Peterson's Forced Christianity

So, I'm an atheist. Or an agnostic. Or... Let me put it this way: I don't believe in any God mentioned in any scripture, and most certainly don't believe in a personal God who can listen to my prayers, and consequently ignore them.

_{source: Wikimedia Commons}

What I do believe is that we're not perfect, that our knowledge about life, the universe and everything else is limited, and I know for sure that there's more to existence than just the materialistic and observable. Science therefore also has it's limitations. I don't mind this uncertainty, in fact I adore it! I even believe it's kind of presumptuous to claim any certain and definitive knowledge about anything at all. "The Truth" is a singular thing, therefore any individual perspective on The Truth is not true. At least not completely true.

Faith, or religion is, just like science, just a method of getting to some kind of truth, but both are inadequate to get to THE truth. Still, given a choice between the two, it should be obvious that science and the scientific method are the best tools we have as humans to determine our shared truths about the physical world. Science has proven to be the best method, as it has given us all progress we've ever made; a prayer never produced anything of substance, like a wheel, fire or a micro-chip. The fact that we can use science to make predictions, and to explain how nature works by grinding down to the fundamental laws of physics, means that we're quite successful in slowly but surely unraveling nature's secrets and use them to our own benefit.

The thing about science, it's main feature, is that it's the ultimate admission of uncertainty; nothing in science is definite and everything is up for change or revision. This is why even the things we're most certain about are still called theories, like the theory of evolution, or the theories of general and special relativity. These are excepted as truths, for now, until someone comes along with a better theory. Scientific truths are forever in motion, where religious truths are forever cast in stone, often quite literally.

There are a couple of scientists however that seem to think we're there, that we've reached a point in our knowledge about reality's fundamental building blocks where basically everything is explained or explainable, and that just some details have to be filled in. Among them are some of my favorite, like Sean Carol, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and the late Christopher Hitchens; the last four are part of the infamous "new atheists" who, much to my chagrin, are on a regular crusade against religion. I don't mind them pointing out the dogmatism and the lack of progress caused by any religion, it's the way that they do it that sometimes bothers me to no end.

_{Am I Christian? | Timothy Lott and Jordan B Peterson}

They do admit, and even proudly proclaim, as the should do, that in science nothing is certain, that every theory is open for critique and amendment as soon as a better one pops up, but they do this as if current scientific truths are written in stone. Stone tablets are best reserved for divine commandments methinks. It bothers me when they claim that there's nothing more than the material world, and that everything, including life and consciousness, can be explained by interactions of the fundamental material building blocks of the universe alone. This I know for sure is not true, or else there would be some generally accepted scientific definitions of life and consciousness, and there aren't.

Our living consciousness is what we use, is the filter through which we observe, experience the external world. My logic says that if we don't have a clue (and we don't) what a living consciousness is, how it functions, how it comes into existence, then everything else is up for grabs. We can debate about personal truths, and we can develop our knowledge of our shared truths through science, discussion, democracy and what else have you, but no one has access to THE truth.

In light of all this, I've been amused and irritated by this modern day guru, Jordan Peterson. I've listened to several of his discussions, as some of them were with people I already follow for years, one of them being Sam Harris. Peterson's "truth" is a very special one; he doesn't care if you say you're an atheist. As long as you behave like a decent human being, that is you don't rape, pillage and murder, you're a Christian. If you abide by Christian morals, you must be a Christian. I do hope there's no need to expand on the ridiculousness of this statement. It could even be seen as insulting if you're a convinced atheist, and someone tells you that you're fooling yourself. Well, I'm sorry mr. Peterson, I beg to differ; I think you're fooling yourself if you really think that I extract my morality from some divine law, or that you yourself are moral because God willed it so.

_{Peterson Thinks Sam Harris Is a "Christian"}

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