In the first post,  I started a discussion of Jordan Peterson’s view of truth.

I believe that Jordan Peterson’s conclusion on the nature of truth is fundamentally flawed. It is his evolutionary pragmatic view of truth that is a great contributor to his inability to see Christianity for what it is, the truth – metaphysical, historical, and literal truth.

In this second post, I will now look at specific examples of Peterson’s ideas on truth and show how they lead to absurdities. I will also show some examples of where Peterson differs from the classical theistic view of Christianity, and how this is derived from his evolutionary pragmatic view of truth.

Recap

Peterson holds to an evolutionary form of pragmatism that states that things are only true if they result in survival. If somehow a belief you hold leads to your death, the belief itself is false. This stands in contrast to the correspondence theory of truth that has historically been held by the Christian church and by most philosophers up to the 19th century.

On the correspondence theory of truth, a proposition is true when it represents reality as it really is. This is the common sense view of truth. This means that truth is objective; that it exists outside of us (outside of human minds) and is discoverable.

A Truth That Changes

Let’s first return to the Harris-Peterson dialogue on truth from their first meeting on Harris’s The Waking Up Podcast.

Sam Harris presents to Peterson a thought experiment to show an absurd situation that arises when you say truth is dictated by survivability.

https://youtu.be/1gdpyzwOOYY&start=6859&end=6978

Harris: But for most things we want to talk about there is no implication of danger on that scale at all. And yet we still have to make strong truth claims. We can make this as prosaic or as weird as you want, if someone says that your wife is cheating on you, presumably that’s within the realm of possibility, provided that you have a wife. And you’re going to want evidence, and what would constitute evidence? Well here’s here’s evidence: “I saw it in a dream” well that’s bad evidence. Well here’s evidence “I hired a private investigator and here are seventeen pictures of her at various locations with a man you’ve never seen before and he looks like Brad Pitt.” Now all of a sudden presumably you’re interested right? Now the claim about whether or not she’s cheating on you is an intelligible claim, we can drill down on what it might mean, does she have to be having sex with this person to be cheating on you? Let’s say yes, she does, okay so that is a claim about what she’s actually doing with this person in a locked room somewhere when you’re not around. That’s a claim that has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you wind up killing yourself based on your reaction to this unhappy truth.

If you then wind up killing yourself, we could say at the end of the day well it would be better if he hadn’t known that. It would certainly be better if she hadn’t done that. It would’ve been better if he had married a different woman, surely we want to say that.

Peterson: It might have been better if he had paid attention to his damn marriage. And to attribute the cause of his demise to the existence of the photographs, this is why I brought up Josh Green is that investigations into this kind of morality always frame it such a way….

Harris: Jordan you have to grant one thing here, there is one piece that doesn’t get moved here. We cannot move the piece that because you killed yourself it’s not true that she was having an affair. That move is not open to you, and yet you’re acting like it is. ¹

Sam Harris confronts Peterson with a simple fact. A woman cheated on her husband. Because Peterson’s takes such a strong stance on his evolutionary pragmatism, he is forced to admit that this fact is somehow not true if the husband kills himself. It was true before the husband died, but it becomes untrue after the husband died. On Peterson’s conception of truth, historical truth is fluid.

Self-refuting

Here is another example from the Harris-Peterson dialogue that shows that Peterson’s position leads to a reductio ad absurdum. It is self-refuting.

https://youtu.be/1gdpyzwOOYY&start=3682&end=4151

Harris: I’m gonna probe you from my epistemology to yours. It seems to me that I can make statements about reality, which neither of us can judge to be true, we just don’t have the tools or we’re not going to take the time to do it, but we know there is a fact of the matter whether or not we can get the data in hand. So I can say for instance you have an even number of hairs on your body. Right, now I don’t know that’s true, but I know I have a fifty percent chance of being right about that and, this is not a non binary possibility, this is a binary one assuming you have any hair on your body.

