June 3, 2025 • 49 mins
Psychologist, "intellectual," and God-defender Jordan Peterson brought his world-salad opinions to a recent roundtable debate with 20 young atheists. Atheist author David McAfee was there, and he joins Seth Andrews to talk about that day.
LINKS:
THE DEBATE
VIDEO of this INTERVIEW
DAVID McAFEE
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.
LINKS:
THE DEBATE
VIDEO of this INTERVIEW
DAVID McAFEE
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
The population of atheists this country is going through the.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not
because I put my hand on a book and made
a wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness. Truth,
Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Okay, there are a lot of sound bites in this broadcast,
and those sound bites come from a video, and so
if you want to watch instead of just listen, or
you want to go back and review the video clips,
there's a YouTube link in the description box. Of course,
we're talking about Jordan Peterson today, who has in many
ways become a right wing darling. And he talks about spirituality, God, Christianity,
(01:23):
the Bible, but he does so in bizarre, nebulous, contradictory,
and often confusing ways, and yet people have lofted him
up as a great thinker. Well, he was involved in
a big event. I'll call it a big event. It's
been talked about a lot on the internet, and so
I wanted to talk about that today with a guy
(01:45):
that was involved. So here we go. Jordan Peterson. He
is a psychologist. Some call him a great mind, this
is debatable, and he recently set in kind of a
round table debate format against twenty atheists, including my guest today,
(02:11):
my friend David McAfee. Welcome brother, how's.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
It going, Thank you, glad to be back.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
So Jordan Peterson set this up or did a third
party set the debate? How did you end up getting involved?
Just set it up for me?
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Yeah, yeah, of course. So these debates have become pretty popular,
especially among the gen Z people, and it's called Surrounded
and it's by Jubilee as the company, and they usually
get these big names. They've had Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro,
and they typically have them go up against twenty college
students about political you know, political topics, and these almost
(02:49):
all always are set up so that the person, the
main debater, the celebrity person, is going to come out victorious.
And I know that because the transcript I was handed
by the company. So they called him the hero. It said, Okay,
the hero sits in the center and everybody else that's around,
and he is the only one that I've seen that
(03:10):
public opinion has said that he's lost this format. But
how I became involved was Jubilee contacted me and they said,
would you like to sit down with a celebrity Christian
And I was a little hesitant at first to be
one of the twenty, you know, just going around some
mystery person. But from the clues that they gave me,
I kind of figured out it could have been Jordan Peterson,
(03:31):
and I was like, yeah, I'll take you up on that,
and so I decided to do it.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
All right, So you've got a background in religious studies,
tell everybody real quick kind of what that background is.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Yeah, definitely. I majored in religious studies at UC Santa Barbara,
and I graduated and have an emphasis in Christianity and
Mediterranean traditions, and so I definitely came armed from that
perspective to this debate.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
And you are an author of what exactly.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
I'm the author of nine books. Started with disproving Christianity
and other secular writings. In college, I wrote that, and
then I have children's books, including the Belief Book, Book
of Gods, and Book of Religions, and I also published
No Sacred Cows about investigating myths, cults, and the supernatural.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
It's funny because we both have a book with Sacred
Cows and the title, and whenever you published after the
fact that I'd published or something, and our paths crossed
and we're like, mmm, you know who's going to sue
who first?
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Man, I remember because your book did come out first
and I had no idea, And I remember they were
telling somebody told me about your book, and I was like,
I need to talk to him, and I emailed you
and I was like, I hope there's no bad feelings.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And there's a ton of books out there with those titles.
Was Ali Risby who used the subtitle, or maybe it
was the title from Religion to Reason, which was the
subtitle of Deconverted. This stuff just cross pollinites. I mean,
there are no original ideas anymore, but I just thought
it was kind of funny. So format here, I'm going
to play some clips from the actual twenty on one debate.
(05:06):
Some people like the format, some people think it's just
a gimmick. What did you think, I mean, you participated.
Is it just kind of a hey, it's flash for clicks,
sound biteable stuff. Does anything get accomplished or do you
find utility in having one guy in the middle and
a circle of twenty around him or her.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
I think that's a fair question. In reality, I don't
think it's all about accomplishing all that much. I think
it's more about setting up, you know, good soundbites and
making the debate of the hero look good. In this case,
that didn't exactly happen, but I think that's more of
the vibe. I didn't get the sense that anybody was
(05:45):
there to really learn anything new, you know.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
So the theme is that these atheists have rejected God.
Jordan Peterson says, they don't really know what God. They
are rejecting what they don't understand, and they poorly defined,
They've limited, they've reduced. I don't know what's the vibe there, David, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
Yeah. His claim the first claim that the one that
I participated in, out of four claims that he made,
was that atheists reject God without understanding what they're rejecting.
And after fleshing out his arguments, he had kind of
redefined every single thing in there, so that you know,
God is the Christian God, and the Christian God doesn't
(06:26):
mean believing in Jesus. Being a Christian to him means
striving for excellence, reaching upward. That's what he said. So
that's why atheists don't understand God, because they don't understand
that all that's about is striving upward. And if we
understood that, we would believe in Christianity and we would
accept his position.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
All right, let me play the clip itself where he's declaring, well,
he's telling atheists why they don't believe.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
My experience with atheists is twofold. Is that they have
a very reductive notion of what constitutes God, say and
did you do a Christian tradition, And they've often been
hurt by someone who was religious, or by the religious enterprise,
or perhaps by God himself, so to speak, and that's
left them with ananimous.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Okay, David, we have limited our idea of God and
somebody wounded us. That's kind of what I took from that.
Am I close?
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Oh, you're dead on And it's an argument as old
as they come. I've heard that, you know since the
first word time I said that I was an atheist.
I heard somebody say, well, you know, you you just
don't understand it properly, and that it's okay, you don't
really believe that, And he really dug in on that claim.
And then on the flip side, he believed that belie
(07:43):
that Christians are properly do understand what they're rejecting, but
atheists do not.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
And then he trods out the story of Moses. And
we did a Sunday School lesson on this on the
show a few years ago where we talked about how,
you know, no mortal could ever totally take in the
full presence of God. So God had a solution for Moses.
Here's what Jordan Peterson said.
Speaker 6 (08:07):
So, despite the fact that Moses is a stellar character
and he's had a long and difficult life and can
withstand a lot of difficulty in travail, God puts them
between two cliffs so we can just see a crack
of what's in front of him, and when God walks by,
he allows him to see his back.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
So the implication and implication of that story is that
the divine is fundamentally unknowable. It's a pinnacle experience, and
that people in their finitude have to be shielded from
a comprehensive vision of the basis of reality. Well, that's
not the God that's defined in that manner, right is
(08:49):
a it's not a simple personification. It's not a simple
old man in the sky. It's something that in its
essence is unknowable and overwhelming. And that isn't, in my experience,
the God that's defined by atheists who are attempting to
undermine the story.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
The best part about Peterson's argument there is it, first
of all, is a complete over extrapolation of what the
verse actually says, where he's reading so much into something
that really just says that Moses witnessed God's backside as
he walked by, and takes that to mean that nobody
can comprehend the full view of God, and Moses was
(09:28):
able to only comprehend this amount, and he took it
to I mean, all these things that, as the interlocerate explained,
you don't really know, these are interpretations. And then he
kind of proved the opposite of his point by saying
God did have this physical form that was able to
be witnessed by Moses, which contradicts what he's saying about
(09:48):
how it's not just a man in the sky. It
clearly was just a man that was able to be
witnessed by Moses. In that case, how he's.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Enjoyed that story of God wandering the garden looking for
Adam and E. It's Adam and E hiding behind the trees,
and I'm like, how do you hide from omniscience? I
never understood that story?
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Same here.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
So you're one of the first ones in the chair.
I think you were number two, right, and you get
like two questions in. I actually lamented the fact that
you didn't have a longer chance to sit down with
a God, because I would have really welcomed a deeper exchange.
But we get into our first example of Jordan Peterson
telling us what we think, who we are, what we believe.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
You're saying atheists don't understand what religion is or what
God is in order to be able to reject it
fully or completely. We have someone over here who studied
it in their own way. I've studied religion. I have
a degree in religious studies, specialty in Christianity and Mediterranean traditions,
and further than that, beyond me. Pew research studies suggest
(10:53):
the atheists and agnostics actually know more about religion and
about religious stories the foundational principles than believers.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
That's because they're more religious than they think they are.
Speaker 6 (11:04):
Okay, well, they're concerned with deep matters, and one of
the defining characteristics of someone who's oriented religious direction is
that they're concerned with deep matters.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Okay, it fact, it's virtually definition.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Right, But they also have to identify with a religious
tradition and accept the foundational stories that go along.
Speaker 6 (11:22):
Well, that would mean more that they're sectarian than that
they're religious.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
All right, So you and I, by being interested in
deep matters, are apparently religious. This is news to me.
What a revelation, David.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
Yeah, you better change the name of your podcast. I
got to change my books. So you got to do
all this stuff because Jordan Peterson says, we're not really atheist,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
He did a lot of that, though, didn't he He would
look at his interlockutor and say, well, you're just uncomfortable
with the question, or you worship something because everybody does,
or this is what atheists want to do with God,
or how they define God. I mean, it's it's so presumptuous,
and I didn't see anybody else doing that to Jordan Peterson,
but he did it to you.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
Oh yeah. There was a whole lot of projection in
his questioning, in his responses. He got very, very defensive
very early. I think my question, I think having to
admit ignorance at the beginning of my question where I
asked him if he was familiar with the Polynesian deity
Lono and he wasn't, And I feel like just that
little admission kind of threw him off balance for that,
(12:24):
and he was He got very defensive after that, and
that's when he started telling us what we are and
what we aren't. And you know, I also noticed being
in that room, I noticed an anger. I don't know
how else to describe it, but I've never seen anything.
You and I go way back, and you know I've
participated in and witnessed many many professional debates. I have
(12:46):
never once seen somebody with the anger and intensity and
their eyes and their voice as Jordan Peterson during that debate.
It was very mismatched between those of us who are
debating him and him.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
And you can see it in his face and hear
it in his voice. For the video viewers, you will
see a few expressions in a clip that I'm playing
in just a few I'm not going to play it here.
I'll let you explain it the example. Lo, No, what
was it and what were you trying to accomplish?
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Basically, First, I wanted to get him to admit that
he didn't know about a deity that he also didn't
believe in. Therefore, in a sense, has rejected belief in
a deity that he knows literally nothing about, so he
was guilty of the same thing that he was accusing
atheists of to start with. And then beyond that, I
was going to go further and show what rejection means.
