451. Navigating Belief, Skepticism, and the Afterlife

Jordan Peterson
So I'm here today speaking with Alex O'Connor, who's flown in from London. I'm in LA. He's known also as cosmic skeptic, and he runs a podcast within reason. And so you can subscribe to and listen to that podcast, watch it on YouTube. Alex was recommended to me by a friend of mine, John Vervecky, who is a professor, along with me at the University of Toronto.

I've done a lot of different public events with John, many conversations, and Alex has interviewed many of the people that I'm interested in, including Richard Dawkins. And he is very interested in religious matters, although he's not a Christian. And we believed jointly that it would be useful for us to meet and to hash out our differences in viewpoint and similarities and see if we could get together and move together somewhere valuable and enlightening. And so that's what trying to do, that's what we try to do with the conversation. It focuses mostly on the nature of belief.

I suppose that's probably the easiest way to sum it up. What it means to believe something, what it means to have a religious belief, what it means to be committed to a belief. We talk a fair bit about the distinction between, let's say, the distinction between fact and fiction, and the idea that fact reflects the real, but so does fiction. And so welcome to the discussion of all that. So, first of all, thank you for coming here.

It's a long way from London. We're in LA, and so that's a long ways. And so. And insofar as you're going to disagree with me, I'm pleased that you're exhausted from the flight because that'll slow you down and that'll be helpful. So anyways, seriously, thank you for coming.

So let's start with this cosmic skeptic. Right? Okay. So how do you come up with the name and why the conjunction? And what do you think, the advantages, if any, in relationship to the emphasis on skepticism?

Alex O'Connor
I'll give you the official and the unofficial story. The official story is that cosmic sort of implies universe, space, big thinking, and skeptic sort of situates me within a tradition of people who are interested in interrogating their beliefs to their sort of fundamental grounding, insofar as that's possible. And skeptic is spelt with a k because most of my listeners are american. The unofficial answer is that when I was younger, I knew a guy who was a musician and started a soundcloud account with the word cosmic in it. And I thought, hey, that sounds like a cool word.

And I was starting a YouTube channel and wanted something that sounded cool, and I thought skeptics sounded cool next to it, and I spelled it with a k because I got it wrong. I see. Okay. Okay. Well, who knows the actual derivation?

Jordan Peterson
And it's a good combination, though, because it. It. Well, it's catchy. So that's nice from a marketing side, but it also has this. It's an interesting allusion to the combination of revelation and critical thinking that actually makes up actual thinking.

Because the problem with being concerned with a vast plethora of ideas is that many ideas are misleading and wrong. And so you have to learn how to combine that openness and curiosity with the capacity to separate the wheat from the chaff. And that's the utility of skepticism. I mean, it can degenerate into a kind of argumentative nihilism. That's the downside.

But properly applied, it separates the wheat from the chaff. Right. And the purpose of that is to keep the wheat. Well, skepticism can only ever be essentially destructive because you're being skeptical of something, somebody's putting something forward, and you're sort of responding to that with skepticism. And so for a lot of people, if skepticism is the thing that you do, then you sort of end up chipping away and ending up with nothing.

Alex O'Connor
Whereas skepticism is really supposed to be a tool that you use. It is destructive. But in the way that you might sort of carve a piece of marble, you're intending to get a statue out of it at the end. Yes. Yes.

Jordan Peterson
Well, that's the thing to always keep in mind. Is skepticism in the service of something. Exactly. Yeah. It's a tool.

Alex O'Connor
It's a methodological tool. It's not a world you mentioned, too. So I'm interested in your progression, in your thinking, in relationship to that, because you mentioned just before we actually went on air that had you come to see me a couple of years ago, you might have been more inclined to. I'm putting words in your mouth to some degree. So correct me if I'm wrong, to strive for a victory or to make your point, something like that.

Jordan Peterson
And you alluded to the fact that your thinking around that has changed to some degree. I suspect that's probably a consequence of experience. So what's changed? In part, it might have something to do with becoming a podcaster and speaking weekly to people, and you can't keep up that energy, or you can, but it becomes totally unwatchable, and nobody wants to engage in that all the time. I think there are times when it's worth doing.

Alex O'Connor
And to be clear, I still like to disagree and do so essentially, unapologetically and bluntly. And that can still come across as quite rude. But I think that the way that I would think about a conversation is that, well, what are we about to do here? A debate. We're about to debate an issue, and I'm going to try to win.

And that's. And not even. I mean, maybe there's sort of an element of pride in there. You want to win for that sake. But also you really think, well, I want to win because I think I'm right about this.

And if I don't, then, you know, I must have just not expressed myself properly. I think I, you know, what I probably meant when I was saying that is that I would have had more of that cap on than now after having so many conversations with so many people and realizing that not only is it more constructive for myself, I've learned a lot more. Now I'm here, like, hey, I might learn something today that would be great, even if I just learn something about what your worldview is. But also, people listening just unanimously say that they prefer it. It's a much, well, the skepticism.

Jordan Peterson
So one of the things you learn as a therapist, for example, is that being right is not very helpful, especially when you're trying to help someone, because whether you, as the therapist is right has very little to do with the positive outcome for them. You still want to maintain the skepticism. And one of the ways of doing that in the manner that's helpful is that, like, if I'm talking to you and you say something I don't understand, that's the right place to be skeptical. Because if I don't understand what you said, well, it might be my ignorance, but it also might be, like, lack of clarity and pointedness on your part. And so one of the advantages of disagreeing with someone is to point out to them in a positive way where they're lost in the fog, because if you're sufficiently lost in the fog, you tend to run into sharp objects, and that's not very pleasant.

But the skepticism, and this is obviously what you alluded to, I would say, as a consequence of learning from the podcast, is the skepticism should be in service of rectifying your ignorance rather than in service of making your point or winning the argument. The problem with winning a bloody argument is that the victory can seduce you into thinking that you were correct and you're never sufficiently correct, right? Yes. And so I don't like debates. Fundamentally, I've never really enjoyed them.

I probably, when I was really young, you know, before I was. I stopped doing this when I was about 23. I would take a certain amount of pleasure in being able to obtain intellectual victory. You know, it was also a way I defended myself when I was young, and it was effective, but it's not the optimal way to conduct conversation. This is one of the reasons why people like Rogan are so successful, because Joel.

Joel pushes point, but he always does it in the service of learning. Yes. He doesn't do it in the service of victory. Yeah, yeah. I think you've probably put your finger on it there.

Alex O'Connor
But what you were saying a moment ago about precision, about sort of thinking clearly and understanding somebody else clearly. I think the reason why I'm excited to speak to you today is because you're someone who celebrates being precise in your speech. And I've always appreciated your desire to make sure that you're really understanding what somebody else is saying. I've made attempts in the past to. I mean, my channel is mostly focused on the philosophy of religion.

Jordan Peterson
Yes. And I've made attempts in the past to try to understand your worldview. Yeah, yeah. Your religious worldview. And I made a video essay.

Yeah. And some of the things I said there, I think at least one thing in particular I probably think I was wrong about. But what I was trying to do there, I've seen that people would ask you on interviews and podcasts, do you believe God? Do you think that Christianity is true? And it was sort of, you would sort of struggle to answer the question.

Alex O'Connor
And I thought to myself, well, people. Comment the question with a priori commitments about what they think truth constitutes. That's a big problem. There must be something important that's being left out of the sort of precondition of that question or conversation if it's so unimaginably difficult to answer. Well, I'll give you an example.

Jordan Peterson
I watched that essay this morning, and I also wanted to talk to you about your discussion with Dawkins. Yeah. So people say, ask me, for example, do you believe in God? And I think, well, I don't know what you are driving at with that question, because I don't know what you mean by believe. Most people, modern people, believe that a belief is a description of accordance with a set of facts.

Right. Well, I don't think that's what belief means in the religious sense in the least. So I just think that's a non. Starter if you have something to do with what you act out. Right.

It has to do with what you're. What you believe is what you're willing to die for. Fundamentally, it's what you're committed to or live for. If you think about it as life in the most extensive manner, it's a matter of commitment. So I understand what you.

Alex O'Connor
What you mean in the religious context. Yeah, but religion is a big topic. Religion is a. Is a. Is a mighty, you know, area to be.

To be talking about. But when I talk about belief in a more mundane sense, like, I believe that this chair exists. Yeah. Like, that is a belief that I hold. I sort of can't help but I can see it.

Jordan Peterson
Yeah, well, that's a place where your action and your statements align exactly right. You leave in the chair and you're sitting in it. Which is why I totally agree when you say that what you believe might really be what you act out. But I think when, when, when people are looking for essentially definitions. And just a second ago, you said, well, what is it to believe?

Alex O'Connor
And you said, well, what you believe is what you're willing to die for. I'm not willing to die for my belief that this chair exists. Maybe. Maybe in a broad sense. If not believing that the chair existed required me to sort of give up my trust in my sense data, then I might literally die by accident by sort of walking off a cliff because I don't trust my eyes anymore.

Jordan Peterson
Well, it's also not something that you're likely to forego, given your role, let's say, as a rational skeptic. That's right. Seriously. Like, it's a commitment that you've made to a certain view of reality. But you understand, surely, that when somebody asks, do you believe in God?

Alex O'Connor
Although they're asking the sort of subject of the belief, is a much more grand entity, the word belief itself. For them, at least in their question, even if you think it's an inappropriate question, they mean something much more mundane. They mean, like, you believe in these things. Well, it's hard to know. It's hard to know what people mean.

Jordan Peterson
You know, like, one of the things I've noticed, for example, is there are no shortage of christian trolls. Right? I mean, there are atheist trolls and there's engineering trolls, there's lots of trolls, but there are christian trolls. And the christian trolls, when they ask that question, and it's often the christian trolls who ask that question, what they mean is, are you in my club? Exactly right.

And my answer is, I'm not even sure you know what club you're in. So there's a trap in the question, which I don't appreciate, because I don't like questions that have traps in them. Yes. Now, not everybody who's asking that question has a trap. Many people do.

And so I find that off putting, let's say, because it's manipulative in terms of that descriptive belief. That's something we could go into. I think we should do that because it does get to the core of the matter that you were attempting to untangle, let's say, in your essay. Yeah, I mean, my understanding of. And I had to sort of piece together different things you'd said in different interviews.

Alex O'Connor
And I suppose the reason I had to do that was because I didn't have you in front of me. So I'm grateful to have the opportunity now. Yeah. Yeah. It seems to me that when you speak of God, you mean something like that, which is at the.

I don't know if you'd rather say the basis or the top, but the basis or the top. Both metaphors of a value hierarchy. And it begins with the recognition that anything that anybody does requires some kind of value, even just to do something as simple as sitting in a chair or picking up a glass. Well, you don't do anything without it being oriented towards a value. Exactly right.

And so even to perceive the glass is something you've spoken about before. You know, why do I see the glass as one object, even though it's got multiple parts, it's got a side and a bottom and top? I see them together in a way that I don't see the cup and the table as one object. Well, you said before, it's because I can grip it. It's sort of functional.

It's because I can use this cup. And the reason that I see it in that way is because I can then drink from it. And the reason that I want to do that is because I sort of value my health. And there's sort of a value regress that goes on always. And more broadly, this comes out in the question of, like, why are you writing an essay to get a good grade, or why do you want a good grade?

To get a good job. Why do you want a good job? Get money. And you keep going back and back. It has to terminate somewhere.

Jordan Peterson
That's right. Because otherwise there would be nothing to sort of lend that value. Well, otherwise you'd always be in an infinite regress. Further down, you just die. Or the infinite.

