Jordan Peterson on the Belief in God

so then the question came to me do I believe in God and I don't like that question and people have complained at me a lot and I'm sure they have the reasons because they don't like my answers you know and I have two answers they've kind of become stalk which is not a good thing but but they're the best approximate exactly I've got three I had three sort of burgeoning hypotheses one was it's none of your damn business that's the first one so it's like a privacy issue like it seemed to me to be a question that was too private to be answered properly and so and you know you could consider that a cop-out and maybe it is and then another one was well what do you mean by believe like do you mean the words do you mean to say the words I believe in God does that indicate that you believe in God like I don't know what you mean by believe exactly because and that's got me in trouble too because you know people think that attempting to clarify the meaning of words is an attempt to escape from the question when it's actually an attempt to specify the question I mean is what you believe what you say or what you act out now you know I would say to some degree it's both but if push comes to shove as far as I'm concerned what you believe is what you act out not what you say and then you know and if you're an integrated person then what you act out and what you say are the same thing and then you're a person whose word can be trusted right because what you say and what you do are isomorphic they're the same thing but belief is instantiated in action so I have also suggested that I act as if I believe in God or to the best of my ability and people aren't very happy with that either but and then the third is that I'm afraid that he might exist which i think is the most comical of the three answers and perhaps the most accurate one but then but then I was thinking about this today when I was thinking about I might talk to you guys about and I thought well let's go into this a little bit more let's say you say you do believe in God say I believe in God it's like okay well that's hypothetically pretty impressive I would say it's like you believe that there's a divine power that oversees everything that is fundamentally ethical that's watching everything you do and and you believe that and so what effect does that have on your behavior if you believe it does that mean that you're well are you --fill are you all in on your beliefs are you sacrificing everything to this transcendent entity that you proclaim belief in have you cleansed yourself of all your sin let's say are you making all the sacrifices that you need to make like have you taken the mote out of your I know or or or or are you in the same situation let's say that the Catholic Church seems to be in right now just out of curiosity bring that up since the Pope seems to be concerned with what's been happening with the Catholic Church given the endless pedophilic scandals let's say which seem rather serious in my estimation and might have been something that was cleaned up perhaps a hundred or a thousand years ago and it's being taken seriously perhaps now and perhaps not because it's not so easy to determine exactly what it would mean to take that seriously and you might say well are all the people who are committing these highness actions and then covering them up or if you ask them well do you believe in God what are they going to say well you'd think the answer would be yes given that they're like priests and and yet and yet what's the evidence well the evidence isn't exactly so clear that the mere statement let's say or the mirror acting out of the ritual let's say and I'm not trying to denigrate the statement or the ritual but I'm pointing out that that's no indication of your right to say that you believe because you got it and I think this is why it's bothered me to answer this question it's like what right do I have to say that to make that claim I believe in God well what's the claim is that the claim that I'm a good person somehow because you think that if you believed in God actually like like seriously that you'd be a good person like right now because well for obvious reasons I would think and so if that hasn't happened in some sort of miraculous sense so that you're the best person you could possibly imagine being on an ongoing basis and then terrified of of deviating from that path in a serious manner then I don't see why you have the right to say that you believe in God you know one of the things Nietzsche said about Christianity it was a great critic of Christianity although also a great friend in a very peculiar way in that sometimes your best friend is the one who points out your weakest properties let's say he said as far as he was concerned there was only one Christian and he died on the cross and and that's that's a you know perhaps an extreme statement but one worth giving some consideration to it's like well then you look at what what are you called upon let's say if you're going to proclaim yourself as a believer you know and I thought about this a lot as I've gone through the Old Testament I did a bunch of lectures last year and so what are you called upon well you're called upon initially to act out the spark of divinity that's within you by confronting potential with the logos that's within you which means to take the opportunities that are in front of you the potential future and to transform it into the present in the best possible way using truth and courage and careful articulation as your as your as your as your as your guide so that's the first thing you're called on to do that that's a major deal there that's a tough one and then the second is to make the proper sacrifices that's the Cain and Abel story is like you you want something you genuinely want it you want to set the world straight then you let go of what's necessary and you pursue you let go of what isn't necessary no matter what it is no matter what it is and then you pursue what's necessary and then maybe you sacrifice your children to God that that was the story