Jordan Peterson definition of God

[DavisModerator]

I guess he means, God makes everyone equal.

Jordan Peterson is a misogynist pig, racist, homophobic and very insulting of those with no religion. Being equal and any form of meaningful equality is completely absent in his writings. Women serve a lower simple purpose and are so some extent subservient to men. LGTB don’t deserve respect or rights and he is an appologist for modern day labour abuse and colonialism. Not only do I not see this equlity trope in his definition, his philosophy is utterly anti-equality. He is a religious old-fashion conservative and unaappologetic about it. Not to mention intellectually vague and very dishonest.

God is the voice of conscience. God is the source of judgment, mercy, and guilt…. something akin to the transcendental repository of reputation.
In other words, the overall moral arbiter and the eye-in-the-sky that watches over us to make sure we behave ourselves.

This is NOT a defition. Listing a multitude of poetic metaphores which more mirror ancient biblical passages than offer anything remotely debatable or informative is NOOOOOT a definition. It is poetry. Which has its own function and is interesting per historical context and modern cultural meaning, but otherwise seriously avoided in philosophy.

I consider that there are two kinds of thriving: short term and long term. We often have to sacrifice the first for the second.

Most of us by now know quite well the outline of your thriving theory. Unfortunately if you try to apply it to everything, it becomes weak and untenable and people stop paying attention. The sacrifice you make to God is not done to thrive. It is done to please his arbitrary whims. It is done to avoid an eternal punishment. And Jordan Peterson takes this metaphor to various levels, like with political leaders and family units. I’m sorry to say thriving is perhaps a bonus extra you might get out of making sacrifices to God….though the bible is full of examples where people worship God and praise him and sacrifice and still suffer in squalid stagnation and misery. Sacrifice to God, is an insurance policy.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 1 month ago by  Davis.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

@davis wrote:
Jordan Peterson is a misogynist pig, racist, homophobic

He really is not.  He’s just not hard left.  He describes himself as an old-fashioned liberal.  I’ve never heard him say anything misogynist, racist or homophobic.  I used to interact quite a lot on his Facebook page (which was a lot of fun), so I’ve had some experience of the way he thinks.  He’s really just a normal everyday psychology professor.

5driedgrams wrote:

So God is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the pursuit of higher being and truth.

This reminds me of a couple of verses from a hymn about Easter and the resurrection, which I hope I can post here as an illustration:

Now the Green Blade Riseth

1 Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,
Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.
2 In the grave they laid Him, Love who had been slain,
Thinking that He never would awake again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

 

It’s interesting that the imagery is biological.  I think the surface Christian meaning is about Easter, but presumably Dr Peterson sees a deeper psychological and spiritual meaning in the process of death and rebirth.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

If apologists like Peterson (a teacher) cannot explain what they mean in simple language then they do not understand what they are attempting to get across to their audience. Why can they not define what they mean by “God”?

I think he’s actually done quite a good job here.  The problem is, God is a difficult thing to talk about.  @davis doesn’t even know whether he wants to thrive, so how can ordinary people talk about the concept of God?

The Cosmological Argument

This runs like so:  1. something exists that is the bestest thing in the universe.  2. God is the bestest thing in the universe.  3. Therefore, God exists.  Am I wrong?

I think that one problem we have in talking about this stuff is that we’re religious outsiders, and don’t necessarily know what we’re talking about.  On the other hand, outsiders can have a different perspective.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

I think he’s actually done quite a good job here. The problem is, God is a difficult thing to talk about.

It’s necessary to do a bit of work, and meet him half way.  If we do that, then a lot of it makes sense (even if you don’t agree with it religiously).

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

God is the voice of conscience. God is the source of judgment, mercy, and guilt…. something akin to the transcendental repository of reputation.
In other words, the overall moral arbiter and the eye-in-the-sky that watches over us to make sure we behave ourselves.

This is NOT a defition. Listing a multitude of poetic metaphores which more mirror ancient biblical passages than offer anything remotely debatable or informative is NOOOOOT a definition. It is poetry.

It’s well understood in the field of moral philosophy, under the domain of “reputation” and universal monitoring and moral evaluation.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

God is the voice of conscience.

That makes no sense. The Creator of the Universe is the voice of conscience?? The voice of conscience had a son?

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

It actually makes perfect sense within the context of moral philosophy.  If we think of “conscience” as “self-governance on behalf of the group” then God fills the place-holder of the ultimate arbiter of moral matters.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

It actually makes perfect sense within the context of moral philosophy.

Only if you are a theist can it make any sense, never mind “perfect sense”.

If we think of “conscience” as “self-governance on behalf of the group” then God fills the place-holder of the ultimate arbiter of moral matters.

How can that make sense Simon if you are an atheist? I mean you cannot believe that if you don’t believe in the existence of gods? And then which “god” because you automatically negate about 3 billion theists when you assert one particular god.

Personally I would have little time to entertain any moral philosophy derived from theistic foundations. It is too absolutist and too underdeveloped.

[PopeBeanieModerator]

Simon Paynton wrote:

If we think of “conscience” as “self-governance on behalf of the group” then God fills the place-holder of the ultimate arbiter of moral matters.

That makes sense to me as an explanation for why God was invented.

 

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

It promotes cooperation, because “watched people are nice people”.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

“watched people are nice people”.

No, they are servile people. They behavior is not natural due do their fear of punishment or expectation of reward. There is an obvious undertone of coercion to anything “good” they do and it must be assumed that their actions are carried out firstly to please the “watcher” before they are done for any altruistic reason. Being forced to cooperate is a form of slavery. That is what a belief in any god encourages because the mind of the believer is chained to the dogma of their faith.

[DavisModerator]

It’s well understood in the field of moral philosophy, under the domain of “reputation” and universal monitoring and moral evaluation.

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. Moral evaluation is part of deontological ethics so I don’t know how you could throw watery poetic definitions into it. Could you please briefly describe what the following are, give me the name of a philosophy from the 20th or 21st century who discuss it and give me a quote by one of them (a published philosopher) where their arguments are vague and poetic instead of actual arguments?

1. Domain of reputation (in philosophy)

2. Universal monitoring (in philosophy)

If it is “well established” in moral philosophy you should have no problem at all finding examples.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

The ideas are contained in (that I’ve read):

Big Gods – how religion transformed cooperation and conflict by Ara Norenzayan, and

A Natural History of Morality by Michael Tomasello.

When two or more people collaborate together (group life is one big collaborative effort), they form a joint agent.  This is composed of two levels: the joint agent (the “Homo duplex” of Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind – why good people are divided by politics and religion), and the individual members themselves.  Attention and perspectives are on two levels: joint and individual.

There is a sense of self-other equivalence, since roles and their ideal standards of performance are fixed, and people are interchangeable within them.

In addition, “partner control” is necessary for the partners to regulate each other so that all behave cooperatively during the team effort.  Partners regulate each other, and themselves.  Because of this, each experiences monitoring and evaluation coming from all sides and from themselves on behalf of the regulating joint agent.

The concept of God fits very well in the position of “chief monitor and evaluator”.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Partners regulate each other, and themselves.

… through self-other equivalence.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Reputation: everyone wants to be able to be chosen as a cooperative partner, so everyone needs to have a good reputation.  This reputation consists of the [joint] monitoring by the people who encounter us and consequently evaluate us.  A monotheistic God is the chief monitor of reputations.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

A monotheistic God is the chief monitor of reputations.

Only if you are a theist. As a monotheistic god does not exist, believers reputations are measured by no useful standard. They are monitored by the group. Humans that still believe in the existence of god are so 16th century!

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