(13:35):
Are we talking about that we you know that we
actually reject this being or are we talking about that
we just don't believe that that's the case. And then
you know, down to can we actually know whether a
deity exists or not? Hence why I'm an agnostic atheist
and nail him down on those details. But obviously we
(13:55):
didn't get the time for that, and I kind of
just had to skip ahead and talk about the Pew
research studies.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Okay, we're going to get into the Christianity that Jordan
Peterson both embraces and denies, and a pretty heated exchange
on that subject, and we'll play the audio and talk
more about this debate next.
Speaker 7 (14:17):
Hang on.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Very recently, the guy who once said that today's college
students were being brainwashed into cultural Marxism, who said that
disciplines like women's studies should be defunded, who advised students
to avoid subjects including sociology, anthropology, English literature, ethnic studies,
(14:44):
racial studies, and other fields which have been corrupted by
the woke libs. Who has claimed that there was an
ongoing crisis of masculinity and a backlash against the masculine
man who said to Joe Rogan back in twenty twenty
two that quote there is no such thing as climate,
(15:07):
and climate and everything are the same word. A man
somehow described in The New Yorker just a few years
ago as one of the most influential public intellectuals in
the English speaking world. Jordan Peterson recently sat down in
(15:28):
kind of a round table with twenty atheists, and among
those atheists was my guest, my friend, the guy we're
talking to about that today, David McAfee. So when we
get into the specifics, because he talked almost exclusively about Christianity.
But when you try to nail him down or any
(15:48):
of the people in the room tried to nail him
down on the specifics or backing up or defending biblical
truths with a capital T, he was like, well, that's
not religion or religious as much as it is sectarianism, right,
this limited, narrow, myopic view of something. So now you're
merely being sectarian. But I'm like, well, if you're going
(16:09):
to invoke Christianity, how do you separate yourself from the
fundamental text of Christianity? Right?
Speaker 5 (16:17):
One hundred percent? And he actually refused to say that
he believed Jesus was divine, that he believed Jesus came
from God, that he believed Jesus was resurrected. He wouldn't
say any of that. Yet when we were approached for
this debate, at least I was told, you know, a
prominent Christian, it would be called Christian verse twenty atheists.
(16:38):
He wouldn't even adhere to the most basic of Christian principles.
Do you believe in Jesus or not? He couldn't do it.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Was it true that it was originally titled the debate
was titled a Christian versus twenty Atheists, and after he
refused to identify as a Christian during the debate, somebody
went back and changed the name of the YouTube.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
Yes, so I was approached for Christian Verse twenty Atheists.
During my casting agent call, the agent said something to
the effect of this person is known for saying vague
things about Christian culture. And as soon as I heard
Christian culture, I thought either Charlie Kirk or Jordan Peterson.
(17:24):
And Charlie Kirk just did an episode of Surrounded a
month or two ago, a couple months ago, and so
I figured it must be Jordan Peterson. But I looked
up online He's never identified as a Christian. So I
was like, I'm going to go in there and probably
expect him to this is his coming out as a Christian.
He's going to admit during this debate that he is
a Christian, and it's going to move forward. When he
(17:46):
didn't do that, and he you know, there's that famous
moment where he refused to Danny is his name. I
thought they would change the I thought they would publish
the YouTube video as Peterson Verse twenty Eightheists, but they
published it as Christian Verse twenty eighteists. It took about
four hours for them to rename the YouTube video after
(18:07):
the comments were just filled with people saying, this guy
said in the video he's not a Christian. How are
you labeling this as Christian? Verse twenty eighteists.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
And Christian's freaking out right? I'll yeah, you coward.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Is everybody big Christian names, big maga Christian names. People
made such a big stink about it. He found himself
on the shit list of so many random people, white supremacists,
all kinds of people, And I was like, holy crap,
this he really stepped in it with his own team
on this one.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
I saw a Fox News article and it ran. I mean,
its headline was essentially, Jordan Peterson shocks by refusing to
identify as a Christian, and uh, you know, but then
lucky us, he decides he's going to clarify it. Jordan
Peterson uses the Old Testament and a popular iconic Old
(18:59):
Testament character to define God.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
So Elijah, the prophet Elijah defined God in the Old
Testament as the voice of conscience within Okay, that's a definition.
Speaker 8 (19:10):
So you're just you're saying, by that definition of God,
I see, this is kind of goes back to where
I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
We're not defining it Elijah.
Speaker 8 (19:18):
So as elijahs as Elijah defines.
Speaker 6 (19:20):
God to find that way in Julnah too. Okay, so
as Cardinal Newman also defined as I'm sure you know
many people who defined it that way. And it's impressive.
You're a very knowledgeable.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Person trying to be impressive.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
I'm just pointing out to you how God is defined
in the Old Testament, all right.
Speaker 8 (19:35):
So to respond to that, I do think there are
lots of interesting ways to define God. And that goes
back to mind.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And then how do we specify what we're arguing about.
Speaker 8 (19:46):
We use context clues or we special we again, it
goes back to my example.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
The moment finding God as conscience.
Speaker 8 (19:52):
Okay, so that's interesting, but then you're kind of expanding
the meaning of.
Speaker 6 (19:57):
God on that's how it's defined in the Old Testament, Okay, Elijah.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And in Jonah, so whoever, so not whoever.
Speaker 6 (20:04):
Elijah is one of the major Old Testament prophets, right,
He's equal in statue to Moses.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So it's not arbitrary, all right.
Speaker 8 (20:11):
So that is interesting, but it's not relevant to the
context with which I am using the term God.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
It's directly relevant. Atheists reject God, but they don't understand
what they're rejecting.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
If you accept conscience as a guide and conscious is
one of the defining characteristics of God in the Old Testament.
Speaker 8 (20:31):
I think you're being intellectually disingenuous.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
In what way?
Speaker 6 (20:34):
Because I asked you if you believe the conscience guide.
Speaker 8 (20:37):
You just asked me a question, and then you stop
me from answering it. In this setting, you understand the
way I am using the term God and belief not
in the least.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
I don't understand how you're using it in the least.
That's why I'm trying to define it. My definition of
God is conscience is a lot more precise and oriented
than your definition of the God that you hypothetically disbelieve in.
Speaker 5 (20:59):
Yeah, you know, I've always heard that God wrote the
moral law on our hearts or something like that, and
so I get his argument that God is part of conscience.
But he is being intellectual intellectually dishonest there. He's being
intellectually dishonest because he knows that we're talking about the
(21:21):
God that's described in the Bible, the same Bible that
he's quoting describes a god who rains brimstone from the sky.
That describes a god who picks and chooses who's going
to win and lose in wars. It's a tribal deity
who has chosen a group of people to protect over
all others. And the way he's interpreting as conscience does
(21:43):
not make sense. And he knows that he knows what
he's doing as well.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I could tell.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
There was a gentleman who sat in the interlocutor chair
was talking about you of all deathical systems as a
riff on where do your morals come from if you
don't believe in God? And he went down a familiar path.
You know, pro social behaviors, even altruistic behaviors makes sense
because this was a key to surviving and thriving in
(22:08):
the African Savannah. Blah blah blah. And Jordan Peterson he
wasn't having any of that. And he said something that
I found was interesting, and I'll play the clip so
you can hear him say it. Science itself has to
exist within a moral framework that isn't scientific.
Speaker 6 (22:29):
Science has to exist within a moral framework that isn't
in itself scientific.
Speaker 9 (22:33):
How's a scientific well?
Speaker 6 (22:35):
Because it's not derived from the scientific process, as you
just indicated process.
Speaker 9 (22:40):
Fact, we are social animals and we need that to
exist as a group.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
Sure, you pointed to the morality of Neanderthals, to the
morality of chimpanzees.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
They didn't derive that from science.
Speaker 9 (22:52):
They don't need to. Science explains it.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Science doesn't explain morality.
Speaker 9 (22:57):
It doesn't explain how social animals would need it to be.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Well, that's a complicated question, but we see it though.
Speaker 6 (23:05):
Yeah, But explaining the evolution of morality and explaining morality
itself aren't the same thing.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
I don't even really know what he was trying to
go forward that, but I do remember when he was
referencing science and our moral framework, he was basically saying that,
you know, like the nuclear bomb is a scientific advancement,
but it was used unethically and was able to harm people.
Speaker 6 (23:29):
You know.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
I don't think there's anybody who disagrees with that comment.
But I also don't think that that means what he
was trying to make.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
It mean that.
Speaker 5 (23:38):
Science can't be a part of how we learn more
about morality. It has to come from this biblical it
has to come from this religious place. I don't feel
like his point landed there, and I think that he
knew that. It felt like he knew that as he
was being pressed on that point.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Damn, But how.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Much of this stuff was just Jordan Peterson word salad right,
peterson isms? The metaphysical substrance. I think somebody even brought
that phrase up during I don't even know what the
hell he means by metaphysical substrate, but he talks about
it all the time. Did you find that when he
was backed into a corner he would just sort of
weave a bunch of multi syllable words and the hopes
(24:14):
of masking the fact that he was he had nothing
of substance.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
That's almost exclusively what he did. And you know, I'm
familiar with Peterson before this. I know that that's kind
of his mo But I figured that we would at
least be able to have a genuine conversation sitting together
during this event, And instead we're sitting here and he
claims that atheists are rejecting God, but they don't know
what they believe in, and he redefines atheism, He redefines rejection,
(24:45):
and he redefines God in all these convoluted ways that
nobody could possibly follow. I don't think he's following along.
I mean, at one point he gasly is interlocked her
by saying that he said a when he did say
the and he just didn't like to be pointed out
they was wrong. He didn't like when I made him
admit they didn't know about a deity. I don't think
(25:06):
I think that's what makes him go into word salid
mode is when he feels like he's wrong about something,
or when he feels out of place or put on
the spot, like he has to defend something he doesn't
fully comprehend.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Another example, he redefines worship in an odd way. So
he says, worship is a scale, right, it's a priority scale.
So if something is down here, then it doesn't matter
all that much to us. We certainly do not worship.
We're not that attuned to it. We don't I forgot
what the word was attending.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
To it atending yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And yet then if something becomes a greater and greater priority,
when it gets really at the top, now I don't
just love it or respect it or crave it or
admire it or attend to it. I worship it. And
so he from that model. Then if you and I
have anything in our life that means anything to us
(25:58):
in a very deep way, you worship that thing.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
It's not possible that you don't worship anyone. Do I worship?
Because you wouldn't attend well, love?
Speaker 10 (26:07):
So I do think I worship love?
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Do you attend in consequence of love? I say, I'm
trying to define something. What do you mean worship? I
told you what I don't. What do you mean? So?
