Ep 1196 ļ½ Where the Jordan Peterson vs. Atheists 'Jubilee' Debate Went Wrong
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 9 minutes
Words per Minute
157.07785
Summary
Jordan Peterson debated 20 atheists. We ll go through some of his answers and I give you what I would say as a Christian to some atheist claims. This episode is brought to you by GoodRanchers. Use code ALI at checkout for 20% off your first purchase.
Transcript
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We'll go through some of his answers today, and I will give you what I would say as a
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far.
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Today, we are talking about Jordan Peterson's recent debate on Jubilee.
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They have a series called Surrounded, where they have one person who holds one position
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and then 20 to 25 people surrounding that person in a semicircle who hold the opposing position.
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So, for example, they've done Ben Shapiro versus 25 Kamala Harris voters, one progressive
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versus 20 conservatives, Dr. Mike, I don't know who that is, versus 20 anti-vaxxers, one
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They've done Charlie Kirk versus like 20 woke students, which was just a piece of cake for
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Charlie, because that's basically what he travels around the country doing.
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And so you see the clips circulating social media.
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And the most recent debate is Jordan Peterson versus 20 atheists.
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And at first, the YouTube video said one Christian versus 25 atheists.
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And then they changed that very quickly because Jordan Peterson does not actually publicly identify
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That's not just me trying to determine what his faith is.
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He actually says he doesn't identify as a Christian.
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There are a lot of clips circulating and a lot of people criticizing Jordan Peterson for
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his answers to these theological apologetics questions and challenges that are being lodged
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And so I wanted to go through some of the claims that are being made by these atheists and
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what I would say to them as a Christian and not just what I would say to them, the opposing
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atheists, but also what I would say to you, because I get so many questions from you about
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a variety of things, but specifically about theology.
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And so I will go through, we'll play some clips, go through some of the things being
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said, what I really agree on with Jordan Peterson and the things that I disagree on and would
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And I will reference scripture in some of these.
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And I know that a lot of you out there will be like, well, atheists don't believe in the
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And I will explain why I reference scripture in some of my answers, but also know that I
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am communicating to you, my Christian audience, people who believe in God's word as inerrant,
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as infallible, as authoritative, because I also want you to understand why we believe what
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we believe and how we contend with these arguments.
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There are a lot of people out there who are much better versed in apologetics than I am,
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And again, a lot of people are superior in that realm to me.
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They've been studying longer than I have, but I have been gifted by my parents, by my
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upbringing, with a lot of evangelical, theological, and apologetics training.
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And I'm very thankful for the wisdom that I have gleaned from professional apologists and
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theologians and scholars who are much, much smarter than I am.
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And they have given us a huge gift in the books that they've written and the wisdom that they
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So I hope to be able to share some of that clarity with you today in a way that's edifying.
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So let's go through some of these clips and we can't go through all of them.
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And so if you want all of the context for every single question and every single answer,
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I'm not trying to decontextualize or misrepresent anyone.
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I'm not trying to slam Jordan Peterson on this.
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As I said, and as I will say, there are some things that he answered that I thought were
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really good that I would affirm and say as well.
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And then there were other things that I'm like, that is not at all the Christian perspective.
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And I'm kind of confused about what exactly is going on here.
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So within this debate, there are four claims that are made by the one opposing person in
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So in this case, the, I don't know, I guess I could call Jordan Peterson the thereto,
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theist, because they changed it from Christian versus atheist to Jordan Peterson versus atheist.
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So I think I could safely say that Jordan Peterson believes in God.
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I think that his wife became Catholic, but he hasn't said that he's become Catholic.
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So I think that I would say that he's a theist.
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So he goes through these four claims and everyone around him is trying to contend with these claims.
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And they literally race to the chair to try to debate with Jordan Peterson.
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There seems like there's some voting process by the other participants that when the person
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debating Jordan Peterson either like uses a logical fallacy or they've just like spent
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enough time arguing with them, they raise their red flags and they're ready to move on to the next
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So it's very fast paced, very high stress and intense, probably for everyone involved.
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But here are the four claims that they're supposed to be contending with that Jordan Peterson makes.
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Claim one is atheists reject God, but they don't know what they're rejecting.
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And then we've got claim two, and that is morality and purpose can't be found within science.
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And then Jordan Peterson's third claim is that everyone worships something.
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And then his last claim is that atheists accept Christian morality.
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They just deny the religious foundation of Christian morality.
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So we'll go through some of these clips and I'll tell you what Jordan Peterson said and
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what I would say to these things, both to you and in some way to these atheists.
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So Jordan Peterson said atheists reject God, but they don't actually know what they are rejecting.
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So here is someone named David, one of the atheists that rushed to the chair, got to the
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chair first, sat down, and asked this question.
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Tell me everything that you know about the Polynesian deity Lono, L-O-N-O.
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I don't know anything about the Polynesian deity Lono.
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So you're rejecting something without knowledge of what you're rejecting.
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Do you believe that he is a deity that exists in the world, exists in the universe, that
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I'll answer that question once you answer my question, which is, do I reject everything
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Because that's your presupposition that undergirds your argument.