that's the one of the next stories that comes up of course and you think well that's pretty damn barbaric and the way the story's laid out of course it is but that isn't exactly what it means it means that what you try to do when you raise children is that you try to do everything you can to impress upon them by imitation and by instruction and by love and by encouragement that they are crucial beings in the world who's ethical decisions play an important role in shaping the structure of reality itself and that they have the moral responsibility to do that and you get your Ark in order that's your family let's say so that when the storms come you can stay above water for the 40 days of flooding and you're capable of leading your people through the desert when the desert makes itself manifest and you can escape from tyranny properly because you're wise enough to see it and you take the full burden of being on yourself all the suffering that's that's part and parcel of that you accept that voluntarily let's say and you do everything you can to confront the malevolence that's part of you and that's part of the state and it's part of the world and you you you make a garden around you that's the paradise a walled garden it's a walled well watered place so the forces of nature and society exist together in harmony and you place your family in that so that they can live properly and you treat your enemy as if he's yourself and the same with your brother and well then you can say then maybe you can say maybe then you have the right to say that you believe in God otherwise maybe you should think twice about it because you know there's a line in the New Testament that Christ Himself says two of them I should read them two because they are very relevant to this I guess I could paraphrase the paraphrase them a rich man comes up to Christ and says and and says good good leader good Lord and they asked him a question about how it is that he should be a good person and Christ says don't call me good there's no one that's good but God and you know that's worth thinking about I mean the one person that in principle in our ancient stories had the right to make some direct connection between himself and the divine was unwilling to do it when challenged and so it might be reasonable to assume that each of us could be much more cautious about making that sort of statement bluntly when we're asked and then the other line is not all those who say Lord Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven got that about right which means something approximating just because you make a claim to moral virtue let's say your belief in God which I can't see how you can make a higher claim to moral virtue than that you know I mean agnostic atheistic I don't recap that the purpose the point is something like this imagine something of ultimate transcendent value I don't care whether you believe in it or not but imagine that something like that exists and then you swear allegiance to it which is to say I believe in this I mean there's a heavy moral burden that comes along with that just to allow yourself to utter the words without feeling that you should be immediately struck down appropriately by lightning and so well and so I think that's why that question makes me uncomfortable it's that I don't think I have a I don't think I have a right to make that Proclamation there's another thing too that I learned when I was going through these biblical lectures it was a fascinating thing to do was the story of Jacob who became Israel and Jacob was a real trickster you know he was a morally ambiguous figure to put it mildly I mean he tricked his older brother out of his birthright and he was full of tricks and he had a lot of tricks played on him too and maybe learned something as a consequence anyways after running away from his brother who had murderous thoughts and for good reasons for I like about 20 years maybe it was only 14 but doesn't matter it was a long time he decided that he would go back and try to make peace and he came to this River he sent his family across the river along with his belongings um and and partly as an offering to his brother a peace offering and he had a dream dream visionary experience hallucination God who knows what it was and he dreamt that he wrestled with an angel all night and that the angel was God and God he won which is very strange because well first of all he was a trickster figure you know like he wasn't your most upstanding moral creature he wasn't Noah for example and second well it was God you know it's like figured a wrestle with someone and lose there's an opponent that's likely to take you out and he did damage his hip I mean so what's not that impressive an accomplishment on thoughts pardon my estimation but but there's a very interesting story because what it does indicate what's so cool about it you see Jacob's name is changed at that point to Israel and Israel means those who wrestle with God and that mat so that blew me away there's one of the things I love about studying old stories is now and then you come across a piece of one and you and you see in it into it you know you see down into the depths that that characterizes it's very difficult but it happens sometimes and just flattens you you know to think that if Israel is that is the choice if Israel is the chosen people of God that's the hypothesis and what Israel means is those who wrestle with God then think that that gives that seems to me to be such a hopeful idea because well everyone does that to some degree I mean you do that in your life because well you don't know what's a fundamental transcendent worth you know because who the hell are you and what do you know you know you're you're struggling all the time with well I would say with good and evil when you're struggling with yourself you're struggling with the world to to portray that as wrestling with God that's perfectly reasonable from a metaphoric perspective and the idea that that's what characterizes the true people of God is that willingness to wrestle that's really something because it didn't it it