Speaker 11 (26:16):
I mean it's a word. Something you worship is something
that you have a reverential view for in a manner
in which you believe it to be above and beyond
normal things you like, like like you have that.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
Attitude towards your wife. I have that you privilege her
to compare to other women.
Speaker 11 (26:31):
Of course I privilege her compared to other women. But
I don't worship her worship, nor does she worship.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Me by the definition you just offered. Yes you do,
because we talket.
Speaker 6 (26:39):
You just offered a definition that involved prioritization and elevation.
Speaker 11 (26:43):
And thinking that she is divine, above and beyond what
a normal another women be, No other women, no beyond
any human being could ever be. I will prioritize her
over as you're making an assumption, she is.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
You're making the assumption that only the thing at the
top or the bottom has anything to do with worship,
and I'm saying that's not true. It's a hierarchy of prioritization,
and there's something. There's either something at the top or
the bottom, depending on the metaphor, or you're fragmented and confused.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Those are the only options.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
So let's say you're either going in many directions, okay,
or you're going in one direction.
Speaker 11 (27:18):
Let's suppose I'm fragmented and confused. Then you agree I
don't worship anything.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
No, well, then you'd worship multiple things.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
His logic here is completely circular, because he literally says
that whatever is at the top of your totem pole
of things that you care about, whatever it is, that's
what you worship. And so everybody worships something under that model,
because even if you don't believe in something very deeply
or love something very deeply, whatever you believe in love
the most, that's what you would worship. In his mind,
(27:47):
it completely does not make sense. It redefines all the
terms so that he's right, and it makes it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And he did the same with this idea of something
that we believe in. You and I believe in something.
If we believe in something, then how far are we
prepared to go with that belief?
Speaker 7 (28:07):
Okay, so you're saying that you don't believe something if
you wouldn't die for it.
Speaker 6 (28:11):
Not really no, okay, So now would you define belief
something you say?
Speaker 5 (28:16):
It reminded me of in Dogma when Rufus is saying
a belief is something that you really people die for
and an idea is just something that you think you know.
And I think he took that a little too far,
took it as gospel and started deciding that if you
believe in something, you have to die for it. He
really said that. He said, anything that you believe is true,
(28:38):
you will die for. And then when confronted on that
point where they said, here's an instance where you would
lie and not die for your beliefs based on what
you think is true or not, he completely backpedaled. He
said he refuses to answer hypothetical questions. And that was
one of the highlights of the entire debate.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Oh I got to play a clip from that, because
this is a point where Jordan Peterson is agitated.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
You lost it?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Would you lie if it meant you would save a life?
Speaker 7 (29:08):
I could believe it is the case that this pen exists.
But if someone like threatened my life, right, I would
lie in order to be able to save my life,
right like? I think you would do that too. You
wouldn't lie to save life? You so sure you wouldn't
lie to save your life?
Speaker 6 (29:21):
How much do you know about me? I didn't lie
to save my career. I didn't lie to save my
clinical practice.
Speaker 7 (29:28):
Would you lie to save your children and your mom
and your dad?
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I don't think lying would save.
Speaker 7 (29:32):
The Can there ever be a circumstance logically that lying
could save something?
Speaker 6 (29:37):
Yeah, And if you're steeped in sin, you're likely live
in circumstances like that.
Speaker 7 (29:41):
I'll give you an example. If you're like in like
Nazi Germany, and it is the case that there's like
Jewish people in your attic and you're trying to would
you lie to like the Nazis?
Speaker 6 (29:49):
I would have done everything I bloody well could, so
I wouldn't be in that situation begin with.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
It's a hypothetical, and it's yotheticals.
Speaker 6 (29:57):
No, I can't answer hypothetical like that, because it's fa
Can you present me with an intractable moral choice that's
stripped of context and you backed me.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Into a corner? You're playing game.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
I just told you I would do everything that I
could to make sure that I'm never in that situation.
By the time you've got there, you've made so many
mistakes that there's nothing you can do that isn't a sin.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
How unbelievably pathetic is this notion that, well, the Jews
who were oppressed by the Nazis in Germany, who lied
to hide and frank or whatever, well they got themselves
into this position through a series of one thousand preliminary
decisions that they should have known better, and it was
their sin that put them in a position where they
(30:43):
would have to lie to escape murder by the Nazis.
Jesus Christ, David McAfee, I mean, you had to have
almost been wanting to come out of your chair at
the time, right.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
If there's video of me in my chair, I was.
I was popping out of my chair because not only
is this man saying what you exactly just stated, he's saying,
you know, these people who hid Jews from Nazis made
all these mistakes that led up to that point, like
being born in Germany, like knowing a Jewish person. These
(31:14):
are the type of mistakes that these people made. Necessarily,
there's nothing else but beyond that. If you take his
words and you map out what that actually means. What
he's saying in that clip is that if he were
around in Germany during Hitler's reign, that the Holocaust wouldn't
have happened. He said, I wouldn't have found myself in
(31:36):
that position because I wouldn't have let myself come that
I wouldn't have let by the time that the Holocaust happened,
there were so many mistakes that people let it happen.
He was literally suggesting that he alone, Jordan Peterson, could
stop the Holocaust and would have if he were around
at that point of time, and that he would have
done it without lying once.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
And that those who were caught up in the meat
grinder of Hitler's Germany essentially responsible because all of the
preliminary decisions they had made in their lives had led
them to the moment of calamity. It's victim blaming and it's.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
Such a thing in it.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
Oh that was I could not believe that one. I
legitimately was like, I was looking around at the people
next to me. I was like, is this really happening?
Did he just say that he would have prevented the
Holocaust single handedly? And to my surprise, that wasn't even
the highlight of the debate because the main highlight of
the debate because then it comes to where he's put
(32:31):
on the spot about the Christianity and has that will
blow up. But when he's talking about Nazi Germany, I
saw him get so mad, and I think they cut
out certain parts where I saw in the room where
his eyes just he was looking at I believe his
name was Parker, with just this hatred that I really
have not seen. As I said, as I mentioned, I
(32:53):
can't get into that guy's brain. I don't know what's
going on in there, but it's not pretty.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Before I play the next clip, I got to know
you're sitting there with all these other people. First of all,
were you taking visual cues from each other? You're watching
each other going oh my god, oh my oh, Mike,
can you believe he saying that? Are you guys playing
off each other?
Speaker 7 (33:11):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (33:12):
Definitely, yeah, we're all keeping each other in view. And
the thing that was bad for me is a lot
of these people are regulars where they're doing these debates
all the time, and they're the people that they call
in to do this thing, and I was pretty much
the only one or one of the few who hadn't
done it before, and so that's why they kind of
voted me out faster, so that they could get their
turn to talk for their friends and the people who
(33:34):
are doing it a lot more often. That's what they
told me afterward. But during the actual debate, we're all
looking at each other. And I even saw in my
clip when I'm making the few research point, I see
people with their flag up to take me down, and
they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
And the point you were making, to be clear, was
that non believers actually statistically have a greater knowledge of
what the Bible says than the people who ostensibly believe
in it. And you were just trying to say, you know,
I think the point was correct me if I'm wrong
that hey, we're not coming at it because we don't understand,
(34:08):
we're actually in disagreement because we do often understand better
even than those who say it's.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
True one hundred percent. You and I are good examples
of that with your background, in my background, we do
know more than the average person. The average believer does
about their religion. And that's okay. That's not to say
that they can't have their faith, But to come to
a debate like this and assert the opposite, I'm going
to have to bring up the facts. And those studies
are done every couple of years. Is not a one off.
(34:36):
They always always show atheists, agnostics, and then Jewish people
they have the highest understanding of the various religious systems.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Oh goodie. Jordan Peterson has asked about slavery and other
atrocities in the Christian Old Testament.
Speaker 12 (34:53):
So in the Bible it talks a lot about slavery, right, yes, yes,
So in that it teaches you how to take care
of a slave rather than saying slavery is wrong.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I think he says that in the story of Moses.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
Says slavery is incorrect.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Why Moses leads us people away from slavery, But why.
Speaker 12 (35:10):
Does the Bible predicate and tell people exactly how to
take care.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Of a slave is moral?
Speaker 12 (35:15):
Wouldn't you say that culturally we've evolved as a species,
As he said earlier, about empathy.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
Yeah, I would say that the reason we evolved, so
to speak, away from slavery was because the West was
founded on Judeo Christian morality and the presumption that every
person was made in the image of God. Slavery itself
became immoral, and that was established by Protestant Christians in
the UK, who then convinced the UK government for two
hundred years to go to war.
Speaker 12 (35:40):
And way you say that this is about the cultural
evolution of humans in general rather than just I.
Speaker 6 (35:46):
Think it's the flowering of the ideas that were embedded
in the Biblical text across long spans of time.
Speaker 12 (35:52):
I feel like this is just humans editing based on
the cultural evolution.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
What do you mean by just well.
Speaker 12 (35:59):
Based on culture and history.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Right, we get better.
Speaker 6 (36:03):
They did do it based on culture and history. But
culture and history have their foundations too well.
Speaker 12 (36:07):
Yeah, but we were talking about slavery, so many people
bolstered it based.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
On everyone based on the Bible.
Speaker 12 (36:14):
They looked, they justified it. In the United States and
the South, they justified slavery.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
But the main thrust, the main thrust of Protestant thought
in particular, was stringent slavery, and it was about the
only movement in the history of the human race that
had an anti slavery direction.
Speaker 12 (36:29):
Which was driven by humans. And well, it depends the
same with women's suffrage, I mean women's in.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
The patri mean it was driven by humans. Humans drove
slavery too, Yes, exactly they So there was no argument there.
Speaker 6 (36:43):
If slavery and anti slavery were both driven by humans,
what what does your claim that they were driven by
humans have to.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Do with it?
Speaker 12 (36:51):
Based on the culture that within the society that they live. Okay,
So with as well as a very similar topic in
the Bible, there are denominations in Christianity such as Pentecostal
movement which do bolster women to be pastors, right, which
I think that's a great thing to do.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
But most like to disregard.
Speaker 6 (37:08):
Where do you think the idea that human beings were
sufficiently equal to all vote and not be slaves came
from humans?
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah? But so did the idea of slavery. So did
the idea of God.
Speaker 6 (37:19):
Fine, but what's your point, Like, you're not making an argument,
You're just saying all thoughts come from humans. Regardless of
the thoughts.
Speaker 12 (37:26):
It's not driven by higher power, it's driven on our experience, hires,
which is what is.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Best for all? Is it driven by conscience?
Speaker 12 (37:34):
It could be which conscious is also something that has
evolved over time, and I think that's what does evolve
with morality and empathy.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Okay, I don't understand the point that you're making.