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And unless you can prove that that's valid, then there's no point in...
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Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's formulated accurately.
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I'm not going to answer that question for the reasons I just described.
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You don't have to understand something to reject it if what you accept precludes the validity
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Christians believe in the triune God of the Bible.
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The God we believe in says this about himself in Isaiah 44, 5.
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So because I am a Christian, because Christians believe in God, and because Christians believe
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the Bible is God's word, and because the Bible tells us that there is no God besides my God,
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I don't believe in Lono or any other false God.
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You don't have to know something or understand something even to reject it.
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I reject all other men, even though I don't know most of them.
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But marriage is, by nature, by definition, exclusive.
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And so you are announcing your rejection of all others when you enter into that covenant.
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And believing in him means believing that he is the way, the truth, the life, as we read
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And again, you may say, well, atheists don't believe that.
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They'd rebut that by saying they don't believe in God.
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Yes, but that's actually irrelevant right now to the question that's being asked, the
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claim and the counterclaim that are being leveled right now.
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What's relevant is that it is logically and theologically possible to reject an idea or
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an entity that you don't know about or understand.
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And Jordan Peterson's claim that atheists reject what they don't understand can still be true
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Because Jordan did not actually claim that you can never reject that which you don't
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That's what this atheist is assuming that he meant by his claim, but that's not actually
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He claimed that atheists specifically reject that which they don't understand.
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Not that no one can reject anything that they don't understand.
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Now, I don't know if Jordan Peterson's claim is true.
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It's not a claim that I would make in a debate because I have found through experience that
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you are more likely to win an argument if you overestimate your opponent rather than underestimate
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So you go into an argument assuming that your opponent is very smart, very logical, prepared,
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has a full understanding of what they believe and why.
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When you assume that going into an argument rather than assuming that your opponent is stupid
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and that you're so much smarter than them, when you assume that they are smart and logical,
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you will come up in your preparation with much better arguments.
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I would assume that everyone in that room knows Christianity well and is well-versed in the
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Now, I don't know if that's true, but it is a safer assumption.
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It's safer for me to assume that than to assume that they don't know what they're talking about
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Because then when they prove very quickly that they're not stupid, that they do have a good
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understanding of what they're rejecting, then you're left looking unprepared.
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And I'm not saying that Jordan Peterson is consciously thinking these people are stupid
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But to start with the claim that atheists never know.
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They don't know what they're rejecting when they are rejecting God.
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I think that is a difficult and dangerous and slippery place to start as a debater.
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But for the record, like this guy didn't actually have a good question.
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Because again, he's not actually directly addressing the claim that Jordan Peterson made there.
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He thinks that he made a good claim, but he didn't really.
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Okay, then we have someone who is addressing this claim one named Greg.
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My background is in studying to become a traditional Catholic priest, daily mass, daily rosary,
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going on long retreats, deep into the magisterium and biblical hermeneutics like I was thoroughly in it.
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Is there something that I missed over years of study,
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both of this issue formally and living out religion so deeply?
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And Jordan Peterson said, Well, obviously, you know, there's something that you were missing during this training for the priesthood.
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But Jordan Peterson didn't really elaborate on that.
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I would say in the beginning, Jordan got better throughout the debate.
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He seemed very agitated, I would say, by the first people who sat down across from them.
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And it's true that the opponents are going to be kind of adversarial.
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Everyone is feeling very tense and agitated because it is so quick.
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And so there was a lot of tension, I would say, between them.
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But I don't think that Cade got a very good answer for what he said,
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because he's trying to say, Okay, you're telling me I don't know what I'm missing,
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How could you tell me that I don't know what I'm missing?
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which is why I don't think the claim that you don't even understand what you're arguing,
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Because then how do you respond to someone like this who has been studying religion and
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But the truth is, Cade misses what it actually means to be a Christian.
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It is not about how deeply religious life is lived out.
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It's not about how many times you pray the rosary.
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It's not about participating in the worship team.
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This is actually what separates Christianity from every other religion in the world.
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We don't become Christians by the behavior that we live out.
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We don't become Christians or become reconciled to God through works of our own.
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The Bible actually says that our righteousness is like filthy rags, but we are justified by
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grace through faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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There is a saying that says often heaven is missed by 18 inches.
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18 inches is roughly the distance between the head and the heart.
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So it could be possible, Cade, that you did have the head knowledge, that you knew about
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You participated in the sacraments, but that you didn't know the gospel, that you didn't
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understand it, that you didn't really believe it.
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I think that's true of a lot of people, whether you're Protestant, whether you are Catholic,
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that you can have all of the head theological knowledge, but it's never been embedded into
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your heart, so that you can look at a chair and say, I know that's a chair, but you'll
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never sit in it because you don't really believe that it can hold you.
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That means you have knowledge of what something is, but you don't have faith in its function,
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And in Christianity, it is the faith that is given to us as a gift of grace by God that
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So maybe this is what Jordan Peterson was implying when he said, well, obviously you
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missed something when you were studying for the priesthood.
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I might say the same thing, but I would want to explain what he actually missed, that just
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because you have a cognitive understanding of Christianity does not actually mean that you
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understood God, or you understood what it means to have a relationship with God, or you
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understood the crux of what it means to be a Christian, which is the gospel.
