So here we go for part 2…
Thanks again for picking really simple, easy concepts! But I will do my best. In the first video, Peterson does a much better job articulating the point he was actually making with the given example of Crime and Punishment. So, first I will give Dillahunty the win on the fact that we should take people at their word when they say they are who they say they are. Where, it seems to me Peterson was trying to make the point as to what being atheist ultimately means. In a sense, they were talking past each other, but the Peterson’s example is understandably off-putting and dark. Using the justified murder of someone to describe the limitlessness of ultimately believing in nothing can make the point, but you are going to put off your audience with the foulness of the implication.
So, Dillahunty is right. If someone says they are atheist, then that’s good enough. There is and should be no reason to have to qualify or prove that you are. You can be an atheist, be a good person and up hold the moral foundations you believe in.
Peterson’s ultimate point however, is that atheism, true atheism, removes the ‘rules’. I.E. you can believe what ever you want and behave a certain way, but you can simply flip the script and behave completely differently and there should be no consequence for doing so, especially cognitively, after all you are just being reasonable and that is true. You don’t have to be a narcissist to be an atheist, but you can be a narcissist and still be ethically equitable because there is no moral framework, just traditions, social constraints and opinions. In other words, you cannot have an objective moral framework and be an atheist because morality and the God are intrinsically linked. Hence, there is no good or bad, or evil or righteous. There’s just stuff you can do.
So what I think Peterson is trying to illustrate is that since objective morality is intrinsic to God, you cannot have one without the other.
It’s perfectly reasonable to be an atheist and choose to behave in a way that we could call ‘good’, well mannered, behaved, restrained and well intentioned. But there is no incentive to do so, other than choice, to be that way. It’s equally reasonable to be narcissistic, self interested, behaving in a way that only benefits the self even if it’s detrimental to others because it doesn’t matter. And it really doesn’t matter in the end.
He uses Sam Harris as an example in the earlier video and I think that is a better example, because his observation does apply to Sam. Sam is an atheist who believes in objective moral values and the two contradict. And Sam does not have a good reason for believing in objective morality except that it ‘seems obvious’.
That’s the part Peterson was attacking. The ‘seems obvious’ that is better to put up with a baby crying rather than shutting it up by throwing it in a well and Sam does not have a good reason for justifying why one is better than the other.
Either option is inconsequential morally, so it doesn’t matter what you do.
Peterson also delves into the intrinsic nature of the moral code being written on the soul\ heart. And to break with that is do do major damage to the self. That, for seemingly no obvious physical reason a severe violation of our ethics causes shattering of the self, when its not evident that there is a physical reason why it should. In other words, the law is there and we don’t know why, we cannot point to it physically, but it’s extremely detrimental.
Here he is invoking the argument that St. Paul made in Romans 2 (I believe) that the even to the non-believer God has written His law on the heart. That even the non-believer has good reason to obey their intrinsic knowledge of good and evil even if they do not believe.
Now, I have heard the arguments that this is evolutionary, that it is in fact a physical manifestation in the brain as a part of the evolutionary process.
There doesn’t seem to be any evidence of that and what consciousness is and what makes something a living thing vs. a non-living thing. Especially, when two comparative things are all equal physically, but one is living the other is not. We don’t have the science to explain it. We know ‘it’ when we see it, but we don’t know what it is exactly.
And morality does not necessarily co-inside with survival of the fittest. In fact in many cases it’s contradictory. Why would we want to preserve and help the weakest and most vulnerable, when their existence is evolutionary detrimental? It would be more evolutionary beneficial to practice eugenics. Prop up the strong and fittest while letting this weakest least fit to quietly die off without propagation. But to do that seems monstrous to us. Hell, its what Hitler tried to do an he went down as the superhero of all evil. Evolutionary, he was on the right track, morally he was an abomination. Why?