Speaker 1: The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
Speaker 1: an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
Speaker 1: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
Speaker 1: tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not
Speaker 1: because I put my hand on a book and made
Speaker 1: a wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 3: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness. Truth,
Speaker 3: Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Speaker 1: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 3: Okay, there are a lot of sound bites in this broadcast,
Speaker 3: and those sound bites come from a video, and so
Speaker 3: if you want to watch instead of just listen, or
Speaker 3: you want to go back and review the video clips,
Speaker 3: there's a YouTube link in the description box. Of course,
Speaker 3: we're talking about Jordan Peterson today, who has in many
Speaker 3: ways become a right wing darling. And he talks about spirituality, God, Christianity,
Speaker 3: the Bible, but he does so in bizarre, nebulous, contradictory,
Speaker 3: and often confusing ways, and yet people have lofted him
Speaker 3: up as a great thinker. Well, he was involved in
Speaker 3: a big event. I'll call it a big event. It's
Speaker 3: been talked about a lot on the internet, and so
Speaker 3: I wanted to talk about that today with a guy
Speaker 3: that was involved. So here we go. Jordan Peterson. He
Speaker 3: is a psychologist. Some call him a great mind, this
Speaker 3: is debatable, and he recently set in kind of a
Speaker 3: round table debate format against twenty atheists, including my guest today,
Speaker 3: my friend David McAfee. Welcome brother, how's.
Speaker 4: It going, Thank you, glad to be back.
Speaker 3: So Jordan Peterson set this up or did a third
Speaker 3: party set the debate? How did you end up getting involved?
Speaker 3: Just set it up for me?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, of course. So these debates have become pretty popular,
Speaker 5: especially among the gen Z people, and it's called Surrounded
Speaker 5: and it's by Jubilee as the company, and they usually
Speaker 5: get these big names. They've had Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro,
Speaker 5: and they typically have them go up against twenty college
Speaker 5: students about political you know, political topics, and these almost
Speaker 5: all always are set up so that the person, the
Speaker 5: main debater, the celebrity person, is going to come out victorious.
Speaker 5: And I know that because the transcript I was handed
Speaker 5: by the company. So they called him the hero. It said, Okay,
Speaker 5: the hero sits in the center and everybody else that's around,
Speaker 5: and he is the only one that I've seen that
Speaker 5: public opinion has said that he's lost this format. But
Speaker 5: how I became involved was Jubilee contacted me and they said,
Speaker 5: would you like to sit down with a celebrity Christian
Speaker 5: And I was a little hesitant at first to be
Speaker 5: one of the twenty, you know, just going around some
Speaker 5: mystery person. But from the clues that they gave me,
Speaker 5: I kind of figured out it could have been Jordan Peterson,
Speaker 5: and I was like, yeah, I'll take you up on that,
Speaker 5: and so I decided to do it.
Speaker 3: All right, So you've got a background in religious studies,
Speaker 3: tell everybody real quick kind of what that background is.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely. I majored in religious studies at UC Santa Barbara,
Speaker 5: and I graduated and have an emphasis in Christianity and
Speaker 5: Mediterranean traditions, and so I definitely came armed from that
Speaker 5: perspective to this debate.
Speaker 3: And you are an author of what exactly.
Speaker 5: I'm the author of nine books. Started with disproving Christianity
Speaker 5: and other secular writings. In college, I wrote that, and
Speaker 5: then I have children's books, including the Belief Book, Book
Speaker 5: of Gods, and Book of Religions, and I also published
Speaker 5: No Sacred Cows about investigating myths, cults, and the supernatural.
Speaker 3: It's funny because we both have a book with Sacred
Speaker 3: Cows and the title, and whenever you published after the
Speaker 3: fact that I'd published or something, and our paths crossed
Speaker 3: and we're like, mmm, you know who's going to sue
Speaker 3: who first?
Speaker 5: Man, I remember because your book did come out first
Speaker 5: and I had no idea, And I remember they were
Speaker 5: telling somebody told me about your book, and I was like,
Speaker 5: I need to talk to him, and I emailed you
Speaker 5: and I was like, I hope there's no bad feelings.
Speaker 3: And there's a ton of books out there with those titles.
Speaker 3: Was Ali Risby who used the subtitle, or maybe it
Speaker 3: was the title from Religion to Reason, which was the
Speaker 3: subtitle of Deconverted. This stuff just cross pollinites. I mean,
Speaker 3: there are no original ideas anymore, but I just thought
Speaker 3: it was kind of funny. So format here, I'm going
Speaker 3: to play some clips from the actual twenty on one debate.
Speaker 3: Some people like the format, some people think it's just
Speaker 3: a gimmick. What did you think, I mean, you participated.
Speaker 3: Is it just kind of a hey, it's flash for clicks,
Speaker 3: sound biteable stuff. Does anything get accomplished or do you
Speaker 3: find utility in having one guy in the middle and
Speaker 3: a circle of twenty around him or her.
Speaker 5: I think that's a fair question. In reality, I don't
Speaker 5: think it's all about accomplishing all that much. I think
Speaker 5: it's more about setting up, you know, good soundbites and
Speaker 5: making the debate of the hero look good. In this case,
Speaker 5: that didn't exactly happen, but I think that's more of
Speaker 5: the vibe. I didn't get the sense that anybody was
Speaker 5: there to really learn anything new, you know.
Speaker 3: So the theme is that these atheists have rejected God.
Speaker 3: Jordan Peterson says, they don't really know what God. They
Speaker 3: are rejecting what they don't understand, and they poorly defined,
Speaker 3: They've limited, they've reduced. I don't know what's the vibe there, David, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. His claim the first claim that the one that
Speaker 5: I participated in, out of four claims that he made,
Speaker 5: was that atheists reject God without understanding what they're rejecting.
Speaker 5: And after fleshing out his arguments, he had kind of
Speaker 5: redefined every single thing in there, so that you know,
Speaker 5: God is the Christian God, and the Christian God doesn't
Speaker 5: mean believing in Jesus. Being a Christian to him means
Speaker 5: striving for excellence, reaching upward. That's what he said. So
Speaker 5: that's why atheists don't understand God, because they don't understand
Speaker 5: that all that's about is striving upward. And if we
Speaker 5: understood that, we would believe in Christianity and we would
Speaker 5: accept his position.
Speaker 3: All right, let me play the clip itself where he's declaring, well,
Speaker 3: he's telling atheists why they don't believe.
Speaker 6: My experience with atheists is twofold. Is that they have
Speaker 6: a very reductive notion of what constitutes God, say and
Speaker 6: did you do a Christian tradition, And they've often been
Speaker 6: hurt by someone who was religious, or by the religious enterprise,
Speaker 6: or perhaps by God himself, so to speak, and that's
Speaker 6: left them with ananimous.
