This is an extremely complex and sensitive theological issue so all I can do in this blog post is to introduce the topic. Mimicking Peterson, perhaps, I tell it with a more positive interpretation in mind, as I believe it provides a fitting coda: “Bohr had a horseshoe above his door to prevent evil spirits entering the house, and a friend asked him, ‘Do you believe in it?’ And Bohr said, ‘Of course not, I’m a scientist.’ The friend asked, ‘Well, then why do you have it there?’ And Bohr replies, ‘I was told it works even if you don’t believe in it.”. They are atheists who believe in God—or at least who act as if God is real. Left: Old & New, 3. Jesus has forced humanity to deal with a freedom that is beyond its capacity to ethically handle; by lowering God to the level of humanity, and hence bringing humanity to the level of God, Jesus has doomed humanity to Hell given it can surely never live up to God’s example. Adhering to these rules, supplemented with traditional Christian values and the ideals of the ancient Greeks, will undoubtedly lead one to live a life of deep meaning and fulfillment. Recall McKenna’s characterization of the modernists as Christians who, “. Got totally embarrassed, even some of his admirers were turned off! Click Here to Get More Details On 12 Rules for Life. Peterson’s articulation is absolutely invaluable. Reactionary pessimist that I am, I seriously doubt we have public intellectuals of the caliber of either of these monumental figures these days. Once again there is a strong religious correlation, without a necessarily religious component, except that now the dominant force is avowedly atheist. As opposed to “atheism,” which ought to mean a fairly straightforward metaphysical belief (arguably the most straightforward metaphysical belief of all), the culturally dominant viral strain of anti-theism has proven to be desperately empty. Žižek and Paglia know it. This leads me to perhaps my favorite chapter in the book. Mencken would be dynamite on Twitter, provided he reigned in the racism. nder the heading “Christianity and its Problems”. In addition to your book, you will receive regular e-mail updates about this site, unique insights, and more. “How should I live a good life? Steiner reminds us, “I. My response to the critiques of Kirkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Peterson is that the Kingdom Gospel, in the words of “The Six Gospels We Preach Today”, creates “Activists who are Christ-followers intent on learning to live as Jesus lived.”. What do you dream about? What gives? He writes at Quillette, Areo, and Medium. Randolph Bourne said of the Puritan,“His impulse to shatter ideas that he does not like will flourish wild and wanton … He loves virtue not so much for its own sake as for its being an instrument of his terrorism.”, “The Puritan’s utter lack of aesthetic sense, his distrust of all romantic emotion, his unmatchable intolerance of opposition, his unbreakable belief in his own bleak and narrow views, his savage cruelty of attack, his lust for relentless and barbarous persecution—these things have put an almost unbearable burden upon the exchange of ideas in the United States.”. This backlash was built in the early twentieth century with various intellectuals and reformers bemoaning the outsized influence of “puritanism” on American public morality. We need more of this. McKenna writes,“. It should be screened in every high school today to prepare any students foolish enough to be considering the looming nightmare of higher education. Steiner himself says of Freudian psychoanalysis that, “this is not to denigrate the seminal power of Freud’s insights. As the universalist fundamentalists had terrible explanations for the mystery of evolutionary biology, the new universalist anti-theists have terrible explanations for the mystery of the human condition. This critique is in chapter “Rule 7 Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient) u … But I absolutely claim that their power is utterly trivial, and the problems they still cause are dwarfed by the unresolved problems borne out by their uprooting over the course of the twentieth century. I agree. Has anyone else has their sleep ruined by Peterson? Coincidence? The atheist who believes in God! You’re all alone. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Can Carl Schmitt Explain How We Got from the Cold War to Trump? But we needn’t rely solely on a work of fiction. Only rarely, if ever, is a Kingdom or Discipleship Gospel preached. It is testament to the brilliance of the writing of. President of Civil War Museum: Similarities Between the Elections of 1860 and 2016. This entire exchange reminded me of Claire Lehmann’s essay in Quillette, that I happened to read just a day or so earlier. Welcome to the discourse! We really are alone, we really are responsible. Yes, both previous campaigns of intolerance were waged at least by the deeply religious for explicitly religious reasons. Jordan Peterson has provided his critique of institutional Christianity in 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. She acts as if God exists. He wishes to think! The West will likely win that coming war, but the costs will be staggering. This is precisely the message of The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, which Žižek praised during the debate, and Peterson has favorably referenced several times previously. Nobody to mourn you, nobody to give a damn. What happened over the course of the twentieth century was a conceptual and rhetorical sleight of hand on the part of, for lack of a better expression, “Atheists, The linguist and literary critic George Steiner, best known for his seminal. From the back cover of The Discipleship Gospel: Many today preach a gospel that makes converts, but not disciples. Cookies help us