Christianity and Metaphysics - Jordan Peterson interviews Jonathan Pageau

[AshvinP]

The latest Peterson interview is a must-watch for anyone interested in both his recent personal tribulations and his metaphysical position (the latter starting around the 19 minute mark, where he brings up Carl Jung and Erich Neumann). Jonathan Pageau is more explicitly idealist. In reference to the pragmatic/phenomenological framework of viewing the world as a forum of values/meanings, Pageau says, "and there are a lot of things which are down the road from that [viewing 'physical objects' as fundamentally being tools for purposes], like the world being made out of something like attention, like consciousness". And much more fascinating discussion ensues from there.

Jonathan Pageau and I discuss the issue of conscience, narrating objective reality, the perfect mode of being, the responsibility to move things towards the divine, the inevitability of religion, the significance of the virgin birth, and the idea of heaven.

Jonathan Pageau is a symbolic thinker, YouTuber, and class carver of orthodox icons. Jordan and Jonathan have an ongoing dialogue surrounding Judeo-Christian narrative, reality, and symbolism among many other topics.

[Simon Adams]

I feel for Peterson as I think I know something of the two different things he is going through. I get the impression there is a sense in which he can’t fully distinguish the two processes, the one drug related, and the one related to the ground he stands on. It was an astute observation that he has been standing with one foot in one world, and and the other in a very different one. You can’t do that for very long whilst really being serious, because one of them involves a kind of death, like the way the seed needs to ‘die’ for the new plant to grow. That takes it well beyond the world of purely intellectual analysis.

The more he pushes against that the harder it will be. Something I found useful when I finally started to see what was happening was hearing about Augustine’s prayer when he was going through this, “Lord make me pure, but not yet”...

[Soul_of_Shu]

I can't help but be struck by the contrast of this dialogue with recent dialogues with Tammy Peterson, JP's spouse, wherein she reveals that she deeply feels beyond any doubt that her own deliverance from a terminal cancer diagnosis, and the attendant suffering ~ which JP describes here as a miracle ~ was clearly related to her giving it up to a greater power, like in "Thy Will be done", as opposed the JP's struggles, by his own poignant admission, deeply doubting his own faith in any such greater power delivering him from his painful condition, such that he might rather shake his fist at God than pray to one, if indeed such a God exists. And yet, as a Jungian psychologist, it would seem a most plausible leap of faith, given Jung's understanding that the spiritual and corporeal are inextricable. This is not meant as a criticism, just that I'm not sure how one reconciles this puzzling dilemma, when he has a living example of a healing 'miracle' so dear to his heart, and still questions why, when he seemingly has been such a great help to others, he is unable to help himself. Isn't the whole point that one needs to surrender this hapless 'self' to a greater one? It just seems that some crucial factor is missing here.

[AshvinP]

It's hard to say, but I feel like Peterson is still struggling to tell the Christian religious 'community', which makes up a sizeable chunk of his 'fan base', that he thinks their approach to the 'faith' is complete bullshit. There are nicer ways to put it, but that's the long and short of it. It doesn't help when Catholic theologians write a book about his Biblical lectures and why they believe he "just doesn't get it". It seems that sentiment is common within the Christian religious community - they feel like he has done a lot of good for the faith but he just needs to take a few more steps to figure out what they already know, i.e. Jesus is our Lord and Savior and he literally died to redeem our sins.

But he has already considered and rejected that evangelical/fundamentalist view. He knows it is deeply rooted in rationalist and dualist frameworks. He brought up Jung's Aion and The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. I haven't read the latter yet, but the former, along with most of Jung's other religious writings, deeply challenges traditional Christian theology. I think Peterson would greatly benefit from a chat with BK or any idealist philosopher, since the unexamined metaphysical axioms and the corresponding fundamentalist approach within the Church are what he finds to be complete bullshit. Pageau does as well but he kept trying to explain that in roundabout ways. He talked about how the faith is all about us becoming God.

I found it really interesting when JP brought up the Catholic Church and its Gothic 'darkness' of the Middle Ages. It's like he is longing for a return to that perspective on the Christian faith and I feel the same way. When I used to attend church, I also started cringing during the sermons and songs. Everything about that modern church setting is sterilized, demystified, flattened out and rationalized. Like Simon said, it makes you want to pray, "Lord make me pure, but not yet". And the most cringe-worthy part is when people in that tradition look down on you with a condescending aura of moral superiority. That's the impression I got from the interview, anyway. He also brought up Nietzsche, who was the ultimate critic of that Christian mentality.

[Simon Adams]

I can't help but be struck by the contrast of this dialogue with recent dialogues with Tammy Peterson, JP's spouse, wherein she reveals that she deeply feels beyond any doubt that her own deliverance from a terminal cancer diagnosis, and the attendant suffering ~ which JP describes here as a miracle ~ was clearly related to her giving it up to a greater power, like in "Thy Will be done", as opposed the JP's struggles, by his own poignant admission, deeply doubting his own faith in any such greater power delivering him from his painful condition, such that he might rather shake his fist at God than pray to one, if indeed such a God exists. And yet, as a Jungian psychologist, it would seem a most plausible leap of faith, given Jung's understanding that the spiritual and corporeal are inextricable. This is not meant as a criticism, just that I'm not sure how one reconciles this puzzling dilemma, when he has a living example of a healing 'miracle' so dear to his heart, and still questions why, when he seemingly has been such a great help to others, he is unable to help himself. Isn't the whole point that one needs to surrender this hapless 'self' to a greater one? It just seems that some crucial factor is missing here.

