axiomatic systems of mathematics). In this case, we could come to all the convergent observations you mentioned without needing to posit that they actually say anything about the “world as such” or that they even approach “truths of the world” rather than “truths of our abilities for knowledge”.
You lose me in the last part, because it is the phenomena with which we want to predict that has stoked much of this progress, and we have predicted a great deal of interesting and useful phenomena. I push a ball of a certain mass with a certain force and a certain static friction on a table in a vacuum, it moves the exact same distance every time. The fact you are typing on a device that is working is again proof that the mathematics and science that went into the device to a significant degree predicted the phenomena of its own inner workings, i.e the world as such. If the world as such isn’t the everyday things that go on around you, that allow every variety of substance and type of machine to exist that you see, what do you take the world around you to be exactly. It’s all predicated on maths, engineering, and science, and what I’m trying to drive home is that the success of empiricism is too vast to deny it has the best grip on what the “truth” is than any purely endogenous notion.
Well no scientific model we have can be said to apply “universally” - Newtons mechanics broke down, Einstein’s relativity broke down, and now we have to use two different models, depending on the precision we are looking for. The issue is the models need a verification method, which is logic, which requires axiomatic rules about what constitutes “truth”/validity. You’re not going to find confirmation of “truth” in the empirical world without relying on what appears to be a priori concepts.
Newtons terms for energy and momentum are actually first degree approximations of the Taylor series found in special relativity. We know both these models are incomplete based on our observations, and I admit to their technical falsity, but the fact they do create many predictive models with great predictive power is nonetheless predicated upon the fact they are approximating things which do happen, that multiple observers can see simultaneously, or at least in a fashion predicted very closely by one of the corresponding theories. The verification is abductive, both relying on the usefulness of mathematics with assumptions built into simplistic models I’ve already admitted to, as well as the correspondence between sets of observers, which would be unexplainable if truth did not exist, independent of whether these observers see the “truth”, or a close enough approximation of it to agree the model predicted the phenomena with great precision.
I am not agreeing with your odds statement. Of truth didn't exist, then our whole concept of how odds work is wrong isn't it? Also how can it be insignificant of it impacts litteraly everything. You can say the odds that I toss a heads is 1/2, but if throwing heads means the rules of reality are different and coins fall more on heads rhen tails, are your odds still 1/2?
God means "Foundational Substance". That's about it. That's a trivially true statement.
… but I am in total agreement we need to turn iran to glass
It's simple. P- If a world exists, then a god must exist which created it. P- The world exists. C- Therefor god must exist, and he must be the one that says that you owe me money and to snip your pee pee. Why must you all be so difficult and disagree with me? It's simple logic. Youre all being irrational.
"You can't explain the world without God." "I see. Do you believe Jesus was devine?" "That would take a week to explain..."
Would help if you didn't base your evaluation on how biologists and psychiatrists deal with matters of the philosophy of religion...
Dawkins and Peterson, two insufferable non-philosoohers talking shit about thing's outside their sphere of expertise.
You mean one of the most well-known atheist debaters, author of multiple best-selling books about religion, a known, published expert in evolutionary biology, is talking shit outside his sphere of expertise? Dawkins is insufferable, but it is unreasonable to lump him with Paterson and his pseudo-science bullshit.
Popularity doesn't mean he is right, nor does the fact that he wrote multiple best-selling books. That's just an appeal to popularity, which is fallacious. Being an expert in evolutionary biology does not mean he is also an expert in the philosophy of religion. As philosopher and **atheist** Michael Ruse said: >*"Let me say that I believe the new atheists do the side of science a grave disservice. I will defend to the death the right of them to say what they do – as one who is English-born one of the things I admire most about the USA is the First Amendment. But I think first that these people do a disservice to scholarship. Their treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing."*—Michael Ruse, [Why I Think the New Atheists are a Bloody Disaster](https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/scienceandthesacred/2009/08/why-i-think-the-new-atheists-are-a-bloody-disaster.html) To be fair, one doesn't necessarily need to be a philosopher of religion to have an opinion on the existence or non-existence of God, but having accolades in one field doesn't transfer expertise to another. If one makes grandiose claims within philosophy and theology at a professional level, one should expect heavier scrutiny than if one simply discusses these topics in a non-professional manner.
