Jordan Peterson Discusses God Part One

KEVIN HARRIS: Hey, glad you’ve joined us for Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. It’s Kevin Harris. You know, whether you mostly agree or mostly disagree with Jordan Peterson, you have to admit he’s always interesting. When it comes to Dr. Peterson’s views on God, it seems like a big freight train that is picking up speed. He’s asked more and more about the topic of God these days, it seems. Today we will check out some clips from a very energetic interview with Piers Morgan. But before we get to it, let’s hear from Dr. Craig.

DR. CRAIG: Hello! This is William Lane Craig. We are right in the midst of our annual fall matching grant campaign. Up through December 31st of this year, any gift that you give to Reasonable Faith will be doubled by a matching grant of very generous donors. So this is a wonderful way for you to double the impact of your giving to the Lord’s work. I think that what’s happening at Reasonable Faith around the world is certainly exciting and well worth your support. Over three million engagements every month come through our social media platforms. We have hundreds of local Reasonable Faith chapters all around the world – throughout Latin America, Asia, even the Middle East – that provide a community and a place of fellowship and outreach for local believers often in hard-pressed circumstances. In addition to that we have our Equip course which has now been taken by thousands of high schoolers and teenagers to equip them in the articulation and defense of the Christian faith. We have been so pleased with the enthusiastic reaction to this Equip platform. So, as you approach the year’s end and think about how best to invest the Lord’s dollar from your giving, we hope that you will think of Reasonable Faith and send a gift toward our ministry. It will be doubled, and thereby have double the impact. Thank you so much for your consideration.

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, in your dialogue with Jordan Peterson and Rebecca Goldstein at the University of Toronto, you commended theism to Dr. Peterson, especially after hearing his thoughts on meaning. He seemed to be reluctant. He still seems to be reluctant when it comes to God as seen in this recent interview with Piers Morgan. Listen to this.

PIERS MORGAN: I want to talk about your new book, We Who Wrestle with God. A lot of your fans – there's all sorts of Jordan Peterson groups that you can join who debate whether you really believe in God or not. So let's just get it on the table. Do you believe in God?

DR. PETERSON: I don't think that's anybody's business. I think it's the most private question you can ask someone. But then I would say also . . . what's the right response to that? . . . “By their fruits you will know them.” How's that?

PIERS MORGAN: Well, let me ask you a different question then. Do you think there is a God?

DR. PETERSON: I'm terrified that there might be, Piers. How's that? I'm not trying to be a smart--- when I'm making that comment either. It's an Old Testament saying, I believe, that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. And that is actually about as true a statement as you could manage in such a short phrase.

PIERS MORGAN: And you are the most open book of almost anyone I've ever interviewed. Right to the point I asked you if you believe in God. I didn't actually know what you were going to say. But for some reason you're reluctant to say. Why are you reluctant?

DR. PETERSON: Well, OK. Let’s walk along . . . well, because it's not a well-posed question. It's too complicated an issue to be dealt with like that. You step into instant traps just by accepting the question. I'll show you what I mean. The first thing I would say is, “What do you mean by ‘believe’?” Like, do you think that a statement about the existence of God is something like a scientific theory? Do you think it's a list of facts? Is it a factual question: Does God exist or not? Is it a factual question like you're asking about whether a cup on a table exists or a plate on a table, an artifact in a room? What do you mean by this? What do you mean by “believe?” I'll stake my life on the proposition that God exists. How's that? Is that an answer? Because that’s the right answer.

PIERS MORGAN: I would ask you – here's my supplementary: Do you ever pray?

DR. PETERSON: Always.

PIERS MORGAN: Who do you pray to?

DR. PETERSON: The spirit that protects you from hell.

PIERS MORGAN: But that, many people would say, is God.

DR. PETERSON: Hey, sounds good to me!