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So I would say that that was a missed opportunity there.
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And again, when you have someone who doesn't identify as a Christian, you're debating with
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a bunch of people, as we'll see later, who thought that they were going to be debating
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They're kind of speaking past each other because there are different expectations and different
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And we see in this debate that Jordan Peterson doesn't actually believe in God as the Bible
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So Elijah, the prophet Elijah, defined God in the Old Testament as the voice of conscience
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So you're just, you're saying by that definition of God, I see, this is kind of goes back to
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So as Cardinal Newman also defined it that way, as I'm sure, you know, many people who've defined
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I'm just pointing out to you how God is defined in the Old Testament.
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So to respond to that, I do think there are lots of interesting ways to define God.
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And that goes back to my kind of opening statement.
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Then how do we specify what we're arguing about?
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We use context clues or we, again, it goes back to my example of the Mona Lisa.
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But then you're kind of expanding the meaning of God.
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Not whoever, Elijah is one of the major Old Testament prophets, right?
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So that is interesting, but it's not relevant to the context with which I am using the term
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Atheists reject God, but they don't understand what they're rejecting.
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You accept conscience as a guide and conscience is one of the defining characteristics of God in
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I think you're being intellectually disingenuous.
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I asked you if you believe that conscience guided you.
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You just asked me a question and then you stopped me from answering it.
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In this setting, you understand the way I am using the term God in belief.
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I don't understand how you're using it in the least.
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My definition of God as conscience is a lot more precise and oriented than your definition
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of the God that you hypothetically disbelieve in.
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And I know it was longer than clips I typically play, but that's because there was a lot of
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I actually wanted to play their whole exchange.
00:24:55.860
So he's trying to get Jordan Peterson to nail down his definition of God, which is fair
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because for any conversation, especially a debate that you have, you need to define your
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I learned that even more during 2020 when we're talking about racism and justice and equality
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and equity, all of these things have so many nowadays malleable meanings.
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And for Christians, we need to be able to define what they are for everyone, but especially
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So we define them in reality and morality and the Bible, most importantly.
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And when you're having a debate with someone that you have a totally different worldview from,
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you need to be able to decide upon a shared definition so you can have a conversation.
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That's why the Tower of Babel was such a curse, because no one had the same words.
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So he is trying to nail down, what do you, Jordan Peterson, actually believe about God?
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They both agree that they can't really have this debate if they can't see eye to eye on
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But as a Christian, I have no idea what Peterson is talking about there.
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Maybe there are some people who call themselves Christians who would say that, but there are
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a lot of people who call themselves Christians who say a lot of wacky things, and that is
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God convicts our conscience, our mechanism of discerning right and wrong.
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He can use his Holy Spirit to convict us of right and wrong.
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I think he can choose to reveal to the non-Christian what's right and wrong.
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I think being made in God's image, having eternity written on the human heart, as we read
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in Ecclesiastes 3.11, I think all of that gives all people some innate sense of justice
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In the New Testament, we see this word conscience quite a few times.
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Several times, Paul references his own conscience, saying, my conscience is clear.
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So he's saying, in context there, and even if you look at the original Greek, he's saying,
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In 1 Timothy 4, we read that in the end times, sinners' consciences will be seared.
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That word seared, that means burned to the point of no longer having functioning nerve endings.
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So meaning that their consciences won't be able to feel the prick of conviction.
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He can govern the conscience, but he himself is not conscience.
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Genesis 1.1, very first verse of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, says
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So in that very first verse, we read that God is far more than conscience.
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And in John 1, we see that Jesus is this God, that everything God the Father did in the Old
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Testament, Jesus participated in as the second and equal person in the Trinity, along with
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So that means that God is creator and he is savior.
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So if I were there, I'd say we are talking about, I am talking about God is the creator
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The God is defined by the Bible, Alpha, Omega, the whole shebang.
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Obviously, that person would disagree that that entity exists, that God exists, but we
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would need to agree that that is who we are talking about.
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This person claims, this person, Greg, who seems like a nice person, misguided, I would
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He claimed that his conscience is dictated by empathy restrained by reason.
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That's actually better, I would say, than what a lot of progressives would say.
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They would say that they are led by empathy, completely untethered empathy.
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He says, what is the mediating principle between two people's contradicting empathetic feelings?
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If that's what you're led by, if you're led by empathy that is bound by some sort of reason,
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what if two people have contradicting ideas of like, what is most empathetic in that scenario?
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And Greg concedes that that's a good question, and he doesn't really know if he has the answer
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Greg says, you know, that's when you talk it out.
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And I just wish that they would have gone further on that, because that's really it.
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And the guy didn't have a good answer for it, is that the atheist really doesn't have a
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good answer for why morality exists or where it comes from.
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But they all agree that some kind of moral principle is necessary to govern society.
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So I would ask when he says, you know, it's empathy guided by reason.
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I would have asked him, what is reason and why?
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Why does your empathy have to be dictated by reason?
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And what guide are you using to constrain your empathy and define your reason?