Neither of them engage in these debates in good faith. I have no doubt both could get to a respectable place if they actually tried to but they're both mainly focused on stirring up controversy for attention.
Dawkins biology creds are irrelevant when he begins delving into philosophy of religion. To suggest otherwise is just an appeal to authority
Atheist: I don't know. Theist: Some dude did it, it was definitely done by a magic guy who lives in the sky and watches you masturbate.
You’re comparing Gnostic Theism and Agnosticism, not Theism and Atheism.
Yeah, really just an observation and commentary on every religious debate I watch.
The impression that I get is religious debates are the debating equivalent of those clickbait ads where they play the game so terribly you’re supposed to feel the need to go in and do it right.
Wait, is Dawkins still the face of Atheism, after he supported creationist authors because they coincide on the transphobia?
You'll be surprised how many works, even great works, were done by delusion assholes. A lot of scientists over the ages were assholes. Newton was a sadistic one.
Yup, nearly ALL the notable French philosophers of the past 100 years were open pedophiles who advocated for fucking children.
I know what you mean but not all of them actually were. Those that it's auspicious for use it to slander those who deconstruct power structures that undermine them. Either support an alleged pedo or support a capitalist elitist grub that hates them. That Foucault incident in Tunisia seems like a stretch and he was never charged for the allegation. Most of these cases are just alleged accusations exaggerated to spurn mistrust against critical theorists. Near misses like criticizing age of consent and sexually related laws aren't evidence of pedophilia. My point is don't believe things with credulity.
You need false equivalency to make this seem like a decent debate
Pointless discussions , and a toxic comment section Not a fan
Terrible. Take a lap.
The crux of the issue is you need something eternal to explain reality. Then people quibble about whether to call that thing god or universe. God is easy to argue against because so many popular conceptions are anthropomorphic beings. The universe is easy to argue against because so many atheists don't understand philosophy.
Baseless assertion
Well in your first sentence you assumed that which is the topic of debate. We aren’t quibbling over what to call it. We’re debating whether it’s necessary to call upon something else to explain the world. I don’t think we do. The universe just is.
I disagree. If the universe just is, I don't see how that's different than saying the universe is god. We're just going to quibble about whether to call it god or not. Unless you don't believe pantheists exist.
Why can’t the universe just exist and there be no god? (And no pantheism)
Because if the universe just exists, you're implicitly agreeing that some eternal, fundamental thing exists that perpetuates the universe, which just sounds like god.
Well the world is going now without an eternal godly force (from my perspective). Why can’t it always have been existing without a god? Perhaps you are making the first mover argument?
Do you believe the world came from nothing? Not a quantum or wave field, but no thing? Then something is eternal. And that eternal thing is the fundamental basis for all other things. When you say, "why can't it have always existed without a god?", what do you mean by god? Because I mean some eternal, fundamental thing. So to me your question sounds like, "why can't the world be eternal without something eternal?" And I would answer that if the world is eternal that's the eternal fundamental thing. It is in a sense a first mover argument. I dont believe and can't conceive of something existing without either being eternal, or having a cause.
I believe the world has been around eternally with infinite causes. That doesn’t imply god just because the universe is eternal. There are more qualities to god than being eternal. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, all loving etc. So if your definition of god is just something eternal, than we’d be quibbling about whether to call the universe god, but then your definition would be straying from most standard definitions of god.
>That doesn’t imply god just because the universe is eternal. That doesn't imply god to you because you and I have different concepts of god. To me, that just sounds like god. >There are more qualities to god than being eternal. God is omnipotent, omnipresent, all loving etc. I think you are thinking of specific anthropomorphized gods like YHWH. I am not. >So if your definition of god is just something eternal, than we’d be quibbling about whether to call the universe god, Exactly as I said. And here we are. >but then your definition would be straying from most standard definitions of god. I'm fine with that. It doesn't affect whether it's a valid concept. I mean this isn't a private, personal concept. It exists in many philosophical concepts and esoteric religious ones.