Alex O'Connor
Yeah, you literally. It's the kind of regress in which the value that you have for a. Actually borrows the value from b. You don't value a at all without b, so it doesn't get it without b, and b doesn't get it without c, and c doesn't get it without d. So if that went on infinitely, there's nothing to give the entire sequence value in the first place.

Jordan Peterson
Right? And so there's got to be something at the basis here. And then you said, at least on one occasion, that we'll call that place whatever's at the top there. We'll call it the divine place. And you said, we'll make.

That's a matter of definition. Yeah. Now, I'm kind of. I'm fine with this, but it seems to me that what you're doing is you're giving a definition of God that makes him partial or makes it him whatever, unavoidably exist, and also makes it a quite different entity to the entity described by a great deal of, for instance, your christian listeners who will say that God is not the basis of a value hierarchy. God is an omnipotent, omniscient, agential being with consciousness that intentionally brings about human beings and sent down a physical man to sacrifice his life in order to save us from our sins.

Alex O'Connor
That means that when someone asks you, does God exist? And you say, well, look, I think that's almost an inappropriate question at times. You sort of imply that you don't even believe in atheists because you sort of act as if you believe in God. If what you mean by God is. Just, well, Dawkins himself admitted he was.

A cultural christian, that's another matter, because that's much more specific. I mean, that's cultural Christianity. This is just, although it's a problem when a Christian says to you, I mean, very clear that that's what I mean by God. I don't know if you do believe in the omniscient, omnipotent agential being, but if you start talking about the inevitability of believing in some basis of evaluation. Well, it's not so obvious.

Jordan Peterson
You're talking about so obvious from the traditional judeo christian perspective that God is properly conceptualized as a being. That's probably right. Well, so it's tricky, right? Because one of the ways that you can approach God traditionally is in relationship to a being. But that's a veil.

So why do I say that? Okay, so let's speak about it religiously first. Then we can speak about it conceptually. So there's a tremendous insistence in the judeo christian tradition that God is outside of the categorical structure. Right?

Like, seriously, outside, Elijah the prophet establishes that God is not in nature. He's not in the earthquake, he's not in the conflagration, he's not in the storm. Right? So that doesn't mean that nature doesn't speak of God, but it does mean that whatever God is is not in the natural world. Okay?

Now, we can extend that. Not bound by time, not bound by space. Well, does that make God a material object? Because when people say, is God real? Which is a variant of the question is, do you believe in God?

It's like, well, God's immaterial and outside of time and space. So if your definition of real is material things in the domain of time and space, then we're not talking about the same thing. Now, usually people approach that question of belief with some materialistic framework like that in mind, even if they don't know it. The Christians, let's say, who put this question forward in the hope of getting the answer they want to hear, are materialistic and enlightenment minds, even though they don't know it, because they have an implicit definition of what constitutes real. Is God real?

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Alex O'Connor
I think that the physicality of God is an interesting question. In the Old Testament tradition, it seems to evolve as far as I can see. If you look at some of the earlier descriptions of God, you've got a God who walks through the garden of Eden. You've got a God who has a council of angels and the accuser. You have a sort of.

It's being at least conceptualized as a much more physical being. And as time goes on, God becomes less localized. And I've heard a lot of theories as to why that's the case. I've just done an episode on my own show. Yeah, I'm not sure that's true exactly.

Jordan Peterson
I don't think there's a clear historical progression like that. There is a constant tension between God as ineffable and then God as manifest in a manner that's comprehensible. Right. And if so, Mircha Elliott had mapped the consequences of this out to some degree. So he was very interested in Nietzsche's proposition that God had died.

Most people, including Nietzsche, regarded that as like a unique historical event. There was a religious tradition, the enlightenment arose in consequence. We became skeptical about God. And in 1850, the philosophers decided that he was no longer necessary or real. But Eliade, who, who is a brilliant historian of religions, has noted that this has happened many, many times, that God has vanished, disappeared.

And one of his explanations for that is that a God that's too ineffable. So that's completely outside of the categories of time and space, let's say. And who doesn't make himself present as a being, who doesn't have a heavenly counsel, who has no hierarchy between the pinnacle and earth itself tends to float off into space. It becomes so abstract that you can't have a relationship with it. And then he disappears.

Alex O'Connor
In many ways, this is what Christianity provides with the New Testament and the figure of Jesus. And that's why I think for a lot of christians, the more important question for you and the question that they're interested in, and you're quite right, that a lot of people are like, I want to get you on my team. I have no dog in this fight. I'm not a Christian. But I know that a lot of christians are frustrated when they begin asking about Jesus, who's a much more physical entity.

It's a real human being. It's someone of flesh and blood. It's someone who's physically crucified by the. Yeah, it's a very different question. It's a very different question.

And then is seen as a physical entity, at least according to the canonical tradition, by his disciples after he died. So when somebody asks you, do you believe that that happened? And when I've seen you ask about that question, you tend to still speak in terms of the psychological and the mythological. I think the frustration is that as. You'Ve just said, yeah, I don't mind frustrating christians on in that regard either, because the truth of the matter is, with regard to the gospel accounts that the mythological and the historical are inextricably cross contaminated, there's no pulling out the historical Jesus.

Jordan Peterson
Right. That just, that's, that's a non starter. The, and why that is, I don't know. It's, it's very, it's very mysterious. It's very hard to understand as is, are the, let's say, the accounts of the resurrection.

Okay, so what do I think about that? Well, I don't, I think that denying the historical reality of Christ is. I think that's just a fool's errand. Of course, I don't know why anybody would bother with that. So a man exists called Jesus.

Alex O'Connor
We have that much. Now, Christ. Now there's a claim that is attributed to Christ, that he is the embodiment or the incarnation, the fulfillment, let's say, of the prophet and the laws. I think that's true. Yeah.

Jordan Peterson
What does that mean? Well, you know, I think it's in the Gospel of John. I think Gospel of John closes with a statement that something like, if all the books that were ever written were written about the gospel accounts, that wouldn't be enough books to explain what had happened. Yeah. If we could do the things that Jesus did.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, and it's, there's a, there's a truth in that. The truth is that profound religious account is bottomless. And the biblical representations are like that.

There's no limit to the amount of investigation they can bear, not least because the text itself is deeply cross referenced. So there's like, there's an innumerable number of paths through it. It's like a chessboard. And so it's inexhaustible in its interpretive space. That's true.

That's a problem, too, because it means it's also susceptible to multiple interpretations, including potentially competing interpretations. I think a lot of people interpret Paul, for example, the earliest New Testament source, as saying that if Jesus did not literally rise from the dead, if there was not a man who stopped breathing and then started breathing again, then your faith is futile and you're still in your sins. That is, Christianity is undermined. Now, that means that, and Paul doesn't say sort of believing that that's false is really bad. He says, if you do not believe this proactively.

Yeah. Then your faith is futile. If you don't proactively believe that yourself, then I think when a Christian asks you, do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? Are you a Christian? I think you must be committed to saying no, at least under that interpretation of Paul.

Alex O'Connor
And even if you're not sure, I mean, it's fine. If I say to you, do you think that a man physically rose from the dead? And you say something like, well, I don't know. I mean, I wasn't there, but I think it has a lot of mythological significance, or I think that maybe it happened in a different sense, or it happened in the sense that good fiction happens, then fine. But it needs to begin with that caveat of the simple sort of historically speaking.

I don't know, and I know you don't like to pull out the historical views. That's a good objection. But it's an important question to ask. No, of course, it's a very good objection. So the, so I just did a seminar on the gospels with a crew of about eight people, and was the same crew that walked through Exodus with me with a couple of variations.

Jordan Peterson
And we spent a lot of time on the resurrection accounts, for example. Of course, that was the toughest, let's say that was the toughest morsel to chew and digest. The thing about the resurrection accounts is that they're all, look, so I could say something like this, which will just annoy people, but it doesn't matter. I believe the accounts, but I have no idea what they mean. When you say you believe the accounts, do you mean.

Alex O'Connor
And I hate to be sort of pedantic here, it seems pedantic, but do you mean you believe that these are things that happened such that if I. That's a strange thing. I know you don't like that. Let me put it this way. If I went back in time with a Panasonic video camera and put that camera in front of the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, would the little lcd screen show a man walk out of that tomb?

Jordan Peterson
I would say suspect, yes. So that, to me, seems like a belief in the historical event of the resurrection, or at least of Jesus leaving the tomb, which means it went to. Somebody says, do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead? It doesn't seem clear to me why you're not able to just say it would seem to me. Yes, because I have no idea what that means and neither did the people who saw it.

Alex O'Connor
I mean, I suppose one of, look. Let'S approach this obliquely. Let's say the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. Yeah. Okay.

Jordan Peterson
So people will say, well, do you believe that happened literally, historically, it's like, well, yes, I believe that it's okay. Okay. What do you mean by that? That you believe that? Exactly?

Alex O'Connor
Yeah. So you tell me. You're there in the way that you describe it. What do you say? What are the fish doing exactly?

Jordan Peterson
And the answer is you don't know. You have no notion about it at all? You have no theory about it. Sure. So your belief is.

What's your belief exactly? I think a Christian might say something like, my belief is that I have no idea, looking at those fish what I would see in the process of them being converted into enough food for the 5000 to eat. No idea what I would see. But I do know that what I would see is the fish end up being spread amongst the 5000 in the same way. Like if I opened up the water jar, what would I see when the water became wine?

Alex O'Connor
I have no idea. Does it sort of blend from one color into another? Does it suddenly snap? Does it disappear and then reappear? I don't know.

But what I do know as a Christian is that I would see something at some event in which when I look at the beginning, it's water and when I look at the end, it's wine. And I mean, actually, I don't mean that Jesus turning water into wine is some kind of, you know, inextricably mythological story. And the question of whether it happened sort of doesn't matter. Or maybe it happened in a meta manner or maybe it happened in a. In a hyper reality sense, I would be, as a Christian saying that it's.

Jordan Peterson
More inclined historically, I'm more inclined rather than to believe, I'm more inclined to understand. And then when I hit the limits of my understanding, I think I don't understand that. Now, do I believe it or not believe it? I think often, especially with regards to biblical matters let's say I have a suspension of belief and disbelief. Yeah, that's fine too.

I think part of the reason that I've been able to be an effective interpreter of the biblical texts and a relatively scientific interpreter is because I approach the texts with respect the same respect that I would approach a lab animal. It's like, I don't know what this is like. I seriously don't know. And I'm not going to come at it with axiomatic assumptions that are unquestionable. I'm going to try to see what's right in front of my eyes.

I'm going to try to see what mystery reveals itself if I take this phenomenon seriously. This is one of the things that I find puzzling, for example, about Dawkins, because Dawkins formulated the idea of meme, which is, by the way, the same idea as archetype. It's exactly the same idea, except he just stopped. It's like, okay, there are memes. They're selected for.

Okay, selected on what basis exactly does that mean there's a hierarchy of memes. Are the memes more likely that are the memes that are conserved more likely to be, what would you say, viable organisms? And if they're viable organisms, are they microcosms? This is really interesting in terms of the survivability, because there's a point. I've spoken to Richard Dawkins, well, a number of times, but twice on my podcast, and the second time somebody pointed out to me that there might be a point of agreement between you two that has been overlooked, which is that I don't know if you've ever come across the evolutionary argument against naturalism or the argument from reason.