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He uses an example, Greg uses an example of he's driving and he sees a kitten being stuck
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He says he would feel empathy for the kitten and he'd be really sad, but he wouldn't stop
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because, he says, reason tells him it's dangerous to stop for the kitten.
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So is it self-interest that guides your reason to constrain your empathy?
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Why is your life, Greg, or the life of the people on the road more important than this
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It can't be reason alone that's constraining your empathy in that case.
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It is an inherent understanding that your life and the lives of the other humans on the road
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are more important than this singular kitten's life.
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And I bet that calculation would change, hopefully, if you saw a grandmother or a child standing
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The question is, what are the inputs for the atheist moral calculations?
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It's not just logic, because reason alone cannot tell you why your life is more valuable than
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That is the interesting question, and I've never heard an atheist answer it well.
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So I wish that they would have gone more into that.
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Now, this idea of God as conscience, Peterson, when he says Elijah, refers to God as conscience.
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I was trying to figure out what exactly he meant by that.
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There could be something that I've never heard of.
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There could be a teaching that I have not seen.
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I think he might be referring to God speaking to Elijah after the whirlwind, after the storm,
00:32:31.220
in a still, small voice, he might be proof texting that.
00:32:39.080
So he might be taking that and saying, oh, still, small voice.
00:32:42.580
That kind of sounds like how we refer to our conscience.
00:32:47.280
But Elijah certainly did not believe that God was simply conscience.
00:32:52.980
Elijah would have believed, would have known, as Moses knew, like that God is the great I am,
00:33:00.280
that he is the creator, that he is the lawgiver.
00:33:06.340
God spoke to Moses through a burning bush, not as his conscience, but as his God, as his ruler,
00:33:15.680
to tell him how to save and preserve his people.
00:33:19.280
And so just because God decides to talk to Elijah in a different way than he talked to Moses,
00:33:28.120
Again, God can govern conscience, as he did for Moses, as he did for Elijah, as he does
00:33:34.440
to his people, but that doesn't mean that God is conscience.
00:33:42.060
I think that this section of the debate brings to light the fact that Jordan Peterson's belief
00:33:49.120
in the scriptures is not actually based on a Christian understanding of who God is and
00:34:00.880
This is not just a meta-narrative that we can kind of, like, copy and paste here today.
00:34:10.740
I think that there are symbols and lessons and archetypes that we can look for in the Bible,
00:34:27.380
That's not the point of God's eternal plan of redemption.
00:34:35.940
If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
00:34:43.920
So it's not just that the Bible gives us some good lessons and some good regulations or that
00:34:49.300
Jesus helps us navigate this life in some kind of upward trajectory.
00:34:53.300
As I heard Jordan Peterson say throughout this debate, it is that he gives us real resurrection
00:35:02.340
And if he doesn't give us that, then we are a people to be shamed and we should be embarrassed.
00:35:08.060
Christianity, without the hope of the resurrection, without the hope of the next life,
00:35:12.520
the greatest evangelist in the world, Paul says it is embarrassing.
00:35:19.700
I've seen this with a lot of people who seem to be really attracted to the traditions of Christianity
00:35:26.880
and the lessons of Christianity who don't buy in to this whole Emmanuel God-made flesh thing,
00:35:36.560
And we could look at that and say, well, that's useful, that's practical, that's better than
00:35:44.560
And yes, pragmatically, that may be true, but the Bible says it's actually embarrassing
00:35:49.640
to have that kind of short-sighted, just, earthly faith.
00:35:55.520
Why sacrifice for something that is going to end you up in the same place as atheism or
00:36:06.880
So the second claim, that's just the first claim.
00:36:10.500
The second claim is morality and purpose, Jordan Peterson says, can't be found within science.
00:36:20.480
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So under this claim that morality and purpose can't be found within science, and I guess
00:37:47.500
the implication, although maybe it's too far to say the implication, is that morality and
00:37:53.780
purpose have to be from God, I would say from Christianity, not just from any supernatural
00:38:02.140
entity, but that seems to be the implication here.
00:38:05.600
And actually, the implication is what most of the debaters are debating against, and maybe
00:38:11.460
that's their error, or maybe it's a safe assumption.
00:38:16.720
He says that he is a former Young Earth Fundamentalist YouTube apologist.
00:38:23.580
And yet, he doesn't know the answer to one of the most basicāit's a good question, but
00:38:29.320
one of the most basic apologetics questions, which is, like, why did God allow, or does
00:38:38.480
And how do we reconcile the fact that slavery existed in the Old Testament, and God seems
00:38:49.120
In the Bible, it talks a lot about slavery, right?
00:38:53.560
So in that, it teaches you how to take care of a slave.
00:38:55.980
Rather than saying slavery's wrong, I think it should say that.
00:39:02.760
Well, that's why Moses leads his people away from slavery.
00:39:05.220
But why does the Bible predicate and tell people exactly how to take care of a slave?
00:39:11.540
Don'tāwouldn't you say that culturally we've evolved as a species, as he said earlier about
00:39:17.120
Yeah, I would say that the reason we evolved, so to speak, away from slavery was because
00:39:21.540
the West was founded on Judeo-Christian morality and the presumption that every person was made
00:39:27.880
Well, slavery itself became immoral, and that was established by Protestant Christians
00:39:32.300
in the UK, who then convinced the UK government for 200 years to go to war on slavery.
