The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - Susan Blackmore - Do we need God to make sense of life?

Episode Date: June 28, 2018

Jordan Peterson vs Susan Blackmore - Do we need God to make sense of life? Jordan Peterson debated atheist psychologist Susan Blackmore on the UK's Unbelievable? show as part of their Big Conversation series. For the video, more debates and bonus content sign up www.thebigconversation.show Get the Unbelievable? podcast at www.premierchristianradio.com/unbelievable Additional relevant links: 12 Rules for Life Live Tour: https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/events

music Hello and welcome along to the show. Conversations matter, and here on Unbelievable, broadcasting from the heart of London in the UK on Premier Christian Radio. We've been bringing you conversations that matter on a weekly basis between Christians and non-Christians for many years now. I'm Justin Briley, and if you're a regular listener, you will have heard me already talking about a new project from Unbelievable, The Big Conversation. Well, today it launches. The Big Conversation is a new project from Unbelievably the big conversation. Well, today it launches. The big conversation is a new video, podcast and radio series from Unbelievably, in which I sit down with some of the biggest thinkers in the Christian and atheist world.

To talk about science, faith, philosophy and what it means to be human. Well in a moment I'll introduce today's guests Jordan B. Peterson, in debate with atheist psychologist Susan Blackmore. But can I encourage you to go and watch and share the video of today's show? And you'll see just how expressive my guests actually get. It's available now at the Big Conversation website, and while you're there, sign up to the unbelievable newsletter to get notified about new episodes, bonus content, and extra resources.

That's all at thebigconversation.show. Plus, it includes our just released app for unbelievable. You can now download it for Apple and Android devices, and it's the one stop shop for all things unbelievable in terms of podcast videos, articles, all in one place on your mobile device. And before we get into the big conversation, you could be part of a live audience edition

of the show. When I sit down to record with Professor John Lennox and Professor Michael Rousse on science, faith and the evidence for God, that'll be a special live edition of the big conversation. If you want to be there yourself, the details are also at the big conversation website to book in on Wednesday, 18th July, when we're recording that one. Go to thebigconversation.show. Right now it's time for the first episode of The Big Conversation. Welcome to the Big Conversation here on Unbelievably, with me Justin Brieley.

The Big Conversation is a series of shows exploring faith, science, philosophy and what it means to be human in association with the Templeton Religion Trust. Today our conversation topic is the psychology of belief and do we need God to make sense of life? Well the big conversation partners I'm sitting down with today are Jordan B. Peterson and Susan Blackmore. Jordan Peterson is a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and author of the new book, 12 Rules for Life, an antidote to chaos.

Jordan rose to prominence in 2016 when his stance on free speech in the threat of legal action for refusing to use transgender pronouns created a media storm. But since then many new people have discovered his academic work, including a very popular lecture series on the psychology and wisdom of ancient Bible stories. And his new book, 12 Rules for Life, distills much of the wisdom into a guide to leading a meaningful life. Our other guest is Susan Blackmore. She's a psychologist lecturer and author of books on consciousness and evolutionary psychology, including the meme machine, and seeing myself the new science of out-of-body experiences. And she views many forms of religion as fundamentally negative for human flourishing, as she's written

for instance that religions are an example par excellence of memeplexes that use wicked tricks to ensure their own survival. Well today we'll be looking at the psychological roots of faith beliefs. Can we make our own rules for life or are we subject to some higher level of meaning? And are even atheists fundamentally religious deep down? I'm really looking forward to today's conversation. So Susan and Jordan welcome along to the program. Thanks, have a good time. Thank you Justin. We'll start with you Jordan. You're a hard man to categorize in many ways.

Your work actually attracts attention from both believers and non-believers. Many of whom say that you've actually made them reconsider their views about religion, especially many atheists I've heard on, who have said your work opens up things in a new way. Do you just tend to describe yourself as a religious man at all?

I would definitely describe myself as a religious man. Yeah, I think that's fundamentally true. The devil is in the detail. What does that mean exactly? I've seen you've been asked the question, do you believe in God? And that's not a question you necessarily find it terribly easy to answer. Well, I don't know what people mean when they say believe. Like it sits as if that question explains itself when it's asked. It's like it doesn't. What do you mean by believe? What do you mean by God? And what makes you think that the question that I'm answering is the same one that you're asking. This is not something that you can say yes or no to in any straightforward manner.

So I find it an off-putting question. And I don't think it's because I'm avoiding the issue. I think that to answer it properly requires books and lectures. Look, and so do you see yourself at least in the Christian tradition as far as your, I suppose, worldview? Well, there's no doubt about that because I'm a westerner. There's no escape from that. I'm conditioned in every cell, as a consequence of the Judeo-Christian worldview. And so I've read a fair bit in other religious traditions and have a reasonable grasp on some of them, I would say, not trying to overestimate my knowledge, but we're saturated in Judeo-Christian ethics and so.