Alex O'Connor
The idea that if you're a materialist, you can't trust your reasonable faculties. So Alvin Plantinger formulated this very well, very geniusly, I think, in saying that if you believe that evolution by natural selection happens materially, what does natural selection select for? Survivability. So if you're a materialist, that means that the very rational faculty that you're using right now evolves not to be sensitive to truth, but to survivability. Yes, that's right.

And if that's the case, well, why do you believe in the truth of evolution? Well, because you've been rationally convinced of it. But the thing that you've just assented to, the belief itself, has just undercut the process by which you came to that belief. There's a whole. The New England pragmatists figured this out in, like, 1880.

Now, I think this is a fascinating. I think it really is just a. It is. It's exciting. It's novel, that's for sure.

That's for sure. It's actually a point where Darwin and Newton do not come together. Have you ever browsed in incognito mode? Fun fact. It's probably not as incognito as you think.

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Alex O'Connor
How do you mean? Well, the darwinian definition of true and the newtonian definition, sure. Exactly. So here's the thing. Here's the thing.

You had a conversation with Sam Harris. You've had a number, but one of them, I don't think it was a live event. I think it was before that. You're talking about truth. Yeah.

And you're trying. Awkward 1st, 2nd talk I had with him, I was extremely ill. It was, you know, it was awkward to listen to because it felt very much like, and I remember at the time thinking, you know, what is this, this Jordan Peterson talking about like truth is like darwinian truth is about like survivability. What do you mean truth is true? True the way an arrow flies.

Yeah, right. And now I asked Richard Dawkins about the evolutionary argument against naturalism. Yeah. I said, well, how can you know that what you believe is true? And he said, because believing true things makes me more likely to survive.

Jordan Peterson
Hey boy, watch where you go with that. I didn't catch it at the time, but I thought to myself afterwards, it was one of my commenters on Patreon actually had mentioned this. He was listening to Richard and I said, but sometimes it's at least possible that something that's false helps you to survive. The rustling in the bushes, believing that that's a lion every time, or tiger, even if it's not, that helps you to survive because that one time that it is, you're still going to run away. And it costs you nothing to run away when it's not a tiger.

Alex O'Connor
So believing it's a tiger, even when it's not is going to help me. That's why we have a negativity bias. Yeah. And Dawkins says, well, yeah, of course there are some circumstances where believing something false could be beneficial to survival. And I said, well, how do you know that two plus two equals four is not one of those?

And it seemed as though he was just saying that believing that would not be advantageous to our survival, which might well be true. But if that's the case, then suddenly I'm listening to what you're saying about truth being more sort of darwinian and related to survivability. And I think maybe you two would agree there. And I think, well, why is it that when you sit down with Richard Dawkins, you find it difficult to have a conversation with each other? And.

Jordan Peterson
Well, I think it's partly because we don't know each other very well. That's right. And also, there are things he knows that I don't know, and there are things I know that he doesn't know. Now, I would say, in my defense that I. What would you say?

I'm more of the. We're aware of the things he knows that I don't know than he is of the things I know that he doesn't know. Right. So, for example, as far as I can tell, Dawkins doesn't know anything about the jungian tradition of literary interpretation. And that actually, if you're going to talk about religion, that's actually a fatal flaw.

Right. So. And, you know, he's called me, for example, drunk on cymbals. It's like, well, the imagination is a biological function, and it has a structure and a purpose, and it has its own logos, its own intelligible order. And if you're not aware of that order, that doesn't make me drunk on symbols.

It just means you don't know what you're talking about. Now, that, that frustration that you appeal to there when you hear Richard Dawkins. I think Terry Eagleton said that listening to Dawkins on theology is like listening to somebody write a book about biology whose only knowledge of the subject is having once read the great British Book of Birds. And, okay, fair enough. But that actually turns out to be a real problem.

And it's a problem with regards even to the meme idea, because you don't have to extend Dawkins work very far to understand that religious stories are memes. Sure. Right. Yeah. Well, and there's a hierarchy of memes, and some of them are very functional.

Alex O'Connor
But then here's the thing, like that frustration that you're sort of throwing in that direction, I think people throw towards you. When you say, well, religion, you don't have to look very far to see that religion is a meme. Well, without further clarification, and of course there's going to be it. You can understand why, to somebody first listening, that sounds almost atheistic or religion is a meme. Religion is not.

Religion is not a true historical account of, you know, the history of the universe. It's not a true historical account. It's a meme now. It's. It.

When you say that. When you say that the resurrection of Jesus. Well, what does it mean historically? That the spirit of God brooded upon the primordial waters? Like, what does that mean historically?

Jordan Peterson
No one. No one knows. I agree. I don't think. I don't think that at least most of Genesis or parts of Genesis are supposed to be.

Alex O'Connor
I mean, the Bible is a library, right? It's not a book. And that means that it's going to contain different genres, that's for sure. And so when we know, and some. Of them are more historically accurate and some of them tilt more towards that kind of elusive.

Jordan Peterson
I don't mean elusive in the. I mean a l l U S I. Yeah, sure. Right. That.

That elusive and symbolic form that characterizes Genesis one. So because there are different genres here, it depends on what story we're talking about. And I think what I often observe you doing is we might talk about Christianity, and if you aren't comfortable committing to a historical ideal, you'll start talking about the spirit moving over the face of the waters, which is obviously a much more mythological ideal and not quite equivocating them, but moving between them too quickly and not delineating them enough. So if I asked you, do you think that the spirit moved across the face of the waters, and you said to me something like, I think it's still happening. Right.

Alex O'Connor
And that is what I would say, hey, fair enough. Yeah, that makes sense. It always happens. It happened at the beginning of time, and it's always happening. When somebody says, did the exodus story happen?

Did the Jews enslaved in Egypt break free of their slavery and move to the promised land across the desert for 40 years? Did that happen? You have also said of the exodus specifically, it's still happening. Yes. Now, to me, that's far more inappropriate than saying that the spirit is still moving across the face of the waters, because I think what people mean there's is.

Do you believe that these people in that time period actually did this in such a way that, for instance, might show up in an archaeological report? Well, I think that the simplest answer. To that is probably, sure, and that's fine, too. But then we don't know. I mean, like, to the degree that there's been archaeological investigations into the kinds of biblical narratives that you've described, the archaeological evidence tends to fall on the side of historical accuracy in relationship to the Bible quite surprisingly often.

Clearly, you spent more time in exodus than probably any person I've ever met in person. Clearly, the story sort of captivates you, and you think it's really important and. Can teach a lot. Right. It's infinitely deep story.

I think most people speaking to you already know that you think that, right. And so when they ask you a question, when they suddenly say to you, but do you think it really happened? Well, what the hell does that mean? You must know that. What they mean is what I was talking about a second ago, which is that sort of what.

Jordan Peterson
Okay, so, fine. So it's easy just to turn this around. It's like, okay, what exactly happened in your historical account when Moses encountered the burning bush? I don't need to know exactly what happened. What I need to know is, I'm.

Not asking you specifically or attacking you for that. What I need to know is that if I sort of went to the egyptian desert at sort of the time that this story is alleged to have taken place in history, would I see a mass movement of Israelites from Egypt into the promised land? Would I see people with feet walking through the desert, leaving foot. Well, let's take it apart rationally. But you also understand that when someone's asking that, and you want, even if you don't like the question, you must understand what someone's asking.

Oh, yes, I understand many of the things that they're doing simultaneously. You must also understand that when you then say, it's still happening, people just go, what are you talking about? Yeah, well, I would say that's not. My problem, but it becomes a problem when you understand that someone's asking a quite banal historical question. Yeah, but you don't get to do that.

Alex O'Connor
But why not? Because the stories that you're dealing with aren't banal. I agree. But, like, so you can't reduce them to something. Even if it's.

Jordan Peterson
Even if it's. What would you call it? Even if it's reassuring this actually happened. It's. Well, then what do you do with the burning bush?

This actually happened. One comparison I would make is between this and talking about fiction. More broadly. Yeah. Right.

Well, you got it right earlier, you know, I would say you noted that the stories in the biblical library leap across genres. Well, we know this because sometimes they're poetry and sometimes they're a song. Yeah, exactly. So in any given story, there's going to be historical account plus mythological overlay. And you have to be a discriminating reader to kind of see what's different.

And you don't just get to say, well, all the mythological symbolism is historical reality. It's like, no, it's not. Here's the thing, for example. So take a piece of trivial fiction like Forrest Gump. Yeah, right.

Alex O'Connor
We say, like, okay, did that happen? Now, I think that what you'd probably say is something like, well, I don't think the events literally occurred, but I think that they obviously get at something that's sort of perennially true about human nature. Then suppose I said to you, they happened. They existed as a pattern. But there's a scene in Forrest Gump when, you know, he.

I think he meets the president. Is it JFK at the time? I think he goes and meets John F. Kennedy. Yeah.

And so I said to you, well, is JFK, like, that part of that specific part of that story? Is it true that JFK was the president? Right. And you would probably just say, yeah, yeah. You wouldn't say anything more complicated.

And even though the subject as a whole of like, is Forrest Gump true? Is Hamlet true? That's a complicated question. Very. But specifically, when I say, but interestingly, there's this little point I want to make in this broader discussion.

Do you think that JFK was actually the president? You would say yes. Why do you think it matters to people? Like, I don't know. There's more ancient accounts.

Maybe that's the biggest problem. Maybe that's the biggest problem that you have with people, people who are asking these questions. It is. What point are you trying to make here? The point is.

Jordan Peterson
I know what the point usually is, is the people who are asking the question believe that true in unerringly means objectively happened in history. Like the things that we're seeing right now happen. Yeah. It's like, well, no, that's not how. That's what those stories are like.

Alex O'Connor
For me, some of it is. But for a Christian, when asking you that, it's probably because for them, they have an understanding of Christianity that requires believing in that kind of truth. For me. Yeah. And the reason why I hope that, like, me asking these questions will be less frustrating to you is because I have no desire for that.

I don't care about that. I'm genuinely just interested in what you think. Yeah. So my desire to know whether you think Exodus historically happened goes no further than a point of interest about your beliefs. So there's elements of the, especially the setup to the exodus story that strike me as very, very plausible historically.

Jordan Peterson
So, for example, the Jews before the pharaoh of that time were under the guidance and protection of Joseph and the previous pharaoh, and they regarded the Israelites as benefactors because Joseph had helped save the kingdom and his people were welcome, but that was forgotten. And so the new pharaoh and the new Egyptians regard the appallingly successful Jews as destructive interlopers and they make them slaves. It's like, well, can you believe that? It happens all the time. It's happening right now.

Alex O'Connor
So it's happening. So it's very, in this particular case, saying it's very plausible. It's like saying something like, well, yeah, it could have happened. I don't know. Well, I don't know.

Jordan Peterson
So I don't think anybody knows. So when somebody asks, did the exodus really happen? That word really when they say, if. I just really is the, if I. Said, did the exodus happen?

Alex O'Connor
And I'd understand why you would then say, well, you've got to understand what kind of story this is. Fine, but then if somebody says, yeah, but did it really happen? Even which parts of it, even if. They'Re not expressing it very well, like what they're getting at there is they're trying to emphasize the historicity. They're trying to say, yeah, but did it historically happen?

Probably is what they mean by the word really there's. Right. But the thing is, it speaks of their, see, they have a problem is that christians who ask that have a metaphysics that's not christian. So it's a non starter. The question.