00:39:36.520
And wouldn't you say that this is about the cultural evolution of humans in general, rather
00:39:41.880
No, I think it's the flowering of the ideas that were embedded in the biblical texts across
00:39:48.480
I feel like this is just humans editing based on the cultural evolution of morality.
00:39:54.640
Um, okay, I liked the last part of Jordan Peterson's answer there, because he is absolutely
00:40:02.340
And I'm sorry, but this is not actually a good, sound, interesting argument from Lucas.
00:40:08.340
I think he could have stopped where he said, well, why doesn't the Bible condemn slavery?
00:40:11.820
But then to say that human beings in general have evolved to the point of not liking slavery,
00:40:21.160
Uh, this is such a basic talking point from secular progressives, and I find it so interesting
00:40:28.660
how many apparently former fundamentalists, former churchgoers, they claim that they had
00:40:34.900
been in church forever, they transition into these atheists or agnostics, and they come
00:40:39.240
out swinging with the most basic, tired arguments about the Bible and Christianity.
00:40:48.440
Not every part, and this is like mostly to Christians, but I'd probably try to explain
00:40:53.440
the Christian position to an atheist like this too.
00:41:00.440
It's true that the Old Testament law did not ban outright the owning of slaves.
00:41:05.560
But we see in Deuteronomy 24 and elsewhere in the Old Testament that slavery was to be the
00:41:11.760
last resort for someone who could not provide for his family.
00:41:15.620
It was actually a way for destitute people to be cared for.
00:41:20.060
And in Deuteronomy and Exodus, God gives very clear specifications for how slaves were to be
00:41:31.540
They were not to be treated as objects or as property.
00:41:34.760
God is categorically, we see it throughout Scripture, against oppression.
00:41:39.960
The kind of slavery that Israelites were enduring in Egypt was oppressive, and God freed them from
00:41:47.480
And in the New Testament, slavery in the Roman Empire was acknowledged.
00:41:53.160
Slaves were told to obey their masters, but they were also encouraged to seek freedom if they could.
00:41:59.540
And masters were instructed to care for their slaves in, for example, Ephesians 6.9.
00:42:06.300
Slaves were told that in Christ, they had the same position before God as free people did.
00:42:15.380
Paul doesn't tell Philemon to free Onesimus, but encourages Philemon to welcome him as he would a brother.
00:42:24.860
So it is true that the Bible does not outright condemn every single form of slavery, but the
00:42:35.800
biblical attitude toward slaves as made in God's image, as people with rights, as people
00:42:43.160
fully able to receive salvation by grace through faith, receive riches in Christ, completely contradicted
00:42:51.320
how every other culture and religion has viewed slavery throughout history, which was and still
00:42:58.820
is in many cultures today an amoral fact of life.
00:43:03.460
It was not, as Jordan Peterson pointed out, until Christians in the West started making an
00:43:08.820
issue of slavery that it was eventually fought against and defeated.
00:43:16.600
To say that people have just evolved, and so we don't accept slavery anymore.
00:43:23.240
And it is so often atheists and progressives who say that, well, we Americans, we're just
00:43:29.820
so blinded by our Western lens, and we just need to open our eyes to the way that other
00:43:42.080
Africa sold slaves to Americans hundreds of years ago, and they still sell and use slaves
00:43:49.640
China makes its Uyghur Muslim population slaves.
00:44:00.020
I've talked about this many times, how in the Roman pagan world, people's worth was determined
00:44:09.620
So their ability to reason, their ability to rationalize.
00:44:13.240
And it was believed by the scholars of that time that only the adult free male had the
00:44:18.260
fullness of logos, and therefore the adult free male only had the fullness of value as
00:44:23.560
And consequently, other kinds of people were treated as subhuman, especially children.
00:44:30.980
That's why abortion and infanticide, a terrible practice called exposure, where unwanted newborns
00:44:36.660
were placed on a hill, exposed to the elements to die.
00:44:40.260
All of that was a widespread, well-documented practice.
00:44:45.200
And it took years and years to change that, to stigmatize those practices, to stigmatize
00:44:52.120
child sex slavery, which was rampant in the pagan Roman Empire at the time, to stigmatize and
00:44:59.200
eventually criminalize the mistreatment of the poor and the homeless and the sick.
00:45:09.320
How were those brutal practices eventually criminalized?
00:45:13.660
How were they eventually replaced with taking special care of the widow and the child and
00:45:29.340
Christians who preached the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth.
00:45:33.480
Christians who worshipped a God who came to earth as an embryo, who was heralded by the
00:45:41.060
kicks of an unborn John the Baptist, who was born as an infant in a manger, who, as an
00:45:48.040
adult, against the protestation of his disciples, said,
00:45:51.780
Let the little children come to me, for such as these belong the kingdom of heaven.
00:45:56.740
This Jesus who healed the sick, who helped the poor, who told his people to do the same.