deliver our Services. A culture in which attesting to the literary and spiritual magnificence of the Bible, even aside from its obvious religious importance, will get you laughed out of its most prestigious institutions of higher learning is not one under the iron grip of the Pope. It gets more bizarre, and definitely more to the annoyance of those who wanted fireworks from this so-called debate. The atheist who believes in God! Millenia-old religious texts gave facile explanations for phenomena that scientific inquiry has since improved upon. This chapter also has an excellent discussion on faith and religion. You fraud! Drummond’s criticism should be put to every anti-theist activist, every Nietzschean übermensch, every wannabe Grand Inquisitor. Randolph Bourne said of the Puritan, His impulse to shatter ideas that he does not like will flourish wild and wanton … He loves virtue not so much for its own sake as for its being an instrument of his terrorism. And I warn you that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys everyone it touches, its upholders as well as its defenders.”, “Can’t you understand that if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it the private schools, and tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it, and soon you may ban books and newspapers.”, “This man wishes to be afford the same privileges as a sponge! Northerners were more tolerant of the currents of modernism that questioned traditional doctrines and literal readings of the Bible, since they could transfer their religious enthusiasm into social causes and put aside doctrinal quarrels as more or less irrelevant. What gives? , argued  in his 1974 Massey Lecture Series that, “The decay of a comprehensive Christian doctrine had left in disorder, or had left blank, essential perceptions of social justice, of the meaning of human history, of the relations between mind and body, of the place of knowledge in our moral conduct.”, Steiner argues that this decay has caused a, , the title of his lecture series, and that various pseudo-philosophical systems have arisen in the West to attempt to fill this void: namely, Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, Lévi-Straussian anthropology, and fads of irrationality including, crucially, the sociologists of the Frankfurt school—primarily Marcuse, Adorno, and Horkheimer—whose argument Steiner characterizes as, “O. I was disappointed throughout this book tat the clear lack of structure. When you go to your grave, there won’t be anybody to pull the grass up over your head. You’ll be there. It is a mere commonplace that these insights have exercised a formidable feedback on Western culture. The Grand Inquisitor takes up only about a third of this volume. I do not claim that there is no religious intolerance in the West, or that there are no religious hierarchies that still have unfortunate influence on the culture at-large. Peterson argues, however, that reason trumps faith, but faith nonetheless triumphs in the end. The religious hold these truths to be self-evident, but the general population hosts an ever-increasing share of atheists, and atheism is by far the dominant cultural more beyond even its numbers, to the point that treating the stories even as metaphors is disapproved of. To be clear, Žižek told the joke in a pessimistic, ironic tone. was written, after all, in 1955 and dramatizes an event that occurred in 1925. Why the mental and linguistic gymnastics to address such important and yet basic questions as, more or less, “Should we be good? Yes, both previous campaigns of intolerance were waged at least by the deeply religious for explicitly religious reasons. Stay tuned for more discussion of this topic. What … what do you need? They descend culturally, and, in most cases even ecclesiastically, from the modernists. Anti-theism has gone far past its point of marginal social utility as a motivating force for rationalism and skepticism. Looks like you're using new Reddit on an old browser. First a basic theology lesson: gospel is the Old English translation of Greek εὐαγγέλιον, evangelion, meaning “good news.” Arguably, Jordan Peterson preaches good news that involves a fundamental change in thinking (metanoia – μετάνοια) that leads to changed behaviors (action). The Grand Inquisitor says that the Church has now undertaken to correct Christ’s mistake. , which Žižek praised during the debate, and Peterson has favorably referenced several times previously. Who else would defend my right to be lonely?”, I think that the opinions of the author on both theism and a=theism are wildly exaggerated. That undermines the effort Peterson put into the book. We already have the Ten Commandments, government laws, what our parents tell us, peer pressure, etc. Or call them fascists. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, More posts from the JordanPeterson community. What do you dream about? They descend culturally, and, in most cases even ecclesiastically, from the modernists. Žižek, the atheist, suggested accepting the following deep spiritual value implicit in Christianity: “In other religions you have God up there, we fall from God, and we try to climb back through spirituality, training, good deeds and so on. It is really much the same question as, “Why did Žižek and Peterson get along and not argue about God?” It would seem that Žižek too is an, “Atheist with respect for religion.”, I think that the dissatisfying cordiality between Žižek and Peterson, on what may superficially seem to be an intractable disagreement about how the world works, can be traced back to an argument that Peterson has made several times. here is something that is built into the fabric of existence that tests us so severely in our faith about being that even God himself falls prey to the temptation to doubt.