Speaker 3: Okay, David, we have limited our idea of God and
Speaker 3: somebody wounded us. That's kind of what I took from that.
Speaker 3: Am I close?
Speaker 5: Oh, you're dead on And it's an argument as old
Speaker 5: as they come. I've heard that, you know since the
Speaker 5: first word time I said that I was an atheist.
Speaker 5: I heard somebody say, well, you know, you you just
Speaker 5: don't understand it properly, and that it's okay, you don't
Speaker 5: really believe that, And he really dug in on that claim.
Speaker 5: And then on the flip side, he believed that belie
Speaker 5: that Christians are properly do understand what they're rejecting, but
Speaker 5: atheists do not.
Speaker 3: And then he trods out the story of Moses. And
Speaker 3: we did a Sunday School lesson on this on the
Speaker 3: show a few years ago where we talked about how,
Speaker 3: you know, no mortal could ever totally take in the
Speaker 3: full presence of God. So God had a solution for Moses.
Speaker 3: Here's what Jordan Peterson said.
Speaker 6: So, despite the fact that Moses is a stellar character
Speaker 6: and he's had a long and difficult life and can
Speaker 6: withstand a lot of difficulty in travail, God puts them
Speaker 6: between two cliffs so we can just see a crack
Speaker 6: of what's in front of him, and when God walks by,
Speaker 6: he allows him to see his back.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 6: So the implication and implication of that story is that
Speaker 6: the divine is fundamentally unknowable. It's a pinnacle experience, and
Speaker 6: that people in their finitude have to be shielded from
Speaker 6: a comprehensive vision of the basis of reality. Well, that's
Speaker 6: not the God that's defined in that manner, right is
Speaker 6: a it's not a simple personification. It's not a simple
Speaker 6: old man in the sky. It's something that in its
Speaker 6: essence is unknowable and overwhelming. And that isn't, in my experience,
Speaker 6: the God that's defined by atheists who are attempting to
Speaker 6: undermine the story.
Speaker 5: The best part about Peterson's argument there is it, first
Speaker 5: of all, is a complete over extrapolation of what the
Speaker 5: verse actually says, where he's reading so much into something
Speaker 5: that really just says that Moses witnessed God's backside as
Speaker 5: he walked by, and takes that to mean that nobody
Speaker 5: can comprehend the full view of God, and Moses was
Speaker 5: able to only comprehend this amount, and he took it
Speaker 5: to I mean, all these things that, as the interlocerate explained,
Speaker 5: you don't really know, these are interpretations. And then he
Speaker 5: kind of proved the opposite of his point by saying
Speaker 5: God did have this physical form that was able to
Speaker 5: be witnessed by Moses, which contradicts what he's saying about
Speaker 5: how it's not just a man in the sky. It
Speaker 5: clearly was just a man that was able to be
Speaker 5: witnessed by Moses. In that case, how he's.
Speaker 3: Enjoyed that story of God wandering the garden looking for
Speaker 3: Adam and E. It's Adam and E hiding behind the trees,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, how do you hide from omniscience? I
Speaker 3: never understood that story?
Speaker 4: Same here.
Speaker 3: So you're one of the first ones in the chair.
Speaker 3: I think you were number two, right, and you get
Speaker 3: like two questions in. I actually lamented the fact that
Speaker 3: you didn't have a longer chance to sit down with
Speaker 3: a God, because I would have really welcomed a deeper exchange.
Speaker 3: But we get into our first example of Jordan Peterson
Speaker 3: telling us what we think, who we are, what we believe.
Speaker 5: You're saying atheists don't understand what religion is or what
Speaker 5: God is in order to be able to reject it
Speaker 5: fully or completely. We have someone over here who studied
Speaker 5: it in their own way. I've studied religion. I have
Speaker 5: a degree in religious studies, specialty in Christianity and Mediterranean traditions,
Speaker 5: and further than that, beyond me. Pew research studies suggest
Speaker 5: the atheists and agnostics actually know more about religion and
Speaker 5: about religious stories the foundational principles than believers.
Speaker 2: That's because they're more religious than they think they are.
Speaker 6: Okay, well, they're concerned with deep matters, and one of
Speaker 6: the defining characteristics of someone who's oriented religious direction is
Speaker 6: that they're concerned with deep matters.
Speaker 2: Okay, it fact, it's virtually definition.
Speaker 5: Right, But they also have to identify with a religious
Speaker 5: tradition and accept the foundational stories that go along.
Speaker 6: Well, that would mean more that they're sectarian than that
Speaker 6: they're religious.
Speaker 3: All right, So you and I, by being interested in
Speaker 3: deep matters, are apparently religious. This is news to me.
Speaker 3: What a revelation, David.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you better change the name of your podcast. I
Speaker 5: got to change my books. So you got to do
Speaker 5: all this stuff because Jordan Peterson says, we're not really atheist,
Speaker 5: isn't it.
Speaker 3: He did a lot of that, though, didn't he He would
Speaker 3: look at his interlockutor and say, well, you're just uncomfortable
Speaker 3: with the question, or you worship something because everybody does,
Speaker 3: or this is what atheists want to do with God,
Speaker 3: or how they define God. I mean, it's it's so presumptuous,
Speaker 3: and I didn't see anybody else doing that to Jordan Peterson,
Speaker 3: but he did it to you.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah. There was a whole lot of projection in
Speaker 5: his questioning, in his responses. He got very, very defensive
Speaker 5: very early. I think my question, I think having to
Speaker 5: admit ignorance at the beginning of my question where I
Speaker 5: asked him if he was familiar with the Polynesian deity
Speaker 5: Lono and he wasn't, And I feel like just that
Speaker 5: little admission kind of threw him off balance for that,
Speaker 5: and he was He got very defensive after that, and
Speaker 5: that's when he started telling us what we are and
Speaker 5: what we aren't. And you know, I also noticed being
Speaker 5: in that room, I noticed an anger. I don't know
Speaker 5: how else to describe it, but I've never seen anything.
Speaker 5: You and I go way back, and you know I've
Speaker 5: participated in and witnessed many many professional debates. I have
Speaker 5: never once seen somebody with the anger and intensity and
Speaker 5: their eyes and their voice as Jordan Peterson during that debate.
Speaker 5: It was very mismatched between those of us who are
Speaker 5: debating him and him.
Speaker 3: And you can see it in his face and hear
Speaker 3: it in his voice. For the video viewers, you will
Speaker 3: see a few expressions in a clip that I'm playing
Speaker 3: in just a few I'm not going to play it here.
Speaker 3: I'll let you explain it the example. Lo, No, what
Speaker 3: was it and what were you trying to accomplish?