KEVIN HARRIS: And, by the way, in case that ran past you – his forthcoming book is called We Who Wrestle with God. There seems to be a continuing wrestling match with him and God. Plenty of things to talk about there.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. A lot to talk about in that clip. If one were cynical, one might say that his caginess and coyness about answering the question is deliberately calculated to promote his mysterious public image so as to make people even more interested in him. If you were a public relations agent for Jordan Peterson, you would tell him don't you dare answer that question straightforwardly. By not answering it, by being coy, it increases the mystique of Jordan Peterson and makes him interesting. People talk about it. They debate whether he really believes it or not. It increases his public notoriety. Whereas if he were to simply come right out and say yes or no, the debate would be over. It wouldn't be nearly as interesting. People wouldn't talk about it. So if you were cynical, you might say that this is just really well-calculated public relations. Now, I'm not cynical so I want to take it at face value. But he says so many different things in this clip as to why he won't answer the question. Piers Morgan is just relentless in pursuing him. At first he says it's a personal question that you shouldn't have to answer. I can understand where he would say a question about whether you believe in God is personal. But then Morgan rephrases the question in a clever way. He says, “OK, then does God exist?” That's not a personal question. And Jordan Peterson doesn't feel any more comfortable with that. He then says it's not a factual question whether God exists or not. I would say it certainly is a factual question. Is there a being who is a transcendent creator and designer of the universe and the source of absolute goodness and love? That is a straightforward factual question that deserves an answer. He says, “Well, what do you mean by ‘believe’?” I do think there's ambiguity in the word “believe.” You can say you believe that God exists in the sense that you affirm the proposition “God exists.” That's one of your propositional beliefs. Or you can speak of belief in the sense of trusting in a person: Do you believe in God? But Piers Morgan had already gotten around that ambiguity by asking him, “Does God exist?” And there Peterson just really waffles on the question of whether or not God actually does exist. Now, he finally says, “I stake my life on the existence of God.” That sounds very powerful, and indeed it is courageous, I think, to stake your life on God's existence. But that's not the same as saying that you believe that God exists. This became very clear to me in studying the doctrine of faith in my systematic philosophical theology that I'm working on. One of the key questions in the doctrine of faith is whether or not faith entails belief that something. And there are Christian philosophers who want to disassociate belief from faith, as odd as that sounds. What they're trying to do is make room for people who are in doubt about the existence of God but who want to believe in God's existence. So there is a certain attitude toward believing in God called pretense theory. That is to say, you don't believe in God but you act as if he existed. So you're in doubt, you don't have positive God belief, but you will act as though there were a God. I don't want to belittle that. As I say, that can be a very courageous stance. But it's certainly not the same as believing that God exists. So even if Dr. Peterson is adopting a kind of pretense theoretical approach to this question, that's still not coming to believe that God exists. That's just making believe that God exists and perhaps hoping that God exists, maybe even fearing that God exists as he says. But that's not to say that he's a theist.

KEVIN HARRIS: I might mention as well – if one were to listen to that entire interview, you would see what Jordan Peterson means by “hell.” He says he prays to the one who will “save him from hell” but he defines hell basically as Auschwitz – hell on Earth. He’s still very vague about the state of affairs in the afterlife – a permanent state, the Biblical teaching on heaven and hell. But he says he wants to get as far away and get everyone as far away from Auschwitz as possible.

DR. CRAIG: Which is a noble aspiration. I think as a psychologist he is probably very familiar firsthand with the destructive effects of sin. I think very often we don't realize how self-destructive sin is. The person who engages in immoral behavior and evil behavior – paramount would be an example of these Hamas terrorists who burned and beheaded little babies and tortured family members before mothers and fathers and children. That sort of evil is not just perpetrated upon the victims. It's perpetrated upon oneself because one becomes oneself a twisted, deformed, vile, selfish human being. And so I think Peterson is right to be concerned with the earthly, or this-worldly, effects of sin even if, again, that is not the ultimate eternal state of man when we die.

KEVIN HARRIS: Like you said, Piers Morgan presses Jordan Peterson. He does so even more in this clip. Peterson discusses some arguments for God. Check out this next clip.

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

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, that's somewhat of a cliffhanger, but Dr. Craig has several things to say about that excerpt, and we'll pick it up next time on Reasonable Faith. One more quick reminder. Please consider giving to Reasonable Faith here at the end of the year. Your financial support will be doubled if you give now. The matching grant campaign ends December 31st. Your prayer and support are very appreciated. We’ll continue part two of this interview with Jordan Peterson next time on Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig.^[1]