Do you literally froth at the mouth when you go on the Internet and type stuff on forums????
Jordan Peterson thread
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Do you literally froth at the mouth when you go on the Internet and type stuff on forums????
Soldato
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Don't understand why people idolise this guy, much of what he says falls into common sense and the rest religious nonsense and opinions largely influenced by religious nonsense, although he tries quite hard at times to avoid admitting that. 
Exactly, When I was at university I went around to a student house to pick up a camera for my course, spoke to one student who was going on a Greenpeace rally but didn't even recycle!
Thats what JP is talking about. The whole process of having an opinion in the world when your own life is in disarray is counter productive and not based on any real truth.
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Don't understand why people idolise this guy, much of what he says falls into common sense and the rest religious nonsense and opinions largely influenced by religious nonsense, although he tries quite hard at times to avoid admitting that.
Your response just highlights that maybe what JP is saying is beyond your grasp.
Its nothing to do with religion.
Theology is used to explore real truth. Just like science can be used to explore real truth.
Fact is, all science up to a point is based on faith. Science explains the world from a certain standpoint. But beyond the proven its all faith and scientific conjecture.
Using a story from the bible to explore the morality of good V evil is just the mechanism for discourse. The religious elements can be discarded and not change the outcome of morality.
Soldato
A very good and accurate post as to people not having the ability to comprehend what he says (or the intelligence).
Its like the morons who say "have you tidied your room!" Hahahaha... Inside, you are thinking this person could barely understand the three little pigs but you put the smile on and nod along because you know its cruel to criticize people who have a mental deficiency and thus open up the they win you win outcome.
Soldato
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There are plenty of people I'm sure that appreciate his push back on what some consider to be leftist nonsense, along with his take on personal responsibility. I personally lose interest when he covers religion/Chritianity and I'm sure others do too. Not everyone swallows his every word but that doesn't mean his doesn't have interesting things to say either.Don't understand why people idolise this guy, much of what he says falls into common sense and the rest religious nonsense and opinions largely influenced by religious nonsense, although he tries quite hard at times to avoid admitting that.
Soldato
People tend to hear Peterson's stuff on the importance of religion and run for cover - cuz atheism! - without actually taking the time to really understand it, which is a shame because it's very interesting and the foundation on which his more general 'clean your room' advice is based.
My poverty understanding is that as a big Jung fanboy, he sees religion and mythology as meta-stories/narratives/archetypal truths and ethical frameworks for society that have been manifested out of the collective human unconscious over vast spans our time, powered to a large extent by our biology and evolutionary ancestry. The heavy focus on Christianity is mainly down to that particular religion forming the basis for societal structure in the West, in his view, and likely his familiarity with it from his upbringing. His 'God' isn't a sky father fairy but a word used to describe the highest ideal, or something like that - he's sort of an agnostic who's grappling with the notions of why we seem seem innately drawn towards the notion of there being something beyond the material.
Edit - decent reddit thread here discussing his postion
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That 'certain standpoint', in the scientific sense, is explaining the world and how things in it work in a repeatable and observable way.
'Faith' doesn't make planes fly... Science does based on its verifiable, repeatable understanding of how the physics of air passing over a wing works (as well as the science governing all the other aspects of a plane design).
Religion doesn't generally make any testable verifiable predictions based on faith or its texts.
This doesn't mean that religious texts contain nothing of a scientific nature as the people writing the texts would have had some understanding of the word around them and possessed some technology based on the accumulated human knowledge and experience available to them in their own time
Yes.
There are many theories regarding dark matter for example. What it is...Why etc... What existed pre big bang? How does the universe manifest from nothingness?
All these questions currently cannot be answered. So therefore any hypothesis is based on faith.
To question that nothing can be made into something juxtaposes the basic scientific framework that exists today.
LOL, at least you are honest.
That's quite revolutionary these days... most people can't microwave a meal without government advice and intervention through enacting new laws. That's probably why so many people fear Brexit if government collapses they'll probably forget to breath.
Soldato
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I do love a bit of Ham Sarris. Cleverly done.
Haha.
The thing that I found most interesting about the first or second interview with Sam Harris (I forget which) was when they were discussing these meta-stories. Sam was asking why JP feels that the Christian versions of these stories are so important when the same stories appear in Hindu/Bhuddist/other texts and teachings. JP didn’t really have an answer (maybe it was the cider).
It’s all well and good using meta-stories as ‘archetypal truths’, but why insist on such a western-centric Judeo-Christian approach to it and ignore (or even reject) the rest of human culture?
I don’t think it’s just the Christian apect of JP that puts people off, it’s this ‘only Christian’ approach that detracts from many of his valid arguments.
The thing about Sam is, despite being atheist, he clearly believes in some sort of ‘spirituality’, he just achieves it through meditation (and psychedelic drugs) instead of through religion. That allows him to take an impartial view of all religions/religious teaching when forming his thoughts and arguments.
Soldato
I think it's something like this: the West for some time has been the best... or perhaps the least worst place to live in all of human history, and so to him if this was a result of the Judaeo-Christian framework, then there's something about that specific vehicle that made it superior to the other ones, even if they were all viable modes of transport themselves. He has deconstructed things from other religions and mythologies, but in his eyes the proof is in the pudding that there's something about this particular one that has led to the best outcome culturally, which is why he's spend the most time delving into it.
If we take Buddhism for example - and I don't claim to be an expert - it's a largely a religion of renunciation and of participation from the world; material reality is an illusion to be overcome in the search for enlightenment, versus the the JC take which involves active participation in God's creation. There's certainly elements that are shared, but there's also differences like less of an emphasis on spoken truth and in particular of family, building community and going out into the world.You clean your room... then sit on your zafu cushion in blissful contemplation, which can do a lot for you personally but perhaps less for the society you inhabit.
Soldato
Lol..that took me quite a few listens to realise what was going on.
I do see what you’re saying, but I just can’t get on board with attributing ‘West is best’ to Christianity being the predominant religion. It disregards so many other aspects of global human development and it surprises me that someone of JP’s calibre appears to actively ignore this (although as I stated earlier in the thread, it may be a cynical attempt to appeal to his primary target audience).
In 'Talking to My Daughter About the Economy', Yanis Varoufakis makes the argument that the propensity for the agricultural (and industrial) revolution in the West had a lot more to do with geography than any specific human traits. In 'Outliers', Malcolm Gladwell argues that Asians tend to do better in Maths than Westerners, partly because of their language and partly because of the 'cultural legacy' of growing rice which is heavily labour intensive and requires very specific growing conditions. Ironically, this benefit when it comes to Maths (which is often incorrectly assumed to be a sign of 'genetic intelligence') doesn't lend itself to global expansion unlike wheat, which doesn't require as much man-management and will grow in a much wider range of soil and climate conditions.
Both rice- and wheat-growing cultures share aspects of creation myths and moral fables. I don't accept that the myths from the wheat-growing cultures are somehow more 'real' because they spread further and faster due to an arbitrary factor that had nothing to do with the myths themselves.
If you were really seeking out 'The Truth' of the human condition via meta-stories and archetypes, why limit yourself to just the Western interpretation of those stories? Surely a global view would be much more interesting and much closer to 'The Truth' instead of just 'The Western Truth' — but then I come back to JP writing for his audience.