Jordan Peterson #crackpot #quack youtube.com
[From “Jordan Peterson vs 20 Atheists” on Jubilee]
Parker: So do you believe in [...] God?
Peterson: What do you mean by “believe”?
PA: Do you think it to be true?
PE: That’s a circular definition. What do you mean when you say you believe? [...] you added no content to the answer by substituting the word “true” and “believe”.
PA: I said, “you think it to be true”?
PE: [...] If you believe something, you stake your life on it. [...] You live for it, and you die for it, that’s what I mean by that. It isn’t something that you say, it isn’t something that’s associated with logical consistency, it’s not declarative, it’s not propositional, it’s not a figment of your imagination, it’s the presupposition of your attention and your action. And you’re either fragmented, in which case you worship multiple Gods, or there’s some unity at the bottom of it that makes you an unstoppable force.
PA: OK, so [...] you don’t believe something if you wouldn’t die for it?
PE: Not really, no. How would YOU define “belief”? Something you SAY?
PA: ... I could believe it is the case that this pen exists, but if someone like threatened my life [...] I would lie in order to be able to save my life, right? I think you would do that too? You wouldn’t lie to save your life?
PE: Don’t be so sure.
PA: You wouldn’t lie to save your life?
PE: How much do you know about me? I didn’t lie to save my career. I didn’t lie to save my clinical practice.
PA: Would you lie to save your children or your Mom or your Dad?
PE: I don’t think lying would save them.
PA: Can there ever be a circumstance logically that lying could save someone?
PE: Yeah. And if you're steeped in sin, you're likely to live in circumstances like that.
PA: [...] If you're [in] Nazi Germany, and it is the case that there's like Jewish people in your attic and you're trying to protect them?
[...]
PE: I would have done everything I bloody well could so I wouldn’t be in that situation to begin with. It's a hypothetical and it's not answerable.