Jordan Peterson
It's like you're asking me the question a materialist atheist would ask, and you want me to give you an answer that bolsters your faith, but the presumptions of your question are enlightened atheistic. So it's like, I don't know how to play that game. So do you think that to be a Christian, you don't need to believe in the historicity of the exodus or the resurrection of Jesus, for example? Well, I think those are separate issues, actually. Okay.

Alex O'Connor
Yeah, that's probably right as well. And interesting. You know, I spent last night, it was a bit of a time delay, so it feels like longer. But last night I was having a conversation with a friend of mine, I said, you know, I'm speaking to Jordan Peterson tomorrow. I was thinking, how can I prepare for this?

And we ended up, my friend Sheehan's his name. We ended up having a conversation about whether Hamlet is real, and that was probably better preparation than anything else I could have done. Yeah, that's a good question. So take, if somebody asks, was Hamlet a real person? Sort of naively, I say, have you heard of the story Hamlet?

Oh, no. Is that a real person? I would say no. However, there is a sense in which, and I'm trying to understand what you're saying here, there is a sense in which there are a lot of characters, infinitely many characters that Shakespeare never wrote about. Yeah, right.

Those characters seem to exist less than Hamlet does. Yeah. Even if Hamlet exists less than Jordan, peace and Alex O'Connor do in the well, Hamlet might exist more than me. And it might be easy to just toss all of your discipline to the side for the summer. But a life of greatness doesn't happen by taking the easy route.

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Jordan Peterson
Things you pointed to in the analysis that you did of a talk I had with Jonathan Pagio is my somewhat tongue in cheek comment that God is the ultimate fictional character. Yes, right. Which I think is a hilarious line, by the way, which, by the way. I think I misunderstood. Now that I've watching that back, that's the thing I say.

Alex O'Connor
I think I might have misunderstood and maybe that's what you were about to tell me. I shouldn't interrupt. Let's walk through that. Yeah. Because people see, and this is part of this underlying materialist, atheist enlightenment ethos, people think that fiction and fact are opposites.

Jordan Peterson
It's like, no, they're not. Okay. Not at all. Okay. So let's use an analogy to begin with.

What's more real, things or numbers? Okay? Now, I'm not going to make a case for either of those positions. I'm just saying that's an actual question. Yeah.

You talk to mathematicians, they think, well, numbers are way more real than things. Things are evanescent. They disappear. They flash in and out of existence. Numbers are permanent.

And then you could think about it biologically. It's like, well, how useful is numeracy to survival? Like, very. Right. When you become numerate, you're powerful in a way that the mere grip you have on the individual facts doesn't afford at all.

So there are forms of abstraction that are clearly more real than the things from which they're abstracted, or at least as real. I would say more real because they're so powerful. Well, fiction is an abstraction. Right? And so Hamlet, did Hamlet exist?

It's like Hamlet is the pattern of character that existed in multiple people over a very long period of time. And so Hamlet is an abstraction like Raskolnikov in crime and punishment. Did Raskolnikov exist? It's like Raskolnikov existed in the soul of every Russian from like, 1850 to 1990. Right.

And so is it real? It's like. It's hyper real. Fiction is hyper real. It's a meta truth, as you put it.

Alex O'Connor
Exactly. Now, is that real? Well, when someone says, if they've listened to what you've just said and understood it, then if they still ask the question, but is it real? You must understand that what they mean is like, you know, like, did a woman, did Aliona Ivanovna get hit in the head with an axe? Like, yes, on did that happen?

And again, you could still resort saying it happened in the heart of every Russian who's ever thought about, well, I would say no to that specific, but no. Right. No is the answer. And we can say no with confidence because we know that Dostoevsky sort of thought this up with something like the Egyptians walking through the desert. We can't as confidently say something like, no, that didn't happen.

But you'd have to be more humble in saying something like, I don't know, but the comparison I made in this video I put two questions side by side. You were asked by Douglas Murray, did Raskolnikov exist? And you say, well, I think that the events literally didn't happen, but that kind of misses something and there's something more to talk about. And then you're asked, the pattern is extremely real. Sure.

Then you're asked about Cain and Abel. The story of Cain and Abel happened. Yeah, that's like better example, a famous. The question did that happen? Begs the question, if you've got a sort of.

In a way that it seems strange to me that the ease with which you were able to say of Raskolnikov and Dostoevsky. Well, no, that didn't literally happen, of course. But you've got to understand that there's another sense in which we've got to talk about the truth of the story. Well, the Cain and Abel story is quite complex because you could imagine easily that there was a fratricide at some point in the past that was of sufficient emotional magnitude to have stories aggregate around it, to have an account. It's easiest to presume that they're.

Jordan Peterson
Because why not? It's perfectly plausible that a primordial murder of that sort happened in the memory of that tribal people and was represented in that manner. Now, it, as the account and Iliad has done a very good job of pointing out how this develops, too. You could think of Iliad's work on the mythologization of stories as an extension of Dawkins idea of the meme, because Iliad discusses in great detail how an account mutates to. What would you say to be maximally memorable across time.

So it mutates. You can take. There is a core. That's true, let's say, in the narrow historical sense, but the account mutates to be optimally adapted to the structure of memory that characterizes the human. And that comes out in story like the story of Cain and Abel.

Right, right. And you get a maximally memorable story. Now that's a meme. Is it true? That's a hard question because, you see.

Alex O'Connor
I think Cain and Abel probably belongs more on the sort of brooding over the face of the waters category than it does exodus category, for example. Like. So I think we can. Yeah, well, there's very little detail in it that would make it a specific historical event. Yeah, I mean, because it's.

Jordan Peterson
It's two generic brothers and there's a generic murder. But it's interesting, too, because even in the case of a specific fratricide, let's say that actually happens in the world. Well, there's all sorts of principalities involved in the background. Right. So, for example, I spent a lot of time looking at Dylan Klebold's accounting of his mental state before shooting up the Columbine high school.

Well, you know, if you read that, it'll make your blood run cool. Oh, yeah. He's obviously possessed, whatever that means. Whatever that means. He happy to accept the word possessed.

Well, look what he did. Knowing in part, don't take this wrong way, knowing that I'm speaking with you. I'm not going to take that as literally as I would if I was speaking to. That's a very hard thing in a circumstance like that, because I'm happy with people invited something in and it wasn't pleasant and it had its way with him. Right.

And the results, although dreadful, were nowhere near as dreadful as he was hoping they would be. Right. It's dark and is that real? So what happened there? It's like.

Well, one way of describing it is that an alienated young man shot up a high school. Another way of representing it, which may be more true, is that it was another, what would you say, punctuated episode of a cosmic drama that's been going on forever. Fine. It isn't obvious to me at all which of those two accounts is more real. Well, it depends on what specific questions being asked.

Alex O'Connor
For example, right now, suppose that you were a witness to this crime and the police pull you into questioning as a witness. Yeah. And they say, we're trying to gather information to try and catch the suspects. Suppose that there's no suicide involved. The suspects at large, they're trying to get your help.

And they say, so, Doctor Peterson, what happened? And you say, well, I think what happened was the continuation, sort of a punctuation in the long paragraph of the cosmic drama that is our human existence. And the police was like, that's not what we meant. Okay, but like, come on, help me out here, man. Like really?

Like. And I think that's. That's a level of doing with the religious question. Well, that's a level of analysis problem. So we went back when we started this discussion, you talked about the infinite regress for purposes for writing an essay.

Jordan Peterson
Right. So what are you doing when you're writing an essay? Well, you're making horizontal and curved marks with a pen. Sure. Right, well, right, so.

But there is a cosmic tree of events in every micro event, right? And when people, when they're looking for eyewitness testimony, they're asking you for something like the highest possible level of narrow resolution you can manage. Ian McGilchrist just. Yeah, that's right. I just spoke with him, and unfortunately, I think we lost about half of the footage.

Alex O'Connor
So I'm not sure how much that will be seen in the world. But he brought to my attention, I'm sure he said it was John Ruskin who talked about having a. You see, in the garden, you see, like a square, and you think it's like a white square in the garden, inexplicably. And then you go a bit closer, and you see it's. Oh, it's actually a page.

There's a book. And then you look a bit closer, and you see it's got words on it. Then you have a microscope, and you see, actually, it's got, like, ridges. Yeah. You know, and then you go a bit closer, and you actually see atoms bumping into each other.

And you go a bit closer and you see sort of waves and energy. Yeah, right. And it's sort of like, well, which of those is the real thing you saw? Right, well, and the thing is, is that that hierarchy that you just described, this is the cosmic tree of life. This is Yggdrasil.

Jordan Peterson
It's like you have got the quantum level and the atomic level and the molecular level and so forth up to the phenomenal level. That's not where it stops. I started to understand this when I was thinking something very peculiar. This is decades ago. I thought, people will go to a museum to look at Elvis Presley's guitar.

It's like, what the hell are they doing? So you can imagine that you have a display case and you have Elvis's guitar in it. And now you take that guitar out, let's say it's a mass produced guitar, just for the sake of argument, you replace it with an identical model from the same year. Okay? Now, is that Elvis's guitar?

And people will say, and you can think, this is so strange. People would say, well, even if I couldn't tell the difference, I would rather look at Elvis's guitar. And then you think, well, what is that, some kind of delusion? Like, what the hell's going on here? No, the answer is, this is what Duchamp was on about when he think it was Duchamp who put the urinal in the art gallery.

What he was pointing to, and it was brilliant, was that much of what we perceive as concretely real is actually dependent on a hierarchical context that isn't part of the apprehension of the object. So when you go to see Elvis's guitar in a museum. The perception is informed by the context. It's like, well, you're an Elvis fan and you know a lot about Elvis history, and you know that this is Elvis's town. And the object itself partakes in that higher order unity.

That's the unity that extends off to heaven. Every object partakes in that embeddedness above. Like, for the reductionist types, you'd say, well, what's this made of? Right? It's like, well, it's molecules and then it's atoms, and then it's like quantum.

Quantum. Whatever the hell exists down at the quantum level. That's what this is made of. It's like, wait a second, it's on this table. It's in this room.

It's of this time. That's all this thing, too. And that's the higher order conceptualization. But it's just as much part of the object. And a reductionist view doesn't take that into account.

And that's a big problem. I think it's true that looking at Ruskin's book piece of paper, it would be silly to always say, well, what's that in the garden over there? Oh, it's a bunch of atoms bumping into each other. Right. That would be ludicrous.

Right. Well, that's also. So back to our discussion of darwinian utilities. It's like, well, it's the wrong level. Of function, but surely it would also be inappropriate to do the opposite.

Alex O'Connor
That is like to always think at a higher resolution than people are obviously sort of practically trying to. So, for example, if I was close enough to see and I was interested in what paper is made of, and I said, well, what is this? And someone said, oh, it's a white square in the garden. Yeah. Say, well, that's inappropriate.

You've gone too hard. Yeah. Focused down, right? And I feel like, what? Where you might criticize the reductionist materialist for going too high a resolution thought too narrow.

You go too wide on issues of religious historicity. Well, you want to hit the target squarely, right? And that's hard. So in the sermon on the Mount, Christ addresses that to some degree. So his injunction for paying attention properly takes local and distal into account simultaneously.

Jordan Peterson
He says, okay, this is what you have to do. First of all, you orient yourself. So this is the highest level of orientation, right? So this is the divine orientation. It's the thing at the top of Jacob's ladder.

It's the value. At the pinnacle of the value hierarchy, you put what's properly highest first and foremost in the theater of your imagination. Right. And then you align that with the belief that other people have the same intrinsic value as you, and that are a reflection of that infinite value. You start there, then you pay attention to the moment.

