Thread by @EstherOfReilly

Continuing my lovingly frustrated rant from yesterday: @PaulVanderKlay contends that "Jordan Peterson is building the most potent natural theology of his generation." This...is TRUE. /1

@PaulVanderKlay "But wait, your TED talk, I thought you said..." Yep, I said natural theology does not equal ev-psych, which is ALSO true. These things are BOTH true. "But how?" So glad you asked. /2

@PaulVanderKlay The reason they can both be true is that Jordan Peterson, bless him, is not a very logical man. One moment he is holding forth about TRUTH & BEAUTY & the MEANING you could see all around you if you weren't so BLIND, dammit. Next moment he's rambling about lobsters. /3

@PaulVanderKlay Now mind you, the truth and beauty and meaning has NOTHING to do with the rats and chimps and lobsters, as least not outside the strange and eccentric mind of Dr. Peterson. BUT...that good stuff? Is really, really good. In SPITE of the lobsters, not because of them. /4

@PaulVanderKlay Paul said yesterday the reason Peterson is so compelling is that he grounds his project in evolution. This is incorrect. The reason Peterson is compelling is that he still manages to achieves escape velocity from his own evolutionary thinking. /5

@PaulVanderKlay Every time he waxes eloquent about morality, conscience, Tao, Logos, creative speech, all that good exceptional, immaterial stuff, that's the potent natural theology, right there. Not the stuff he is unsuccessfully trying to build it all on. /6

@PaulVanderKlay The evolution part is just what makes both him and his audience feel like this is all conforming to "science," (read: someone else's bogus idea of what "science" is), so they can have some kind of explanation for the good stuff sans woo. /7

@PaulVanderKlay Peterson's project is bottom-up. Paul seems to think I think it should be top-down. On the contrary: I believe Peterson's project is not bottom-up ENOUGH. A truly bottom-up project would not regard macroevolution as unassailable fact. /8

@PaulVanderKlay Peterson's problem is that when he achieves escape velocity, he has one kind of project cooking--a pretty damn beautiful and terrifying project that's going to carry him right out of this universe if he's not too careful of his reading material. /9

@PaulVanderKlay He's not sure he's ready to get spun out of the universe, and honestly who can blame him? So he counteracts this bottom-up project with a top-down project that starts with Darwin and makes conclusions from there. /10

@PaulVanderKlay Of course he doesn't *think* this other project is top-down, because he doesn't even realize just how many questions he's begging or just how scientifically shaky the ground of Darwinism actually is. But in essence, that's what it is. /11

@PaulVanderKlay So in sum: Is Peterson building the most potent natural theology of his generation? YES. Does he understand how he is building it? Nope. /End