Yes, there's a veneer of engagement, but his hateful prejudices eventually start seeping through.

@ skado I agree. Peterson is not a Christian. His notion of God is the highest aspirations of man expressed through the notion of Logos. That 'spark of divinity' he talks about is a recognition of the highest ideal of mankind. We got that notion through religion. But now we can understand it as psychology.

@Renickulous I posted part of that on the site, & yeah, as I've said before, Peterson is just Chopra lite!

@brentan
Yes that's exactly how it seems to me, although I wouldn't say that makes him not a Christian, if that's what he wants to be called, it just makes him not a literalist, and I'd be delighted if all Christians could be so aware.

He is trying to credit Christianity with the view in Westernized societies that everyone has inherent worth and should be treated equally. Though I am unconvinced that Christianity deserves credit for that, let's go hypothetical and agree with that for the moment. That there can be useful concepts taken from Christianity does not preclude that it also contains many inferior concepts and that sources other than Christianity have also contributed greatly to our current world view. It also does not argue for the 'truth' of the religion. It's a great con that he is trying to achieve by arguing this, which is probably why he finds it necessary to give such convoluted, 'word salad', hour long explanations, to what are straightforward questions. For all of his supposed sophistication, at bottom he is attempting to conceal his game, which is that he knows Christianity is not true, but that he feels it is useful. I'd like to see him try to defend the concepts of vicarious redemption through human sacrifice, and lack of moral accountability which can be skirted by repentance.

@Rossy92
I'd like to see that too. Good points.

@Rossy92 Well put! It seems he so often obfuscates just to appear deep or to disguise what he's actually saying. I find him disingenuous & fake, & pompous to boot!

@phxbillcee I actually find him very insightful on other topics, and to be fair he does have some things of interest to say on religions' metaphorical truths and its relationship to Jungian concepts and Nietzsche. But a good part of the time I don't know WTF he's saying (metaphysical substrate) and he tries to stretch his conclusions way beyond what I could ever swallow.

@Rossy92 I don't think he is trying to deceitfully expound the idea that the Christian religion is truth, just that there is truth to be found in the Christian religion. He sees truth in the idea of Christ exemplifying the heroic, self-sacrificing man but I doubt he would ever think that Christ came to earth to undo the sin of Adam.

@Renickulous The way I saw the Peterson/Dillahunty debate was Peterson trying to draw Dillahunty into the middle-ground. JBP’s tortuous questioning of Matt Dillahunty was an attempt to drag him into the middle-ground between religious faith and atheism. That middle-ground seems to be where mythology, and psychology meet to explain, between the three of them, the serious issues of our existence. One of those subjects brought up was where we got the idea of what was good for us. Dillahunty did not want to go there, happy with the notion that he got that from his ancestors. Peterson suspects that the idea is encapsulated in the Logos, that divine spark said to place meaning into our existence. I hope he continues trying to rationalise the idea but backs off if it proves to be elusive. It may be that goodness is a kind of phenotype of human genes. Richard Dawkins seems to believe our do-gooding comes basically from the imperatives of the genes for group survival. Peterson himself says human hierarchy is a feature of the physiology of lobsters. I’m sure he would agree that the social order in lobsters comes from their genes and not from the Logos.

@Renickulous I think that gets to the heart of the matter with Peterson. I would call him quasi-Christian because of it. He believes that we act out the notion that man has a spark of the divine in his nature. This comes from our Judeo-Christian culture. But he also fully believes in evolution. And he believes that if you throw out the Judeo-Christian culture, you lose that notion of man’s divinity and all hell breaks loose in the form of tyranny and genocide. History seems to indicate that he is right there. But there seems to be no proof at all that we actually have sparks of a divine nature. So perhaps we need a middle-ground where we treat each other as if it were true, find a secular term that’s equivalent to the concept, and move on.

Right to the point! I just call him Chopra-lite, he's surely getting almost as incoherent!

Spot on. There's a whole raft of these attention-seekers, such as Milo Yiannopolos and Richard Spencer catering to the low-information right. In Britain we have Peter Hitchens, Katie Hopkins, Jeremy Clarkson et al. It's an industry - like pro-wrestling.

Peterson is a blow-hard, I can say that by applying my BS detector! LOL

She's great! I post her often, if your interested.

@phxbillcee. Brother... her truth help me get here. I've watch just about all her videos. She's open and honest and bold. I would never put on some skates and follow my friends naked through town to celebrate a day. She's out there.

@phxbillcee That was my first time seeing her though I'd come across the name before. There was a lot to process there, so I'm not sure if I agree with all of her points, but I was impressed enough that I will be checking out more of her content, so thank you. Just curious though how I missed all of your previous posts of her?

@Rossy92 Mostly in "Religion" & maybe a few in "Philosophy", at least a half-dozen, maybe more.
Here's the last one I posted...

So, you're a Peterson fan? I honestly consider him Chopra lite. & I don't think either is as smart as they think they are. & I'm a big Bionic Dance fan & post a lot of her stuff here. Just sayin'!

Awww bionic dance is pretty cool. I've liked her for a long time, she was even on tosh.O lol.

@phxbillcee I just thought the conversation the two guys were having was more interesting that what the person in the blue shirt had to say.

@indirect76 That's fine, I just don't find Peterson interesting, I find him unintelligible most times. & as I said, I'm a fan of Bionic Dance. to each their own, I guess.