Speaker 5 (37:44):
As I was listening to that, all I could think
of was Bill Clinton. It depends on what the definition
of the word is. Is define, just define higher, define all.
You don't know what just means, like you do know
exactly what he's trying to say. He was put on
his back foot, and he was hesitant, and he was
trying to catch him up in word games. Because the
(38:07):
Interlocketare was correct that the Old Testament described how to
take care of slaves in some instances, it says when
you are allowed to kill them, and it never says
that slavery is a moral is wrong in any way
he's talking about the story of Moses. Was that story
is about how the enslavement of Jews is wrong. The
(38:28):
chosen people, the Jews are allowed to keep slaves as
per the rest of the text. He's picking and choosing
these things on purpose to try to distract from the
main point. And then to play down the nature of
Christianity in supporting slavery in America is insane, because of
course there were religious elements to the pushback, especially the
(38:50):
Quakers played a big, big, big, big role in anti
slavery activism early on, but primarily all all of the
main arguments used to support slavery where Christian and nature,
as that individual was saying.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Exodus what seven through twelve, I think tells the story
of Moses and the liberation of the Israelites out of Egypt,
but it's just a few chapters later, and Exodus twenty
one we're talking about specific instructions how to beat your slave,
How if the slave gets up within forty eight hours
and he's conscious and can move around, then there's no
(39:26):
punishment or penalty for the master. And you know, you
have Jesus. So we have New Testament references to slavery,
and Jesus never once says, oh, this is a shitty idea.
So this idea that you know, Judeo Christian thought is
the reason that the abolition of slavery has taken place,
not just in the United States but worldwide, is absolutely crazy.
(39:47):
You want to speak to Judeo Christian. He threw that
term out a few times.
Speaker 5 (39:51):
Oh yeah, yeah, he loves that because he knows that
it helps him conflate his beliefs. But when it comes
to the issue of slavery, you know, Christians could have
a good point if they were able to make it properly.
It is true that a lot of slaves were mistreated
during the years in which the Bible was being compiled,
(40:12):
and it's also true that having rules such as, hey,
you could be punished if you kill your slave, that
was pretty new to the time. So Christianity was a
step forward regarding the treatment of slaves at their time period.
But the second you say that it's from an all
knowing God and all loving God, you throw all that away,
because now you have to account for how these beliefs
(40:35):
have continued for all these years, even though now we
know that they're a moral We have to account for
why God and Jesus allowed slavery in the first place
if they are truly all loving, omnipotent beings, and that
just they can't do that. So yeah, Peterson ended up
looking like a fool there.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Two. I narrated the audiobook for a seriologist, doctor Joshua
Bowen did the Old Testament endorse slavery, and he was
addressing the common apologetic that, well, you know, God had
to work with what he had at the time, these
primitive ages, these primitive cultures, so he had to condescend
and use the system that was already in place. God
(41:12):
just couldn't abolish slavery outright. He had to kind of,
you know, use the clay that he was given in
this primitive time. David McAfee, we know it's bullshit. Why
is the argument bullshit?
Speaker 5 (41:27):
Well, the youth played that he was given given by
whom oh wait, God, who created us all. I think
the time that anybody leans on that argument that you
just made is them admitting that God isn't all powerful.
If he has to play into whatever the current culture's
games are and he has to rely on the clay
(41:49):
he's given for this particular context, then he's by definition
not all powerful.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Jordan Peterson challenged about whether or not he is a
Catholic and believes in the Immaculate Conception or understands the
Immaculate Conception, and things get kind of nasty. That clip
is right after this. I'm talking here with author and
(42:16):
journalist David McAfee. He was in the circle in the
room as twenty atheists faced off one at a time
against Jordan Peterson. So let's play the clip that we've
referenced a few times, and this is the hottest moment
in a ninety minute discussion.
Speaker 4 (42:34):
I'm excited to talk about this.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
One where the guy goes I mean, the interlocutor, I
can't remember his name. He goes hard. Some would say
too hard, but I mean, I don't know. I thought
it was kind of refreshing at Jordan Peterson regarding his
Christian slash Catholic faith.
Speaker 10 (42:50):
Are you familiar with the Immaculate conception?
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Why is that relevant?
Speaker 13 (42:53):
Because you go to a Catholic church? Don't or you've
attended recently? You're interested in Catholicism, aren't you sure?
Speaker 10 (42:58):
All right? Are you familiar with their doctrine?
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Somewhat?
Speaker 10 (43:00):
Okay, you're familiar. How do they regard how do they
regard Mary? Why are you asking me because you're a Christian?
Speaker 2 (43:07):
You say that I haven't claimed that.
Speaker 10 (43:09):
Oh what is this? Is this a Christians versus atheist?
Speaker 2 (43:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 10 (43:13):
You don't know where you are right now?
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Don't be a smart ass. Well, and I mean, either
you're a PSI or you if you're a smart ass.
Speaker 10 (43:19):
Oh, either you're a Christian or you're not. Which one
is it?
Speaker 2 (43:22):
I could be either of them. But I don't have
to take you.
Speaker 10 (43:25):
You don't have to tell me.
Speaker 13 (43:26):
I was under the impression I was invited to talk
to a Christian?
Speaker 10 (43:30):
Am I not talking to a Christian?
Speaker 2 (43:32):
No, you were invited to.
Speaker 13 (43:34):
I think everyone should look at the title of the
YouTube channel. You're probably in the wrong YouTube video. You're
a really quite something you are, aren't I?
Speaker 10 (43:40):
But you're really quite nothing right, You're.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Not a Christian. I'm done with him.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
Danny came out of the gate very hard and very
fast at Jordan Peterson, And you know, there was a
part of me that did cringe because he's coming at
him so hard so fast that it doesn't feel like
it's in good faith. That being said, the format necessarily
lends itself to that type of interaction, so I wasn't
(44:05):
really blaming him. And then he asked the questions that
every single one of us was wanting to ask in
that room. Every single person was like nodding right along
with him because we all wanted to know how he's
capable how he wants to defend the Christian position and
won't admit to his own Christian beliefs or lack thereof.
(44:27):
He wouldn't say it either way. Then, when Jordan Peterson
rage quit on everybody and said I'm done with this one,
Danny walks away, and the production actually chastised Danny and
was like, that's not cool. We're not going to let
you come up and speak again. Because of that, he
got in trouble. And after the filming, I was talking
(44:48):
to Danny. We were just kind of alone, just chatting
about it, and he was like, they're going to cut
that out of the debate because they got mad at me,
and it's going to make them look bad for even
having him on as a Christian. W won't say he's
a Christian. And I said, I told him, there is
no way they are cutting the most interesting part of
that debate. There's just no way that's going to be
the highlight. And then as soon as it published, they
(45:11):
open with that clip and it just went crazy, and
I was like, I knew they were going to lean
into that.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Is there a question that you wish you'd gotten in.
I'm sure there's probably a booklet of them. But before
I let you go here, you know the format is
tragically limited. Twenty people in a room, ninety minutes, blah
blah blah. But you're sitting down over coffee. What other
stuff would you have?
Speaker 5 (45:34):
Asked Jordan Peterson. I, yeah, you're right, I have a
book about it in my mind about it, and I
would like the chance to sit down with them and
have a good faith debate about these topics. I just
don't know if he's capable. I truly don't know that.
I didn't get the sense that he was. I got
the idea, I got the viewpoint that he was trying
(45:56):
really hard to confuse people and trying really hard to
keep people from understanding, as opposed to trying to understand
and help people understand. But if it was a good
faith discussion, I would definitely have gotten him to nail
down some definitions of belief. Does it just mean adhering
to something that you think is true, or does it
(46:17):
really mean to him, like, if you believe this pencil
is read, then you will die for that pencil being read.
I need him to know, I need him to tell
us if that's true or just bluster. I think we
all know that that's bluster and that he really really
really wants the people that he talks to at the
Daily Wire is conservative audience. They want him to say
(46:39):
stuff like that, and so I think that was more
for the audience at home than anyone else.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
If you like that. There's a whole culture of folks.
They're just impressed something about the way he present Like
I don't get it. When I look at him, I'm like, no,
that doesn't make any sense. No, that's bullshit. No, that's
esoteric word salad, you know. But there is a demographic
of people. I'm not trying to say I'm smart to
anybody else, but for some reason, his frequency hits their
(47:05):
receiver and they're like, Wow, that guide's an intellectual heavyweight.
Let us, you know, listen with great attention to everything
that he has to say. I do not get this. Damn,
I don't understand.
Speaker 5 (47:17):
I actually know a person and I hope she does
not watch this, because I was just talking to her
the other day, a girl I used to talk two
years ago, and she now considers herself a conservative and
no longer an atheist, and she used to be a
liberal atheist, and she credits Jordan Peterson for that. She says,
until she started listening to Jordan Peterson, she was a
liberal atheist and now she's not. And when I was
(47:38):
talking to her about her, she's like, he's just so
genius and all this stuff. And I think it's because
he's just smart enough to convince dumb people and average
intelligence people that he's smarter than he actually is. I
will not say that he's dumb.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
He's not.
Speaker 5 (47:55):
I could tell that he's an intelligent man. You have
to be able to be smart to be able to
play the word games that he does play. But he's
not the genius that he wants people to think he is.
And I think that's probably his greatest insecurity. I think
that might be why he plays these games, because he
fears that somebody's gonna find out that he's not what
he's presented himself as.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
It also might explain why he got so agitated at
several points when he was really called to task. Next time,
we'll sit you down in a room and you can
have a debate with a random word generator and then
might have kind of the same experience. David, where can
people find you? Your books? Your work et, cetera. Where
do they go?
Speaker 5 (48:34):
Yeah, yeah, go to I'm on Facebook author David G. McAfee.
My books are all on Amazon Disproving Christianity, no Sacred cows. Hi,
I'm an atheist, the Belief book. You can find me anywhere.
Speaker 4 (48:45):
David G. McAfee is usually my tag and I.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Will throw the link and the link to the original debate,
the ninety minute twenty on one Atheist versus Jordan Peterson
debate that is linked in the description box, and it's
worth a full watch rather than just catch the sound bites.
Go back and check me and what's the whole damn thing?