00:46:04.040
The people, the followers of the way, Christians, little Christ, changed how the world saw children.
00:46:19.580
Jesus introduced the world to the concept of human rights that didn't just naturally happen.
00:46:30.320
Can't you look at the world today and see that humans err towards oppression and selfishness and
00:46:39.180
And it takes effort to go the opposite direction.
00:46:43.000
Holy Spirit empowered efforts to go the opposite direction.
00:46:47.200
So even just the most basic observation can see that human beings don't evolve towards
00:46:56.760
Christianity has forged Western civilization in a way that has completely revolutionized
00:47:06.080
And Jordan Peterson is right that, well, we'll get to that.
00:47:13.040
That progressives take for granted the rights and the values and the virtues that have been
00:47:21.100
long heralded by the West, and they reject their religious, their Christian foundations.
00:47:27.480
So this person who claims to know so much about the Bible really doesn't know that much about
00:47:38.980
I'm running out of time here, and so I have to skip ahead.
00:47:43.060
There are some other interesting questions that were asked by different atheists under that
00:47:47.520
second claim, but we just don't have time for it.
00:47:52.620
Everyone worships something, including atheists.
00:47:56.340
So Zina, I think she's one of my favorite participants in this debate.
00:48:07.060
What makes someone a Christian and what makes someone not a Christian?
00:48:13.660
Yeah, well, probably the deepest answer to that is willingness to shoulder your cross
00:48:18.100
voluntarily and trudge uphill regardless of circumstances.
00:48:22.980
Okay, so she goes on to say that she doesn't think you can get that definition of Christian,
00:48:30.400
what Jordan Peterson just articulated from the Bible,
00:48:33.000
and that anyone could orient their lives in that way without being a Christian, and she
00:48:39.960
Like, I just appreciate that she, a lot of these people, not all of them, but she, at
00:48:45.600
least, has a good understanding of what Christians say we believe.
00:48:51.500
Like I said at the beginning, it is always better to start from that position, and she's very
00:48:57.820
effective, I think, in this conversation because she's steel-manning the argument.
00:49:05.500
She is trying her best to accurately represent what Christians believe so then she can properly
00:49:12.500
The truth is, is that being self-sacrificial does not matter, I mean, spiritually, eternally
00:49:19.500
at all, unless you believe Jesus is who he says he is, God, and that he died for your sins
00:49:29.320
But lots of people are self-sacrificial who are not Christian.
00:49:41.380
Now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for.
00:49:53.080
Galatians 3, 24 says that we Christians are justified.
00:49:56.580
We are made right, made righteous before God by faith.
00:50:04.780
Peterson says that when Jesus says, not all who say, Lord, Lord, will be saved, he mentions
00:50:12.600
He says that the differentiator between those who just say, Lord, Lord, and those who are
00:50:20.220
And I could see how he would think that may be from Matthew 25.
00:50:23.760
But as he also points out in different parts of this debate, you have to look at scripture
00:50:32.020
And when we see that, we can see that when we do that, we can see that it's not your works
00:50:39.300
It's not true that the differentiator for Christians is the behavior.
00:50:48.140
And the work will follow true faith and true belief, but it is the faith given to us by God's
00:51:01.640
It's not the works of the law that justify you.
00:51:09.780
It is actually the faith that is given to you by God that justifies you and makes you
00:51:17.480
So he's simply not correct when he defines what it actually means to be a Christian.
00:51:24.140
We've got someone who's pointing out, well, it doesn't seem like you are a Christian,
00:51:28.640
And Jordan Peterson's got an interesting answer.
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So this person, Danny, says, uh, well, I don't think you're a Christian.
00:52:39.000
Are you familiar with the Immaculate Conception?
00:52:41.880
Because you go to a Catholic church, don't you?
00:53:06.280
Because I won't talk to you if you're a smartass.
00:53:10.660
I could be either of them, but I don't have to tell you.
00:53:22.220
I think everyone should look at the title of the YouTube channel.
00:53:26.600
You're really quite something you are, aren't I?
00:53:44.020
I liked some of these other participants did not like Danny.
00:53:46.620
I actually do not blame Jordan Peterson for how he reacted,
00:53:49.800
because I don't think this guy was trying to have an honest debate.
00:53:53.040
This clip is going around as some sort of like dunk on Jordan Peterson,
00:54:11.320
I'm sure that you have gathered that if you are new here.
00:54:13.680
And I really appreciate my Catholic listeners so much.
00:54:16.780
And there's so much that we, so much that we agree on.
00:54:19.820
And so many things I appreciate about my Catholic friends and followers.
00:54:23.740
But what I'm about to say is probably going to ruffle feathers,
00:54:32.040
Okay, I'm not totally sure what Danny was getting at
00:54:37.740
when he was asking about Mary and if Catholics worship Mary.
00:54:45.220
and I'm going to get into some points in a second,
00:54:46.840
but I'm not sure what he was trying to prove here
00:54:48.860
or how the Catholic veneration of Mary would disprove Peterson's claim
00:54:58.240
I'm going to give Danny the benefit of the doubt
00:55:00.000
and act like he had like a thought out argument here.