Speaker 5: Basically, First, I wanted to get him to admit that
Speaker 5: he didn't know about a deity that he also didn't
Speaker 5: believe in. Therefore, in a sense, has rejected belief in
Speaker 5: a deity that he knows literally nothing about, so he
Speaker 5: was guilty of the same thing that he was accusing
Speaker 5: atheists of to start with. And then beyond that, I
Speaker 5: was going to go further and show what rejection means.
Speaker 5: Are we talking about that we you know that we
Speaker 5: actually reject this being or are we talking about that
Speaker 5: we just don't believe that that's the case. And then
Speaker 5: you know, down to can we actually know whether a
Speaker 5: deity exists or not? Hence why I'm an agnostic atheist
Speaker 5: and nail him down on those details. But obviously we
Speaker 5: didn't get the time for that, and I kind of
Speaker 5: just had to skip ahead and talk about the Pew
Speaker 5: research studies.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're going to get into the Christianity that Jordan
Speaker 3: Peterson both embraces and denies, and a pretty heated exchange
Speaker 3: on that subject, and we'll play the audio and talk
Speaker 3: more about this debate next.
Speaker 7: Hang on.
Speaker 3: Very recently, the guy who once said that today's college
Speaker 3: students were being brainwashed into cultural Marxism, who said that
Speaker 3: disciplines like women's studies should be defunded, who advised students
Speaker 3: to avoid subjects including sociology, anthropology, English literature, ethnic studies,
Speaker 3: racial studies, and other fields which have been corrupted by
Speaker 3: the woke libs. Who has claimed that there was an
Speaker 3: ongoing crisis of masculinity and a backlash against the masculine
Speaker 3: man who said to Joe Rogan back in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: two that quote there is no such thing as climate,
Speaker 3: and climate and everything are the same word. A man
Speaker 3: somehow described in The New Yorker just a few years
Speaker 3: ago as one of the most influential public intellectuals in
Speaker 3: the English speaking world. Jordan Peterson recently sat down in
Speaker 3: kind of a round table with twenty atheists, and among
Speaker 3: those atheists was my guest, my friend, the guy we're
Speaker 3: talking to about that today, David McAfee. So when we
Speaker 3: get into the specifics, because he talked almost exclusively about Christianity.
Speaker 3: But when you try to nail him down or any
Speaker 3: of the people in the room tried to nail him
Speaker 3: down on the specifics or backing up or defending biblical
Speaker 3: truths with a capital T, he was like, well, that's
Speaker 3: not religion or religious as much as it is sectarianism, right,
Speaker 3: this limited, narrow, myopic view of something. So now you're
Speaker 3: merely being sectarian. But I'm like, well, if you're going
Speaker 3: to invoke Christianity, how do you separate yourself from the
Speaker 3: fundamental text of Christianity? Right?
Speaker 5: One hundred percent? And he actually refused to say that
Speaker 5: he believed Jesus was divine, that he believed Jesus came
Speaker 5: from God, that he believed Jesus was resurrected. He wouldn't
Speaker 5: say any of that. Yet when we were approached for
Speaker 5: this debate, at least I was told, you know, a
Speaker 5: prominent Christian, it would be called Christian verse twenty atheists.
Speaker 5: He wouldn't even adhere to the most basic of Christian principles.
Speaker 5: Do you believe in Jesus or not? He couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: Was it true that it was originally titled the debate
Speaker 3: was titled a Christian versus twenty Atheists, and after he
Speaker 3: refused to identify as a Christian during the debate, somebody
Speaker 3: went back and changed the name of the YouTube.
Speaker 5: Yes, so I was approached for Christian Verse twenty Atheists.
Speaker 5: During my casting agent call, the agent said something to
Speaker 5: the effect of this person is known for saying vague
Speaker 5: things about Christian culture. And as soon as I heard
Speaker 5: Christian culture, I thought either Charlie Kirk or Jordan Peterson.
Speaker 5: And Charlie Kirk just did an episode of Surrounded a
Speaker 5: month or two ago, a couple months ago, and so
Speaker 5: I figured it must be Jordan Peterson. But I looked
Speaker 5: up online He's never identified as a Christian. So I
Speaker 5: was like, I'm going to go in there and probably
Speaker 5: expect him to this is his coming out as a Christian.
Speaker 5: He's going to admit during this debate that he is
Speaker 5: a Christian, and it's going to move forward. When he
Speaker 5: didn't do that, and he you know, there's that famous
Speaker 5: moment where he refused to Danny is his name. I
Speaker 5: thought they would change the I thought they would publish
Speaker 5: the YouTube video as Peterson Verse twenty Eightheists, but they
Speaker 5: published it as Christian Verse twenty eighteists. It took about
Speaker 5: four hours for them to rename the YouTube video after
Speaker 5: the comments were just filled with people saying, this guy
Speaker 5: said in the video he's not a Christian. How are
Speaker 5: you labeling this as Christian? Verse twenty eighteists.
Speaker 3: And Christian's freaking out right? I'll yeah, you coward.
Speaker 5: Is everybody big Christian names, big maga Christian names. People
Speaker 5: made such a big stink about it. He found himself
Speaker 5: on the shit list of so many random people, white supremacists,
Speaker 5: all kinds of people, And I was like, holy crap,
Speaker 5: this he really stepped in it with his own team
Speaker 5: on this one.
Speaker 3: I saw a Fox News article and it ran. I mean,
Speaker 3: its headline was essentially, Jordan Peterson shocks by refusing to
Speaker 3: identify as a Christian, and uh, you know, but then
Speaker 3: lucky us, he decides he's going to clarify it. Jordan
Speaker 3: Peterson uses the Old Testament and a popular iconic Old
Speaker 3: Testament character to define God.
Speaker 6: So Elijah, the prophet Elijah defined God in the Old
Speaker 6: Testament as the voice of conscience within Okay, that's a definition.
Speaker 8: So you're just you're saying, by that definition of God,
Speaker 8: I see, this is kind of goes back to where
Speaker 8: I'm saying.
Speaker 2: We're not defining it Elijah.
Speaker 8: So as elijahs as Elijah defines.
Speaker 6: God to find that way in Julnah too. Okay, so
Speaker 6: as Cardinal Newman also defined as I'm sure you know
Speaker 6: many people who defined it that way. And it's impressive.
Speaker 6: You're a very knowledgeable.
Speaker 2: Person trying to be impressive.
Speaker 6: I'm just pointing out to you how God is defined
Speaker 6: in the Old Testament, all right.
Speaker 8: So to respond to that, I do think there are
Speaker 8: lots of interesting ways to define God. And that goes
Speaker 8: back to mind.
Speaker 2: And then how do we specify what we're arguing about.
Speaker 8: We use context clues or we special we again, it
Speaker 8: goes back to my example.
Speaker 2: The moment finding God as conscience.
Speaker 8: Okay, so that's interesting, but then you're kind of expanding
Speaker 8: the meaning of.
