.@jordanbpeterson is returning and did his first Q/A video. He clumped up the questions and the first one he dealt with was the religion question. It was one of his better answers to it. I needed to do a commentary video on it.
His address of religion was based on three questions. 1. How to believe in the divine even though it is a loose end 2. How has your conception of God changed in the last year or two. Has your wife's burgeoning conception changed you?
You said "the grace and mercy of God" in your return video... 3. Why do so many people follow an ideology blindly today as sort of replacements for religion, family or a meaningful life... 4. Why does your personal theology seem to align to Eastern Orthodoxy?
It's important to remember that he gleaned these questions and selected them in a particular order, and he decided to treat this area of common interest in his work first. Peterson, although he's a famous follower of rabbit trails in his speaking is quite intentional in planning.
What follows here is MY summary of @jordanbpeterson's work with a number of things I've added and integrated for clarity after studying this area of his work for the last 3 years.
The big take-away from Cognitive Science and the quest to create artificial intelligence is that the world is too large and in order for us to successfully compress it in order to interact with it productively we massively compress the data quite unconsciously.
"Religion" has been erroneously defined and pigeon-holed as merely dealing with "god" or "gods" or the "supernatural". What it actually is is the level of our implicit framework that addresses our broadest conceptualization of reality.
Narratives, ideas and conceptualizations of "God" and the divine are actually a massive compression scheme to conceptualize the whole of the manifest image. Regardless of our conscious we are of these conceptualizations they govern us as individuals and civilizations.
Because the world is too large we need these in order to know how to act. The potentiality is too large and so every action is an attempt to manage this potentiality and draw from it what we desire.
Value hierarchies are one framework that we implicitly or explicitly, naturally and inevitably develop to manage desire and behavior. These will get conceptualized and acted upon with representations some of which we identify as religious.
Ideals will be represented, tested and disseminated in stories. They will be acted out individually and communally scaling all the way up into cultures and civilizations made up of these patterns. Can we know how they correspond a physical, non-human order?
These will compete and endure in the natural order therefore bearing a sort of Darwinian witness to that which is beyond human cultural development. This is how we can assess if our religious story-verse accurately reveals governing truths of the physical world.
This is a revelation we can believe in and it seems to him that this is what has been going on beneath Western Civilization. We ignore the Bible and Christianity at our peril.
THE best conversation he had this year was with @PageauJonathan, his friend from before the first wave of popularity and notoriety. He won't foreclose on Christian miracles or the possibility of the resurrection of Jesus because of this revelation.
.@jordanbpeterson has built his life trying to live into this as he sees it yet he has not identified with or religiously participated in the church. Based on this argument he has sort of done it on his own. @PageauJonathan sees his suffering as a consequence of this.
Where @jordanbpeterson differs from church going Christians is the direction of this quest. Christians generally begin with the narrative and work their way down. They begin not with a psychological account of the origin of their revelation but with a story of revelation.
They (psychologically and philosophically naively) just live into the story and through the story and act it out. Genesis starts with the God of the Hebrews and builds the world from there. @jordanbpeterson starts with Darwin and psychology and builds a stairway to heaven.
This excites both God-first story-living Christians and cultural conservatives who act out traditional applications of God-first story-living Christians but don't dress up and LARP on Sundays. They have cheered on his cause over the last 3 years.
Among God-first story-living Christians this has initiated a "is he" or "isn't he", a "will he" or "won't he" drama about @jordanbpeterson's identity and submission to the church. People see movement.
I think, however, that one of the most accurate observations has come from one of his most repetitive critics, youtuber @RationalityRule who in this notes that @jordanbpeterson always goes up to "the line" but not over (in public).
.@jordanbpeterson's stairway to heaven has a line on it that he won't cross IN PUBLIC. His sensitivities of propriety have been bred in the modernist tradition where piety is private and his science. Psychology is public.
.@jordanbpeterson has pushed this line further and more publicly than anyone else today, pushing the new atheists back on their heels. The problem is that the church repeated demands that professions of faith BE public. The demand of this church is that it BE public.
So here we wait, watching as Jordan builds a public stairway to heaven but never quite takes that final step, crossing that line. Will he or won't he. It's a Truman Show. Will he enter (or leave) the REAL world? Will he become a REAL boy?

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More from @PaulVanderKlay

3 May
I don't have a huge list of questions if I had a one-on-one convo with @jordanbpeterson but at times questions arise. As I listen to his most recent Q/A I do wonder about his relationship with his guild.
I really enjoyed Slate Star Codex' review of 12 rules for life. slatestarcodex.com/2018/03/26/boo… He noted that to him @jordanbpeterson sounded like a good clinical therapist.
It is noteworthy that Peterson has said that he has personally never been in therapy himself. I was aghast at that statement when I heard it knowing how much nearly every therapist I've known values that process as part of their own personal and professional formation
Read 7 tweets
2 May
The best thing about having a YT channel is people watch other content FOR me and send me the salient points. This section of @BretWeinstein and Jamie Wheal was interesting
Bret is anxious about "our" future. With all of the catastrophes that face us what is to keep us from curling up in the fetal position and sucking our thumb into oblivion? Good question.
Jamie Wheal rehearses a list of near misses and names of those we might consider heroes of goodness or progress. He intimates that all of this could be summed up into a force of sorts that could be distilled into a word "Grace"
Read 12 tweets
16 Apr
In today's video I begin to touch on the crisis in the evangelical church. 1/11
A friend shared the recent @drmoore newsletter with me which I found deeply touching in terms of his pastoral and evangelistic heart 2/11 erlcemailcommunication.cmail19.com/t/ViewEmail/r/…
Saying "there is a crisis in the church of believing its own message" I think isn't the best way to articulate the crisis. I'd say the church isn't able to embody its own promises, realize the expectations it raises or compete with expectations of others. 3/11
Read 11 tweets
15 Apr
Today's video was an absolutely outstanding conversation between myself, @JeanPhi76459673 and @vervaeke_john 1/5
@JeanPhi76459673 launched this a few months ago when he began to look at CS Lewis' book Miracles. A book I endlessly promote on my channel because of it's deep impact in my life. 2/5 thesymbolicworld.com/articles/inves…
Here was our first conversation which was dramatic. 3/5
Read 5 tweets
14 Apr
.@billmaher Connects church to the movies. "Less than half of Americans go to church. They don't have to. If they want to feel guilty, dirty and bad they can watch Nomadland."
"Academy awards used to say 'look at what good movies we make' now they say 'look at what great people we are' "
"In 2021 if you're wondering at the movies and wondering 'which one is the bad guy', it's you. Because you have indoor plumbing and the nominees don't."
Read 4 tweets
2 Sep 20
Spoke today with @kalezelden. Another powerful conversation. He shared penetratingly about the church's (not just RC) abandonment of Generation X.
I approached him after reading this blog post onepeterfive.com/things-are-bro…
Read 6 tweets

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