00:55:16.100
like the ability to understand all the languages of the world
00:55:25.800
well, that seems to fit your definition of worship.
00:55:28.780
And Jordan's definition of worship is to attend to or prioritize.
00:55:32.540
And Catholics attend to, he might say, and prioritize Mary.
00:55:38.680
So Danny is probably trying to argue in the same way atheists attend to
00:55:43.900
and prioritize certain things, but they don't worship them.
00:55:48.460
As a Protestant, I would say, no, that is worship.
00:55:54.860
I know Catholics say that they don't worship Mary.
00:55:59.400
But I would say praying to an icon of something daily
00:56:02.820
and giving someone characteristics that are biblically only reserved for God.
00:56:12.580
The Holy Spirit tells us what to pray, hears our prayers, intercedes for us.
00:56:19.160
Jesus is the only one who was immaculately conceived.
00:56:22.380
All of that, no matter what you call it, does seem to amount to worship.
00:56:29.960
We don't see this reflected in Scripture at all.
00:56:32.180
The Bible gives us the best picture of what the early church was like in Acts and in the epistles.
00:56:37.300
We see no mention at all of honoring Mary in this way, not even a slight implication of it.
00:56:43.940
So that line of argumentation from Danny wouldn't have worked on me.
00:56:53.160
You might worship money, your job, your free time, sex, sports.
00:56:58.520
And I don't think prioritize and attend to is a bad definition of worship.
00:57:06.080
I would say it is what do you orient your life around?
00:57:11.320
I'd argue that most atheists today, and even those who claim to be religious, worship the God of self.
00:57:20.120
It can also mean to adulate or to adore or to praise.
00:57:29.400
And so there, I think, is an expanded definition of what worship can actually mean.
00:57:36.540
And I think that the claim is an interesting one.
00:57:39.460
And I wish they would have gone a little bit different of a direction, at least with Danny.
00:57:50.300
And I do encourage you to go back and to watch that part of the debate.
00:57:57.660
Atheists accept Christian morality, Jordan Peterson claims, but deny their religious foundations, which I agree with.
00:58:08.660
Ian might be, I think, more irritating than Danny.
00:58:15.780
So God says that you can own people as property.
00:58:17.940
He says that you can beat them with a rod, too.
00:58:20.140
He commands genocide and Deuteronomy and Numbers and in Samuel.
00:58:29.140
Like, is all of this in line with Christian ethics?
00:58:36.300
So then God doesn't fit within Christian ethics.
00:58:39.340
Well, the biblical library is a continuing story, and everything written in it has to be contextualized by the entire text.
00:58:48.040
There's 65,000 hyperlinks in the biblical text.
00:58:51.380
And you can take pieces of it out, out of context, and criticize them, and that's what you're doing.
00:58:58.760
It's an analytic mistake because you're putting the cart before the horse.
00:59:03.740
Okay, first of all, God does not say that you can own people as property.
00:59:07.260
As we've already explained about slavery, those people are still made in the image of God.
00:59:11.380
That was a relief from their destitution and from their severe poverty last resort.
00:59:23.300
And Jordan Peterson is right that you do have to read Scripture in light of Scripture.
00:59:31.140
At least he was able to articulate the entire thrust of his argument, unlike our friend Danny.
00:59:39.060
So Peterson says more about that, and he is absolutely right that decontextualizing Scripture to make a point is an analytical mistake.
00:59:48.720
To read Scripture in context, and as you would read any other historical account, or even a literary account, if you don't think that this is real history,
00:59:57.960
is to know that not everything is prescriptive, as we've already noted.
01:00:04.340
That is descriptive, not prescriptive, and not everything that God prescribed to Israel at that time is a prescription for us today.
01:00:16.180
So looking at the whole biblical narrative, we see that Israel was God's chosen people.
01:00:21.820
He created all people, but not all people were his.
01:00:25.720
We see throughout the Old Testament that God will stop at nothing to glorify himself and to protect his chosen people, to preserve them, to fight on their behalf.
01:00:37.620
Even when they sinned, even when they rebelled, because of his mercy, he preserved them.
01:00:43.340
And in the New Testament, we see that God again stops at nothing to save his own people,
01:00:47.880
a new people made up of both Jews and Gentiles through Christ, for which he sacrifices his own son.
01:00:55.720
So the bloody brutality endured by God's enemies to save Israel points to the bloody brutality endured by God's son to save his enemies.
01:01:06.180
So I'll repeat what I said a couple weeks ago about Passover that explains this.
01:01:12.180
And I was telling the story about when my daughter asked why people would celebrate Passover if children in Egypt died.
01:01:19.880
And this is not the explanation I gave to her, who is five.
01:01:23.160
This is the explanation that I'm giving you adults.
01:01:26.000
But Passover is celebrated not because of the death that occurred, but because God was making a way for his people to be saved.
01:01:34.800
And it took this action, this killing, to convince Pharaoh to let God's people go and free them from slavery.
01:01:41.560
The lamb's blood over the door frames of the houses of Israel that signaled God's spirit to pass over them was a signifier of what was to come.
01:01:49.920
The blood of the final spotless lamb, Jesus, which cleanses us from sin and saves us from eternal death.