Speaker 6: God on that's how it's defined in the Old Testament, Okay, Elijah.
Speaker 2: And in Jonah, so whoever, so not whoever.
Speaker 6: Elijah is one of the major Old Testament prophets, right,
Speaker 6: He's equal in statue to Moses.
Speaker 2: So it's not arbitrary, all right.
Speaker 8: So that is interesting, but it's not relevant to the
Speaker 8: context with which I am using the term God.
Speaker 2: It's directly relevant. Atheists reject God, but they don't understand
Speaker 2: what they're rejecting.
Speaker 6: If you accept conscience as a guide and conscious is
Speaker 6: one of the defining characteristics of God in the Old Testament.
Speaker 8: I think you're being intellectually disingenuous.
Speaker 2: In what way?
Speaker 6: Because I asked you if you believe the conscience guide.
Speaker 8: You just asked me a question, and then you stop
Speaker 8: me from answering it. In this setting, you understand the
Speaker 8: way I am using the term God and belief not
Speaker 8: in the least.
Speaker 6: I don't understand how you're using it in the least.
Speaker 6: That's why I'm trying to define it. My definition of
Speaker 6: God is conscience is a lot more precise and oriented
Speaker 6: than your definition of the God that you hypothetically disbelieve in.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I've always heard that God wrote the
Speaker 5: moral law on our hearts or something like that, and
Speaker 5: so I get his argument that God is part of conscience.
Speaker 5: But he is being intellectual intellectually dishonest there. He's being
Speaker 5: intellectually dishonest because he knows that we're talking about the
Speaker 5: God that's described in the Bible, the same Bible that
Speaker 5: he's quoting describes a god who rains brimstone from the sky.
Speaker 5: That describes a god who picks and chooses who's going
Speaker 5: to win and lose in wars. It's a tribal deity
Speaker 5: who has chosen a group of people to protect over
Speaker 5: all others. And the way he's interpreting as conscience does
Speaker 5: not make sense. And he knows that he knows what
Speaker 5: he's doing as well.
Speaker 4: I could tell.
Speaker 3: There was a gentleman who sat in the interlocutor chair
Speaker 3: was talking about you of all deathical systems as a
Speaker 3: riff on where do your morals come from if you
Speaker 3: don't believe in God? And he went down a familiar path.
Speaker 3: You know, pro social behaviors, even altruistic behaviors makes sense
Speaker 3: because this was a key to surviving and thriving in
Speaker 3: the African Savannah. Blah blah blah. And Jordan Peterson he
Speaker 3: wasn't having any of that. And he said something that
Speaker 3: I found was interesting, and I'll play the clip so
Speaker 3: you can hear him say it. Science itself has to
Speaker 3: exist within a moral framework that isn't scientific.
Speaker 6: Science has to exist within a moral framework that isn't
Speaker 6: in itself scientific.
Speaker 9: How's a scientific well?
Speaker 6: Because it's not derived from the scientific process, as you
Speaker 6: just indicated process.
Speaker 9: Fact, we are social animals and we need that to
Speaker 9: exist as a group.
Speaker 6: Sure, you pointed to the morality of Neanderthals, to the
Speaker 6: morality of chimpanzees.
Speaker 2: They didn't derive that from science.
Speaker 9: They don't need to. Science explains it.
Speaker 2: Science doesn't explain morality.
Speaker 9: It doesn't explain how social animals would need it to be.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a complicated question, but we see it though.
Speaker 6: Yeah, But explaining the evolution of morality and explaining morality
Speaker 6: itself aren't the same thing.
Speaker 5: I don't even really know what he was trying to
Speaker 5: go forward that, but I do remember when he was
Speaker 5: referencing science and our moral framework, he was basically saying that,
Speaker 5: you know, like the nuclear bomb is a scientific advancement,
Speaker 5: but it was used unethically and was able to harm people.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: I don't think there's anybody who disagrees with that comment.
Speaker 5: But I also don't think that that means what he
Speaker 5: was trying to make.
Speaker 4: It mean that.
Speaker 5: Science can't be a part of how we learn more
Speaker 5: about morality. It has to come from this biblical it
Speaker 5: has to come from this religious place. I don't feel
Speaker 5: like his point landed there, and I think that he
Speaker 5: knew that. It felt like he knew that as he
Speaker 5: was being pressed on that point.
Speaker 2: Damn, But how.
Speaker 3: Much of this stuff was just Jordan Peterson word salad right,
Speaker 3: peterson isms? The metaphysical substrance. I think somebody even brought
Speaker 3: that phrase up during I don't even know what the
Speaker 3: hell he means by metaphysical substrate, but he talks about
Speaker 3: it all the time. Did you find that when he
Speaker 3: was backed into a corner he would just sort of
Speaker 3: weave a bunch of multi syllable words and the hopes
Speaker 3: of masking the fact that he was he had nothing
Speaker 3: of substance.
Speaker 5: That's almost exclusively what he did. And you know, I'm
Speaker 5: familiar with Peterson before this. I know that that's kind
Speaker 5: of his mo But I figured that we would at
Speaker 5: least be able to have a genuine conversation sitting together
Speaker 5: during this event, And instead we're sitting here and he
Speaker 5: claims that atheists are rejecting God, but they don't know
Speaker 5: what they believe in, and he redefines atheism, He redefines rejection,
Speaker 5: and he redefines God in all these convoluted ways that
Speaker 5: nobody could possibly follow. I don't think he's following along.
Speaker 5: I mean, at one point he gasly is interlocked her
Speaker 5: by saying that he said a when he did say
Speaker 5: the and he just didn't like to be pointed out
Speaker 5: they was wrong. He didn't like when I made him
Speaker 5: admit they didn't know about a deity. I don't think
Speaker 5: I think that's what makes him go into word salid
Speaker 5: mode is when he feels like he's wrong about something,
Speaker 5: or when he feels out of place or put on
Speaker 5: the spot, like he has to defend something he doesn't
Speaker 5: fully comprehend.
Speaker 3: Another example, he redefines worship in an odd way. So
Speaker 3: he says, worship is a scale, right, it's a priority scale.
Speaker 3: So if something is down here, then it doesn't matter
Speaker 3: all that much to us. We certainly do not worship.
Speaker 3: We're not that attuned to it. We don't I forgot
Speaker 3: what the word was attending.
Speaker 4: To it atending yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And yet then if something becomes a greater and greater priority,
Speaker 3: when it gets really at the top, now I don't
Speaker 3: just love it or respect it or crave it or
Speaker 3: admire it or attend to it. I worship it. And
Speaker 3: so he from that model. Then if you and I
Speaker 3: have anything in our life that means anything to us
Speaker 3: in a very deep way, you worship that thing.
Speaker 2: It's not possible that you don't worship anyone. Do I worship?