[…]

Harris: Okay, but let’s say it could hurt or kill you, let’s say that you know now you’re a hostage and your hostage takers have a bizarre religion of their own invention where they, they will kill people who have odd numbers of hairs on their body, and they will venerate people who have even numbers of hairs. So now your life depends on which is true about you. And perhaps if you have an even number of hairs you want to find out, if you have an odd number you don’t, or you want to find out and surreptitiously pluck one so that you can be now a safe member of this moral emergency. So, nothing has changed with respect to the truth value about the claims one might make about the hair on your body, right? It’s just a different situation. Your concept of truth can’t be hostage to these superficial changes in context.

Peterson: I think it’s inevitably hostage to them. I don’t think you can help it but be hostage to them. I think that even the choice of what you’re interested in as a scientist is subject to contextual factors that are part of the parameters within which you, when you ask the question.

Harris: Jordan, what does that mean in this context? So I’m talking again, this is a bizarre example that just…it may seem strange to talk about for any length, but I think it reveals, at the very least, an awkward commitment to revising our language.

Peterson: I think what it means technically is that the only final way of sorting out whether a scientific claims is sufficiently true is through Darwinian means. Because I think that the Darwinian process is the only way of adjudicating truth. Now you don’t accept that, and that’s fine, I mean it’s not like what you’re doing isn’t coherent.

[…]

Harris: But I don’t think we are. I think you’re simply deciding at the end of the day to say that any truths that led us down a path where we suffered unnecessarily or died weren’t true.

Peterson: Right. You have to choose what you mean by true. You have to. And I’m not accepting the same definition of truth that you operate under because, and it’s partly because I believe that Darwin trumps Realism let’s say, I believe that Pragmatism trumps Realism.

Harris: But even the truth of Darwinism is not anchored to a Darwinian conception, in your view of truth, it is anchored to a realistic one. So Darwinism will not prove to be false if knowing about Darwinism get us all killed. That is entailed in your claim. Darwinism would bite its own tail there and disappear. ²

 

 

Let’s grant for the sake of thought experiment that Darwinian evolution is true. If we all suddenly died tomorrow, and this was a direct result somehow of our knowledge of Darwinism, this wouldn’t make Darwinism untrue. Here is what this would look like in syllogistic form:

1. Darwinian evolution is true.
2. If something kills you, it is not true (evolutionary pragmatism).
3. A belief could arise from Darwinian evolution that causes us all to die.
4. Therefore, Darwinian evolution is not true.

Peterson’s view of truth is self-refuting.

What Grounds Moral Truth?

Moral and ethical messages are deeply embedded in Peterson’s work. This is the part of Peterson’s message that I especially like. It is hard not to imagine this message resonating with almost anyone.

The problem here is that his evolutionary pragmatism runs into the same problem that other naturalistic views of the world run into. There is simply no way to explain how objective morality ontologically exists. It just becomes a brute fact or a useful fiction.

Teleological View of Morality

Classical theism’s conception of morality is that it is embedded in nature itself. You may object, “but wait, that is exactly what naturalists who believe in objective morality are trying to claim!” Unlike naturalism, though, this teleological view of morality isn’t just a brute fact. This is an order that can only arise from some sort of an order giver; a mind, something that has the intention for what the order is and causes it to exist.

Classical theism describes this order in the universe via the ideas of essentialism (things have essences) and teleology (the idea that natural things always act towards specific ends). Ends aren’t meant to be taken as final states, as that would mean death would be the natural end for all living things. Rather, it is the perfection of the thing, or the state when a thing is in its fullest state of being. This is the end that all things are naturally directed towards.

For example, the teleological view of the oak tree is that a properly functioning oak acorn always grows up into an oak tree, and not something else like a dog. Teleology explains why nature is ordered.

A teleological view of morality is one in which human action always promotes, rather than inhibits, the realization of a thing’s natural ends (perfections). When humans are acting rationally, by the very teleology embedded in nature, they should always try to do what is good. This is the basic rule of Thomas Aquinas’s view of morality.

“good is to be done and evil is to be avoided.”
–Thomas Aquinas

Teleology must be grounded in God; that is to say, God is the being that gives creation its order. Without God, there would be no reason for this order to exist. More importantly, there would be no reason why one should follow this order.

Matter follows order, it does not create it.

Some people say that consequences (e.g. avoiding suffering) are enough to get to imperatives for moral behavior. Consequences still do not create any objective imperative (imperatives that need apply to all). People will have disagreements over what consequences are acceptable. Everything is just subjective tastes without God.