Alex O'Connor
Yes. Tolstoy wrote about this in his confession. He sort of. He was, he was. I love it.

It's like a hundred pages long. You can. You can read it in notes. Yeah. It's a great book, this wonderful account of essentially him sort of trying to battle with his reason and his faith.

And he eventually concludes that he was looking in the wrong place. He was looking amongst intellectuals. Yeah. And he found that he looked, I think he, he quite dismissively called the simple people, your everyday person, working man. And he found that it was something about sort of if you take someone who's starving and you bring him and you tell him to sort of take this metal pump and just pump it up and down and don't tell him why, and he does it, then the water starts flowing.

It's like you have to actually do the thing. You have to live out the thing and then you get to see why it works.

I understand that. I think that's probably, that's probably true. He also says, Tolstoy, that is in that same account that he found that there was an exactly inverse correlation between the specificity of an answer and the importance of the question. I can tell you exactly how many molecules are in that glass of water, but who cares, right? It's not relevant.

And the more the question becomes about, you know, humanity, human life, the important stuff, the less specific the answer necessarily has to become. So I understand there is a. So you've alluded there to or indicated the relevance of value for perception, right? You nailed it with that observation, because as you pointed out, any phenomena can be analyzed at a multitude, multiple levels of the hierarchy that it exists within. Okay, so what makes the choice of level of analysis appropriate?

Jordan Peterson
Well, it's something like. It is something that's akin to darwinian utility. It's something like that. You can think about it less abstractly. Is that you want the level of resolution that gives you maximal functional grip in relationship to your pursuit.

Alex O'Connor
Absolutely. So what's your pursuit? Well, two questions. What is your pursuit and what should your pursuit be? Well, your pursuit's necessarily nested inside a hierarchy of pursuits.

Jordan Peterson
And when I said that God is the, what would you say the ultimate pursuit that sits at the apex of the progression of pursuits. That is Jacob's ladder. That's what that's indicating in that vision, is that every act of perception unites earth and heaven, and the perception itself is invisibly dependent on whatever it is you're worshiping. Here's one problem. Right.

Alex O'Connor
So that's very common, because I think I see what you're saying, and I hope what I tried to do in making that video essay about your religious views, and I suppose the main thing I was trying to do was sort of offer an interpretation, trying to get to grips with it. And I hope that you feel as though at least I'm making an effort here to, I definitely thought to really try and get what you're thinking at. One problem is that, you know, in the early church, there was a debate around the physicality of Jesus resurrection. Yes. So the canonical tradition ends up stipulating that Jesus physically resurrects.

And you must believe that, otherwise you're a heritage. Yeah. And that's part of the empire. The catholic particular emphasis on the divinity of the body, which has a real wisdom rather than a disembodied soul. You also have, like the gnostic tradition, broadly speaking, the gnostic tradition in early Christianity that's so popular that Valentinus nearly becomes the bishop of Rome.

He's nearly the pope. And I talked about this the other day, and I should have looked it up. I can't remember which church father it was that was telling. The church community, the early church community, when you go to a new place, don't ask to be taken to the christian church, ask to be taken to the Catholic Church, because otherwise you might end up in a gnostic church. It was so popular.

Jordan Peterson
Right, right. And a lot of the gnostic tradition says that the thing that that's being gotten wrong is the idea that there was this literal resurrection. Right? No, no. The kingdom of God is here, and now the resurrection is inside of you and you attain it through gnosis.

Alex O'Connor
I mean, the Gospel of Thomas, which is probably the most famous non canonical gospel and could have been written at the same time as, like the Gospel of John. This is an early text, doesn't even mention the resurrection, doesn't mention a crucifixion. It's a list of sayings. And the very form of that book, as one scholar whose name I've forgotten, unfortunately, has pointed out of that, of that collection, shows that these people believed that the thing that's important is not what Jesus did, but what he said. The thing that's important is the knowledge, the thing that's important.

Jordan Peterson
Yeah. Right. And so this resurrection stuff sort of doesn't matter now. The thing is, in that early church community, somebody who said, well, this question of like, the resurrection as a physical historical event, that you're kind of missing the point. The thing that matters is like, the resurrection that takes place inside of every person.

Alex O'Connor
Yeah, it sort of sounds a little bit like the kind of approach that you would take. Now if that's true, that would mean that in the early church you'd have been condemned as a heretic. So when a modern Catholic says to you, you know, Jordan Peterson, are you a Christian? You know, what do you think about Catholicism? I think that the reason that they're interested is because if it's true what I'm saying, then they would have to say, oh, I suppose, at least according to my understanding of Catholicism, that that's.

Jordan Peterson
A form of nonsense. I can't count you among my number. So I think that's probably why people are interested. And I wonder if that's a genuine. What would you say?

That would constitute a genuine form of inquiry, for sure. And I wonder if you feel like you're, I mean, I don't know. I mean, see, one of the things. I really like about the, the bodily tradition of the resurrection is that it. See, what it does that's so remarkable is that it doesn't desacralize the body.

That's very, very important. I think the fundamental problem with gnosticism is that it's very easy for it to become a doctrine that's contemptuous of the body and contemptuous of the material world. A great deal of the gnostic tradition literally believes that the material world is created by an evil demon. Right, exactly. Well, exactly, exactly, exactly.

Alex O'Connor
Jesus comes to save us from that. Insistence on the bodily resurrection is a medication against that, and it's an effective one. I would really love to ask about Genesis. This might be a bit of a tangent and tell me if it's uninteresting to you, but there's one gnostic text called the testimony of truth that was discovered in the Nagamadi library. And this is buried probably around 300 ad, so it must be earlier than that.

It's a fairly early text, and this text identifies the serpent in the Garden of Eden with Christ. And this is fascinating to me.

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Because when I, when I read a leader to illumination. Yes, exactly. Tradition, that makes the serpent a higher God than the original God because he's the agent that calls to conscience. Yeah, now, of course, the conscience, yes. Now the serpent doesn't, is never identified as Satan or the devil except by, except by christian tradition.

It's just the serpent. Now there's so much interesting about this. When I first read the Genesis, when. I read, well, even the classic christians often regarded the fall as the, what would you say? Fateful, but heaven sent error that made the incarnation of Christ both possible.

Yeah, sure, sure. Right. So there's, it's very interesting because there's a gloss on that where even in traditional Christianity, it gives you Christ. That's right. Yeah, it gives you Christ.

And Jesus at one point compares himself to a servant in the gospel of John, you know, early and early. Oh, yes, he'll raise himself up like Moses lifts up the serpent insanely. See, that's one of the passages, actually. Sorry, I don't want to derail you from your tangent, but that's one of the passages that I've concentrated a lot in this new book that I've just finished. We who wrestle with God because that equation that Christ manages with his identification with the serpent in the desert, that is so stunningly brilliant that I cannot possibly imagine how anyone could have thought it up.

Jordan Peterson
It's to identify him with the source of the poison that to gaze upon. What would you say redeemed the Israelites in the desert. It's so, there's so much in that that it's really a kind of miracle. That serpent on the stake, that's Asclepius. It's the same symbol.

So that just in itself is something stunning to contemplate. There is something amazing that I think, of course, obviously, I'm not going to go as far as saying that I can't imagine that was thought up. Maybe not by somebody. It's complicated with the Bible, of course, and there's a lot to say there. The author of the Gospel of John is obviously a sort of theological genius in the way that the authors of the synoptic gospels at least weren't as much.

Alex O'Connor
So, you know, it's believable to me that could be the case, but besides the point, because that's another complicated thing to talk about. But when I first. It wasn't the first time, but the first time I really tried to read the genesis account of the Garden of Eden. And I was doing it in the service of sort of producing a video. I was.

I want to make sure. I want to revisit the story, make sure I sort of understand it properly. I'm reading this text and God says, you can eat of any of the trees, but not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And immediately you think to yourself, why not? Why wouldn't.

And some people like to say, oh, it's because that's actually by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you get to dictate morality. It doesn't read like that to me. It reads to me like knowledge of good and evil. Let's just take it at face value to start with. It's like, why not God?

Why not? Well, we're not told, but don't do it, because in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Yeah. Now the serpent comes along, and the serpent is described as more cunning than any of the animals that God created. I don't speak Hebrew, unfortunately, but where it says, for example, more cunning than any of the beasts that God had created, that could mean of all of the beasts that he'd created or more cunning than the beasts that he had created.

Almost as if this is a being in the garden that God himself didn't actually create, or God isn't sort of connected to in the same way, because why is the serpent there in the first place? Is a question that's worth asking. Okay. That's for sure. So you have the serpent and that word cunning, I thought to myself, well, what does that mean?

So I looked it up, and it's the word like arum or arum. I don't know how to pronounce it, but I looked elsewhere in the Old Testament, and it's used in a few different ways. You know, it means cunning. It means subtle. Subtle, yeah.

Throughout proverbs, it's used to. It's used consistently to mean sensible? What do you mean prudent? And so there's one reading of this, you know, now the serpent was more sensible than any of the other beasts of the Garden of Eden. And he comes to Eve and says, did God say that if you eat of that tree you'll surely die?

And she says, yeah, that's what he said. And he says, you will not surely die in the day that you eat thereof. God just knows you'll become like him, knowing good and evil. And he doesn't want that. So Eve looks at the fruit and she eats the fruit.

And does she die in the day thereof? Well, again, a complicated question, but on face value, no, she doesn't die. She gives them to Adam. He doesn't die. And what does happen?

Well, God says to them, or God says, now they have become like us, knowing good and evil, they must be banished from the garden so they do not outstretch their hand and eat from the tree of life. So it seems to me that you've got this serpent who could plausibly be described as the most sensible of the animals, telling Eve immense. The people who regard Milton, Satan, as what an admirable revolutionary, tend to have the same attitude towards the serpent in the garden. And it's a complicated, it's a very complicated issue because even to the degree that the serpent is an agent of Lucifer, which I think is an extraordinarily profound, what reading and overlay on that initial story, I think it's remarkable. Lucifer is the bringer of light, right?

Yeah. The spirit of enlightenment, Jesus himself is referred to as Lucifer at one point in the gospel, which is, which is quite a fascinating. Well, side note, I guess the question is like illumination. To what end? I do think that the interpretation that you rejected with regard to the consumption of the fruit of the knowledge of the tree of good and evil is moral presumption.

Jordan Peterson
It's the sin that Nietzsche suggests to everyone as the medication for the death of God. We have to define our own values. It's like, no, we can't. There's knowledge of good and evil, you know? Yeah, but it, but it's, it's, it's more than that.

It's, it's the, it's the consumption of the essence of moral knowledge itself. It sounds to me that like I can never, you know, contradicting exegesis. Sure. Like that, that might, may be the case, but if I, if I read this text naturally, if I just say, well, like, how does this naturally read to me? Yeah, it reads to me like, you have.

Alex O'Connor
And when I. And that's why I brought it up. Because you consider this gnostic tradition, right? The evil demiurgic creator of the universe. And like you have.

And the author of the testimony of truth says, you know, what God is this? What God is this that firstly, you know, condemns man for wanting to eat the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And secondly, lies him about what's going to happen when he does and recognizes. And we're missing like 50% of the text, like it's ripped to shred, these gnostic texts. It's fascinating.

I think the Gospel of Judas spent about 30 years in a safety deposit box in New York City, and he destroyed the whole thing. It's a fascinating story, but. So we don't know for sure. But there's a point where it seems to identify this serpent with Christ, with Jesus. And reading that I'm like, that makes.