I've seen you say that you certainly live your life as though God exists. Yes, I would say well, to the best of my ability. Right, yeah. And I think that that's the fundamental hallmark of belief is how you act, not what you say about what you think you think. What do you know about what you think? Seriously, I mean we wouldn't need a psychology, an anthropology, a sociology, any of the humanities

if our thoughts were transparent to ourselves, they're not in the least. And you've been in the least they are. You've been willing to be quite critical as well of some of the new atheists, so some Harris-Dangler-Dennett, Richard Dawkins, what have you made of their particular way of approaching? Oh, they just don't take it seriously enough. As far as I'm concerned, they don't contend with the real thinkers. Oh, I know all three of them very well. And I have deep, great arguments with them.

And they seem to be taking it seriously. I know what you mean. There's a certain sort of superficiality in the writings of all of them. But as people I find they really care about this. Oh, they care. There's no doubt about that. And it's not like I'm not sympathetic to the atheist or rationalist claim. I'm perfectly sympathetic to it, but I don't believe that the level of discussion that's characteristic of Dawkins and Dennett and Sam Harris say approaches the level of complexity of, say, Friedrich Nietzsche or Dostoevsky. Well, that would be asking for a lot of money. You're going to play in that arena.

Man, you're going to play with the heavyweight. What I've noticed is it's a lot of people who maybe up to a point have been interested in what those people have been saying from the New Atheist side who are also interested in what you're saying as an interesting sort of correlation there. Yeah, definitely. And why is it that especially some of these, you know, potentially, I see a lot of men in this audience are coming to you, Jordan, to sort of sit at your feet and hear what you have to say at this point. Well, the new atheists have a hell of a time with an act of ethic. They say, well, you can build an ethic on rationality. It's like, well, first of all, that's not self-evident.

It's possible, but it's by no means self-evident. And their existential concept is rather hollow, like with Harris, for example. We never, when I talk to him twice on two different podcasts, and we never really got to his sense of what the ideal society might be, but I've read his writings on the maximization of well-being, for example. And it's just, that's just not going anywhere. You can't even measure it properly. And if you're thinking about something like that scientifically,

that turns out to be like, that's not a problem. It's a catastrophic problem. But Sam really goes deeply into the consequences of meditation, and he tells stories about his own experience of how behaviour changes, compassion seems to arise naturally. This is not based on rationality, which is not everything, and I would agree with you there. It's based on practical experience, training in observing one's own thoughts, which is also of interest to you. And in the way behavior changes in ways which he would say, and also query whether it's true,

that it's better behavior. That being compassionate and kind to people is better. We can't have some great underlying reason why, if you don't have God, you know, it's a very difficult question. You've got to find some basis, but even without one, Sam is trying to say as I would, that if you spend a lot of time meditating and really becoming to understand yourself and see the consequences of certain

thoughts and actions, then better actions follow. That's one of the things I like about his work. Well, and I'm certainly not questioning his ethical integrity or his commitment to these problems, although I certainly don't think that integrity or his commitment to these problems, although I certainly don't think that compassion or kindness constitutes the sufficient grounds for a transcendent ethic, not in the least, partly because both, and I can speak about that, technically, to some degree, compassion is associated with trait agreeableness fundamentally and agreeableness is a great short-term strategy for infants.

But it's a very bad medium to long-term strategy for adults, and it's by no means the ground upon which an entire complex society can rest. And that's partly what you see playing out right now in the political world, because the politically correct types are very high in compassion. We have research that demonstrates that. And so, but that ethic doesn't work for a sophisticated society. We were only doing introductions. We were only doing that. But that ethic doesn't work for our sophisticated society. We were only doing introductions, we were only doing introductions. My fault, I started, I interrupted. But let's come to you Sue. You may be familiar to some unbelievable listeners who have already

heard you on the show before. I think you're happy to describe yourself as an atheist. Does that mean for you that you are a naturalist, someone who's committed to a view that our experiences can be fully explained by a purely material world? No, I mean I've, you know, I sign up in a way to naturalism, groups and beliefs, but because I work on consciousness such a lot and the problem of how do we relate, the mind-body problem, you know, here's this table, here's my glass of water, we'll agree that if I like this, it'll go all over the place. I'm ruined the microphone.

I'm ruined the microphone. How does that relate to my the taste of the water? You know, these fundamental problems mean I have big queries about naturalism as you described it there. Okay. In a much broader sense, yes. Um, as you know, and many listeners will know, I started out being a parapsychologist and rejected

ideas of cleverness and telepathy and goes to some poltergeist because of lack of evidence. So that's one way to naturalism to throw that lot out. I was brought up like you as a Christian and I threw that out because in the end then makes sense to me. So that's another way to say I'm left with naturalism, but I'm not left with a naturalism that explains everything. I'm left with a feeling that that's what I want to try to do to understand what's going on here

in minds, in bodies, in tables and glasses of water, and it's very difficult. You're well known for picking up the idea of memes that sort of originated at some level with Richard Dawkins, the idea of an idea propagated across generations. And you even went as far as to describe religion as a virus of the mind in terms of it. That was not with Richard's term, but yes, okay. Is that a kind of view you would still stand by today?