And I think you'll find it compelling, interesting, entertaining, maddening,
(49:08):
and probably a whole bunch of other adjectives. David McAfee,
It's always a pleasure to hang out, my friend. Thanks
for telling us about your experience and we'll talk again.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Follow the Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist
pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com
The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
The population of atheists this country is going through the.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not
because I put my hand on a book and made
a wish and working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness. Truth,
Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Okay, there are a lot of sound bites in this broadcast,
and those sound bites come from a video, and so
if you want to watch instead of just listen, or
you want to go back and review the video clips,
there's a YouTube link in the description box. Of course,
we're talking about Jordan Peterson today, who has in many
ways become a right wing darling. And he talks about spirituality, God, Christianity,
(01:23):
the Bible, but he does so in bizarre, nebulous, contradictory,
and often confusing ways, and yet people have lofted him
up as a great thinker. Well, he was involved in
a big event. I'll call it a big event. It's
been talked about a lot on the internet, and so
I wanted to talk about that today with a guy
(01:45):
that was involved. So here we go. Jordan Peterson. He
is a psychologist. Some call him a great mind, this
is debatable, and he recently set in kind of a
round table debate format against twenty atheists, including my guest today,
(02:11):
my friend David McAfee. Welcome brother, how's.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
It going, Thank you, glad to be back.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
So Jordan Peterson set this up or did a third
party set the debate? How did you end up getting involved?
Just set it up for me?
Speaker 5 (02:25):
Yeah, yeah, of course. So these debates have become pretty popular,
especially among the gen Z people, and it's called Surrounded
and it's by Jubilee as the company, and they usually
get these big names. They've had Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro,
and they typically have them go up against twenty college
students about political you know, political topics, and these almost
(02:49):
all always are set up so that the person, the
main debater, the celebrity person, is going to come out victorious.
And I know that because the transcript I was handed
by the company. So they called him the hero. It said, Okay,
the hero sits in the center and everybody else that's around,
and he is the only one that I've seen that
(03:10):
public opinion has said that he's lost this format. But
how I became involved was Jubilee contacted me and they said,
would you like to sit down with a celebrity Christian
And I was a little hesitant at first to be
one of the twenty, you know, just going around some
mystery person. But from the clues that they gave me,
I kind of figured out it could have been Jordan Peterson,
(03:31):
and I was like, yeah, I'll take you up on that,
and so I decided to do it.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
All right, So you've got a background in religious studies,
tell everybody real quick kind of what that background is.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Yeah, definitely. I majored in religious studies at UC Santa Barbara,
and I graduated and have an emphasis in Christianity and
Mediterranean traditions, and so I definitely came armed from that
perspective to this debate.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
And you are an author of what exactly.
Speaker 5 (04:01):
I'm the author of nine books. Started with disproving Christianity
and other secular writings. In college, I wrote that, and
then I have children's books, including the Belief Book, Book
of Gods, and Book of Religions, and I also published
No Sacred Cows about investigating myths, cults, and the supernatural.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
It's funny because we both have a book with Sacred
Cows and the title, and whenever you published after the
fact that I'd published or something, and our paths crossed
and we're like, mmm, you know who's going to sue
who first?
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Man, I remember because your book did come out first
and I had no idea, And I remember they were
telling somebody told me about your book, and I was like,
I need to talk to him, and I emailed you
and I was like, I hope there's no bad feelings.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And there's a ton of books out there with those titles.
Was Ali Risby who used the subtitle, or maybe it
was the title from Religion to Reason, which was the
subtitle of Deconverted. This stuff just cross pollinites. I mean,
there are no original ideas anymore, but I just thought
it was kind of funny. So format here, I'm going
to play some clips from the actual twenty on one debate.
(05:06):
Some people like the format, some people think it's just
a gimmick. What did you think, I mean, you participated.
Is it just kind of a hey, it's flash for clicks,
sound biteable stuff. Does anything get accomplished or do you
find utility in having one guy in the middle and
a circle of twenty around him or her.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
I think that's a fair question. In reality, I don't
think it's all about accomplishing all that much. I think
it's more about setting up, you know, good soundbites and
making the debate of the hero look good. In this case,
that didn't exactly happen, but I think that's more of
the vibe. I didn't get the sense that anybody was
(05:45):
there to really learn anything new, you know.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
So the theme is that these atheists have rejected God.
Jordan Peterson says, they don't really know what God. They
are rejecting what they don't understand, and they poorly defined,
They've limited, they've reduced. I don't know what's the vibe there, David, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
Yeah. His claim the first claim that the one that
I participated in, out of four claims that he made,
was that atheists reject God without understanding what they're rejecting.
And after fleshing out his arguments, he had kind of
redefined every single thing in there, so that you know,
God is the Christian God, and the Christian God doesn't
(06:26):
mean believing in Jesus. Being a Christian to him means
striving for excellence, reaching upward. That's what he said. So
that's why atheists don't understand God, because they don't understand
that all that's about is striving upward. And if we
understood that, we would believe in Christianity and we would
accept his position.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
All right, let me play the clip itself where he's declaring, well,
he's telling atheists why they don't believe.
Speaker 6 (06:52):
My experience with atheists is twofold. Is that they have
a very reductive notion of what constitutes God, say and
did you do a Christian tradition, And they've often been
hurt by someone who was religious, or by the religious enterprise,
or perhaps by God himself, so to speak, and that's
left them with ananimous.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Okay, David, we have limited our idea of God and
somebody wounded us. That's kind of what I took from that.
Am I close?
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Oh, you're dead on And it's an argument as old
as they come. I've heard that, you know since the
first word time I said that I was an atheist.
I heard somebody say, well, you know, you you just
don't understand it properly, and that it's okay, you don't
really believe that, And he really dug in on that claim.
And then on the flip side, he believed that belie
(07:43):
that Christians are properly do understand what they're rejecting, but
atheists do not.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
And then he trods out the story of Moses. And
we did a Sunday School lesson on this on the
show a few years ago where we talked about how,
you know, no mortal could ever totally take in the
full presence of God. So God had a solution for Moses.
Here's what Jordan Peterson said.
Speaker 6 (08:07):
So, despite the fact that Moses is a stellar character
and he's had a long and difficult life and can
withstand a lot of difficulty in travail, God puts them
between two cliffs so we can just see a crack
of what's in front of him, and when God walks by,
he allows him to see his back.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (08:26):
So the implication and implication of that story is that
the divine is fundamentally unknowable. It's a pinnacle experience, and
that people in their finitude have to be shielded from
a comprehensive vision of the basis of reality. Well, that's
not the God that's defined in that manner, right is
(08:49):
a it's not a simple personification. It's not a simple
old man in the sky. It's something that in its
essence is unknowable and overwhelming. And that isn't, in my experience,
the God that's defined by atheists who are attempting to
undermine the story.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
The best part about Peterson's argument there is it, first
of all, is a complete over extrapolation of what the
verse actually says, where he's reading so much into something
that really just says that Moses witnessed God's backside as
he walked by, and takes that to mean that nobody
can comprehend the full view of God, and Moses was
(09:28):
able to only comprehend this amount, and he took it
to I mean, all these things that, as the interlocerate explained,
you don't really know, these are interpretations. And then he
kind of proved the opposite of his point by saying
God did have this physical form that was able to
be witnessed by Moses, which contradicts what he's saying about
(09:48):
how it's not just a man in the sky. It
clearly was just a man that was able to be
witnessed by Moses. In that case, how he's.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Enjoyed that story of God wandering the garden looking for
Adam and E. It's Adam and E hiding behind the trees,
and I'm like, how do you hide from omniscience? I
never understood that story?
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Same here.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
So you're one of the first ones in the chair.
I think you were number two, right, and you get
like two questions in. I actually lamented the fact that
you didn't have a longer chance to sit down with
a God, because I would have really welcomed a deeper exchange.
But we get into our first example of Jordan Peterson
telling us what we think, who we are, what we believe.
Speaker 5 (10:30):
You're saying atheists don't understand what religion is or what
God is in order to be able to reject it
fully or completely. We have someone over here who studied
it in their own way. I've studied religion. I have
a degree in religious studies, specialty in Christianity and Mediterranean traditions,
and further than that, beyond me. Pew research studies suggest
(10:53):
the atheists and agnostics actually know more about religion and
about religious stories the foundational principles than believers.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
That's because they're more religious than they think they are.
Speaker 6 (11:04):
Okay, well, they're concerned with deep matters, and one of
the defining characteristics of someone who's oriented religious direction is
that they're concerned with deep matters.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Okay, it fact, it's virtually definition.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
Right, But they also have to identify with a religious
tradition and accept the foundational stories that go along.
Speaker 6 (11:22):
Well, that would mean more that they're sectarian than that
they're religious.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
All right, So you and I, by being interested in
deep matters, are apparently religious. This is news to me.
What a revelation, David.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
Yeah, you better change the name of your podcast. I
got to change my books. So you got to do
all this stuff because Jordan Peterson says, we're not really atheist,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
He did a lot of that, though, didn't he He would
look at his interlockutor and say, well, you're just uncomfortable
with the question, or you worship something because everybody does,
or this is what atheists want to do with God,
or how they define God. I mean, it's it's so presumptuous,
and I didn't see anybody else doing that to Jordan Peterson,
but he did it to you.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
Oh yeah. There was a whole lot of projection in
his questioning, in his responses. He got very, very defensive
very early. I think my question, I think having to
admit ignorance at the beginning of my question where I
asked him if he was familiar with the Polynesian deity
Lono and he wasn't, And I feel like just that
little admission kind of threw him off balance for that,
(12:24):
and he was He got very defensive after that, and
that's when he started telling us what we are and
what we aren't. And you know, I also noticed being
in that room, I noticed an anger. I don't know
how else to describe it, but I've never seen anything.
You and I go way back, and you know I've
participated in and witnessed many many professional debates. I have
(12:46):
never once seen somebody with the anger and intensity and
their eyes and their voice as Jordan Peterson during that debate.
It was very mismatched between those of us who are
debating him and him.
Speaker 3 (12:58):
And you can see it in his face and hear
it in his voice. For the video viewers, you will
see a few expressions in a clip that I'm playing
in just a few I'm not going to play it here.
I'll let you explain it the example. Lo, No, what
was it and what were you trying to accomplish?
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Basically, First, I wanted to get him to admit that
he didn't know about a deity that he also didn't
believe in. Therefore, in a sense, has rejected belief in
a deity that he knows literally nothing about, so he
was guilty of the same thing that he was accusing
atheists of to start with. And then beyond that, I
was going to go further and show what rejection means.
(13:35):
Are we talking about that we you know that we
actually reject this being or are we talking about that
we just don't believe that that's the case. And then
you know, down to can we actually know whether a
deity exists or not? Hence why I'm an agnostic atheist
and nail him down on those details. But obviously we
(13:55):
didn't get the time for that, and I kind of
just had to skip ahead and talk about the Pew
research studies.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Okay, we're going to get into the Christianity that Jordan
Peterson both embraces and denies, and a pretty heated exchange
on that subject, and we'll play the audio and talk
more about this debate next.