Makes a lot of sense to me on a surface reading of Genesis, part. Of the ambivalence about the human rise to self consciousness. Right. Is that a good or is that something good or something evil? Because why does God then say, now they've become like us, knowing good and evil, they must not be allowed.

We must banish them lest they reach out their hand and eat from the tree of life. Yeah. And sort of then guards Eden with the. With the cherubim, with the flaming sword. Like it seems to me like God is saying, you know, because we're told that because of the fool, now man can't inherit eternal life, and Jesus must come to.

Must come to save him. Yeah. But as soon as they eat of this tree, God banishes them. They don't. They don't see.

God banishes them in the. I don't have any interpretation with that part of life. Yeah, that. That's. I don't know what sense to make of that.

Jordan Peterson
I should ask Jonathan Pagio, because I suspect he'd have something to say about that. Yeah. I think that the one way of interpreting the account of the fall is that it was the inevitable consequence of Adam and Eves overreach. And so they end up banished, not so much because God wants them out of the garden, but because in their pride, they threw themselves out of the garden in their overreach. And I wrote about this.

It's very hard for me to generate the entire interpretation. Interpretation on the fly. I wrote about this extensively in this new book that I'm publishing in November, trying to take apart that particular issue, because what seems to happen in the Adam and Eve account is that you have an illusion to the function of male and female consciousness. First you have Adam, who names and subdues and orders. He's an extension in some ways, of the logos in human form.

And God's curious enough about that to bring everything to Adam, to just see what he'll name. But the command is for Adam to put everything in its proper place in this hierarchical organization with its proper name. And Adam can do that. If he's an adequate and faithful reflection of the logos, then Eve is created as the counterpart to that. And it's something like, well, there's an ordering tendency and there's the order that that produces.

But then there are things that are on the margin that aren't accounted for by the divine order, and they need a voice, and Eve is the voice of.

You think about this. Biologically, what does a woman do in the context of a family? She brings the attention to that which is vulnerable and has not yet been properly incorporated. So what do you mean by that? Well, imagine that you have a well constituted family and there's a new baby.

Well, the baby doesn't fit in. The baby is an anomaly. The baby is an individual that has its own idiosyncrasies. And the mother who's sensitive to the needs of the infant, she's going to be the voice of that. She's going to knock on the door of the ordering principle and say, you need to make some adjustments here so that what can't fit does if it feels.

Alex O'Connor
Because. Yeah, and again, I'm trying to be. To understand what you're saying and trying to be charitable. It does seem to me that this is an unnatural interpolation in that sort of. It seems like maybe it's too much like, I don't know if that's.

You can make that work, but there's always. This is.

Jordan Peterson
This is the kind of objection that Sam Harris had to the sorts of things that I said. He said, well, you can interpret a cookbook that way. Exactly. Yeah. Well, and this is.

Look, this is a huge problem. This is the problem the postmodernists dangled in front of everyone. It's like, well, what's the canonical interpretation of a text? The answer is no one knows. Right.

And so does that mean that there's an infinite number of interpretations per text? Yes. Which one's correct? Hey, now, that problem, I think to some degree, has actually been technically solved while the large language models do this. Okay.

You bet. So I've been talking to one of my colleagues about a new discipline which is something like computational epistemology. Well, because the large language models track patterns of interrelationships between words. Okay. So when you're trying to interpret something like the story of Adam and Eve, the story is the words, the story is the letters.

The story is the words, the story is the phrases, the story is the sentences and the paragraphs and the chapters and the whole biblical corpus, plus the entire bloody culture. And all of that bears on those interpretations. So you say, well, am I overreaching my interpretation in relationship to Adam and Eve? And I would say, well, that's a very difficult question, and it's possible to overreach, and it's possible to over interpret. I mean, specifically with the female and the family.

Well, the thing is, though, that there. Could any other person, like, having not listened to this conversation and not spoken. To Taoists, would know that. But any other person in the world sort of read the story of Adam and Eve and similarly say, well, I think that this is because Eve is representing what a woman does in a well oriented family, which has to do with, you know, when you have a child, it's sort of a. It's an anomaly.

Alex O'Connor
It's something. It's something new, and it's the woman that brings. Well, that's Eve. Eve stands for the voice of the serpent, the thing that's excluded. That's true, but.

Jordan Peterson
Yeah, but that's exactly the point, is that that's exactly. So would someone else come to that conclusion? I would say, well, people can make that decision for themselves when they read the text, but I would say it's very much in keeping, let's say, with taoist interpretations of what masculine and feminine are. It's not an infallible way to understand whether an interpretation is correct. But I think it's helpful to know if you read a novel, there's that sort of joke that schoolchildren make about, like, it doesn't matter what a novel says.

Alex O'Connor
It'll be like the curtains were blue. And the english teacher say, well, let's unpack that. Let's look at what that means. And people make fun of that because that's their experience in school. Yeah.

I think that one way to understand if we're doing this appropriately is if two people simultaneously think, oh, actually, the fact that the curtains were blue is significant here, if you consider this. So it seems to point to that if people can independently, even if they don't get it quite the same, recognize that that's significant. Yeah, well, it's helpful to understand that there's something, yes, definitely something legitimate about. That kind of analogy. This is actually part of the reason that I was so, became so interested in the jungian iliad.

Jordan Peterson
Eric Neumann School of mythological interpretation, because that's exactly what they did, was they took patterns of interpretation, let's say, of masculine and feminine from multiple cultures and look for overlap. Okay. When I wrote maps of meaning, so I did that. I used the jungian works in that regard, but I also used what I knew about neuropsychology and neuropsychopharmacology, with the presumption being that if all of these pointers pointed to the same thing, it was probably there. That's multimethod, multi trait construct validation, fundamentally.

And the notion is that your senses do the same thing. If your eyes and your ears and your sense of smell and your taste and your touch all report the same thing, then you have a reasonable probability of assuming, of surviving. If you assume that it's true. Now, that's not perfect, because the reason we talk is that I don't want to just rely on my own senses, even though there's five of them. So I've got a quintangulation happening, which is a pretty decent way of specifying truth.

I want to know if your perception shows concordance. We want this converging evidence. Now, it's trickier with textual interpretation. Partly it's trickier too, because mere consensus is not sufficient. You need deep expertise.

Okay, so why would I say that? Well, we have these large language models, for example, and they're doing statistical analysis of textual interrelationship at every level, right? Billions of parameters. So the letter conjunctions, the word conjunctions, the phrase conjunctions, the sentence conjunctions, the whole bloody thing. But even they're prone to go astray.

And the reason for that is that they're overweighted to the present.

So we have the alignment problem as a consequence. Which is? Well, how do we trust the AI interpretations? Well, the same problem obtains for human beings, the alignment problem. How do we align ourselves?

Well, that's what a classical education did, right? And that was steeping in the ancient texts. Why? Because the ancient texts are distillations of patterns that have existed over thousands of years. And if you know the patterns, you orient yourself properly.

And that also makes you immune to. See, the problem with the convergence notion is it can produce a false consensus like every. All the Nazis agree. Well, that's a problem because they were wrong. You think we should be sending chat GBT to Bible school?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we've been. I have a colleague. We've been training AI systems on classic texts.

They're way more useful. I use one all the time. We haven't released it. How is it more useful? Do you like.

It's not woke. Seriously, it's not ideologically adequate. But surely it is. I mean, it's ideologically controlled and confined, just in a different way. No, I don't think it's ideologically confined.

Alex O'Connor
Typical postmodern ideology doesn't need to be bad, especially given that, like, as. As a non believer in Christianity, I see Christianity as an ideology. Right. That's a good objection. This goes back to the point that you made.

Jordan Peterson
This goes back to the point you made about people taking the right to themselves to define the moral order, let's say in the Garden of Eden. Okay, so what's the problem with that? The problem is, is that the proper interpretation is bounded by the actuality of the cosmic order. Right. So it isn't.

The postmodernists say, well, it's just one ideology. It's either this one or this one. But then that's all grounded in power, as it turns out. So they've got something at the bloody pinnacle anyways. That philosophy either degenerates into a kind of incoherent nihilism or it turns into a power play.

It's like. No, there are canonical interpretations. Well, what are they? Well, that's what's encapsulated in the religious text is canonical interpretations. Okay, why are they canonical?

Okay, I'll give you an example. You tell me what you think about this. This is a good rejoinder to Dawkins selfish gene. Right? Okay, so God is conceptualized in the story of Abraham as the call to adventure.

Alex O'Connor
Yeah. Okay, so Abraham is privileged. He's rich. He's in a state of infantile security. He doesn't have to do a damn thing until he's like 70.

Jordan Peterson
His rich parents. He doesn't have to lift a finger. Okay? And then a voice comes to him that says, get the hell away from your zone of comfort. Leave your family, leave your tent, leave your community, go out in the world.

Okay, well, so what is that? Well, that's the same impulse that drives a child to develop. It's the impulse that drives a man to continue to mature. Right. So you can think about it as an instinct if you want the instinct to growth.

Okay. God makes Abraham a deal. It's such a stellar deal. He says, look, if you listen to this voice of adventure, if you commit to it, if you live by its dictates, and you make the proper sacrifices along the way, this is what'll happen to you. You'll be a blessing to yourself.

Okay, so that's a good deal. That's a nice start, right? So you don't have to be miserable and self conscious, aware of your own nakedness. You can start to walk with God again. Okay?

But more, you'll do that in a way that will ensure your valid reputation. That's a good deal, because you want to have a reputation that's distributed in the social community, obviously. And if it's based on something real, so much the better. Then you're not a charlatan or a fake or a psychopath. Okay?

But that's not all. He says you'll do that in a way that will enable you to establish a permanent dynasty that will cascade down the generations. And that's not all either. You'll do all that in a way that's beneficial to everyone else. So this is so cool because it speaks of.

It's something like the tree of life. It speaks of a concordance, right between the instinct to mature and develop that calling of adventure, the pathway that actually works best for you, the pathway that works best for you, and establishes something permanent in a manner that enhances your reputation, that cascades down the generations. Okay? Now, Abraham is offered, if he follows this pathway, God says, well, you'll be the father of nations. Okay?

So now imagine this.

This is contra the selfish gene, let's say the human pattern of reproduction. Dawkins mistake was that he thought reproduction and sex were the same thing. And they're not. They're not, especially not in the human case, because human beings are high investment, long term maters, right? Sure.

So we have very few offspring, and we invest like Matt in them. Pair bond. You live long enough to be grandparents, you put a multi. Okay, so that means that to be the proper father, you have to act out a sacrificial ethos. Okay.

The idea in the story of Abraham is that if you act out that sacrificial ethos properly, which aligns the spirit of adventure with the harmony of the community, you will act in a manner that best ensures the long term survival of your offspring. Right? So you can imagine it's not just the contribution of sperm to egg. It's the development of an ethos of paternal care that increases the probability that your children will be successful, but also in a way that increases the probability that their children will be successful. All right, so that's an alignment with a genuine cosmic order.

It's not arbitrary. And so there are interpretations. We'll say they're not just ideologies. They're not just arbitrary interpretations of the way the world lays itself out. They are in harmony with the cosmic order.

And that's what makes them deep, sacred, fundamental, and in the truest possible sense, that is the proper rejoinder to the post modernists. It's like, see, this is why they insist. It's why they're so anti science in their ethos, too. And this is where Sam Harris has got a point, because Harris likes to make a case for objective morality. Objective?