kind of indicates that you're here as a contender you know you're not here to be happy you're not here to be complacent you're not here to be materially satisfied not that that would be possible anyways but that you're here to contend with the structure of reality right and that's what will satisfy you because there's something to you you know you're not weak and nothing there's something to you there's certainly something malevolent and terrible I mean you know that you look at how people behave you you look at the blood and catastrophe of our history you can certainly see though the absolute the absolute hellish depths of the human soul but there's there's something that takes root in that and grows up out of that it's absolutely magnificent beyond belief and that's looking for for to contend you know and I've often thought that I've been fortunate in my marriage because you think well you got you get married you live happily ever after it's like that's not it is it you don't want that Eve you know what you putting on it we want your partner to do just all she's gonna do is sprinkle rose petals in front of you right and pat you on the back of the head and tell you how wonderful you are constantly day after day man you'd be so sick of that after - well maybe take a month but but let's say two weeks it'd be you you'd be because you know she should be more on the side of who you could be than on the side of who you are and if she's deluded enough or terrified enough to worship you in your current form then well that doesn't say much for her and it certainly isn't very helpful for you you want someone that's gonna get in the way now and then you know and and to contend with and I've been fortunate in my marriage because I have someone to contend with you know we we have our our discussions and they're not easy involved but partly because we have hard problems to solve because life is full of hard problems I want someone who stand up you know and have her say even if it's not what I would say and maybe I'm even willing at times because she's quite intuitive and a good dreamer and I'm more facile verbally and so we have to be careful in our relationship because if I'm in a particularly ornery mood and she has something to say I can usually slice up her arguments verbally you know and then that's that's fine as far as I'm concerned because I get to win but it's stup well it's stupid it's first of all that doesn't mean I'm right it just means I can formulate verbal arguments slightly faster than she can but her intuitions and her dreams are often extraordinarily accurate and so we've learned to to some degree to buttress each other's arguments just on the off chance that the person that you were foolish enough to marriage marry might know something you don't now and then about something important you know and so what do you want well you want someone to contend with then it's an adventure you know and then you have someone that you love and that you respect and that's not a bad combination for longevity of relationship and then maybe if you have someone that you love and respect and that you can communicate with and your children also love and respect her or him and then that's pretty good for them because they've got some parents that they could love and respect that's a good combination you know it solidifies their life and so you want to contend with them and you want a job that's challenging I would say that pushes you beyond what you already are and god only knows how much how hard you need to be pushed in order to go beyond where you are but you know to some degree if you have a choice you know it's not that uncommon that what we'll do is choose to be pushed to the limit especially when we're at our best we think well where's the limit it's here maybe I can manage that I'm gonna push myself right to the damn limit then I'm gonna push myself a little bit over just to see if it's possible and and if that happens then you know you emerge with a sense of truck of triumph I'm now more than I was right and maybe that's what you're here to be is to be more than you were trying to push those limits and to do that you contend with the world you wrestle with God you don't casually say I believe because who knows no one no one knows right we're separated from the infinite by death and ignorance we don't know we contend we wrestle you know and in that maybe we'd find our destiny at least we find our purpose we find something that's that that justifies us to some degree you know if I'm awake at night wondering and I thank God you know like I've I pushed myself as far as I could in this effort whatever the effort that I'm considering happens to be I pushed myself I don't have a weight on my conscience because I let something go or I failed to accomplish something I mean I do often have those sorts of weights I'm talking about the rare times when I don't it's like well there's something that that that's where there's some atonement and some peace as far as I'm concerned where that contending and that wrestling has been successful and I would say that insofar as you're deeply involved in that like completely involved in that thoroughly involved in that then you have the right to say that you believe in God and since I'm not like that a hundred percent of the time or even approximating the percent of the time that I would like to be like that you know despite my best efforts then when people ask me I'm not going to say something virtuous like I'm a believer because there's plenty wrong with me that needs to be fixed before I would dare utter words like that thank you [Applause] well so that's better answer to that question so thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Jordan B Peterson Clips

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Keywords: psychology, philosophy, Jordan B. Peterson, Jordan Peterson, JB Peterson, jordanbpeterson, jordanpeterson, personality, understandmyself, selfauthoring, neuropsychology, believe in God

Id: TUD3pE3ZsQI

Length: 20min 55sec (1255 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 14 2019