Speaker 7 (14:17):
Hang on.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Very recently, the guy who once said that today's college
students were being brainwashed into cultural Marxism, who said that
disciplines like women's studies should be defunded, who advised students
to avoid subjects including sociology, anthropology, English literature, ethnic studies,
(14:44):
racial studies, and other fields which have been corrupted by
the woke libs. Who has claimed that there was an
ongoing crisis of masculinity and a backlash against the masculine
man who said to Joe Rogan back in twenty twenty
two that quote there is no such thing as climate,
(15:07):
and climate and everything are the same word. A man
somehow described in The New Yorker just a few years
ago as one of the most influential public intellectuals in
the English speaking world. Jordan Peterson recently sat down in
(15:28):
kind of a round table with twenty atheists, and among
those atheists was my guest, my friend, the guy we're
talking to about that today, David McAfee. So when we
get into the specifics, because he talked almost exclusively about Christianity.
But when you try to nail him down or any
(15:48):
of the people in the room tried to nail him
down on the specifics or backing up or defending biblical
truths with a capital T, he was like, well, that's
not religion or religious as much as it is sectarianism, right,
this limited, narrow, myopic view of something. So now you're
merely being sectarian. But I'm like, well, if you're going
(16:09):
to invoke Christianity, how do you separate yourself from the
fundamental text of Christianity? Right?
Speaker 5 (16:17):
One hundred percent? And he actually refused to say that
he believed Jesus was divine, that he believed Jesus came
from God, that he believed Jesus was resurrected. He wouldn't
say any of that. Yet when we were approached for
this debate, at least I was told, you know, a
prominent Christian, it would be called Christian verse twenty atheists.
(16:38):
He wouldn't even adhere to the most basic of Christian principles.
Do you believe in Jesus or not? He couldn't do it.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Was it true that it was originally titled the debate
was titled a Christian versus twenty Atheists, and after he
refused to identify as a Christian during the debate, somebody
went back and changed the name of the YouTube.
Speaker 5 (17:02):
Yes, so I was approached for Christian Verse twenty Atheists.
During my casting agent call, the agent said something to
the effect of this person is known for saying vague
things about Christian culture. And as soon as I heard
Christian culture, I thought either Charlie Kirk or Jordan Peterson.
(17:24):
And Charlie Kirk just did an episode of Surrounded a
month or two ago, a couple months ago, and so
I figured it must be Jordan Peterson. But I looked
up online He's never identified as a Christian. So I
was like, I'm going to go in there and probably
expect him to this is his coming out as a Christian.
He's going to admit during this debate that he is
a Christian, and it's going to move forward. When he
(17:46):
didn't do that, and he you know, there's that famous
moment where he refused to Danny is his name. I
thought they would change the I thought they would publish
the YouTube video as Peterson Verse twenty Eightheists, but they
published it as Christian Verse twenty eighteists. It took about
four hours for them to rename the YouTube video after
(18:07):
the comments were just filled with people saying, this guy
said in the video he's not a Christian. How are
you labeling this as Christian? Verse twenty eighteists.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
And Christian's freaking out right? I'll yeah, you coward.
Speaker 5 (18:22):
Is everybody big Christian names, big maga Christian names. People
made such a big stink about it. He found himself
on the shit list of so many random people, white supremacists,
all kinds of people, And I was like, holy crap,
this he really stepped in it with his own team
on this one.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
I saw a Fox News article and it ran. I mean,
its headline was essentially, Jordan Peterson shocks by refusing to
identify as a Christian, and uh, you know, but then
lucky us, he decides he's going to clarify it. Jordan
Peterson uses the Old Testament and a popular iconic Old
(18:59):
Testament character to define God.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
So Elijah, the prophet Elijah defined God in the Old
Testament as the voice of conscience within Okay, that's a definition.
Speaker 8 (19:10):
So you're just you're saying, by that definition of God,
I see, this is kind of goes back to where
I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
We're not defining it Elijah.
Speaker 8 (19:18):
So as elijahs as Elijah defines.
Speaker 6 (19:20):
God to find that way in Julnah too. Okay, so
as Cardinal Newman also defined as I'm sure you know
many people who defined it that way. And it's impressive.
You're a very knowledgeable.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Person trying to be impressive.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
I'm just pointing out to you how God is defined
in the Old Testament, all right.
Speaker 8 (19:35):
So to respond to that, I do think there are
lots of interesting ways to define God. And that goes
back to mind.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
And then how do we specify what we're arguing about.
Speaker 8 (19:46):
We use context clues or we special we again, it
goes back to my example.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
The moment finding God as conscience.
Speaker 8 (19:52):
Okay, so that's interesting, but then you're kind of expanding
the meaning of.
Speaker 6 (19:57):
God on that's how it's defined in the Old Testament, Okay, Elijah.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And in Jonah, so whoever, so not whoever.
Speaker 6 (20:04):
Elijah is one of the major Old Testament prophets, right,
He's equal in statue to Moses.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
So it's not arbitrary, all right.
Speaker 8 (20:11):
So that is interesting, but it's not relevant to the
context with which I am using the term God.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
It's directly relevant. Atheists reject God, but they don't understand
what they're rejecting.
Speaker 6 (20:24):
If you accept conscience as a guide and conscious is
one of the defining characteristics of God in the Old Testament.
Speaker 8 (20:31):
I think you're being intellectually disingenuous.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
In what way?
Speaker 6 (20:34):
Because I asked you if you believe the conscience guide.
Speaker 8 (20:37):
You just asked me a question, and then you stop
me from answering it. In this setting, you understand the
way I am using the term God and belief not
in the least.
Speaker 6 (20:46):
I don't understand how you're using it in the least.
That's why I'm trying to define it. My definition of
God is conscience is a lot more precise and oriented
than your definition of the God that you hypothetically disbelieve in.
Speaker 5 (20:59):
Yeah, you know, I've always heard that God wrote the
moral law on our hearts or something like that, and
so I get his argument that God is part of conscience.
But he is being intellectual intellectually dishonest there. He's being
intellectually dishonest because he knows that we're talking about the
(21:21):
God that's described in the Bible, the same Bible that
he's quoting describes a god who rains brimstone from the sky.
That describes a god who picks and chooses who's going
to win and lose in wars. It's a tribal deity
who has chosen a group of people to protect over
all others. And the way he's interpreting as conscience does
(21:43):
not make sense. And he knows that he knows what
he's doing as well.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
I could tell.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
There was a gentleman who sat in the interlocutor chair
was talking about you of all deathical systems as a
riff on where do your morals come from if you
don't believe in God? And he went down a familiar path.
You know, pro social behaviors, even altruistic behaviors makes sense
because this was a key to surviving and thriving in
(22:08):
the African Savannah. Blah blah blah. And Jordan Peterson he
wasn't having any of that. And he said something that
I found was interesting, and I'll play the clip so
you can hear him say it. Science itself has to
exist within a moral framework that isn't scientific.
Speaker 6 (22:29):
Science has to exist within a moral framework that isn't
in itself scientific.
Speaker 9 (22:33):
How's a scientific well?
Speaker 6 (22:35):
Because it's not derived from the scientific process, as you
just indicated process.
Speaker 9 (22:40):
Fact, we are social animals and we need that to
exist as a group.
Speaker 6 (22:45):
Sure, you pointed to the morality of Neanderthals, to the
morality of chimpanzees.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
They didn't derive that from science.
Speaker 9 (22:52):
They don't need to. Science explains it.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Science doesn't explain morality.
Speaker 9 (22:57):
It doesn't explain how social animals would need it to be.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
Well, that's a complicated question, but we see it though.
Speaker 6 (23:05):
Yeah, But explaining the evolution of morality and explaining morality
itself aren't the same thing.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
I don't even really know what he was trying to
go forward that, but I do remember when he was
referencing science and our moral framework, he was basically saying that,
you know, like the nuclear bomb is a scientific advancement,
but it was used unethically and was able to harm people.
Speaker 6 (23:29):
You know.
Speaker 5 (23:29):
I don't think there's anybody who disagrees with that comment.
But I also don't think that that means what he
was trying to make.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
It mean that.
Speaker 5 (23:38):
Science can't be a part of how we learn more
about morality. It has to come from this biblical it
has to come from this religious place. I don't feel
like his point landed there, and I think that he
knew that. It felt like he knew that as he
was being pressed on that point.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Damn, But how.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Much of this stuff was just Jordan Peterson word salad right,
peterson isms? The metaphysical substrance. I think somebody even brought
that phrase up during I don't even know what the
hell he means by metaphysical substrate, but he talks about
it all the time. Did you find that when he
was backed into a corner he would just sort of
weave a bunch of multi syllable words and the hopes
(24:14):
of masking the fact that he was he had nothing
of substance.
Speaker 5 (24:19):
That's almost exclusively what he did. And you know, I'm
familiar with Peterson before this. I know that that's kind
of his mo But I figured that we would at
least be able to have a genuine conversation sitting together
during this event, And instead we're sitting here and he
claims that atheists are rejecting God, but they don't know
what they believe in, and he redefines atheism, He redefines rejection,
(24:45):
and he redefines God in all these convoluted ways that
nobody could possibly follow. I don't think he's following along.
I mean, at one point he gasly is interlocked her
by saying that he said a when he did say
the and he just didn't like to be pointed out
they was wrong. He didn't like when I made him
admit they didn't know about a deity. I don't think
(25:06):
I think that's what makes him go into word salid
mode is when he feels like he's wrong about something,
or when he feels out of place or put on
the spot, like he has to defend something he doesn't
fully comprehend.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
Another example, he redefines worship in an odd way. So
he says, worship is a scale, right, it's a priority scale.
So if something is down here, then it doesn't matter
all that much to us. We certainly do not worship.
We're not that attuned to it. We don't I forgot
what the word was attending.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
To it atending yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
And yet then if something becomes a greater and greater priority,
when it gets really at the top, now I don't
just love it or respect it or crave it or
admire it or attend to it. I worship it. And
so he from that model. Then if you and I
have anything in our life that means anything to us
(25:58):
in a very deep way, you worship that thing.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
It's not possible that you don't worship anyone. Do I worship?
Because you wouldn't attend well, love?
Speaker 10 (26:07):
So I do think I worship love?
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Do you attend in consequence of love? I say, I'm
trying to define something. What do you mean worship? I
told you what I don't. What do you mean? So?
Speaker 11 (26:16):
I mean it's a word. Something you worship is something
that you have a reverential view for in a manner
in which you believe it to be above and beyond
normal things you like, like like you have that.
Speaker 6 (26:27):
Attitude towards your wife. I have that you privilege her
to compare to other women.
