Peterson Challenges Everyone to Read THIS book!!!

[_Philo Sofee]

Thanks to everyone for the warm welcomes and kind comments.

When it comes to dealing with creationists who are not ashamed of showing that their motives are purely religious, one can sometimes make some progress by pointing to such things as BYU's curriculum. I meet Catholics who don't accept evolution, and I always point out to them that the church itself has no problem with evolution (though it does layer a bit of supernaturalism on top). I have devout friends who are Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox all of whom do not deny evolution but who are quite intense in their religious commitments, and I try very hard to point out that such an arrangement is possible....

Peterson is more sophisticated than most of the people you debate on this. And he is pretty hard to pin down. He is a fan of science, believes in an old earth, and says he accepts the theory of evolution. The problem is that he doesn't fully accept naturalism: the philosophy upon which science is based and the ultimate implication of its insights. So while he is more-or-less open to any given piece of the puzzle of evolution, he isn't willing to concede that God isn't somehow involved and isn't somehow pulling at least some of the strings at least some of the time. It's like he says, "Yep, that's the fossil record. Evolution all right." But he won't concede that natural selection is enough to drive it. He needs God to be involved, somehow.

You'll note I only said he doesn't fully accept naturalism. But in a way, he does accept most of it. You need to understand that for Mormons, God isn't the literally all-powerful creator of the universe--rather, He is a being like us who is trapped within the natural universe and is subject to natural laws and in a transcendental way is actually the same species as us. The difference between us and God is that for the time being, God is more advanced and has figured some stuff out that we haven't figured out yet.

Given all that, you might now be able to understand his infatuation with NDEs--he is convinced that true science will eventually vindicate his belief in spiritual things. In his mind, NDEs are a great candidate for eventually proving that there really is a ghost in the machine.

In other words, while he has his religious convictions, he also wants to be a respected academic who accepts scientific reality. So he'll accept a lot of science but hopes that some day, there will be a scientific revolution that will vindicate his religious beliefs.

This is an outstanding and well thought out description Analytics. Thank you for sharing. It appears that apologetics is still continuing with this "lets throw as much jello at the wall and see what sticks" method as they can get away with without appearing ridiculous. I see Peterson doing this with every subject. All he wants is to find evidences. He has no faith at all, and who can blame him? Faith disappoints when it comes to Mormon theological promises and premises. It is why so vastly much of his materials are literally worthless for the faith he espouses.

[_Gadianton]

I suspect some sort of neurological impairment here because the phenomenon in some of these people is so general.

I have to agree that neurological impairment might explain a lot of stuff that goes on at Sic et Non.

[_Puck Mendelssohn]

The problem is that he doesn't fully accept naturalism: the philosophy upon which science is based and the ultimate implication of its insights. So while he is more-or-less open to any given piece of the puzzle of evolution, he isn't willing to concede that God isn't somehow involved and isn't somehow pulling at least some of the strings at least some of the time. It's like he says, "Yep, that's the fossil record. Evolution all right." But he won't concede that natural selection is enough to drive it. He needs God to be involved, somehow.

Ah, okay. One does run into these from time to time. Sometimes they're very combative, sometimes rather non-committal. My view of it would be that the notion that supernatural beings intervene from time to time is pretty much non-falsifiable and hence untestable -- there's too much caprice allowed in it and no way to invoke such actions. As long as such people don't try to compromise the educational system, I don't see much harm in them speculating that supernatural forces may be at work, but these seem like questions of lunar politics.

They sometimes suppose that the notion that natural forces are insufficient can be tested basically by negation: that if it can be demonstrated that natural mechanisms are incapable of generating the results seen in nature, then one may infer that there is some unknown supernatural mechanism. What they tend to fail to appreciate is that it is impossible to proceed in this manner; it's difficult to delimit what the capabilities of known mechanisms are, and even if you could, you would not know that the cause was an unknown supernatural mechanism, because it could just as well be an unknown natural mechanism.