Speaker 2: Because you wouldn't attend well, love?
Speaker 10: So I do think I worship love?
Speaker 2: Do you attend in consequence of love? I say, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to define something. What do you mean worship? I
Speaker 2: told you what I don't. What do you mean? So?
Speaker 11: I mean it's a word. Something you worship is something
Speaker 11: that you have a reverential view for in a manner
Speaker 11: in which you believe it to be above and beyond
Speaker 11: normal things you like, like like you have that.
Speaker 6: Attitude towards your wife. I have that you privilege her
Speaker 6: to compare to other women.
Speaker 11: Of course I privilege her compared to other women. But
Speaker 11: I don't worship her worship, nor does she worship.
Speaker 2: Me by the definition you just offered. Yes you do,
Speaker 2: because we talket.
Speaker 6: You just offered a definition that involved prioritization and elevation.
Speaker 11: And thinking that she is divine, above and beyond what
Speaker 11: a normal another women be, No other women, no beyond
Speaker 11: any human being could ever be. I will prioritize her
Speaker 11: over as you're making an assumption, she is.
Speaker 6: You're making the assumption that only the thing at the
Speaker 6: top or the bottom has anything to do with worship,
Speaker 6: and I'm saying that's not true. It's a hierarchy of prioritization,
Speaker 6: and there's something. There's either something at the top or
Speaker 6: the bottom, depending on the metaphor, or you're fragmented and confused.
Speaker 2: Those are the only options.
Speaker 6: So let's say you're either going in many directions, okay,
Speaker 6: or you're going in one direction.
Speaker 11: Let's suppose I'm fragmented and confused. Then you agree I
Speaker 11: don't worship anything.
Speaker 2: No, well, then you'd worship multiple things.
Speaker 5: His logic here is completely circular, because he literally says
Speaker 5: that whatever is at the top of your totem pole
Speaker 5: of things that you care about, whatever it is, that's
Speaker 5: what you worship. And so everybody worships something under that model,
Speaker 5: because even if you don't believe in something very deeply
Speaker 5: or love something very deeply, whatever you believe in love
Speaker 5: the most, that's what you would worship. In his mind,
Speaker 5: it completely does not make sense. It redefines all the
Speaker 5: terms so that he's right, and it makes it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: And he did the same with this idea of something
Speaker 3: that we believe in. You and I believe in something.
Speaker 3: If we believe in something, then how far are we
Speaker 3: prepared to go with that belief?
Speaker 7: Okay, so you're saying that you don't believe something if
Speaker 7: you wouldn't die for it.
Speaker 6: Not really no, okay, So now would you define belief
Speaker 6: something you say?
Speaker 5: It reminded me of in Dogma when Rufus is saying
Speaker 5: a belief is something that you really people die for
Speaker 5: and an idea is just something that you think you know.
Speaker 5: And I think he took that a little too far,
Speaker 5: took it as gospel and started deciding that if you
Speaker 5: believe in something, you have to die for it. He
Speaker 5: really said that. He said, anything that you believe is true,
Speaker 5: you will die for. And then when confronted on that
Speaker 5: point where they said, here's an instance where you would
Speaker 5: lie and not die for your beliefs based on what
Speaker 5: you think is true or not, he completely backpedaled. He
Speaker 5: said he refuses to answer hypothetical questions. And that was
Speaker 5: one of the highlights of the entire debate.
Speaker 3: Oh I got to play a clip from that, because
Speaker 3: this is a point where Jordan Peterson is agitated.
Speaker 4: You lost it?
Speaker 3: Would you lie if it meant you would save a life?
Speaker 7: I could believe it is the case that this pen exists.
Speaker 7: But if someone like threatened my life, right, I would
Speaker 7: lie in order to be able to save my life,
Speaker 7: right like? I think you would do that too. You
Speaker 7: wouldn't lie to save life? You so sure you wouldn't
Speaker 7: lie to save your life?
Speaker 6: How much do you know about me? I didn't lie
Speaker 6: to save my career. I didn't lie to save my
Speaker 6: clinical practice.
Speaker 7: Would you lie to save your children and your mom
Speaker 7: and your dad?
Speaker 2: I don't think lying would save.
Speaker 7: The Can there ever be a circumstance logically that lying
Speaker 7: could save something?
Speaker 6: Yeah, And if you're steeped in sin, you're likely live
Speaker 6: in circumstances like that.
Speaker 7: I'll give you an example. If you're like in like
Speaker 7: Nazi Germany, and it is the case that there's like
Speaker 7: Jewish people in your attic and you're trying to would
Speaker 7: you lie to like the Nazis?
Speaker 6: I would have done everything I bloody well could, so
Speaker 6: I wouldn't be in that situation begin with.
Speaker 2: It's a hypothetical, and it's yotheticals.
Speaker 6: No, I can't answer hypothetical like that, because it's fa
Speaker 6: Can you present me with an intractable moral choice that's
Speaker 6: stripped of context and you backed me.
Speaker 2: Into a corner? You're playing game.
Speaker 6: I just told you I would do everything that I
Speaker 6: could to make sure that I'm never in that situation.
Speaker 6: By the time you've got there, you've made so many
Speaker 6: mistakes that there's nothing you can do that isn't a sin.
Speaker 3: How unbelievably pathetic is this notion that, well, the Jews
Speaker 3: who were oppressed by the Nazis in Germany, who lied
Speaker 3: to hide and frank or whatever, well they got themselves
Speaker 3: into this position through a series of one thousand preliminary
Speaker 3: decisions that they should have known better, and it was
Speaker 3: their sin that put them in a position where they
Speaker 3: would have to lie to escape murder by the Nazis.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, David McAfee, I mean, you had to have
Speaker 3: almost been wanting to come out of your chair at
Speaker 3: the time, right.
Speaker 5: If there's video of me in my chair, I was.
Speaker 5: I was popping out of my chair because not only
Speaker 5: is this man saying what you exactly just stated, he's saying,
Speaker 5: you know, these people who hid Jews from Nazis made
Speaker 5: all these mistakes that led up to that point, like
Speaker 5: being born in Germany, like knowing a Jewish person. These
Speaker 5: are the type of mistakes that these people made. Necessarily,
Speaker 5: there's nothing else but beyond that. If you take his
Speaker 5: words and you map out what that actually means. What
Speaker 5: he's saying in that clip is that if he were
Speaker 5: around in Germany during Hitler's reign, that the Holocaust wouldn't
Speaker 5: have happened. He said, I wouldn't have found myself in
Speaker 5: that position because I wouldn't have let myself come that
Speaker 5: I wouldn't have let by the time that the Holocaust happened,
Speaker 5: there were so many mistakes that people let it happen.
Speaker 5: He was literally suggesting that he alone, Jordan Peterson, could
Speaker 5: stop the Holocaust and would have if he were around
Speaker 5: at that point of time, and that he would have
Speaker 5: done it without lying once.
