The Problem with Petersonian Christianity
Is it enough to “act as if God exists”?
Jordan Peterson is revolutionizing what christianity means in the modern west. His Biblical Lectures have millions of views (could you imagine a 2h long video of a word-by-word interpretation of Genesis having 13M views?), his tours sell out arenas around the whole western world. He is a public intelectual who has reached superstardom in a way unseen for a while now.
He has a very intelligent way, not without academic and respectable scientific sensibility, to work out the psychological meaning of the biblical cannon. His project, seen from afar, is to argue that the lessons we learn from the Bible are, as a matter of fact, the best mythological representation of our psychological make-up. Better, as it happens, than scientific descriptions, which never land with the same weight as stories do.
The truths contained in the Bible are translatable to scientific truths about psychology (and, he sometimes suggests, sociology and politics as well). Our very conscience, ou interface with the world and our psyches, by the inherent necessity or prioritization of perception, structures itself in a hierarchy. Attending to some things rather than others means implicitly assuming some things to be more worth attending to than others.
Not only that, but this prioritization seems to be best structured in the form of stories. Story-telling is a practice we find in every human society, it is a constant of our species, and not without reason. It’s very likely our number one technology that gives us adaptive advantage over other animals. These stories permit social cohesion and cooperation, not only for a moment, but in the very long run. This is, he suggests, the purpose of stories. The better a story is, the more it can call our attention to things relevant to our long term cooperation as a species, which, he assumes, must be aligned to a harmonization with the world “as it is”.
Good stories lead us to survival, yes. But more than that, they lead us to truth. Not in the “propositional” sense of truth, of epistemological assent to a certain claim; but in the sense of being well-adapted to the world. Truth in the sense of living not in ignorance of those things which are most important. This means, more than merely assenting to a certain proposition, to live as if it is true. Because what really counts, evolutionarily speaking, is what we do — not which propositions we assent to.
Jordan reaches back to a practical side of belief to claim that to believe in God is to act as if He exists. That is, belief in the christian God is, fundamentally, adherence to christian values. It is participation in christian rituals. It is embedded in what we find salient or not. It is a much broader thing than simply mouthing the proposition “I believe in God”. In fact, to say that, by itself, means very little. Anyone can say that. Not everyone can sacrifice himself to a greater good, though.
It is the participation in the ethics of self-sacrifice and veneration of truth and reality, claims Jordan, that really is at the base of christian belief. We measure belief by what one stakes their life on — not by what they say. This is why he claims, somewhat polemically, that scientists like Richard Dawkins are “more christian than they think”. This is why the term “cultural christian” is now trending more than ever.
It is due to his influence that we have now, exponentially more than in the previous decade, new converts into christianity — many of which convert for “cultural reasons”. Put another way: lots of people now convert into christianity more for affinity to conservative western values (in opposition to, say, muslim fundamentalism or post-modern decadence), than love of God in the metaphysical (or even emotional) sense.
These people, under Jordan’s guise and influence, argue that “acting as though God exists”, which turns out to be, maybe surprisingly, acting in accordance with traditional/conservative values, is enough to properly count as belief in God. If you sacrifice yourself for the community, you believe in God. And if this is not enough, what would?
Good question. It seems to me that “acting as if God exists” is, in fact, not enough. And I also doubt that the correspondence between this “practical belief” and the concordance with traditional values is so overwhelming as it may seem by what Jordan (or other conservatives online — Ben Shapiro and such) may suggest.
The reason for this is made that much clearer by Jordan’s reluctance to answer the question “Do you believe Mary was actually a virgin?”. He has answered this question saying that “every culture that fails to see femininity, motherhood and virginity as sacred, dies”. What he means by this, I imagine, is that the belief in the virgin birth is a mythological totem of respect for women. And I imagine this is probably true.
It is not hard to see that people who believe in the sanctity of the virgin birth, in the miracle of a woman untainted by sins of the flesh being impregnated by the Holy Spirit, will treat women differently than someone who believes God was born out of a rape or something like that. But the question that remains is: is belief in the virgin birth the same as belief in the duty to respect women? And the answer is, I think, obvious: no.
I’m sure there is a connection between these beliefs, that one may lead to the other and belief in this myth may even be a better way of assuring that one actually, in practice, respects women, than the belief in “the duty to respect women”, not codified in any story. But, just because one is a more efficient way to induce a certain practical outcome than the other, it does not mean that one is “truer” than the other, or that they mean the same thing. They are, in fact, different claims.
I might believe in the duty to respect women not due to belief in the virgin birth, but due to veneration of Parvati (Hindu goddess of fertility). The outcome is the same, but the beliefs are not. The question of which myth will be the most effective in bringing about adaptive behaviour becomes an empirical one, and by no means is there a definitive answer that the christian mythology is in fact the best at doing that.