Yes this is my thought as well. You can understand rationally that it’s the right thing to do, but letting go can be a hard thing to do. Peterson calls god “terrifying”, but that’s because he is aware at some level that he has to let go of a part of himself. I don’t think it’s god he is really afraid of (although I do think part of the experience of god will always contain fear just by the way he exceeds so far everything we can even imagine), but it’s that aspect of god that is like a mirror, as much as the surrender of yourself.

[Soul_of_Shu]

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross is largely about a purported connection between early Christianity and the pagan/shamanic practice of using of a psychedelic, likely involving mushrooms, to induce visionary/healing experiences. As we know, this theory, along with similar theories about the Eleusinian mystery schools, and speculation about other 'foods' of the Gods, like manna and soma, is currently coming back into vogue, with the so-called psychedelic renaissance. And given JP's knowledge of this, and his own daughter's experiential explorations in that regard, I'd be surprised if he hasn't given some consideration to the healing powers of these plant 'medicines' used in a therapeutic context of proper set and setting, to get at the core of some psychospiritual crisis manifesting as corporeal illness. However, whether or not he's actually open to that possibility in his own case, I've no idea, and besides wouldn't be possible if he's still using any prescribed anti-depressant/anxiety meds ~ alas one such prescribed drug, benzodiazepine, being culpable for making his condition far worse. But whatever is the cause of JP's struggles, it somehow doesn't seem solely corporeal in nature, and indeed, if Jung is correct, could not be without some spiritual correlate.

[AshvinP]

Below is a response to this topic on the Thinkspot forum, which was so aligned with my perception of the interview that I just had to post it here.

I believe that Judeo-Christianity as a "religious trajectory" is an ultimately unconsciously generated prospective combinatorial gamble, and that it also might be the most meaningful, wise, and adaptively competent religious trajectory that's emerged from life on this planet. In other words, I believe that Judeo-Christianity is an emergent evolutionary experiment--a meta-hunt attempting to fundamentally transfigure and transform the form and flow of human existence through archetypal predation. I believe that is a more honest and authentic way of identifying and articulating the significance of the Judeo-Christian trajectory, and of Christ's life and death, than any explanation that traditional Christian theology has ever put forward.

I believe Christ was a real person, maybe is for all I know--but who says he was or is conscious of what the true significance of his life or actions would be in the final analysis?

Judeo-Christianity could just as easily be the work of extra-terrestrials who could see where we were headed and who chose to try to evolve us to the point where we could get our shit together before we destroy the planet we emerged on. Christ could be an incarnated alien who tried to show us a way to muddle through the evolutionary mess we're in.

Evil is just as numinous/sacred/alien/transcendental/holy/set-apart as good is. It's just as real/efficacious/potent. It has to be accounted for.

Traditional Christian theology has no answer for the reality of evil other than that God valued it enough bring it forth out of his own being by his own free will. The best that traditional Christian theology can come up with to account for the deterministic sovereignty of God, in its Reformed flavor, is that God is a totally conscious personal being, who inhabits eternity, who predestined the created actuality of Auschwitz before he created the created potential that would eventually unfold into that actuality.

In other words, "Work makes one free" is a joke that the triune God, including the pre-incarnate Son, came up with all on his own, for his own glory.

He predestined that joke before "Satan" existed, for his own glory. He predestined that joke before the Fall, which he also decreed from all eternity, for his own glory. He predestined that it would be a joke, for his own glory. He predestined that people would find it funny, for his own glory. He sovereignly predestined the actuality of evil in his own divine being before he created the created potential for evil that would eventually unfold into that actuality.

He predestined the actuality of every motivational state that's ever existed in human beings. Then he created that actuality himself. No one twisted his arm, unless that someone was a part of him with potency over the rest of him. That means he predestined people finding humor in evil. He's the first cause, the whole reason evil has ever been regarded as a joke. He's the whole reason evil exists in the form of jokes. If part of him hates evil and another part of him values it as something that should be, then he's just as split and neurotic as all of us are in one way or another. Gods might have Shadows too.

That dogmatic formulation of God is responsible for Auschwitz, and Sobibor, and Belzec, and Treblinka, and Nanking, and the Holodomor. He dreamed all of those up by himself. He pulled every string to weave the lace of ages into those patterns. He knows the end from the beginning; he planned those events and every other instance of malevolence in the history of the cosmos down to the quantum details, before he created the created potential for evil that would unfold into the actuality of those events. He predestined every grunt of satisfaction that would pass between the lips of every molesting priest in the history of the church as they spilled their seed into their altar-boys. In other words, the possibility for evil has been in God from eternity past to eternity future and always will be in God, that's why he's "dangerous", as CS Lewis remarks.

