Jordan Peterson Discusses God Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Welcome back to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig as we continue with Dr. Craig’s interaction with Jordan Peterson’s comments from a recent interview. By the way, you may be interested in the discussion, if you've never seen it, that Dr. Craig had with Dr. Peterson before a live audience in Toronto several years ago. You can check out our YouTube channel for info on that.^[1] Before we get to today’s podcast, here’s a quick message from Dr. Craig.

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DR. PETERSON: So the first is that's the argument by design. That things are so complex and sophisticated that that cries out for the hypothesis of something like a creator. I'm not a big fan of the argument by design. I can see its advantages, but it isn't the primary argument as far as I'm concerned. The Big Bang proponents have a problem because it's a tenet of the Big Bang theory that the laws of physics themselves break down at the point of the singularity, and that would be the point just before the Big Bang. When you say the laws of physics, the existence of space and time even, is an unknowable prior to the Big Bang, you're basically positing a miracle at the beginning of existence. So if you get to have your miracle, there's no reason the religious types can't have theirs. You might argue about what the miracle needs to be, and I think that's an argument that has to be had. I don't like the argument by design. I like the argument by conscience better. The argument by conscience, which is another string of classic theological thought, is that something dwells within you that aligns you with the spirit of reality, and it's the still small voice within that was identified first by the Prophet Elijah. It was part of a transformation in the religious viewpoint in historical terms that moved the notion of God from something like Baal – a nature god, the god of storms and earthquakes, of (what would you say?) remarkable and awe-inspiring natural phenomena – to the voice within that can, if you attend to it, align you with the structure of reality itself. That internal voice being a manifestation of God. And I think that's an extremely powerful argument. And I think it's right.

KEVIN HARRIS: You know, obviously, as a psychologist, he would like arguments from conscience. But what do you think about all his comments here?

DR. CRAIG: Very interesting. He at first, I think, runs together two arguments that are really distinct: the design argument and then the cosmological argument. The design argument would seek for some sort of intelligent designer of the universe on the basis of the orderly structure of the universe, particularly in the contemporary scene, the fine-tuning of the universe. The enormously complex and precise constants and quantities that appear in the laws of nature that are just right for the existence of embodied conscious life. One of the greatest challenges today is to explain the presence of this fine-tuning of the universe. The other argument – the cosmological argument – is that the universe had a beginning, that the universe has not always existed, that it came into being at some point in the past. I think that Peterson is quite right to say that the absolute origin of the universe from nothing (which is what the standard model postulates) requires a miracle, that is to say, the act of a transcendent creator who brings the universe into being. Now, notice he did not fault any of those arguments. He did not say that he disagreed with them or that they were fallacious or weak. He just said, “I don't like them,” and by that I think he meant these are not the ones that appeal to him the most. They don't speak to him. And I can certainly understand why he would say that. These are scientific and philosophical in nature and might not speak to him deeply, and therefore he prefers the argument from conscience. Now, when I first heard this, I thought he meant the moral argument for God's existence. In our conscience, we sense not only the demands of the absolute moral law, but we also sense our failure to live up to the demands of the moral law. So we wonder: what is the source of objective right and wrong, of good and evil? But as you listen to him, that's not what he means. He means that inner voice of God's Spirit to your spirit telling you that he is there and how to become related personally to him. And that's what really speaks to Jordan Peterson's heart. I would say that this is what the Bible calls the witness of the Holy Spirit, and as such this is not really an argument. We shouldn't think that we experience this witness of the Holy Spirit and that the best explanation for this is that God is speaking to our hearts. Rather, this is what epistemologists call a properly basic belief. For example, my belief as I look out the window that there are trees and grass outside, that belief is not offered as an explanation of my sense data, but rather it is a properly basic belief that is grounded in my experience of the external world. Similarly, I do think that our belief in God is a properly basic belief that is grounded in that inner witness of the Holy Spirit of which Peterson speaks so eloquently. So I would encourage all of our listeners not just to embark upon an intellectual quest of God but on that spiritual quest for God where you are alert to that voice of God to your heart speaking to you. I would encourage listeners to read the Bible, to pray, and to ask God to speak to them in that way, and then to be attentive to that voice within.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let me ask you, because you've told us many times that you don't determine the existence of God via psychology. God is a projection, I need a father figure so therefore I need God to exist and so on. To his credit, it seems that Jordan Peterson, as a psychologist, recognizes that because he at least offers the objective nature of the existence of God either from argument from design or argument (as he calls it) by conscience as he sees not as a psychological effect ultimately but as something objective and something philosophical and beyond psychology.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. Even the appeal to conscience (in his mind at least) is an argument – the argument from conscience. It's odd though because that stands in a certain tension with his reluctance to treat the existence of God as a factual question. What are these arguments like the design argument and the cosmological argument proving if it is not the fact that there is a transcendent creator and designer of the universe?