We might argue that christianity is the best though. And I happen to think that is probably is. But, again, to believe this is not the same as believing in the actual virgin birth. On the one hand, you may believe Mary got pregnant while remaining a virgin. On the other, you may believe that belief in the virgin birth is the most adaptive strategy to harmonize with reality.
You may believe in both things. No problem with that. The problem is that you may believe in one thing and not the other. This proves they are, at the end, not the same thing. Maybe Jordan would insist they are the same thing. Believing in the virgin birth is literally the same as believing in the duty to respect women. Or that they mean the same thing.
I can agree that, to some degree, they are the same belief, if they end up having the same consequence in terms of behaviour. But in another, I can’t. These beliefs certainly share something. But they are not the same. It would be absurd to suggest this. It would be, essentially, a denial of “literal” meaning.
Let’s put it this way. Maybe, after reading Hamlet, I am exposed to a different way of thinking my own internal life, and also see reflections of this in others. So I am led to the quite insightful (and true) conclusion that “We are all Hamlet”. This is true — in a metaphorical sense. It is not true in a more ordinary sense — it is false that we are all called Hamlet, or that we are all princes of Denmark, and so on. But it is true that we all have a hamletian persona inside us.
So it is, or so it could be, with the case of the virgin birth. In saying “Mary birthed God a virgin”, I might mean a metaphorical (and quite deep) truth that is too complex for me to unpack, but that would be translated, certainly, at least in respect for women; or I might mean that there was this woman Mary, and she got pregnant without having sex. Jordan insists in belief, reverence and awe for the former. He says little about the latter.
I understand the hesitancy. In claiming truth to the supernatural, he might alienate a great deal of the people who were led away from christianity precisely because of the “supernatural” claims. His whole shtick is being able to articulate old mystical wisdom in concrete and empirical knowledge about matter and stuff, as well as in practical and actionable steps. He revived the niche of “christian self-help”, I suppose.
Modern people are not willing to assent to supernatural events, but they are willing to assent to the value of certain values for the culture. Jordan exploited this to great effect — and may God bless him for it. But christianity is not a naturalistic religion. To conflate belief in God to action in accordance with certain values is to “reduce” christianity to material processes. It is a focus on external things — the very thing that makes modern science so accurate. But exclusive focus on the external, in detriment of the internal, is the sin of materialism.
In the same way Jordan argues we might simply say we believe in something and act otherwise; we also might act in a different way than what we believe. In the same way we can deceive through words, we can deceive through action.
People in totalitarian regimes will act as if they believe in the divinity of dictator, they might posture about their love for him, they might even believe that his rule is the best for society. None of this means they believe he is actually divine. When confronted as to hether they actually think he is divine and incapable of error, for example, they might hesitate to answer, fumble and try to evade the question.
In totalitarian regimes, this does not matter as much. What people actually believe is not too important — as long as they do as they’re told. But in religions this is probably the most important thing. Maybe not all of them (some are more ritual focused than belief focused). But certainly in christianity.
Ever since the beggining, christianity focused very much on its boundaries. Much more than say, hinduism, christianity lay crucial importance on correct doctrine, besides correct ritual proceedings. If other religions and groups were tolerant of different views regarding divinity, christianity has been combating heresies from the get go.
It is not enough to worship Jesus Christ: everyone must be on the same page regarding His nature (is He divine or human?), His relationship to God, the Father and the Holy Spirit, about His resurrection and its consequences, and so on. Everyone must be on the same page as to Mary’s virginity. Everyone must be in accordance regarding the Trinity. About which prophetic books are cannonical and which are not.
If it was only about acting out a purpose, there would not have been this much insistence on doctrinal purity, so to speak. Heretics would not have been condemned and fought against so incredibly passionately.
Jordan says that the “propositional tyranny” came with the Protestant Reformation. This is partially true. The insistence that we are saved not by good works, but sola fide, by faith and faith alone, together with the commandment that every man read the Bible for himself, instead of letting his faith be mediated by a human institution such as the Church, put a lot of emphasis on words, beliefs and faith, in a way disconected from practice.
But Jordan seems to reverse this radical protestant position, arguing that we are saved by good works alone. In fact, he seems to reduce faith to good works. When in reality, they are separate things — both necessary.
Ultimately, you might argue that they converge (as do all things): if you really have faith to the highest degree, it would be impossible for you not to do good works; and if you really did good works to the highest degree, it would be impossible not to have faith. This is why, I think, many Church Fathers regarded Socrates and others as “saints before Christ”, or “christians before Christ”.
But to really have both, you must focus on both inner and outter, so to speak. You might want to stretch the reach of the outter to the highest possible limit, but eventually you will have to be led to accepting the other side and making the leap. Being a christian is impossible within a naturalist mindset. You need a different metaphysical framework to actually work it out and make sense of the full meaning of the christian mysteries.
If Jordan fails to make this leap (and I don’t think he will), he might be a naturalist with deep respect and reverence for the christian tradition, but that is exactly what he will be: a naturalist.