It's like transcendent is the right word, not objective. But did it actually happen? I'm kidding. What? I was really interested thinking about that, and I just had 3 hours with Sam Harris where we sort of went round on that question.

Alex O'Connor
And I agree that I think his system fails essentially. For what it's worth, he's got a point. He wants to ground morality in something that isn't a mere post mortem illusion. And there's something to be said for that. I want to know how much, like the story of the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible, the story of Abraham.

Okay. Train a large language model on that because it's, it's, uh, integrated into the, into the cosmic order. However you want to say it. How far do you go with this? I mean, like, do you train this, this model on the New Testament?

Jordan Peterson
No. Do you train it on the epistles? We're playing with that. I don't know. Do you train on John Milton?

Good, good question. Dante? Like, well, imagine. That's a very good question. So imagine that at the foundation you have the biblical library.

Okay? But then you have, like you said, the secondary literatures. What about the Quran? We want to train a separate one on the Quran. Keep them, keep them.

And then we want to have them debate. Yeah, well, what's really interesting in the case of Islam, because there's an insistence in the islamic world that the entire epistemology is actually contained in the text and nothing else. I think the mistake that people make in comparative religion between Islam and Christianity is that they think that the Bible in Christianity is what the Quran is. Just not the case. In Islam, the word becomes a book, and in Christianity the word becomes a person.

Alex O'Connor
I think Jesus is to Christianity what the Quran is to Islam. Right? Absolutely. And that's a big difference. I think that's a mistake that people make partly because, you know, I mean, the Quran is infallible, right?

You can't think that any word of the Quran is wrong because it's the literal and altered word of God. The Bible. You've got a bit more, more leeway. Say it's mythology or maybe there's a historical contradiction, but it's not actually that much of a problem. However, if you had Jesus in front of you, you can't contradict him.

Right. I think that's an important distinction for people to. Definitely. For people to keep in mind. Well, that also makes.

Jordan Peterson
Yeah, that also makes the logos the living word. Yeah. Right. Which is very, that is a very. It makes it more difficult to put forward the somewhat naive criticism that I think people often make of the gospels as contradicting each other.

Alex O'Connor
Because again, like we're talking like historically here, you know, was Herod on the throne at the same time Corineus was the governor of Syria as Lucas. And it's sort of like, in a sense, who cares? I mean, one of the points that my Friend, my friend John Nelson has made brilliantly is have you ever come across the concept of the, what do they call it, the churchillian drift, where a bunch of quotes that Churchill never said just get attributed to him? I find that part of the mythology. That'S part of the pattern of mythologization.

If someone says, you know, because they. Fall into his Orbit, because they're of. His type, I think the best breakfast in the morning is a glass of champagne, a hearty glass of champagne. Right. He never said that.

But people sort of think maybe he. Said, sounds like something Churchill might have. Same thing happens with CS Lewis. Now the point that my friend John pointed out to me was that, well, if all you had, the only information you had about Winston Churchill was a book of apocryphal quotes that people had attributed to him and agreed that he'd said, yeah, you'd still probably get a pretty good idea about who Winston Churchill was. Yeah.

Well, and that's, that's something you can do at the bottom. Well, that's partly because you, while you. Or the gospels, well, you put something, you see, let's say that. Let's say that there's a shape, there's a three dimensional shape on the wall and you want to. The walls like flat whites.

Jordan Peterson
You can't really see it. So what you want to do is you want to throw a bunch of like garbage at the wall, so to speak. And the outline, despite the fact that everything you throw at the wall is garbage and it lands in many different places. If you throw, if you throw enough of it at the wall, you'll get the shape. Yeah, well, it's partly because you can imagine that there's a set of apocryphal, there's a set of sayings that have been, what?

Misremembered. But a fairly comprehensive set. You're still going to be able to extract signal, right? There's going to be no signal there. That's part because the truth will be encoded in the panoply.

Alex O'Connor
That's why it's a bigger problem. If somebody points out like some flat historical, if there was discovered just like a flat historical contradiction in the Quran, that'd be a big problem because the Quran is the literal word of God. If someone points out a flat historical contradiction in the gospels, it kind of doesn't matter as much because you're able to accept that maybe that is just a contradiction. But the thing that matters is the word of God. And the word of God is not the gospel of Luke or the gospel of John, but the person that they were sort of writing about.

Jordan Peterson
Well, that's also partly. See that you just pointed to another reason why I don't like the over concretized questions. It's like you're looking for truth in the wrong place there, buddy. I understand that, but it also depends on what kind of truth you're looking for. Right?

Alex O'Connor
Because for me, as an interested party. Everything depends on that. I'd really like to know if Jesus actually rose from the dead as a historical fact. I'd love to know if there was a real exodus. You know, like, that's really interesting and important to me now, as somebody who doesn't believe that those things did happen, I still have access to the, to the meaning of the story of something like a resurrection.

Jordan Peterson
Well, let's assume just for the sake. But I'm not a Christian, it's not enough for me to say, well, you know, do I believe that, you know, self sacrifice is at the basis of a meaningful life. Oh, maybe, but that's not enough to make me a Christian because I don't believe it's the case. I'm also, I'm quite interested, actually, how, I mean, you're obviously quite attracted to Christianity in the christian story. I mean, you keep Jesus on your jacket, but I'm interested how that dovetails with your insistence on personal responsibility as the way to live a proper and meaningful life.

Alex O'Connor
Given that the story of Jesus is one of vicarious redemption, I sort of throw my sins on him. You know, he takes responsibility for the sins that I've committed. Yeah, well, I, you know, I'm I. Wonder how those go together. Well, I'm.

Jordan Peterson
What would you say?

Alex O'Connor
No, Jesus, really good. Clean up your religion. It's really good to have a divine ally. And I think the more unerringly you aim upward, the more you walk with God. And that does mean that Christ is beside you.

Jordan Peterson
And so that is a reflection of the truth of vicarious redemption. But that doesn't mean you have nothing to do. Right. And Christ makes that very clear in the gospels. Not everyone who says Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, right.

Only those who do the will of my father. You must be willing to hate your brother and your. Well, there's it. Just see, there's a tension there because the vicarious redemption idea is a reflection of the mercy of God. It's like if you and I believe this to be the case, as I said, if your aim is upward, then God is your ally, right.

And so he's there with you bearing the cross, but you're still obliged to carry it. Right. And you see that in the story too. That's embedded in the passion story because there's an insistence in traditional Christianity that the suffering and the death that a man would experience in that situation were real, despite the fact that God was also experiencing it. Right.

So there's this duality, and I think that's reflected in the idea of vicarious redemption. When it's understood properly, it's like, yes, you'll have. Now here's another way of thinking about it, is that if you aim upward unerringly, you have the spirit of what's good. What are you saying? You've established a relationship with the spirit of what's the highest good.

Well, then that's with you. And that's not just a reality. It's like the ultimate reality. It's partly, it's. Nietzsche even alluded to that when he said, if you have a why, you can bear any how.

Well, what? Why? Well, the ultimate why? Well, what does that enable you to do? To bear the ultimate how?

And that's exactly what the passion story is. And so there is a vicarious redemption there because if you do it properly, you don't have to do it alone. But that doesn't mean that there's nothing on you, you know? And you see that too. There's an insistence in the entire biblical library that what humans are called to do is real, like we're made in the image of God.

We're participating in the process by which possibility is transformed in order we're building. As far as I'm concerned we're either building the city of God or we're building its alternative. Right. With the domain of hell, actually. Right.

Actually. Really? As well as metaphysics. I mean, it's interesting you say hell and actually in the same sentence because. Well, it's easier to believe in hell than heaven.

Alex O'Connor
One of the other criticisms that I made of you in this video was that I felt like you were appropriating religious language illegitimately, to apply a sense of the sacred, to profane things, to mundane things. And that's perhaps one example. So I can give you a few examples. I mean, one is implied in what you just said there, but you said it, I think, explicitly to Matt Fradd recently on Pints of the Aquinas, where you said, if you have studied any amount of history and you don't believe that hell is real. Right.

Jordan Peterson
Right. Then you're an idiot. Yeah, definitely. I understand, I think, what you mean by that, because hell, like, you know, hell is a place on Earth in many respects, right? Like, if you study history and you look at just, like, what levels of depravity humanity can sink to, like.

Alex O'Connor
And you could. You could quite poetically say, well, if hell isn't the right word to describe that, then I don't know what is, right? Something like that. But clearly a theological conception of hell does not exist on planet Earth. It's somewhere you go after you.

Jordan Peterson
It's not so clear. I wouldn't say it's so clear. Well, certainly not in the jewish tradition. Dante, maybe not in the. Okay, maybe not.

Alex O'Connor
But I mean, like a modern christian who asks you, for example, do you believe in hell? And you know that what they mean? They mean the place you go after you die. Then when you respond and say, sort of, well, of course hell is real. Well, you don't believe in hell.

Have you studied any amount of history? If you. If you've. If you know, it's sort of. It feels like you're sort of describing two different things.

The other area where this. This largely happens, I think, is when you said that the very act of doing science. See, there's a concordance there between that concept of eternal punishment in the afterlife and the hell that is, that unites all totalitarian states. But I don't know what the concordance is like. I don't understand, and I don't speculate generally on anything that's, let's say, beyond death.

Jordan Peterson
I mean, what the hell can you say about that? I don't have anything to say about that. But that's another I don't know. Point. Right.

Alex O'Connor
So if I ask you, for example, do you think that Hitler is being punished now? I mean, he's dead, but is he being punished or did he ever get punished? See, the answer to that question is something like, what is the relationship between the evanescent consciousness of man and eternity? And the answer is, we don't know. Yeah.

When Matt Fradd asked you, do you believe in an afterlife? You said that something like your behaviors or actions resonate through eternity. Yeah, well, there's that, which is, you know, in a way, an evasive answer, too. But the thing is, we don't understand. We exist in relationship to the infinite.

Jordan Peterson
Obviously, what that relationship is. No one knows how to conceptualize that. In the final analysis, I don't understand the relationship between our binding temporally and eternity. Like, is there something permanent about our conscious experience? I don't know.

Alex O'Connor
I think you excite your christian listenership when you say, like, not only, you know, do I believe in hell, but, but you can't not believe in hell. I mean, are you serious? You seriously don't believe in hell? And they think, ah, here's, here's a, here's a strong sort of warrior, while the other. But then they realize that what you, what you mean by hell?

Jordan Peterson
You go, well, it's so I. Lots of human suffering and catastrophe, you know, on planet Earth. More than that. Because it's more than that, you know, because it is the case that the invitation to hell is offered by the eternal usurper of the moral order. That's true.

You end up in hell because you lie. That's also true. And so, but when you say that's true, you end up in hell because you lie. Yeah. What do you mean?

Well, the totalitarian. Totalitarianism. You're not allowed to use the word hell. Right? Like, what is the thing you're describing?

Alex O'Connor
You end up where. In a totalitarian state. Yes, and that's fine. A state of ultimate misery. I think this is where somebody might be prone to confusion, and you could say, that's their fault.

Maybe it is, but if somebody's listening to you and do you believe in hell? You say, of course I believe in hell. How can you not believe in hell? And they go, oh, you know, thank goodness, because that, of course, is my worldview. I'd love to know how I can defend my vision of hell.

And then they realize that when you say hell, what you actually mean is totalitarian human regime. Yes. I mean, at least that, sure, right. And so, fine, I'm often trying to make a minimal case. Right.