You need to understand that for Mormons, God isn't the literally all-powerful creator of the universe--rather, He is a being like us who is trapped within the natural universe and is subject to natural laws and in a transcendental way is actually the same species as us. The difference between us and God is that for the time being, God is more advanced and has figured some stuff out that we haven't figured out yet.

Good point -- I would not have thought of it that way on my own but I am familiar enough with Mormon cosmology to see that that's exactly right.

Given all that, you might now be able to understand his infatuation with NDEs--he is convinced that true science will eventually vindicate his belief in spiritual things. In his mind, NDEs are a great candidate for eventually proving that there really is a ghost in the machine.

Yes, and I can appreciate that that is a step above many of those I deal with: a commitment, even if somewhat qualified, to empiricism and to the idea that spiritual claims should not be mere philosophical propositions with no purchase upon reality, but should correspond to real and demonstrable aspects of the world. That much I can respect, even if I do not think the particular inferences are well-grounded.

[_Gadianton]

On the other hand, he will, every once in a while, remind people that he was able to find water with dowsing sticks, so I don't think he understands science quite as well as he likes to argue that he does. That may also explain why he keeps harping on NDEs when they really are most unlikely to be what he thinks they are.

Right, as Puck pointed out, he's an empiricist in an exceptionally undisciplined fashion. A common theme to his many untenable positions is eye-witness testimony, particularly in the case of good and sincere men. He and "his friends" are witnesses with their own eyes that water witching works. The three and eight witnesses all but close the case on the existence of gold plates. Those who have NDEs are eyewitnesses themselves. The idea of witnesses permeates the Book of Mormon, and he seems to weave this into a proto-Baconian philosophy of science. The witness is an observer, multiple witnesses tighten up observation, and induction is the way forward -- the witching rod is tried by multiple persons in several configurations and so on, and we're looking at cause and effect primarily while theory is less important. What his worldview hasn't discovered, however, is the importance of controls that help prevent the experimenter from deceiving himself. I believe he also remarked once that he'd be a witness against Doctor Scratch at the last day. That's important, because it helps the student understand why experimental controls take a back seat to the purity of the eye -- if a man with a degree lauded by Cambridge bears witness of it, then we ought to take it very seriously.

[_Gadianton]

By the way, Puck, it looks like you've been noticed over here:

In the strange little corner of the internet where they seem to spend much of every day, a few of my more, umm, exotic critics profess to be baffled by what they claim to see as my obsession with near-death experiences.

I was actually going to explain, that I do think a primary drive of his interests is a tremendous fear of death, and this makes for somewhat of a convoluted theistic picture. His worldview is by no means consistent.

As Analytics mentioned, he's bound to an alien God, but at the same time, he's radically anti-materialism. An alien physical brain no matter how advanced is just blind matter in motion without any meaning. So there has to be something "more" than matter, but Mormonism assures us there is "no such thing as immaterial matter"; and so there's this tremendous disconnect in his thinking that he's never attempted to deal with, because his fans who read his blog lack the education to ask him proper questions and he doesn't give critics the time of day. He has a tremendous affinity for Evangelical apologetics, which exist in seriousness tension to the beliefs that analytics described.

Notice he recently posted about the Disney cartoon Beauty and the Beast, he noted how time flies, and he couldn't believe how long it's been since that film came out. He must have done the math and realized that looking ahead by that same number, and it's lights out unless those NDEs are right. God, really, in my opinion, is quite ancillary to his faith. God is a provider of immortality.

Another major disconnect along the same lines concerns morality. He typically goes with Evangelical arguments that God is needed for morality, but his fear of death turns it all upside down. There is a certain line of reasoning he's never been able to face: Suppose God is needed for meaning and morality, and that he created man, but suppose his will and pleasure was such that, when man dies, that's it. Certainly, there are major strains of Judaism that deny an afterlife. This likely will not work for him, therefore, God is not the architect of morality. What is needed is an eternal afterlife, and without that, whatever we do here is ultimately of no value. And so, if an alien God could provide immortality, then it seems that this would solve the problem for personal meaning, but its totally incongruent with the hundreds of mud balls he's lobbed at materialism.