01:01:55.700
Also, in Exodus 4.22, God calls Israel his firstborn son.
01:02:00.080
He says, you, Egypt and Pharaoh, you're killing and oppressing my firstborn.
01:02:06.200
So here he kills his enemy's firstborn son to save his own firstborn son, Israel.
01:02:14.460
He kills his own son to save his enemies who become his sons and daughters.
01:02:19.980
So in the Old Testament, he kills his enemy to save his children.
01:02:24.320
In the New Testament, he kills his child to save his enemies.
01:02:29.040
I think of Romans 5.15, for if many die through one man's trespass, that's Adam, much more have the grace of God and the free gift of the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.
01:02:48.260
He flooded the earth because of the evil happening in the world.
01:02:51.560
And he commanded Israel to wipe out the Amalekites because of their sin and oppression.
01:02:57.660
That's what this guy was talking about here, the defeat of the Amalekites and how God instructed Israel to kill all of them, including their children and their infants.
01:03:11.220
But again, context, the Amalekites were known as nomadic plunders.
01:03:16.600
For centuries, they traveled around terrorizing people groups and praying upon the weakest among them, women and children.
01:03:24.460
We see this in Deuteronomy and Exodus and 1 Samuel.
01:03:28.060
Several references to the wickedness of the Amalekites throughout the Old Testament show the just kind of darkness that they were up against.
01:03:35.560
So God wanted to ensure that no descendants of the Amalekites would be able to inflict this kind of terror again.
01:03:42.340
So in 1 Samuel 15, he tells King Saul, not everyone everywhere at all times.
01:03:47.440
He tells King Saul, you need to totally destroy the Amalekites, including their children.
01:03:52.920
And Saul disobeyed, by the way, and he didn't destroy everyone.
01:03:56.080
And the Amalekites continued to terrorize Israel and other people groups for centuries, killing other women and children.
01:04:02.100
So I think we have no clue the wickedness committed by some of these pagan societies.
01:04:11.100
All kinds of depravity and violence were the norm.
01:04:14.140
I saw the other day someone posted this archaeological finding.
01:04:18.460
It was a picture of this mask that had been dug up that was believed to be worn in ancient societies.
01:04:24.240
It was written about, worn in ancient societies to mock the victims of child sacrifice as they were screaming being fed to the fire to please their gods.
01:04:36.400
When you read things like that, the kind of malice and deep depravity that existed, it's like it's no wonder that God ordered for the destruction of some of these groups.
01:04:47.240
And actually, the children were probably spared torture and torment by God carrying this out.
01:04:58.620
I would actually say it's a little ironic because pro-abortionists have no problem with this, which is, of course, the irony here that this guy more than likely celebrates abortion, which is widespread infanticide, and thinks that he's morally superior to Christians who have been on the front lines against infanticide and child sex trafficking and slavery.
01:05:15.400
And the mistreatment of orphans and widows and the poor for millennia.
01:05:20.320
The hard truth is, there are things about the Bible and history and God that we do not understand.
01:05:25.120
If there are things that we understand that kids can't understand just in general, and we're two finite beings, then how much bigger is the gap of understanding between us and God?
01:05:37.980
We don't explain everything to our toddlers that they don't understand because we know that telling them too many details would probably make them more anxious.
01:05:45.920
And so don't you think it's possible that God doesn't explain everything to us because we don't have the capacity to fully understand it?
01:05:53.600
And by the way, the inclusion of stories like that in Scripture actually lend to Scripture's credibility.
01:05:58.680
Like, if the Bible were just compiled by men who wanted to assert their religion and way of life onto society, they would have excluded all the difficult-to-understand stuff.
01:06:08.040
They wouldn't have included the passages about God destroying or ordering the destruction of societies.
01:06:15.620
They would have just made a PR pamphlet for him.
01:06:20.300
They included the stuff that shows how difficult God's people have it.
01:06:23.620
So that'sāI probably wouldn't have time to answer that thoroughly in that kind of setting, but that's what I would say.
01:06:33.280
It's a difficult question, but it is an answerable question.
01:06:36.900
Now, whether or not that answer is satisfactory to the atheists there, I don't know.
01:06:42.860
All in all, I actually think that Jordan Peterson did a lot better than some critics on social media are saying.
01:06:55.880
There should have been a Christian representing the Christian position.
01:07:00.040
And I'm not even sure that Peterson really believes in God.
01:07:06.420
It sounds to me like he believes in idea of God that could be the conscience, that could perhaps be other things.
01:07:12.300
I'm not even sure that fits the definition of theism.
01:07:17.380
It was more of an opportunity for atheists to dunk on someone who is opposing them.
01:07:22.980
I really hope Jubilee does this again with a Christian apologist that can answer some of these questions.
01:07:30.260
But kudos to everyone who volunteered for that because that's very intense and very tough.
01:07:35.300
And I enjoyed watching it, and it made me think myself.
01:07:38.140
And I always welcome the opportunity to think more deeply about my faith and why I believe what I believe.
01:07:43.460
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01:07:54.480
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01:08:07.920
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01:08:13.200
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01:08:16.160
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