Speaker 11 (26:31):
Of course I privilege her compared to other women. But
I don't worship her worship, nor does she worship.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Me by the definition you just offered. Yes you do,
because we talket.
Speaker 6 (26:39):
You just offered a definition that involved prioritization and elevation.
Speaker 11 (26:43):
And thinking that she is divine, above and beyond what
a normal another women be, No other women, no beyond
any human being could ever be. I will prioritize her
over as you're making an assumption, she is.
Speaker 6 (26:54):
You're making the assumption that only the thing at the
top or the bottom has anything to do with worship,
and I'm saying that's not true. It's a hierarchy of prioritization,
and there's something. There's either something at the top or
the bottom, depending on the metaphor, or you're fragmented and confused.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Those are the only options.
Speaker 6 (27:14):
So let's say you're either going in many directions, okay,
or you're going in one direction.
Speaker 11 (27:18):
Let's suppose I'm fragmented and confused. Then you agree I
don't worship anything.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
No, well, then you'd worship multiple things.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
His logic here is completely circular, because he literally says
that whatever is at the top of your totem pole
of things that you care about, whatever it is, that's
what you worship. And so everybody worships something under that model,
because even if you don't believe in something very deeply
or love something very deeply, whatever you believe in love
the most, that's what you would worship. In his mind,
(27:47):
it completely does not make sense. It redefines all the
terms so that he's right, and it makes it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
And he did the same with this idea of something
that we believe in. You and I believe in something.
If we believe in something, then how far are we
prepared to go with that belief?
Speaker 7 (28:07):
Okay, so you're saying that you don't believe something if
you wouldn't die for it.
Speaker 6 (28:11):
Not really no, okay, So now would you define belief
something you say?
Speaker 5 (28:16):
It reminded me of in Dogma when Rufus is saying
a belief is something that you really people die for
and an idea is just something that you think you know.
And I think he took that a little too far,
took it as gospel and started deciding that if you
believe in something, you have to die for it. He
really said that. He said, anything that you believe is true,
(28:38):
you will die for. And then when confronted on that
point where they said, here's an instance where you would
lie and not die for your beliefs based on what
you think is true or not, he completely backpedaled. He
said he refuses to answer hypothetical questions. And that was
one of the highlights of the entire debate.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Oh I got to play a clip from that, because
this is a point where Jordan Peterson is agitated.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
You lost it?
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Would you lie if it meant you would save a life?
Speaker 7 (29:08):
I could believe it is the case that this pen exists.
But if someone like threatened my life, right, I would
lie in order to be able to save my life,
right like? I think you would do that too. You
wouldn't lie to save life? You so sure you wouldn't
lie to save your life?
Speaker 6 (29:21):
How much do you know about me? I didn't lie
to save my career. I didn't lie to save my
clinical practice.
Speaker 7 (29:28):
Would you lie to save your children and your mom
and your dad?
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I don't think lying would save.
Speaker 7 (29:32):
The Can there ever be a circumstance logically that lying
could save something?
Speaker 6 (29:37):
Yeah, And if you're steeped in sin, you're likely live
in circumstances like that.
Speaker 7 (29:41):
I'll give you an example. If you're like in like
Nazi Germany, and it is the case that there's like
Jewish people in your attic and you're trying to would
you lie to like the Nazis?
Speaker 6 (29:49):
I would have done everything I bloody well could, so
I wouldn't be in that situation begin with.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
It's a hypothetical, and it's yotheticals.
Speaker 6 (29:57):
No, I can't answer hypothetical like that, because it's fa
Can you present me with an intractable moral choice that's
stripped of context and you backed me.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Into a corner? You're playing game.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
I just told you I would do everything that I
could to make sure that I'm never in that situation.
By the time you've got there, you've made so many
mistakes that there's nothing you can do that isn't a sin.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
How unbelievably pathetic is this notion that, well, the Jews
who were oppressed by the Nazis in Germany, who lied
to hide and frank or whatever, well they got themselves
into this position through a series of one thousand preliminary
decisions that they should have known better, and it was
their sin that put them in a position where they
(30:43):
would have to lie to escape murder by the Nazis.
Jesus Christ, David McAfee, I mean, you had to have
almost been wanting to come out of your chair at
the time, right.
Speaker 5 (30:53):
If there's video of me in my chair, I was.
I was popping out of my chair because not only
is this man saying what you exactly just stated, he's saying,
you know, these people who hid Jews from Nazis made
all these mistakes that led up to that point, like
being born in Germany, like knowing a Jewish person. These
(31:14):
are the type of mistakes that these people made. Necessarily,
there's nothing else but beyond that. If you take his
words and you map out what that actually means. What
he's saying in that clip is that if he were
around in Germany during Hitler's reign, that the Holocaust wouldn't
have happened. He said, I wouldn't have found myself in
(31:36):
that position because I wouldn't have let myself come that
I wouldn't have let by the time that the Holocaust happened,
there were so many mistakes that people let it happen.
He was literally suggesting that he alone, Jordan Peterson, could
stop the Holocaust and would have if he were around
at that point of time, and that he would have
done it without lying once.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
And that those who were caught up in the meat
grinder of Hitler's Germany essentially responsible because all of the
preliminary decisions they had made in their lives had led
them to the moment of calamity. It's victim blaming and it's.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
Such a thing in it.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
Oh that was I could not believe that one. I
legitimately was like, I was looking around at the people
next to me. I was like, is this really happening?
Did he just say that he would have prevented the
Holocaust single handedly? And to my surprise, that wasn't even
the highlight of the debate because the main highlight of
the debate because then it comes to where he's put
(32:31):
on the spot about the Christianity and has that will
blow up. But when he's talking about Nazi Germany, I
saw him get so mad, and I think they cut
out certain parts where I saw in the room where
his eyes just he was looking at I believe his
name was Parker, with just this hatred that I really
have not seen. As I said, as I mentioned, I
(32:53):
can't get into that guy's brain. I don't know what's
going on in there, but it's not pretty.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Before I play the next clip, I got to know
you're sitting there with all these other people. First of all,
were you taking visual cues from each other? You're watching
each other going oh my god, oh my oh, Mike,
can you believe he saying that? Are you guys playing
off each other?
Speaker 7 (33:11):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (33:12):
Definitely, yeah, we're all keeping each other in view. And
the thing that was bad for me is a lot
of these people are regulars where they're doing these debates
all the time, and they're the people that they call
in to do this thing, and I was pretty much
the only one or one of the few who hadn't
done it before, and so that's why they kind of
voted me out faster, so that they could get their
turn to talk for their friends and the people who
(33:34):
are doing it a lot more often. That's what they
told me afterward. But during the actual debate, we're all
looking at each other. And I even saw in my
clip when I'm making the few research point, I see
people with their flag up to take me down, and
they're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
And the point you were making, to be clear, was
that non believers actually statistically have a greater knowledge of
what the Bible says than the people who ostensibly believe
in it. And you were just trying to say, you know,
I think the point was correct me if I'm wrong
that hey, we're not coming at it because we don't understand,
(34:08):
we're actually in disagreement because we do often understand better
even than those who say it's.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
True one hundred percent. You and I are good examples
of that with your background, in my background, we do
know more than the average person. The average believer does
about their religion. And that's okay. That's not to say
that they can't have their faith, But to come to
a debate like this and assert the opposite, I'm going
to have to bring up the facts. And those studies
are done every couple of years. Is not a one off.
(34:36):
They always always show atheists, agnostics, and then Jewish people
they have the highest understanding of the various religious systems.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
Oh goodie. Jordan Peterson has asked about slavery and other
atrocities in the Christian Old Testament.
Speaker 12 (34:53):
So in the Bible it talks a lot about slavery, right, yes, yes,
So in that it teaches you how to take care
of a slave rather than saying slavery is wrong.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I think he says that in the story of Moses.
Speaker 4 (35:04):
Says slavery is incorrect.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Why Moses leads us people away from slavery, But why.
Speaker 12 (35:10):
Does the Bible predicate and tell people exactly how to
take care.
Speaker 4 (35:13):
Of a slave is moral?
Speaker 12 (35:15):
Wouldn't you say that culturally we've evolved as a species,
As he said earlier, about empathy.
Speaker 6 (35:21):
Yeah, I would say that the reason we evolved, so
to speak, away from slavery was because the West was
founded on Judeo Christian morality and the presumption that every
person was made in the image of God. Slavery itself
became immoral, and that was established by Protestant Christians in
the UK, who then convinced the UK government for two
hundred years to go to war.
Speaker 12 (35:40):
And way you say that this is about the cultural
evolution of humans in general rather than just I.
Speaker 6 (35:46):
Think it's the flowering of the ideas that were embedded
in the Biblical text across long spans of time.
Speaker 12 (35:52):
I feel like this is just humans editing based on
the cultural evolution.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
What do you mean by just well.
Speaker 12 (35:59):
Based on culture and history.
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Right, we get better.
Speaker 6 (36:03):
They did do it based on culture and history. But
culture and history have their foundations too well.
Speaker 12 (36:07):
Yeah, but we were talking about slavery, so many people
bolstered it based.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
On everyone based on the Bible.
Speaker 12 (36:14):
They looked, they justified it. In the United States and
the South, they justified slavery.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
But the main thrust, the main thrust of Protestant thought
in particular, was stringent slavery, and it was about the
only movement in the history of the human race that
had an anti slavery direction.
Speaker 12 (36:29):
Which was driven by humans. And well, it depends the
same with women's suffrage, I mean women's in.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
The patri mean it was driven by humans. Humans drove
slavery too, Yes, exactly they So there was no argument there.
Speaker 6 (36:43):
If slavery and anti slavery were both driven by humans,
what what does your claim that they were driven by
humans have to.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Do with it?
Speaker 12 (36:51):
Based on the culture that within the society that they live. Okay,
So with as well as a very similar topic in
the Bible, there are denominations in Christianity such as Pentecostal
movement which do bolster women to be pastors, right, which
I think that's a great thing to do.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
But most like to disregard.
Speaker 6 (37:08):
Where do you think the idea that human beings were
sufficiently equal to all vote and not be slaves came
from humans?
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah? But so did the idea of slavery. So did
the idea of God.
Speaker 6 (37:19):
Fine, but what's your point, Like, you're not making an argument,
You're just saying all thoughts come from humans. Regardless of
the thoughts.
Speaker 12 (37:26):
It's not driven by higher power, it's driven on our experience, hires,
which is what is.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Best for all? Is it driven by conscience?
Speaker 12 (37:34):
It could be which conscious is also something that has
evolved over time, and I think that's what does evolve
with morality and empathy.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Okay, I don't understand the point that you're making.