Speaker 3: And that those who were caught up in the meat
Speaker 3: grinder of Hitler's Germany essentially responsible because all of the
Speaker 3: preliminary decisions they had made in their lives had led
Speaker 3: them to the moment of calamity. It's victim blaming and it's.
Speaker 4: Such a thing in it.
Speaker 5: Oh that was I could not believe that one. I
Speaker 5: legitimately was like, I was looking around at the people
Speaker 5: next to me. I was like, is this really happening?
Speaker 5: Did he just say that he would have prevented the
Speaker 5: Holocaust single handedly? And to my surprise, that wasn't even
Speaker 5: the highlight of the debate because the main highlight of
Speaker 5: the debate because then it comes to where he's put
Speaker 5: on the spot about the Christianity and has that will
Speaker 5: blow up. But when he's talking about Nazi Germany, I
Speaker 5: saw him get so mad, and I think they cut
Speaker 5: out certain parts where I saw in the room where
Speaker 5: his eyes just he was looking at I believe his
Speaker 5: name was Parker, with just this hatred that I really
Speaker 5: have not seen. As I said, as I mentioned, I
Speaker 5: can't get into that guy's brain. I don't know what's
Speaker 5: going on in there, but it's not pretty.
Speaker 3: Before I play the next clip, I got to know
Speaker 3: you're sitting there with all these other people. First of all,
Speaker 3: were you taking visual cues from each other? You're watching
Speaker 3: each other going oh my god, oh my oh, Mike,
Speaker 3: can you believe he saying that? Are you guys playing
Speaker 3: off each other?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 5: Definitely, yeah, we're all keeping each other in view. And
Speaker 5: the thing that was bad for me is a lot
Speaker 5: of these people are regulars where they're doing these debates
Speaker 5: all the time, and they're the people that they call
Speaker 5: in to do this thing, and I was pretty much
Speaker 5: the only one or one of the few who hadn't
Speaker 5: done it before, and so that's why they kind of
Speaker 5: voted me out faster, so that they could get their
Speaker 5: turn to talk for their friends and the people who
Speaker 5: are doing it a lot more often. That's what they
Speaker 5: told me afterward. But during the actual debate, we're all
Speaker 5: looking at each other. And I even saw in my
Speaker 5: clip when I'm making the few research point, I see
Speaker 5: people with their flag up to take me down, and
Speaker 5: they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And the point you were making, to be clear, was
Speaker 3: that non believers actually statistically have a greater knowledge of
Speaker 3: what the Bible says than the people who ostensibly believe
Speaker 3: in it. And you were just trying to say, you know,
Speaker 3: I think the point was correct me if I'm wrong
Speaker 3: that hey, we're not coming at it because we don't understand,
Speaker 3: we're actually in disagreement because we do often understand better
Speaker 3: even than those who say it's.
Speaker 5: True one hundred percent. You and I are good examples
Speaker 5: of that with your background, in my background, we do
Speaker 5: know more than the average person. The average believer does
Speaker 5: about their religion. And that's okay. That's not to say
Speaker 5: that they can't have their faith, But to come to
Speaker 5: a debate like this and assert the opposite, I'm going
Speaker 5: to have to bring up the facts. And those studies
Speaker 5: are done every couple of years. Is not a one off.
Speaker 5: They always always show atheists, agnostics, and then Jewish people
Speaker 5: they have the highest understanding of the various religious systems.
Speaker 3: Oh goodie. Jordan Peterson has asked about slavery and other
Speaker 3: atrocities in the Christian Old Testament.
Speaker 12: So in the Bible it talks a lot about slavery, right, yes, yes,
Speaker 12: So in that it teaches you how to take care
Speaker 12: of a slave rather than saying slavery is wrong.
Speaker 2: I think he says that in the story of Moses.
Speaker 4: Says slavery is incorrect.
Speaker 2: Why Moses leads us people away from slavery, But why.
Speaker 12: Does the Bible predicate and tell people exactly how to
Speaker 12: take care.
Speaker 4: Of a slave is moral?
Speaker 12: Wouldn't you say that culturally we've evolved as a species,
Speaker 12: As he said earlier, about empathy.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I would say that the reason we evolved, so
Speaker 6: to speak, away from slavery was because the West was
Speaker 6: founded on Judeo Christian morality and the presumption that every
Speaker 6: person was made in the image of God. Slavery itself
Speaker 6: became immoral, and that was established by Protestant Christians in
Speaker 6: the UK, who then convinced the UK government for two
Speaker 6: hundred years to go to war.
Speaker 12: And way you say that this is about the cultural
Speaker 12: evolution of humans in general rather than just I.
Speaker 6: Think it's the flowering of the ideas that were embedded
Speaker 6: in the Biblical text across long spans of time.
Speaker 12: I feel like this is just humans editing based on
Speaker 12: the cultural evolution.
Speaker 2: What do you mean by just well.
Speaker 12: Based on culture and history.
Speaker 4: Right, we get better.
Speaker 6: They did do it based on culture and history. But
Speaker 6: culture and history have their foundations too well.
Speaker 12: Yeah, but we were talking about slavery, so many people
Speaker 12: bolstered it based.
Speaker 2: On everyone based on the Bible.
Speaker 12: They looked, they justified it. In the United States and
Speaker 12: the South, they justified slavery.
Speaker 6: But the main thrust, the main thrust of Protestant thought
Speaker 6: in particular, was stringent slavery, and it was about the
Speaker 6: only movement in the history of the human race that
Speaker 6: had an anti slavery direction.
Speaker 12: Which was driven by humans. And well, it depends the
Speaker 12: same with women's suffrage, I mean women's in.
Speaker 2: The patri mean it was driven by humans. Humans drove
Speaker 2: slavery too, Yes, exactly they So there was no argument there.
Speaker 6: If slavery and anti slavery were both driven by humans,
Speaker 6: what what does your claim that they were driven by
Speaker 6: humans have to.
Speaker 2: Do with it?
Speaker 12: Based on the culture that within the society that they live. Okay,
Speaker 12: So with as well as a very similar topic in
Speaker 12: the Bible, there are denominations in Christianity such as Pentecostal
Speaker 12: movement which do bolster women to be pastors, right, which
Speaker 12: I think that's a great thing to do.
Speaker 2: But most like to disregard.
Speaker 6: Where do you think the idea that human beings were
Speaker 6: sufficiently equal to all vote and not be slaves came
Speaker 6: from humans?
Speaker 2: Yeah? But so did the idea of slavery. So did
Speaker 2: the idea of God.
Speaker 6: Fine, but what's your point, Like, you're not making an argument,
Speaker 6: You're just saying all thoughts come from humans. Regardless of
Speaker 6: the thoughts.
