Dare I wade in...
@hurfdurf
Those clips seem to have a case of Cathy Newman-itis. The whole “so what you’re saying is...?” Etc.
I’m not going to go through them all but the first clip is about the “gay cake scenario”. Whereby he is defending the right of a company to not make a cake with a certain political message on it due to it conflicting with the bakers personal belief. The interviewer uses the analogy that in racist-era America bakers refused to bake for black people and they both agree that’s wrong. So why is it any different to refusing to bake for gay people?
And that analogy is fine and legitimate but that is not what the case was about. They didn’t refuse to make the cake because the people wanting it were gay (I don’t even know if they were). They refused to make the cake because of the message on it. So it doesn’t matter if the people requesting the cake were gay or not, they wouldn’t make the cake. And so actually they’re treating everybody the same and it’s not discriminatory. Going back to the analogy, if some black people walked in asking for a black power slogan on a cake and they refused to make it because they disagreed with the political message on the cake. That’s not racial discrimination. Racial discrimination would be if they refused to make them a plain cake because they’re black. They’re refusing to because of the message on the cake, and so it doesn’t matter if the people requesting the cake were black or white, they wouldn’t make the cake.
So really he missed a trick there. I don’t know how old that clip is. The outcome in the Supreme Court sided with the bakers. It’s not discriminatory to deny a cake if you would deny making that cake to everybody regardless of their protected characteristics.
The second clip - The argument about art and religion is a Christian apologists argument against evolution (or more nuanced, argument specifically against evolution in humans). That is, if our traits were selected by gene selection over thousands of years. What was the genetic benefit for creating art? Something that only humans seem to do. GK Chestertons apologetic ‘The Everlasting Man’. Uses this principle as the foundation of the book. That is if man is a species evolved over a long time. That we are a profoundly odd and strange being, as we have so many traits and characteristic to which there isn’t an easy evolutionary explanation for (creating art being the one argued in this case). Compared to other animals.
The argument in Chesterton's book is that some of the earliest evidence we have of very early man is cave drawings. And that even before we invented the wheel or complex devices which obviously are helpful, man found pleasure in: observing something, and recreating it's likeness on a wall. What's the evolutionary benefit for creating beautiful things or being able to observe the beauty of nature? There's obviously an evolutionary benefit to be able to see sexual beauty in partners, you see favourable traits, you want them in your offspring. Easy evolutionary argument. But what's the evolutionary argument for seeing a Deer grazing in a field, remarking how beautiful it is, and to decide to draw it on a cave wall? They're not instructions, not ways to help someone in the future hunt, it's just 'art'. What's the evolutionary benefit for man to want to create and enjoy it? Chesterton goes on to argue that we have these traits because we are not 'wordly' in the sense that we evolved like the other animals, but that we were made as custodians of the Earth. Which if you're catholic, and Chesterton was, is a rather convenient argument.
I’m not making a case either way, I have read the everlasting man and I find the argument compelling, I’m sure there are counter arguments to it. However just saying this is a “lol-worthy crap argument” is a bit of a stretch. Although I will 100% agree that Jordan Peterson is not arguing the point very well in that clip.