[_Puck Mendelssohn]

A common theme to his many untenable positions is eye-witness testimony, particularly in the case of good and sincere men.

Funny, that. The difficulty, of course, that immediately presents itself is that there are too many mutually inconsistent sets of views of the supernatural that are all well-attested by eyewitness testimony. It's akin to the "leap of faith" problem, where someone insists that the answers to some sort of "what's it all for" question are not accessible to reason and evidence and that one must therefore take a leap of faith. Even if that is so, which leap? The only possible way to answer that question is reason and evidence, so the problem cannot be solved.

All eyewitness testimony to the supernatural cannot be right, but it can all be wrong. I think the best statement of the problem I've ever read is Huxley's essay, The Value of Witness to the Miraculous: https://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE5/Wit.html

[_Puck Mendelssohn]

By the way, Puck, it looks like you've been noticed over here:

Indeed it does. And that would seem to confirm that Peterson is not interested in serious engagement on the subject of the Bethell book, as he still has yet to speak to it at all.

I was actually going to explain, that I do think a primary drive of his interests is a tremendous fear of death, and this makes for somewhat of a convoluted theistic picture. His worldview is by no means consistent.

I have some experience with that. My father was immensely frightened of death, but had abandoned Christianity as a youngster after having his stern German Lutheran minister tell him too many times that he had crucified Jesus with his sins. He spent the rest of his life as a "seeker" after some sort of spiritual reality, reading everything he could from every religious tradition he knew of, resulting in a strange spiritual amalgam which drew mostly from Ernest Holmes' The Science of Mind (basically "The Secret" a la 1930 or so, and now the foundation of the Church of Religious Science) but also from various other sources. Even as his death imminently approached, he could never speak of it as a thing that would, or indeed could, ever happen.

My own reaction to all of that was that as a child I very much mirrored my father's fears. But increasingly I came to the view that the only reason I had for believing in an afterlife was that I desperately wished it to be true, but that I knew very well that wishes are no reason to believe something; reality does not care what I wish for.

As Analytics mentioned, he's bound to an alien God, but at the same time, he's radically anti-materialism. An alien physical brain no matter how advanced is just blind matter in motion without any meaning. So there has to be something "more" than matter, but Mormonism assures us there is "no such thing as immaterial matter"; and so there's this tremendous disconnect in his thinking that he's never attempted to deal with, because his fans who read his blog lack the education to ask him proper questions and he doesn't give critics the time of day. He has a tremendous affinity for Evangelical apologetics, which exist in seriousness tension to the beliefs that analytics described.

This always puzzles me a bit. I've never understood the hostility to materialism. Surely any force which actually exists and actually acts upon things is material, at least in its manifestation. And there is nothing in "material" which inherently negates the possibility of some sort of transcendant purpose. I tend to think that we are the authors of these transcendant purposes, but why should we not be, and why would that be bad?

Another major disconnect along the same lines concerns morality. He typically goes with Evangelical arguments that God is needed for morality, but his fear of death turns it all upside down. There is a certain line of reasoning he's never been able to face: Suppose God is needed for meaning and morality, and that he created man, but suppose his will and pleasure was such that, when man dies, that's it. Certainly, there are major strains of Judaism that deny an afterlife. This likely will not work for him, therefore, God is not the architect of morality. What is needed is an eternal afterlife, and without that, whatever we do here is ultimately of no value. And so, if an alien God could provide immortality, then it seems that this would solve the problem for personal meaning, but its totally incongruent with the hundreds of mud balls he's lobbed at materialism.

Never, never have I understood the argument that a god is needed for morality. Morality is so very obviously a social phenomenon, rendered meaningless in solitude and bearing only upon social relations. If a god walked among us and was a member of that social community, then its views upon moral questions would be relevant; but if it does not walk among us and is not a member of our social community, then its views are plainly irrelevant. I can see no escape from that. And, worse, if one does insist that moral rules originate from divine command, then all that does is throw ethics out the window and assert that might makes right.