Speaker 5 (37:44):
As I was listening to that, all I could think
of was Bill Clinton. It depends on what the definition
of the word is. Is define, just define higher, define all.
You don't know what just means, like you do know
exactly what he's trying to say. He was put on
his back foot, and he was hesitant, and he was
trying to catch him up in word games. Because the
(38:07):
Interlocketare was correct that the Old Testament described how to
take care of slaves in some instances, it says when
you are allowed to kill them, and it never says
that slavery is a moral is wrong in any way
he's talking about the story of Moses. Was that story
is about how the enslavement of Jews is wrong. The
(38:28):
chosen people, the Jews are allowed to keep slaves as
per the rest of the text. He's picking and choosing
these things on purpose to try to distract from the
main point. And then to play down the nature of
Christianity in supporting slavery in America is insane, because of
course there were religious elements to the pushback, especially the
(38:50):
Quakers played a big, big, big, big role in anti
slavery activism early on, but primarily all all of the
main arguments used to support slavery where Christian and nature,
as that individual was saying.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Exodus what seven through twelve, I think tells the story
of Moses and the liberation of the Israelites out of Egypt,
but it's just a few chapters later, and Exodus twenty
one we're talking about specific instructions how to beat your slave,
How if the slave gets up within forty eight hours
and he's conscious and can move around, then there's no
(39:26):
punishment or penalty for the master. And you know, you
have Jesus. So we have New Testament references to slavery,
and Jesus never once says, oh, this is a shitty idea.
So this idea that you know, Judeo Christian thought is
the reason that the abolition of slavery has taken place,
not just in the United States but worldwide, is absolutely crazy.
(39:47):
You want to speak to Judeo Christian. He threw that
term out a few times.
Speaker 5 (39:51):
Oh yeah, yeah, he loves that because he knows that
it helps him conflate his beliefs. But when it comes
to the issue of slavery, you know, Christians could have
a good point if they were able to make it properly.
It is true that a lot of slaves were mistreated
during the years in which the Bible was being compiled,
(40:12):
and it's also true that having rules such as, hey,
you could be punished if you kill your slave, that
was pretty new to the time. So Christianity was a
step forward regarding the treatment of slaves at their time period.
But the second you say that it's from an all
knowing God and all loving God, you throw all that away,
because now you have to account for how these beliefs
(40:35):
have continued for all these years, even though now we
know that they're a moral We have to account for
why God and Jesus allowed slavery in the first place
if they are truly all loving, omnipotent beings, and that
just they can't do that. So yeah, Peterson ended up
looking like a fool there.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Two. I narrated the audiobook for a seriologist, doctor Joshua
Bowen did the Old Testament endorse slavery, and he was
addressing the common apologetic that, well, you know, God had
to work with what he had at the time, these
primitive ages, these primitive cultures, so he had to condescend
and use the system that was already in place. God
(41:12):
just couldn't abolish slavery outright. He had to kind of,
you know, use the clay that he was given in
this primitive time. David McAfee, we know it's bullshit. Why
is the argument bullshit?
Speaker 5 (41:27):
Well, the youth played that he was given given by
whom oh wait, God, who created us all. I think
the time that anybody leans on that argument that you
just made is them admitting that God isn't all powerful.
If he has to play into whatever the current culture's
games are and he has to rely on the clay
(41:49):
he's given for this particular context, then he's by definition
not all powerful.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Jordan Peterson challenged about whether or not he is a
Catholic and believes in the Immaculate Conception or understands the
Immaculate Conception, and things get kind of nasty. That clip
is right after this. I'm talking here with author and
(42:16):
journalist David McAfee. He was in the circle in the
room as twenty atheists faced off one at a time
against Jordan Peterson. So let's play the clip that we've
referenced a few times, and this is the hottest moment
in a ninety minute discussion.
Speaker 4 (42:34):
I'm excited to talk about this.
Speaker 3 (42:35):
One where the guy goes I mean, the interlocutor, I
can't remember his name. He goes hard. Some would say
too hard, but I mean, I don't know. I thought
it was kind of refreshing at Jordan Peterson regarding his
Christian slash Catholic faith.
Speaker 10 (42:50):
Are you familiar with the Immaculate conception?
Speaker 2 (42:52):
Why is that relevant?
Speaker 13 (42:53):
Because you go to a Catholic church? Don't or you've
attended recently? You're interested in Catholicism, aren't you sure?
Speaker 10 (42:58):
All right? Are you familiar with their doctrine?
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Somewhat?
Speaker 10 (43:00):
Okay, you're familiar. How do they regard how do they
regard Mary? Why are you asking me because you're a Christian?
Speaker 2 (43:07):
You say that I haven't claimed that.
Speaker 10 (43:09):
Oh what is this? Is this a Christians versus atheist?
Speaker 2 (43:12):
I don't know.
Speaker 10 (43:13):
You don't know where you are right now?
Speaker 2 (43:14):
Don't be a smart ass. Well, and I mean, either
you're a PSI or you if you're a smart ass.
Speaker 10 (43:19):
Oh, either you're a Christian or you're not. Which one
is it?
Speaker 2 (43:22):
I could be either of them. But I don't have
to take you.
Speaker 10 (43:25):
You don't have to tell me.
Speaker 13 (43:26):
I was under the impression I was invited to talk
to a Christian?
Speaker 10 (43:30):
Am I not talking to a Christian?
Speaker 2 (43:32):
No, you were invited to.
Speaker 13 (43:34):
I think everyone should look at the title of the
YouTube channel. You're probably in the wrong YouTube video. You're
a really quite something you are, aren't I?
Speaker 10 (43:40):
But you're really quite nothing right, You're.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Not a Christian. I'm done with him.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
Danny came out of the gate very hard and very
fast at Jordan Peterson, And you know, there was a
part of me that did cringe because he's coming at
him so hard so fast that it doesn't feel like
it's in good faith. That being said, the format necessarily
lends itself to that type of interaction, so I wasn't
(44:05):
really blaming him. And then he asked the questions that
every single one of us was wanting to ask in
that room. Every single person was like nodding right along
with him because we all wanted to know how he's
capable how he wants to defend the Christian position and
won't admit to his own Christian beliefs or lack thereof.
(44:27):
He wouldn't say it either way. Then, when Jordan Peterson
rage quit on everybody and said I'm done with this one,
Danny walks away, and the production actually chastised Danny and
was like, that's not cool. We're not going to let
you come up and speak again. Because of that, he
got in trouble. And after the filming, I was talking
(44:48):
to Danny. We were just kind of alone, just chatting
about it, and he was like, they're going to cut
that out of the debate because they got mad at me,
and it's going to make them look bad for even
having him on as a Christian. W won't say he's
a Christian. And I said, I told him, there is
no way they are cutting the most interesting part of
that debate. There's just no way that's going to be
the highlight. And then as soon as it published, they
(45:11):
open with that clip and it just went crazy, and
I was like, I knew they were going to lean
into that.
Speaker 3 (45:16):
Is there a question that you wish you'd gotten in.
I'm sure there's probably a booklet of them. But before
I let you go here, you know the format is
tragically limited. Twenty people in a room, ninety minutes, blah
blah blah. But you're sitting down over coffee. What other
stuff would you have?
Speaker 5 (45:34):
Asked Jordan Peterson. I, yeah, you're right, I have a
book about it in my mind about it, and I
would like the chance to sit down with them and
have a good faith debate about these topics. I just
don't know if he's capable. I truly don't know that.
I didn't get the sense that he was. I got
the idea, I got the viewpoint that he was trying
(45:56):
really hard to confuse people and trying really hard to
keep people from understanding, as opposed to trying to understand
and help people understand. But if it was a good
faith discussion, I would definitely have gotten him to nail
down some definitions of belief. Does it just mean adhering
to something that you think is true, or does it
(46:17):
really mean to him, like, if you believe this pencil
is read, then you will die for that pencil being read.
I need him to know, I need him to tell
us if that's true or just bluster. I think we
all know that that's bluster and that he really really
really wants the people that he talks to at the
Daily Wire is conservative audience. They want him to say
(46:39):
stuff like that, and so I think that was more
for the audience at home than anyone else.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
If you like that. There's a whole culture of folks.
They're just impressed something about the way he present Like
I don't get it. When I look at him, I'm like, no,
that doesn't make any sense. No, that's bullshit. No, that's
esoteric word salad, you know. But there is a demographic
of people. I'm not trying to say I'm smart to
anybody else, but for some reason, his frequency hits their
(47:05):
receiver and they're like, Wow, that guide's an intellectual heavyweight.
Let us, you know, listen with great attention to everything
that he has to say. I do not get this. Damn,
I don't understand.
Speaker 5 (47:17):
I actually know a person and I hope she does
not watch this, because I was just talking to her
the other day, a girl I used to talk two
years ago, and she now considers herself a conservative and
no longer an atheist, and she used to be a
liberal atheist, and she credits Jordan Peterson for that. She says,
until she started listening to Jordan Peterson, she was a
liberal atheist and now she's not. And when I was
(47:38):
talking to her about her, she's like, he's just so
genius and all this stuff. And I think it's because
he's just smart enough to convince dumb people and average
intelligence people that he's smarter than he actually is. I
will not say that he's dumb.
Speaker 4 (47:55):
He's not.
Speaker 5 (47:55):
I could tell that he's an intelligent man. You have
to be able to be smart to be able to
play the word games that he does play. But he's
not the genius that he wants people to think he is.
And I think that's probably his greatest insecurity. I think
that might be why he plays these games, because he
fears that somebody's gonna find out that he's not what
he's presented himself as.
Speaker 3 (48:16):
It also might explain why he got so agitated at
several points when he was really called to task. Next time,
we'll sit you down in a room and you can
have a debate with a random word generator and then
might have kind of the same experience. David, where can
people find you? Your books? Your work et, cetera. Where
do they go?
Speaker 5 (48:34):
Yeah, yeah, go to I'm on Facebook author David G. McAfee.
My books are all on Amazon Disproving Christianity, no Sacred cows. Hi,
I'm an atheist, the Belief book. You can find me anywhere.
Speaker 4 (48:45):
David G. McAfee is usually my tag and I.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Will throw the link and the link to the original debate,
the ninety minute twenty on one Atheist versus Jordan Peterson
debate that is linked in the description box, and it's
worth a full watch rather than just catch the sound bites.
Go back and check me and what's the whole damn thing?
And I think you'll find it compelling, interesting, entertaining, maddening,
(49:08):
and probably a whole bunch of other adjectives. David McAfee,
It's always a pleasure to hang out, my friend. Thanks
for telling us about your experience and we'll talk again.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Follow the Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to atheist
pages and resources, and details on upcoming free thought events
and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.