The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast


04 - Religion, Myth, Science, Truth

December 30, 2016

A discussion about Religion, Myth, Science and Truth. It was originally recorded by Transliminal in November 2015.


Find the original video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Ys4tQPRis&t



  • 0:00 INTRO: PETERSON'S JOURNEY
  • 9:45 RELIGION: CROWD-CONTROL, NAIVE SCIENCE, OR NEITHER?
  • 10:08 "They're straw man arguments"
  • 11:45 Multiple motivational systems, different levels of thinking
  • 13:32 Fundamental presuppositions
  • 14:13 Dawkins vs. Christianity: like a "smart 13 year old boy"
  • 14:44 SCIENTISTS MISREADING RELIGION
  • 15:52 Different systems of thought, different purposes
  • 16:00 More than one basic assumption is possible
  • 17:13 ENTER: DOMINANCE HIERARCHIES
  • 17:19 What's real is what's persistent across time
  • 17:33 Dominance hierarchies and lobsters
  • 17:58 We're evolutionarily adapted to hierarchies
  • 18:14 HIERARCHIES, RELIGIOUS THINKING, AND SUBJECTIVITY
  • 18:42 "Being" as not reducible to material reality
  • 19:12 The road to nihilism and authoritarianism
  • 19:57 DETERMINING THE TRUTH OF A THEORY
  • 20:07 Newton or Darwin? Choose one. You can't have both.
  • 20:20 Nietzsche's "Truth serves life" is a Darwinian idea
  • 20:38 No idea if our knowledge will help us survive over deep time
  • 20:50 Answer to: "But look what we've built with it"
  • 21:20 Crossing Ebola and Smallpox: some science is clearly insane
  • 22:30 Check your assumptions about reality
  • 23:45 Darwinism: truth is what enables survival within chaos, period.
  • 25:03 Dawkins is a Newtonian not a Darwinian
  • 26:09 Reductionism leaves things out. This has consequences.
  • 27:27 The pragmatic problem: truth for what?
  • 28:09 DEEP DARWINISM & RELIGION
  • 28:15 Religion as evolved knowledge about action
  • 29:40 American Pragmatist philosophers: the true Darwinians
  • 30:17 Godel, the stock market and reality
  • 31:02 TRUTH AS ACTION
  • 31:44 Truth from the bottom up: lobsters, wolves, humans
  • 34:27 Ethics: evolved patterns in dominance hierarchies
  • 39:23 Dogs, chimps, and humans: hierarchy navigators
  • 44:45 From dominance hierarchies to archetypes: ancient Egypt
  • 52:36 The soul
  • 55:50 Jung on Christianity, truth and speech
  • 59:07 Truth versus the lie
  • 1:00:52 THE INTELLECT
  • 1:00:52 The totalitarian intellect
  • 1:02:43 Have you made thinking your God?
  • 1:03:38 Attention trumps thinking
  • 1:04:11 EVOLUTIONARY ROOTS OF WESTERN RELIGION
  • 1:04:33 Christ as a metahero
  • 1:04:43 The deep roots of myth
  • 1:07:00 Chaos monsters
  • 1:08:55 Myth as behavioural truth
  • 1:09:37 "Darwin trumps Newton"
  • 1:10:02 "Dawkins is a rationalist...not a darwinian"
  • 1:10:07 Darwinian time, Darwinian truth
  • 1:13:57 Mesopotamian myth as successful behaviour blueprint
  • 1:17:36 FROM NATURE TO HERO MYTHOLOGY
  • 1:19:33 Religious stories model being as a field for action
  • 1:21:13 Our religious task
  • 1:21:47 Religion as hero mythology
  • 1:22:30 "You...don't know that you know the story."
  • 1:23:58 PIAGET AND PRE-RATIONAL MORALITY
  • 1:25:16 We learn to act before we learn the rules
  • 1:26:18 Moses the Judge: observer of emergent moral patterns
  • 1:27:54 "Opiate of the masses" as naive industrial era thinking
  • 1:28:43 METAPHORICAL THOUGHT
  • 1:29:11 Hyperactive agency detection module: it goes deeper
  • 1:31:00 The brain as archetype detection organ
  • 1:32:08 Women are nature
  • 1:33:48 Metaphor, myth and science
  • 1:36:00 SCIENCE AND MORAL TRUTH
  • 1:37:52 Are all scientists devoted to the truth?
  • 1:39:44 How do we judge if science is ethical?
  • 1:42:57 Evil as archetypically real
  • 1:44:06 The reality of good and evil
  • 1:45:09 Science and mythology: which is embedded in which?
  • 1:48:17 EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND DEEP TIME
  • 1:49:13 RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS: OPTIONAL?
  • 1:49:20 Is God an old man with a beard in the sky?
  • 1:51:12 Hurricane Katrina, corruption, and poverty
  • 1:52:12 The significance of the bible
  • 1:53:43 The genius of the sacrifice
  • 1:55:50 INTERLUDE: TRIANGULATING MEANING
  • 1:58:02 END OF RELIGION?
  • 1:58:02 On new atheists' claims of a secular rational future
  • 1:58:29 On new age spirituality
  • 1:58:49 New atheist rationalist optimism so absurd it must be motivated
  • 1:59:18 REDUCING RELIGION VS. EXPANDING EVOLUTION
  • 1:59:40 "[The Jungian alternative]...is terrifying [for people]"
  • 1:59:57 "[Jung's work]...puts enlightenment thinkers to shame"
  • 2:00:17 "Which ideas have you? ... We're like playthings of the gods
  • 2:01:09 JUNG: STUDYING INFORMATION, NOT MATTER
  • 2:02:23 "If you study religion properly, it'll demolish your personality"
  • 2:08:16 METAPHOR VS REALITY: NOT OBVIOUS
  • 2:10:11 Ancients: phenomenologists, not scientists
  • 2:12:24 Religion as spatial
  • 2:13:24 HUMANS: EFFICIENT COMPLEXITY MANAGERS
  • 2:13:48 Reality in terms of resolution
  • 2:15:52 There's lots worse than death
  • 2:16:46 On Becker's "The Denial of Death": smart but mistaken
  • 2:19:40 Death's not the problem, it's complexity
  • 2:21:06 THE MULTICULTURAL DIMENSION
  • 2:27:35 FROM THEORY TO ACTION
  • 2:28:40 Fixing what bugs you
  • 2:29:30 Overcoming the lie
  • 2:31:54 Peterson's experience with truth
  • 2:34:45 The most powerful thing we can do