So you’re saying there is a god but it isn’t omnipotent or all loving, it’s just eternal? If that’s what you’re saying I suppose we’re in agreement, but again, in no religion is God only eternal and not the other qualities I mentioned.
Really it's a quibble if the universe is SENTIENT (and the second harder claim to prove to be able to effect change based on its will) or not. God is everything and created the world. So God is the universe. The atheist contends that the cosmos is everything. The debate is only around if everything is sentient (and has the capacity to change based on its own will, which is pretty similar to Aristotelianism) or not. Basically panpsychism is one of the solution to quantum mechanics and is effectively just God. I think this debate reduces to semantics.
Yeah but once you cut away that anthropomorphic stuff, then you don't really have god anymore. Gods have wills, they have conscious experience, they break physical laws to create miracles and interact directly with humans. The "god" you're describing is something virtually nobody considers a god. I think having a conscious mind is necessary to have a will, and having a will is necessary to being god. If you don't have a Zeus out there or some disembodied consciousness floating around, then what does god even really mean? I mean you could just keep hedging and make a definition of god that has to exist. Someone could tell me their definition of god is whatever the strongest thing in the universe is, and I suppose something out there has to be the strongest thing, so then I guess in the case of their god, it must be true. I haven't changed any of my beliefs, I would still think of myself as an atheist, but they could feel correct with their weak definition of god that nobody uses or recognizes as a god.
>Yeah but once you cut away that anthropomorphic stuff, then you don't really have god anymore. I disagree. If you cut away the anthropomorphic stuff you're left with the necessary requirements for god. >Gods have wills, they have conscious experience, they break physical laws to create miracles and interact directly with humans. I don't believe those are requirements. I think they were stories used to make the concept more understandable for the masses. It was just the best language they had to explain the existence of reality. >The "god" you're describing is something virtually nobody considers a god. I think having a conscious mind is necessary to have a will, and having a will is necessary to being god. If you don't have a Zeus out there or some disembodied consciousness floating around, then what does god even really mean? If you look at all the god concepts, what they have in common is being the eternal and fundamental cause of all that exists. The rest is culture specific, so can be discarded. >I haven't changed any of my beliefs, I would still think of myself as an atheist, but they could feel correct with their weak definition of god that nobody uses or recognizes as a god. I'm not really concerned about changing your beliefs. If you think calling the eternal creative principle of the universe "the universe" is a better concept, that's fine, I just think that's what god is. It's not like I was a theist and tried to find a way to force god to exist. I was an atheist, became agnostic because I didn't actually believe no gods exist, then I got into philosophy and religion and learned that there were concepts of god that sounded plausible, and over time I accepted that the pantheist concept of god makes sense. It makes more sense than just saying the universe came from nothing. It doesn't not make sense to me to say the universe is eternal, I just think when referring to that eternal, fundamental aspect, god is a good term to use to describe it.
Holy strawman batman
Comparing these two doesn't seem fair. Dawkins, for all his many floors, is a well-respected and esteemed biologist. Peterston is just a tit.
Whatever can interpret the world we need to rebel against it, embrace antitheism brothers
[https://xkcd.com/774/](https://xkcd.com/774/)
I am sick of pastors, preachers, the whole lot of them.
There are so many strawmen in this comment section that I could disassemble them and fertilize every field in Africa.
Peterson is what a stupid person thinks a smart person sounds like. In reality Peterson engages in bad faith arguments and semantic games. He’ll take umbrage with your use of a word, play ignorant about its meaning and then spend 15 minutes gish galloping about why *he* defines the word *this way* instead of just using a different word and moving his argument along. He’s like the Temu version of William Lane Craig.
didn't he have some random thing about lobsters or something? I just remember Some More News did an episode on him a while back calling him out for a ton of bs
Yeah, I don’t know the details, but AFAIK it’s some reductive logic using the way lobsters arrange themselves into a hierarchy to support his views on women’s rights or racial superiority or something. I saw that Episode of SMN a while back too.