I think JP is trying to play a part in guiding us through the deepest moral revolution concerning the nature of chaos and order, and good and evil, that we've ever been through and that he is trying (as an evolutionary conservative) to keep things from degenerating into the kind of Adversarial chaos that seeks to use such confusion to advance its own plans to annihilate existence itself. It seems like he's pretty well drained at this point too and doesn't feel like he can competently identify, articulate, and communicate what he believes regarding these topics. He also might not care to share central aspects of what he believes over the internet with a bunch of people who, when it comes down to it, don't really know him at all.

[Eugene I]

I believe that Judeo-Christianity as a "religious trajectory" is an ultimately unconsciously generated prospective combinatorial gamble, and that it also might be the most meaningful, wise, and adaptively competent religious trajectory that's emerged from life on this planet. ....

The Bettik's response is a good articulation of the problem of evil in the traditional theistic theology, Judeo-Christian in particular. I would agree that Judeo-Christianity is indeed a meaningful developmental spiritual trajectory, but would not agree hat it is the most meaningful one. I can sense here again the same position of exclusivity in the Judeo-Christianity that I mentioned before in other threads. There are other spiritual trajectories found by humans that are as meaningful as Judeo-Christianity, although I would not claim that they are more meaningful. Each of these trajectories has its practical merits, and it's unknown to us at this point whether they will eventually converge to a single trajectory, or if they will run forever as separate paths leading to ever-progressing but still different states of consciousness.

[AshvinP]

The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross is largely about a purported connection between early Christianity and the pagan/shamanic practice of using of a psychedelic, likely involving mushrooms, to induce visionary/healing experiences. As we know, this theory, along with similar theories about the Eleusinian mystery schools, and speculation about other 'foods' of the Gods, like manna and soma, is currently coming back into vogue, with the so-called psychedelic renaissance. And given JP's knowledge of this, and his own daughter's experiential explorations in that regard, I'd be surprised if he hasn't given some consideration to the healing powers of these plant 'medicines' used in a therapeutic context of proper set and setting, to get at the core of some psychospiritual crisis manifesting as corporeal illness. However, whether or not he's actually open to that possibility in his own case, I've no idea, and besides wouldn't be possible if he's still using any prescribed anti-depressant/anxiety meds ~ alas one such prescribed drug, benzodiazepine, being culpable for making his condition far worse. But whatever is the cause of JP's struggles, it somehow doesn't seem solely corporeal in nature, and indeed, if Jung is correct, could not be without some spiritual correlate.

Right, and his interest in that sounds to me like he is really trying to hint at the possibility that Christianity is not at all what those theologians make it out to be, i.e. an island of spiritual Truth in a dead sea of mythology, disconnected from all other traditions and frozen in carbonite. Although he phrases it in a questioning manner, like "maybe, just maybe, there is something to this view", I think he is much more confident than that. He mentioned C.S. Lewis a few times, presumably because that's who was being referenced as support in the 'first draft' of a critical theological book he was sent, and Lewis, despite his imaginative brilliance, also became a champion of a thoroughly rationalist, demystified, literalist approach to scripture. It reminds me of what Owen Barfield had to say in his essay on Philology and the Incarnation:

Well, as I say, the supposition is an impossible one, but it is possible — I know because it happened in my own case — for a man to have been brought up in the belief, and to have taken it for granted, that the account given in the gospels of the birth and the resurrection of Christ is a noble fairy story with no more claim to historical accuracy than any other myth; and it is possible for such a man, after studying in depth the history of the growth of language, to look again at the New Testament and the literature and tradition that has grown up around it, and to accept [if you like, to be obliged to accept] the record as an historical fact, not because of the authority of the Church nor by any process of ratiocination such as C. S. Lewis has recorded in his own case, but rather because it fitted so inevitably with the other facts as he had already found them. Rather because he felt, in the utmost humility, that if he had never heard of it through the Scriptures, he would have been obliged to try his best to invent something like it as an hypothesis to save the appearances.

[AshvinP]

I believe that Judeo-Christianity as a "religious trajectory" is an ultimately unconsciously generated prospective combinatorial gamble, and that it also might be the most meaningful, wise, and adaptively competent religious trajectory that's emerged from life on this planet. ....

The Bettik's response is a good articulation of the problem of evil in the traditional theistic theology, Judeo-Christian in particular. I would agree that Judeo-Christianity is indeed a meaningful developmental spiritual trajectory, but would not agree hat it is the most meaningful one. I can sense here again the same position of exclusivity in the Judeo-Christianity that I mentioned before in other threads. There are other spiritual trajectories found by humans that are as meaningful as Judeo-Christianity, although I would not claim that they are more meaningful. Each of these trajectories has its practical merits, and it's unknown to us at this point whether they will eventually converge to a single trajectory, or if they will run forever as separate paths leading to ever-progressing but still different states of consciousness.

Well, although I believe in a deep continuity of long-lasting mythological traditions, I do not see any reason why finding the Judeo-Christian tradition to be the most meaningful is any more "exclusive" than finding all traditions to be equally meaningful. They are both precise intellectual claims which exclude other possibilities.