Speaker 12: It's not driven by higher power, it's driven on our experience, hires,
Speaker 12: which is what is.
Speaker 2: Best for all? Is it driven by conscience?
Speaker 12: It could be which conscious is also something that has
Speaker 12: evolved over time, and I think that's what does evolve
Speaker 12: with morality and empathy.
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't understand the point that you're making.
Speaker 5: As I was listening to that, all I could think
Speaker 5: of was Bill Clinton. It depends on what the definition
Speaker 5: of the word is. Is define, just define higher, define all.
Speaker 5: You don't know what just means, like you do know
Speaker 5: exactly what he's trying to say. He was put on
Speaker 5: his back foot, and he was hesitant, and he was
Speaker 5: trying to catch him up in word games. Because the
Speaker 5: Interlocketare was correct that the Old Testament described how to
Speaker 5: take care of slaves in some instances, it says when
Speaker 5: you are allowed to kill them, and it never says
Speaker 5: that slavery is a moral is wrong in any way
Speaker 5: he's talking about the story of Moses. Was that story
Speaker 5: is about how the enslavement of Jews is wrong. The
Speaker 5: chosen people, the Jews are allowed to keep slaves as
Speaker 5: per the rest of the text. He's picking and choosing
Speaker 5: these things on purpose to try to distract from the
Speaker 5: main point. And then to play down the nature of
Speaker 5: Christianity in supporting slavery in America is insane, because of
Speaker 5: course there were religious elements to the pushback, especially the
Speaker 5: Quakers played a big, big, big, big role in anti
Speaker 5: slavery activism early on, but primarily all all of the
Speaker 5: main arguments used to support slavery where Christian and nature,
Speaker 5: as that individual was saying.
Speaker 3: Exodus what seven through twelve, I think tells the story
Speaker 3: of Moses and the liberation of the Israelites out of Egypt,
Speaker 3: but it's just a few chapters later, and Exodus twenty
Speaker 3: one we're talking about specific instructions how to beat your slave,
Speaker 3: How if the slave gets up within forty eight hours
Speaker 3: and he's conscious and can move around, then there's no
Speaker 3: punishment or penalty for the master. And you know, you
Speaker 3: have Jesus. So we have New Testament references to slavery,
Speaker 3: and Jesus never once says, oh, this is a shitty idea.
Speaker 3: So this idea that you know, Judeo Christian thought is
Speaker 3: the reason that the abolition of slavery has taken place,
Speaker 3: not just in the United States but worldwide, is absolutely crazy.
Speaker 3: You want to speak to Judeo Christian. He threw that
Speaker 3: term out a few times.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, he loves that because he knows that
Speaker 5: it helps him conflate his beliefs. But when it comes
Speaker 5: to the issue of slavery, you know, Christians could have
Speaker 5: a good point if they were able to make it properly.
Speaker 5: It is true that a lot of slaves were mistreated
Speaker 5: during the years in which the Bible was being compiled,
Speaker 5: and it's also true that having rules such as, hey,
Speaker 5: you could be punished if you kill your slave, that
Speaker 5: was pretty new to the time. So Christianity was a
Speaker 5: step forward regarding the treatment of slaves at their time period.
Speaker 5: But the second you say that it's from an all
Speaker 5: knowing God and all loving God, you throw all that away,
Speaker 5: because now you have to account for how these beliefs
Speaker 5: have continued for all these years, even though now we
Speaker 5: know that they're a moral We have to account for
Speaker 5: why God and Jesus allowed slavery in the first place
Speaker 5: if they are truly all loving, omnipotent beings, and that
Speaker 5: just they can't do that. So yeah, Peterson ended up
Speaker 5: looking like a fool there.
Speaker 3: Two. I narrated the audiobook for a seriologist, doctor Joshua
Speaker 3: Bowen did the Old Testament endorse slavery, and he was
Speaker 3: addressing the common apologetic that, well, you know, God had
Speaker 3: to work with what he had at the time, these
Speaker 3: primitive ages, these primitive cultures, so he had to condescend
Speaker 3: and use the system that was already in place. God
Speaker 3: just couldn't abolish slavery outright. He had to kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, use the clay that he was given in
Speaker 3: this primitive time. David McAfee, we know it's bullshit. Why
Speaker 3: is the argument bullshit?
Speaker 5: Well, the youth played that he was given given by
Speaker 5: whom oh wait, God, who created us all. I think
Speaker 5: the time that anybody leans on that argument that you
Speaker 5: just made is them admitting that God isn't all powerful.
Speaker 5: If he has to play into whatever the current culture's
Speaker 5: games are and he has to rely on the clay
Speaker 5: he's given for this particular context, then he's by definition
Speaker 5: not all powerful.
Speaker 3: Jordan Peterson challenged about whether or not he is a
Speaker 3: Catholic and believes in the Immaculate Conception or understands the
Speaker 3: Immaculate Conception, and things get kind of nasty. That clip
Speaker 3: is right after this. I'm talking here with author and
Speaker 3: journalist David McAfee. He was in the circle in the
Speaker 3: room as twenty atheists faced off one at a time
Speaker 3: against Jordan Peterson. So let's play the clip that we've
Speaker 3: referenced a few times, and this is the hottest moment
Speaker 3: in a ninety minute discussion.
Speaker 4: I'm excited to talk about this.
Speaker 3: One where the guy goes I mean, the interlocutor, I
Speaker 3: can't remember his name. He goes hard. Some would say
Speaker 3: too hard, but I mean, I don't know. I thought
Speaker 3: it was kind of refreshing at Jordan Peterson regarding his
Speaker 3: Christian slash Catholic faith.
Speaker 10: Are you familiar with the Immaculate conception?
Speaker 2: Why is that relevant?
Speaker 13: Because you go to a Catholic church? Don't or you've
Speaker 13: attended recently? You're interested in Catholicism, aren't you sure?
Speaker 10: All right? Are you familiar with their doctrine?
Speaker 2: Somewhat?
Speaker 10: Okay, you're familiar. How do they regard how do they
Speaker 10: regard Mary? Why are you asking me because you're a Christian?
Speaker 2: You say that I haven't claimed that.
Speaker 10: Oh what is this? Is this a Christians versus atheist?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 10: You don't know where you are right now?
Speaker 2: Don't be a smart ass. Well, and I mean, either
Speaker 2: you're a PSI or you if you're a smart ass.
Speaker 10: Oh, either you're a Christian or you're not. Which one
Speaker 10: is it?
Speaker 2: I could be either of them. But I don't have
Speaker 2: to take you.
Speaker 10: You don't have to tell me.
Speaker 13: I was under the impression I was invited to talk
Speaker 13: to a Christian?
Speaker 10: Am I not talking to a Christian?
Speaker 2: No, you were invited to.