KEVIN HARRIS: In this next clip, Peterson talks about a prayer that really works. Listen to this.

DR. PETERSON: People don't understand. People think of God – the joke is – as a cosmic butler you pray to to have your wishes granted. He's not a genie. You want to pray? Pray about your stupidity. Here's a prayer that'll work for sure. You want to see if prayer works? Here's one. This will work. Sit on the edge of your bed, ask yourself, “What bloody stupid thing do I continue to do that's making my life more miserable than it has to be and everyone else's life around me that I could give up and that I would give up.” But you have to really want the answer. So you open yourself up in humility to a revelation. You'll get an answer. It won't be one you want. That's how you’ll know it's true. But if you act on it then your life will improve. And that's a proper prayer. That's what you do. In a metaphysical sense, the Christian insistence that you should be aware of your sins, which is in a sense an existential burden, is also the idea that you should attend to your own inadequacies and admit to them because in doing so you open up the possibility that something better can make itself manifest within you. There's no doubt that that's the case. For sure that's true. But you have to do it in humility. You have to be looking. That's why you're supposed to take the mote out of your own eye instead of worrying about the beam in your neighbor's eye. There’s something about you that's stupid you could fix, and God will tell you what it is if you want him to, so to speak.

KEVIN HARRIS: A few things in that clip. What do you think about this self-reflecting prayer that he suggests? And he reversed the mote and the beam there. I wonder if that was intentional.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, I suspect that was accidental. Jesus talked about having a beam in your own eye and yet you're trying to take the little speck or mote out of your brother's eye. You should first get rid of your own imperfection and sin before you try to correct somebody else. I think Peterson – it's so strange to hear this psychologist giving spiritual advice to people about confessing their sins and approaching God in a spirit of humility and asking him to convict you of your failings and your sins, and then purposing to act upon that and to be free of those. The only element that's missing there is forgiveness. He speaks as though God will answer your prayer by revealing to you your own inadequacies and sins and failures for which you're guilty, but he doesn't say anything about asking God to forgive you and cleanse you of that wrongdoing. This, I think, is one of the greatest promises and blessings of Christianity – the forgiveness of sins. I remember when I had my debate at University of Massachusetts Amherst with the atheist philosopher Louise Antony. She made this poignant statement in the rebuttal. Although she was an atheist and content to be one, she said atheism does have its drawbacks and one of them is that there is no redemption. And that hit me so forcefully because for the atheist, even if you turn around your life in the way that Jordan Peterson describes and embark on a program of self-improvement, you always remain guilty for those past sins that you have perpetrated. The victims and people that you've hurt and the things that you've done wrong, they're never cleansed. They're never pardoned or forgiven. There is no redemption. Whereas, in Christianity, when we are united with Christ, all our sins are taken away. We are pardoned by God, and the righteousness of God himself is imputed to us so that we stand pure and holy in God's sight. It really is a remarkable difference. But, again, I want to affirm and rejoice with the path that he's on in encouraging people to a humble self-examination that is ruthlessly honest, and asking God to reveal to each of us the wrong that we're doing, the harm that we're doing (doing to others as well as to ourselves), and then purpose to begin anew.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we conclude today, a New York Times article recently called Jordan Peterson the most influential public intellectual today. He has tremendous respect for the Christian faith and the Scriptures. It's hard to get a read on him despite his attempt to be transparent, but perhaps he's moving closer to becoming a Christian.

DR. CRAIG: I hope so. I think with Jordan Peterson, this is someone who needs to be treated with kid gloves. We don't want to push him away by pointing out all the areas where perhaps we think he's theologically inadequate. Instead, we need to be encouraging him on this spiritual journey that he's on. We can be so thankful that, in contrast to public intellectuals like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and others in the old New Atheism, now we have public intellectuals who are sympathetic to Christianity and speaking out boldly in support of God and belief in God.

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