The traditional dictum here is, you cannot derive an ought from an is. ³

Without God, this is most certainly true. With God, there is no distinction needed. Teleology (ought) is embedded in nature itself (is).

Feet Planted Firmly in the Air

In a recent dialogue, William Lane Craig (Christian philosopher/apologist) asked Peterson how he grounds his system of moral truths without God. Craig pointed out that if you don’t ground morality in God, it makes moral statements either arbitrary or subjective to each person.⁴

Previously in the dialogue, Peterson had been explaining how morality can arise from evolutionary means. Craig pointed out that even if our understanding of morality arose from evolutionary means, it would be the genetic fallacy to say that it somehow explains away the need for morality to be objectively true. ⁵ The manner in which we come to know objective morality doesn’t somehow mitigate the need for an explanation for why it is in nature in the first place. Again, matter follows order, it does not create it.

Peterson responded that there are multiple versions of truth; what is true of action (morality) is not what is necessarily true of matter and nature.

At that level of analysis you have to start questioning your initial presumptions like the idea that the most true truth is objective.  I am not sure that it is.  I don’t think we understand what constitutes true very well.  There is the truth that you act out and the truth that tells you what the world is made of.  And those are not the same thing.  Things get very murky at this level of abstraction.  ⁶
–Jordan Peterson

Peterson offers a confusing answer to Craig’s initial question about how Peterson grounds morality. In Peterson’s talk, it seemed that he had been arguing for objective morality and that it arises naturally through the evolutionary process. Instead, here Peterson now says he is not sure that “the most true truth is objective” and that there are two truths – “There is the truth that you act out and the truth that tells you what the world is made of.  And those are not the same thing.”

Is Peterson arguing for objective morality after all, then? Or is he arguing for multiple kinds of truths?

Multiple Truths

Peterson has been expressing this idea of multiple truths for quite a while. He describes the same concept in the opening chapter from his magnum opus Maps of Meaning.

The world can be validly construed as forum for action, or as place of things…

No complete world-picture can be generated, without use of both modes of construal. The fact that one mode is generally set at odds with the other means only that the nature of their respective domains remains insufficiently discriminated. Adherents of the mythological world-view tend to regard the statements of their creeds as indistinguishable from empirical “fact,” even though such statements were generally formulated long before the notion of objective reality emerged. Those who, by contrast, accept the scientific perspective – who assume that it is, or might become, complete – forget that an impassable gulf currently divides what is from what should be. ⁷
–Jordan Peterson

Another example of this multiple truths idea is from one of Peterson’s appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast:

Rogan: So truth can have multiple definitions?

Peterson:  That’s the issue, that’s what we are trying to get at here. To me there’s two kinds of truth and they may be commensurate and you may be able to stack them on top of one another.   But now and then they dissociate, and in this is actually what Brett was referring to as well. So in this is where it gets so complicated that I can barely manage it.  There’s the truth that manifest itself in the manner in which you act and there’s the truth that manifest itself as a representation of the objective world. And sometimes both those truths are stacked on top of each other and sometimes they’re not.  So like I could give you a piece of wisdom that would work well if you acted it out that carried within it an inaccurate representation of part of the objective world, and you could say well maybe that’s actually the case with the biblical stories because if you read them as science, they don’t read well. ⁸

Here, I believe, is the crux of Peterson’s confusion. There are not two separate truths (moral and material) that can contradict each other. In Peterson’s example above about a moral truth from the Bible that is scientifically incorrect, there is no contradiction. We don’t have multiple truths at all in this situation.  There is simply one mistaken belief about a scientific fact of nature and one true fact about morality.

It is easy to demonstrate other instances where a mistaken belief could arise that would aide survivability. Alvin Plantinga has a well-known example of this in his evolutionary argument against naturalism:

“Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief. … Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it. … Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour.” ⁹
–Alvin Plantinga

Peterson would say that truth is relative to survivability. If he is consistent with his evolutionary pragmatism, he would have to say that it is true that the tiger is “large and friendly”.  If he goes the route of multiple truths, he would likely say that the mistaken belief is actually true and so is the tiger being a violent predator.