There seems, often, to be this weird disconnect between "personal meaning," as you say, and some sort of "universal meaning." People in our culture seem to have grown up supposing that living on earth is like sitting for the SAT, and that it must have some object which is generalizable to all people, so that at the end, we will all get our scores in the mail and I will know that I scored better, or worse, than you did. But "a" meaning seems sterile and pointless -- surely an intelligent being should have its own blasted ideas as to how it ought to behave and what its objectives ought to be. I can't think of much that renders life more farcical and purposeless than the assertion that there is a (somewhat hidden and obscured) single "meaning" to all of our lives -- it is a kind of nihilism.

[_Puck Mendelssohn]

Well, now he's finally posted something, and it's very plain that he has not the slightest interest in hearing what the actual views of actual scientists are. I suppose I might have guessed that, but the remarks here led me to think that he might be a person capable of exercising actual intellectual judgment. Ach!

[_Gadianton]

Well, now he's finally posted something, and it's very plain that he has not the slightest interest in hearing what the actual views of actual scientists are. I suppose I might have guessed that, but the remarks here led me to think that he might be a person capable of exercising actual intellectual judgment. Ach!

Ah, too busy eh? Imagine that.

If you're inclined to wait a few days, his interest in Darwinism may be rekindled as he stumbles upon another YEC. Then again, now that he knows you're lurking, he might be too chicken to post again on Darwinism for a very long time. We'll just have to see.

Your response to Wells was interesting. I Hadn't clicked his links. I anticipated that his main defense would be to move the goal posts from "we don't know anything about x" to "we don't know everything about x" should he cite reputable sources, and wasn't interested in pursuing it. I did not anticipate he'd cite his own obscure work in defense of that. Every TBM posting in the comments really is clueless when it comes to science.

[_Puck Mendelssohn]

Ah, too busy eh? Imagine that.

It's not terribly uncommon. People say they'd like to hear views on something, and what they mean is that they'd like like-minded people to say how great it is: great, or really great? But it is a shame. Looking through some of his other posts it is clear that, despite some odd hobbies, he can be thoughtful on a topic if he wants to be.

Your response to Wells was interesting. I Hadn't clicked his links. I anticipated that his main defense would be to move the goal posts from "we don't know anything about x" to "we don't know everything about x" should he cite reputable sources, and wasn't interested in pursuing it. I did not anticipate he'd cite his own obscure work in defense of that.

Wells is a really strange one. Profoundly dishonest. But I'd have expected him to have written something which was, at least, RESPONSIVE to the criticisms. The usual Discovery Institute technique is to do what he did: pretend to respond to criticisms, while actually responding to something else that did not form part of the criticism. So, for example, when they wrote a rebuttal (on their no-comments-allowed blog) to my review of the book "Heretic" by Matti Leisola, they tried to make it sound as though I was denying that there is a pattern of stasis punctuated with change in the fossil record -- despite the fact that I was citing Gould and Eldredge, who affirm exactly that, and explaining why we see that.

Wells wrote a real stinker of a book recently called Zombie Science -- basically a sequel to his classic "Icons of Evolution," which argues that examples of evolution used in textbooks are misleading, ergo, evolution didn't happen (bit of a non sequitur, that -- and most of his examples of things being misleading are ludicrous). I went to the book launch party (I live in Seattle, where the Discovery Institute rules the dark creatures of the night) and it was quite strange. The man himself just seems sort of jolly and pleasant -- exactly the personality a pathological liar should have if he'd like to seem credible.

But as big a stinker as Zombie Science was, the sulfuric stench that roars right out on opening Bethell's "Darwin's House of Cards" is unrivalled by anything else I've ever read. There are worse books -- some of those by Jerry Bergman are profoundly bad -- but this is real basement-dwelling material, and it's sad to see someone like Peterson being taken in by it. It demonstrates how lack of familiarity with a topic can make someone vulnerable to even the most transparent frauds.