Jordan Peterson
If I'm trying to elaborate on the meaning of a religious texts, what I'm trying to say in all humility is it means at least this. Now, does that cover the entire territory of the meaning? That's very unlikely. You're going to give an exhaustive account. I don't think so.

What does that mean in eternity? It's the same question. And then we should draw this part to a close. It's the same question in some sense as the reality of the resurrection of Christ. So the christian interpretation is Christ defeats death and hell.

Okay, well, the logical objection to that is, well, where's the evidence for the defeat? Since death still exists and so does malevolence. Yeah, sure. Well, the Christians then will escape, so to speak, into something like a symbolic interpretation and say, well, it's true in eternity. And.

And I think, fair enough. Like, I do believe. I do believe that the idea that Christ defeated death and hell is true, but I don't know what that means. Yeah. And so, and that.

Does that bother me? Well, I'd rather know, and I'm continuing to investigate it. But like, I do know, for example. Ayann Hirsi Ali, who recently became a Christian, she just had a conversation with Richard Dawkins. Yeah, it hasn't, hasn't gone out yet.

Alex O'Connor
I was there. I had the privilege of being here. Oh, yeah. So I've already heard it. You know, I know what they spoke about.

But one of the things that Ayan does is, and I've described it as sort of almost comical, the way that Ayanne talks about her struggle with depression, suicidality, total hopelessness, and then finds that by praying, she's able to sort of elevate her life. And then Sir Richard Dawkins sort of. But do you believe that Mary was a virgin when she gave birth? It was funny level of analysis problem. At the same time, I sort of understood it because.

Jordan Peterson
Yeah. And talking to says, surely when you go to church, you're having these feelings. Ian, you must recognize that the things he's saying at the pulpit are nonsense. And Ian said that she chooses to believe it. She says that I no longer find it to be nonsense because what she implied, and I don't want to put words in the mouth, I can't remember, but it was something like, look, I've been so captured by this meaning that although I don't really understand what it means to say that, you know, Jesus was born of a virgin, I just choose to believe it.

Alex O'Connor
Well, now that's fine. But what she does. What I was going to say is what she does is. Says that this, to me, is like a mystery. I don't really know exactly what it means, but I.

But I choose to believe that it's true. And I wonder if that's something like what you're doing here when you say that you believe. Well, I can just tell you what my experience has been in this sort of thing. So I've spent a lot of time digging into the substructure of mythological accounts in many different cultures. And my experience continually is, the deeper I look, the more that's there.

Jordan Peterson
And then I see things come together that make sense that I thought were disparate, and there doesn't seem to be any limit to that. And so now when I see things that are disparate or even contradictory, I think, well, as you already pointed out, given the nature of the biblical library, there's room for some contradiction. But more than that, I think, well, that might be illogical or irrational, or I might just not understand it. And my experience has been that that presumption turns out to be the case far more often than not. And so, you know, you can imagine that you can get the apprehension of a pattern and you can think.

Alex O'Connor
The. Pattern is compelling, and then there are details within the pattern that you don't know how to reconcile. But this is what Ayan is doing in accordance with your account. It's like, well, I'm willing to. I'm not willing to forego my view of the pattern because of some lack of concordance with details, especially given that I'm ignorant.

Jordan Peterson
Yeah, no, like, well, I can. I can only tell you what has been the pattern of my investigations. It's like the more deeply I. This is knocking and asking, the more deep, the more I seek, the more is present. And I guess, you know, to conclude, I suppose so.

Alex O'Connor
Suppose I'm somebody. And broadly, this is true, I think the gospel stories are fascinating and resonant. I like the idea of the resurrection of Christ. The way that it's criticized as this evil human sacrifice, I think is misleading. I have all of those parts, but I'm not a Christian.

And I suppose the question in what. Way are you, Norman? Well, that's what I mean. To help me understand what you mean by this, what is the difference between someone who's not a Christian and not. They don't.

Jordan Peterson
That's a good question. They're not some new atheist type. They're not like, I wouldn't worship God even if they're just not Christian and someone who is. What's the difference between those two is, like 90% Christian. That's what people keep saying about him.

Alex O'Connor
And I. Well, I think partly because I do believe that he is committed to the truth. He does believe that the truth will set you free. He does believe that there's an intelligible order. Yeah.

Jordan Peterson
He believes that the investigation of the intelligible order is redeeming. It's a shame we don't have a bit more time to do the science thing. Perhaps that will have to be another conversation. So, you know, who is and who isn't a Christian. That's not an easy question.

And that's, again, why I started our conversation. I think it's inappropriate for you to try to say who is and who isn't, but just abstractly, like, what you think the difference is. Like, what is it that under what. Conditions christians hoister cross and walk uphill. Right, okay.

Alex O'Connor
So I heard you say that before as well. Right. But, like. But that is. That is what I think.

Jordan Peterson
That's not the difference. Not to sort of. I try to be too left brained about this, but, like, in practice. Yeah. What do you mean?

Alex O'Connor
Perhaps two sort of symmetrical questions. What conditions under which. What are the conditions under which somebody. How careful are you with your words? Well, I try to be careful.

Jordan Peterson
Okay, well, that's a good approximation to christian conduct, right, because that's worship of the logos. Fine. But that's really a serious part of it. I don't know if that will be enough. I certainly don't know if the word worship there is particularly appropriate.

How profoundly do you value it? To the extent that it helps me to convey my ideas properly. I don't worship the words that I'm using themselves. No? No, I don't have the words, but the words are a tool.

Alex O'Connor
And the reason that I'm precise, as precise as I can be, is in service of trying to communicate my ideas to you. For what purpose? So that what I am, whatever it is that I'm feeling or thinking in my head, if I could somehow take a medical instrument and prod your brain to make the same thought arise, that would be really helpful to me because you'd see the world how I see it. That is what language is. It's that tool.

Except instead of prodding your brain with a physical bit of metal and prodding your ears with vibrations in the air. But I'm trying to do the same thing. To what end? Trying to make that thought arise so that you can see the world as I do and so that I can see the world as you do. To what end?

Well, I don't know. Well, how about productive harmonization of. Fine. Yeah, it depends on the conversation. Right.

So, like, in this instance, it will be.

It will be. I mean, I came into this conversation, I suppose, with a goal to more thoroughly understand your worldview, which is more specific than usually with these conversations. It would be, let's try to learn so much from each other and can each other or something. And in this case, I really was just fascinated to sit down and try to understand, you know, what does Jordan Peterson think about religion? Like, that's probably the goal, which maybe is a slightly inappropriate goal to come into a conversation with, but that's really what I've been trying to, been trying to understand.

So I suppose that's the goal. So it's the idea. We can wrap this up with. Let's say a christian observation is that there's a notion, a classical christian notion, that wherever two or more are together in Christ's name, the spirit of God is there. Okay, so what does that mean?

Jordan Peterson
Well, as far as I'm concerned, what it means is that if you're unerring in your choice of words, if you're seeking with them and exploring, and I'm doing the same, and then we do that together, that's a mutually redemptive process that spirals upward. So that's a christian endeavor. One of the conditions under which somebody can say they're a Christian and be either lying or wrong, and the conditions under which someone can say, I'm not a Christian and be either lying or wrong, if you see what I mean.

That's a very good question.

Well, something came to mind right away when you asked that question, like pretty much instantly it said the redemptive, there's a reason that Christ is represented as the person who took the sins of the world unto himself. Well, that's the essence. It's like the world is a fallen place and you have the responsibility to do something about that. And the degree to which you take that responsibility onto yourself, that's the degree to which you are a follower of Christ, I suppose. It's not an on and off switch.

Alex O'Connor
That was an, it's unfair to frame it as such, I suppose. It's not like you either are on or off switch. It's not like you're, well, I think you want to make it christian or you're not. It's like you're more or less when. When Jacob decides to be a good person instead of a bad person.

Yeah. He builds an altar and it signifies his willingness to sacrifice his past self. I think that people decide in many ways and maybe multiple times whether they're going to aim up or not. Now that's that initial commitment. It's like a baptism in a sense, that you decided that you're going to aim up.

Jordan Peterson
Okay, well, now you can do that badly, because you will. And you see this in the old Testament accounts of the prophets all the time. A lot of them are pretty reprehensible when they first find their feet. But you can stumble your way uphill. And that is the essence of christian belief, is to stumble your way uphill with the maximum load you can bear.

And the thing that's so fascinating about that is that that's also the pathway of maximal meaning. And that meaning is exactly what enables you to bear the load. So it's a very paradoxical. What would you say? It's a very paradoxical reality.

And I think the essence of the christian faith is the imitation of Christ. It's not the mouthing of the words. Now that doesn't mean the words shouldn't be in accordance with the commitment. They should be. But the commitment can't be reduced to the utterance.

The commitment is the carrying. Yeah, right. And the carrying in relationship to a. Goal in the imitation of Christ. It's in the imitation, the text, the book, you know, the imitation of Christ.

Alex O'Connor
You won't be judged on. You won't be judged on what you say, but what you've done. Yeah, well, and I don't mean that also doesn't mean that the treasure that you stack up on earth is an indication of your transcendent value, right. You shouldn't fall into the justification by works heresy, but with that Coda firmly in mind, I don't think there's anything in that proposition that isn't in accordance with the gospel accounts. Christ calls on his disciples to be followers, right?

Jordan Peterson
To walk the same path, and they're given the power to do the same things because of that. And Christ says himself that the people who come after him, which means us, will be capable of more than he managed. Right? Well, that doesn't mean that there's no redemption by proxy, let's say, because we already covered that, is that if you aim up, you have the spirit that's inviting you up, you've invited it to take residence in you. And that's true.

That's true as far as I can see. I think it's the most accurate way of construing the situation. That does give you a form of. It gives you what I had found, it gives you a spine.

But that doesn't, that doesn't mean you don't have a cross. Right. And that you see that insistence in the gospel accounts, as I said, the insistence that Christ suffered as a man despite having God. What would being God? Those are both true at the same time.

The christian pathway is the pathway of maximal self sacrificial responsibility. Right. Well I hope those who have been wondering whether you should be legitimately called a Christian in their worldview, in their version of Christianity will be helped by this, by this conversation. I mean I suppose that's in part what I'm trying to do too here is for people who sort of who say to you, you know, just say what you think. It's complicated, you know, but hopefully.

Well I am trying to say what I think is just that the world's a complicated. Yes. Yeah, well hopefully we'll help it. It's nice to get your words in pristine order, but the more complicated the topic, the longer it takes to manage that with stellar precision. Yeah, well it's taken us probably nearly 2 hours now just to get about.

Alex O'Connor
Around to the idea of maybe, well maybe you don't know if, if the jews walk through the egyptian desert, but maybe that'll, they're still walking. Maybe that'll, maybe they're still walking. Good to talk to you. All right, so everyone, I'm going to continue this conversation, we're going to continue this conversation on the daily wire platform. And so I think I'll talk to Alex a bit, something a bit more personally.

Jordan Peterson
I want to find out how we managed his podcast and why he's interested in the things he's interested in what his pathway to that occupation was and what his hopes for the future are and all of that. And so if you want to join us on the daily wire side, please do. Thank you to the film crew here. We're in LA, right? We're in LA and thank you very much for coming all the way from London.

It's very good and it was a fine conversation, much appreciated and thank you all of you who are watching and listening for your time and attention. Hopefully we'll see you on the daily wire side and if not then, well for the next podcast.

451. Navigating Belief, Skepticism, and the Afterlife | Alex O'Connor

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1: Introduction to Belief and Skepticism

2: Cultural Influences on Belief

3: Skepticism and Science

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