This is a confusion of what is quite simple. There is only one objective truth here. It turns out in this case that an incorrect belief aided survival. This does not make a false belief true or create a need for multiple contradictory truths.

The position that there are multiple versions of truth that can contradict each other is absurd. Peterson has now waded into areas of denying the law of non-contradiction. This makes all rational inquiry impossible. There would be no reason to trust anything about our knowledge. Whatever you think to be true, could also be false at the same time.

For classical theism, morality arises out of the interaction of human minds and matter. These two are inexorably tied together. Morality is human action in the world. If there are multiple types of truth, we can end up with absurd situations where a human action is true but the material account of the situation is false. This just doesn’t make any sense.

Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?

Finally, we have what should be the showstopper for all Christians. Peterson has called himself a Christian on multiple accounts. When asked if he believes that Jesus actually rose from the dead, though, he is unable to offer a clear response. During a recent interview with Patrick Coffin, Jordan was asked directly what he thinks about the resurrection.

Coffin: J.R. Tolkien helped C.S Lewis to understand that the story of Christ was the first archetypal myth that was not just true in a mythological sense, but also true in the historical sense. That insight, helped by the grace of God, pushed Lewis over and he became a Christian. Where are you in that discernment process on the historical nature of Christ and especially the resurrection?

Peterson: Well that’s a great question. I do believe that there are places where the mythological and the literal touch. I mentioned one of those earlier, the idea that spoken truth, logos, yet creates habitable order out of chaos. I think that is literally and metaphorically true. I don’t think you can state the nature of being and the role that consciousness plays in it more accurately than that.  And so it’s metaphysically true it’s religiously true and it’s literally true all at the same time. And so there are times when that happens, and I don’t know. See this is the mystery to me I would say. I understand what that means. I understand that there are times when the literal and the metaphysical or religious co-concur… So yeah, the way I’ve been conceptualizing it is it’s as if the material reaches up towards the spiritual and the spiritual reaches down towards the material and now and then they touch and that’s a miracle when that happens. It’s a miracle then that happens, and I do think that happens. With regards to the resurrection…apart from my saying what I just said I would say that I need to think about that for about three more years before I would even venture an answer beyond what I’ve already given because there’s very much there that I don’t understand as well as I need to understand. ¹⁰

Once again, we see Peterson grappling with the idea of multiple types of truth. He states that sometimes they come together, and this is what he thinks may be going on with Christianity.

I would agree that there are multiple perspectives, or levels of analysis one can perform when reading something like the Bible. However, there is only at one time ever one objective truth. This way all the laws of logic are maintained (especially the law of non-contradiction).

On Peterson’s view of truth, there are multiple types of truth, and survival can even change the past truth status of a proposition. In this murky climate of truth, it is easier to see how Peterson can craft statements that appeal to atheists and theists alike (like we saw in part 1).

The Bible does not leave the possibility open to us that it is not factually true.

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) Peterson is able to read very deep archetypal and psychological meaning out of the bible. Unlike C.S. Lewis, he just isn’t able to see that the Bible is more than this, though. Peterson is unable to see that it is the myth that is true.

The Bible does not even leave open the possibility of Peterson’s idea that it is pragmatically true (useful fiction). This is why Peterson’s lack of belief in the literal truth of the resurrection is a show stopper for Christians. It is a basic tenet of Christianity.

1 Corinthians 15 English Standard Version (ESV)

The Resurrection of Christ
15 Now I would remind you, brothers,[a] of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

The Resurrection of the Dead
12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope[b] in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

 

 

Why Should Christians Care?

From a Christian perspective, one of the immediate problems is that Peterson is spreading a false gospel. He is setting up the conditions for people to continue in disbelief by offering a secular interpretation of the Bible. Here is an example with Peterson talking of the fall of man in Genesis as a meta-myth.