Speaker 13: I think everyone should look at the title of the
Speaker 13: YouTube channel. You're probably in the wrong YouTube video. You're
Speaker 13: a really quite something you are, aren't I?
Speaker 10: But you're really quite nothing right, You're.
Speaker 2: Not a Christian. I'm done with him.
Speaker 5: Danny came out of the gate very hard and very
Speaker 5: fast at Jordan Peterson, And you know, there was a
Speaker 5: part of me that did cringe because he's coming at
Speaker 5: him so hard so fast that it doesn't feel like
Speaker 5: it's in good faith. That being said, the format necessarily
Speaker 5: lends itself to that type of interaction, so I wasn't
Speaker 5: really blaming him. And then he asked the questions that
Speaker 5: every single one of us was wanting to ask in
Speaker 5: that room. Every single person was like nodding right along
Speaker 5: with him because we all wanted to know how he's
Speaker 5: capable how he wants to defend the Christian position and
Speaker 5: won't admit to his own Christian beliefs or lack thereof.
Speaker 5: He wouldn't say it either way. Then, when Jordan Peterson
Speaker 5: rage quit on everybody and said I'm done with this one,
Speaker 5: Danny walks away, and the production actually chastised Danny and
Speaker 5: was like, that's not cool. We're not going to let
Speaker 5: you come up and speak again. Because of that, he
Speaker 5: got in trouble. And after the filming, I was talking
Speaker 5: to Danny. We were just kind of alone, just chatting
Speaker 5: about it, and he was like, they're going to cut
Speaker 5: that out of the debate because they got mad at me,
Speaker 5: and it's going to make them look bad for even
Speaker 5: having him on as a Christian. W won't say he's
Speaker 5: a Christian. And I said, I told him, there is
Speaker 5: no way they are cutting the most interesting part of
Speaker 5: that debate. There's just no way that's going to be
Speaker 5: the highlight. And then as soon as it published, they
Speaker 5: open with that clip and it just went crazy, and
Speaker 5: I was like, I knew they were going to lean
Speaker 5: into that.
Speaker 3: Is there a question that you wish you'd gotten in.
Speaker 3: I'm sure there's probably a booklet of them. But before
Speaker 3: I let you go here, you know the format is
Speaker 3: tragically limited. Twenty people in a room, ninety minutes, blah
Speaker 3: blah blah. But you're sitting down over coffee. What other
Speaker 3: stuff would you have?
Speaker 5: Asked Jordan Peterson. I, yeah, you're right, I have a
Speaker 5: book about it in my mind about it, and I
Speaker 5: would like the chance to sit down with them and
Speaker 5: have a good faith debate about these topics. I just
Speaker 5: don't know if he's capable. I truly don't know that.
Speaker 5: I didn't get the sense that he was. I got
Speaker 5: the idea, I got the viewpoint that he was trying
Speaker 5: really hard to confuse people and trying really hard to
Speaker 5: keep people from understanding, as opposed to trying to understand
Speaker 5: and help people understand. But if it was a good
Speaker 5: faith discussion, I would definitely have gotten him to nail
Speaker 5: down some definitions of belief. Does it just mean adhering
Speaker 5: to something that you think is true, or does it
Speaker 5: really mean to him, like, if you believe this pencil
Speaker 5: is read, then you will die for that pencil being read.
Speaker 5: I need him to know, I need him to tell
Speaker 5: us if that's true or just bluster. I think we
Speaker 5: all know that that's bluster and that he really really
Speaker 5: really wants the people that he talks to at the
Speaker 5: Daily Wire is conservative audience. They want him to say
Speaker 5: stuff like that, and so I think that was more
Speaker 5: for the audience at home than anyone else.
Speaker 3: If you like that. There's a whole culture of folks.
Speaker 3: They're just impressed something about the way he present Like
Speaker 3: I don't get it. When I look at him, I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: that doesn't make any sense. No, that's bullshit. No, that's
Speaker 3: esoteric word salad, you know. But there is a demographic
Speaker 3: of people. I'm not trying to say I'm smart to
Speaker 3: anybody else, but for some reason, his frequency hits their
Speaker 3: receiver and they're like, Wow, that guide's an intellectual heavyweight.
Speaker 3: Let us, you know, listen with great attention to everything
Speaker 3: that he has to say. I do not get this. Damn,
Speaker 3: I don't understand.
Speaker 5: I actually know a person and I hope she does
Speaker 5: not watch this, because I was just talking to her
Speaker 5: the other day, a girl I used to talk two
Speaker 5: years ago, and she now considers herself a conservative and
Speaker 5: no longer an atheist, and she used to be a
Speaker 5: liberal atheist, and she credits Jordan Peterson for that. She says,
Speaker 5: until she started listening to Jordan Peterson, she was a
Speaker 5: liberal atheist and now she's not. And when I was
Speaker 5: talking to her about her, she's like, he's just so
Speaker 5: genius and all this stuff. And I think it's because
Speaker 5: he's just smart enough to convince dumb people and average
Speaker 5: intelligence people that he's smarter than he actually is. I
Speaker 5: will not say that he's dumb.
Speaker 4: He's not.
Speaker 5: I could tell that he's an intelligent man. You have
Speaker 5: to be able to be smart to be able to
Speaker 5: play the word games that he does play. But he's
Speaker 5: not the genius that he wants people to think he is.
Speaker 5: And I think that's probably his greatest insecurity. I think
Speaker 5: that might be why he plays these games, because he
Speaker 5: fears that somebody's gonna find out that he's not what
Speaker 5: he's presented himself as.
Speaker 3: It also might explain why he got so agitated at
Speaker 3: several points when he was really called to task. Next time,
Speaker 3: we'll sit you down in a room and you can
Speaker 3: have a debate with a random word generator and then
Speaker 3: might have kind of the same experience. David, where can
Speaker 3: people find you? Your books? Your work et, cetera. Where
Speaker 3: do they go?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, go to I'm on Facebook author David G. McAfee.
Speaker 5: My books are all on Amazon Disproving Christianity, no Sacred cows. Hi,
Speaker 5: I'm an atheist, the Belief book. You can find me anywhere.
Speaker 4: David G. McAfee is usually my tag and I.
Speaker 3: Will throw the link and the link to the original debate,
Speaker 3: the ninety minute twenty on one Atheist versus Jordan Peterson
Speaker 3: debate that is linked in the description box, and it's
Speaker 3: worth a full watch rather than just catch the sound bites.
Speaker 3: Go back and check me and what's the whole damn thing?
Speaker 3: And I think you'll find it compelling, interesting, entertaining, maddening,
Speaker 3: and probably a whole bunch of other adjectives. David McAfee,
Speaker 3: It's always a pleasure to hang out, my friend. Thanks
Speaker 3: for telling us about your experience and we'll talk again.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
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