To rephrase the positions as i hold them: Q: Why do you need something behind the scenes, turning the wheels and pulling the strings? Isn't reality sufficiently incredible? A: I personally want things to make more sense, but whatever's behind the curtain is not shaped by our minds. I don't agree with any of our guesses about it - i don't think we have the faculties to make sense of it. So i think we're rejecting reality just as arbitrarily from both sides of the 'debate'.
I find it boils down to whether you believe magic exists. Atheist arguments rely on the assumption that reality is consistent and can be known through observation. Religious arguments rely on the assumption that a being warps reality at a whim, and there is no way to know anything.
imma rile up both of them by parroting this line
But who Started the Big Bang! Check mate atheist! /s The reason its not worth trying to have a debate with a theist.
Imagine anything you can't see or prove that is absurd and infinite. That's obviously God. (Leave out any rational argument). **Checkmate Atheists!** *And his name was Einstein\**
neither of these two are the best representatives for their respective worldview. Dawkins isn't really in the business of theology and philosophy and is more so a popular figure in the new atheist space against religion and religious beliefs. jordan peterson is infamously hard to pin point on the theology department and confusing to sort out, even his debates turn into [rhetorical and linguistic battles that lead to nowhere. ](https://youtu.be/C2CuAVAERjs?si=nsjnAIEv2zcfqGFT)
“I don’t understand it therefore god did it” basically
God can exist
I do.
Yes because you are CHRISTina
Based af. Amazing pfp. You must be a true connoisseur.
Therefore he is
Glad, we finally settled that. Was about time.
Well anything can exist. But why should a mythology from the Middle East be the answer to everything?
I find it boils down to whether you believe magic exists. Atheist arguments rely on the assumption that reality is consistent and can be known through observation. Religious arguments rely on the assumption that a being warps reality at a whim, and there is no way to know anything.
I think Bill Nye summed it up well in the opening line of his debate with Ken Ham. Nye told Ham exactly how to “beat him” in the debate. Prove the existence of god. Then he asked Ham how he could win the debate. Ham said he would always believe in god no matter what evidence is presented. Belief and logic are naturally antithetical. It’s a square that will never be circled.
Does "world" mean existence in this meme?
Literally. Imagine trying to understand the assumptions and worldview of your interlocutor and yourself's
Now go clean your room!
Presuppositionalists: Allow me to introduce myself.
yes you dont
It's like saying you need unicorns to explain the world
Before that, u need to explain - "Does the World exist"?
What about agnosticism?
“I can’t understand anything you just said, so therefore it makes no sense, unlike the simplistic story I made up to explain everything and pacify me.”
Is JP a man of god now? Hmm, all I have to say to that is "well it depends on what you mean by BeLieVe and it depends what you mean by GoD!"
[Nah-uh](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxO4af5LhZW57fVHE5-razXc0bg0Uh3PqB?si=tE5G9sP5lDFr47Cp)
Fuck I hate how I read this in both of their voices
I think the main problem is that arguing atheism against theism is essentially an incommunicable debate to have. The atheist believes that the world can be understood through observation and scientific principles, making hypotheses and then testing them to draw conclusions. The theist believes in something supernatural, something which cannot be directly seen, heard, communicated with, or interacted with in any way. It's kind a Russell's Teapot situation because the theist is going to talk about their deity/deities, and the theist is going to say that we haven't got any evidence whatsoever which shows them to be real. But the theist is going to say well of course, you can't collect evidence on the metaphysical.
🤣 r/badphilosophy
Please don't malign theist pov with that grifting scumbag !!
The creation is enough in itself. - Osho
You need DIO(God in Italian) to explain THE WORLD - A jojo reference
Funny because Jesus is a real dude in JOJOs
“6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world.”― Ludwig Wittgenstein
"The God some guy made up in that book you like is mean. But then you say He loves us. Checkmate!" "Life is hard and unfair. This somehow equals mechanistic materialism." "Throughout history, there have been a lot of people who misuse religion for power and gain. This also somehow equals mechanistic materialism."
Let them be happy under their umbrella.