The traditional Christian (and not just Christian) notion that man has fallen from an original “state of grace” into his current morally degenerate and emotionally unbearable condition – accompanied by a desire for the “return to Paradise” – constitutes a single example of this “meta-myth.” Christian morality can therefore be reasonably regarded as the “plan of action” whose aim is re-establishment, or establishment, or attainment (sometimes in the “hereafter”) of the 26 “kingdom of God,” the ideal future. The idea that man needs redemption – and that re-establishment of a long-lost Paradise might constitute such redemption – appear as common themes of mythology, among members of exceedingly diverse and long-separated human cultures.24 This commonality appears because man, eternally self-conscious, suffers eternally from his existence, and constantly longs for respite. ¹¹

–Jordan Peterson

This is an example where the believer and non-believer can cross paths in a psychoanalysis of the Bible. For both, there is certainly archetypal truth embedded in these stories.  For the believer, though, this story is simply true. Other religions are just those people who were without God’s direct revelation (contained in the Bible) responding to the idea of God. For the non-believer, though, the Peterson view of Christianity is that it is just a useful fiction. It is a set of mythical stories that help construct a set of rules to better order society.

Peterson’s teaching offers the possibility that the Bible is a useful fiction.  As we saw above in 1 Corinthians 15, the Bible does not leave this open as a possibility of itself.

Another problem from a Christian perspective is Peterson offers other interpretations that are simply heretical. Again in Genesis, Peterson interprets the fall narrative as a great challenge that man needs to overcome.  He thinks people have the ability to save themselves.  This comes across clearly when he interprets the Angel with the flaming sword who guards the entrance to the Garden of Eden, as an obstacle that people need to overcome.

Heaven, after all, will not arrive of its own accord. We will have to work to bring it about, and strengthen ourselves, so that we can withstand the deadly angels and flaming sword of judgment that God used to bar its entrance.

…Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care with yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”

You could help direct the world, on its careening trajectory, a bit more toward Heaven and a bit more away from Hell. Once having understood Hell, researched it, so to speak—particularly your own individual Hell—you could decide against going there or creating that. You could aim elsewhere. You could, in fact, devote your life to this. That would give you a Meaning, with a capital M. That would justify your miserable existence. That would atone for your sinful nature, and replace your shame and self-consciousness with the natural pride and forthright confidence of someone who has learned once again to walk with God in the Garden. ¹²
–Jordan Peterson

 

 

Even if Peterson does think there are some untranslatable metaphysical truths in these stories, he has the theology all wrong.

Christians believe that we are saved by the work that Jesus did on the cross. It is not up to us to earn salvation. This is why Christianity is different from all other religions; it is a theology of the cross, not a theology of works.

We can’t simply become better people and overtake the angel guarding the garden, then. Only Jesus can take us back in. Only Jesus can bring the Garden of Eden back to earth.

Finally, the biggest problem of all for Christians with Jordan Peterson is that he denies that Jesus rose from the dead. As such, he denies one of the basic requirements of the creedal formulations of Christianity. ¹³

1 Cornithians 15:17

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

Errors in the Fundamentals Lead to Problems Down the Road

Peterson’s fundamental errors are what allow for him to have a Darwinian read on the nature of truth and Christianity. We have seen this position on truth leads to many absurdities. It is ultimately incoherent. Conversely, Christianity is founded on the idea that truth is objective. Jesus is the truth. Jesus is not a guru or an Ubermensch, He is God.

I pray that Jordan Peterson may one day come to know this truth.

Make no mistake about it, Peterson’s current message is a challenge to Christianity and it is being heard by countless millions. Christians, in turn, need to make sure that they rise to the challenge. In following Peterson’s own advice, we must always speak the truth in love.

1 Peter 3:15

15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,

Is Jordan Peterson a new champion for truth? He certainly is making great strides in the fight against moral relativism, postmodernism, and Marxism.

Given Peterson’s evolutionary pragmatism, I would have to say that Peterson’s own system of truth is actually built upon great confusion.  This is because his system allows for:

1. Truth that can change.  Truth that is contingent upon survivability.
2. Truth that is self-refuting.  Darwinism can lead to a belief that kills us all.
3. No ground for moral truths
4. Multiple truths that can contradict each other.  Peterson’s claim of the difference in moral truths and material truths.

Out of this confusion, Peterson produces the exact type of message that many people want to hear. It is up to to the individual to create their own meaning and purpose in life. It is up to the individual to create their own truth.

This is not truth.

Truth is not a “what”, it’s a “who”.

John 14:6 New International Version (NIV)

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

2 Timothy 4 New International Version (NIV)

4 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.