If Professor Jordan B. Peterson said he believed in God, would you?
For months now, I have been watching Professor Peterson’s followers ask themselves on social media whether they think Jordan believes in God, and I have been struggling to figure out why. If Milo Yiannopoulos said he believed in God ( he has ), would you? If I said I believed in God ( I have ), would you? I’m thinking not—but why exactly? Milo is easily as famous as Jordan, so it can’t be fame as such. I am easily as well-educated (Ph.D., Columbia University, 1994) as Jordan (Ph.D., McGill University, 1991), so it can’t be education as such. Jordan and I both talk about the importance of the Western tradition and the role of mythology in giving us scripts for how to behave (he says archetypes, I say patterns or models ), so it can’t be the arguments he is making as such. It could be that he is a man, and I am not...but I don’t think that that is quite it either. I think it is because he insists that—whatever mode he is speaking in—he is a scientist. And what people want...