Yes, but you've got to be careful about what you mean by a virus. I mean, I think if I often say in lectures, imagine a continuum between what you mean by a virus. I mean, I think if I often say in lectures, imagine a continuum between what you mean as being a virus of the mind, it's really bad. It's like a fluke. Usually we think of a virus. Usually we do. Usually we do.

Yes, and they aren't always. So imagine that you think, you know, religions is utterly bad. Or you think religions utterly wonderful and utterly good. And all in between, I think Richard is way down there, and I'm somewhere here. I think by and large on balance, the world would be a better place without any religions. But the religions would not thrive if they didn't have, within them, things which are positive. I mean, we know at a personal

level, at a society level, the worst societies are more religious. At a personal level, there's evidence that people are happier and they have better social connections and so on if they're religious. So, I don't think we would be stuck with these horrible memes if it weren't for the fact that they also have some good qualities. What do you make of the whole meme theory and the fact that Sue does feel ultimately? I think it's a shallow derivation of the idea of archetype and that Dawkins would do well to read some young. In fact, if he thought farther and wasn't as blinded by his a priori stance about religion,

he would have found that the deeper explanation of meme is, in fact, archetype. I disagree. I mean, you can write it. Can you just first of all explain archetype for those who are not perhaps familiar with that particular psychological? Well, an archetype is partly a pattern of behavior that's grounded in biology, so it's the behavior itself. So you can think about that as both the instinct and the manifestation of that instinct, but it's also the representation of that pattern. So part of what's coded in our mythological stories, for example, are images of typical

patterns of behavior, and those are the typical patterns of behavior that make us human. I really want to have this discussion about memes, by the way, because it's a really a discussion that needs to be had, because I think that the meme idea is very interesting, and I do think that there are contagious ideas. But that needs to be chased down much deeper, because there are ideas that are so contagious

that we've actually adapted to them biologically. And so, and once that happens, they're not only, they're no longer merely memes, they're something else, they're built into us. I can give you... Acusypes, as you just said. Yeah, well, I can give you a kind of example of that. So, imagine, I'll have to try to do this relatively rapidly, it's very complicated, so I'm

hoping I can do it. So imagine that we live in dormant turkeys, we don't have to try to do this relatively rapidly. It's very complicated, so I'm hoping I can do it. So imagine that we live in dominance hierarchies. We don't have to imagine that. That happens to be the case. They're at least 350 million years old. So they're really, really old. So the idea of the archetype of dominance is older than our ability to perceive trees.

It's really down there. And our nervous system is fully adapted to the existence of dominance hierarchies. It's one of the things the serotonergic system tracks. Okay, so now we also know that your position in a dominance hierarchy, especially if your male is proportionate to your reproductive success. The higher you up in the hierarchy,

the more likely you are to succeed. Okay, so what that means is that males have been selected for their ability to move up a dominance hierarchy. But that's not quite right. They've been selected for their ability to move up a dominance hierarchy. But that's not quite right. They've been selected for their ability to move up the set of all possible dominance hierarchies. And that's a very abstract set. And there's a set of characteristics that go along with the ability to move up the set of all possible dominance hierarchies that's represented in religious terms as the optimal ethical manner in which to conduct yourself. I see.

And that's not a meme that's casually passed from person to person. It's something way deeper than that. I think you're being unfair to memes. I would make this response here about the difference between memes and archetypes. So archetypes are there whether we have memes or not. All of that history of evolution is there. So we have ideas about sex differences or ideas about dominance is a very good example that don't require memes. They can then

become memes. And a meme by definition, as Dawkins started it out, is that which is imitated or that which is copied from person to person. So the idea of dominance hierarchists can be a meme and all the ideas we build on top of that, as long as we pass it from person to person. Now, we can certainly think of hierarchies of memes from, yes, indeed. from ones that are no more than than than than than than fat, that was across the culture to ones that are kind of trivializing memes. And I think the power of the idea of memes is this. We have the first replicator genes on genes on the planet, and we know the consequences

of that, producing all these organisms. But the idea about means is that they are a second replicator. So genes are copied by chemical processes in bodies, memes are copied by imitation, and other kinds of interactions between human beings, and very little in any other species at all, and that's what gives rise to culture. So the whole theory about memes is one of many ways of trying to understand the evolution of culture. And in that way, I say it's not trivial at all. Have you ever made a response and I want to move on to talking about the 12 rules, Jordan? Well, the issue is what happens when a meme is so widely distributed that becomes a determining

factor in evolution itself, because's trans-wearing. Mean gene come into interaction. Yes, it's a coincidence. Well, that's where I think, well, that's where I think the religious, that's for me, that's the grounds of the essential religious instinct. It's a meme gene interaction and it goes back forever. And then, so I'll finish with this. See, because once you see that there's a meme gene interaction

and that there's selection in favor of a certain meme, let's say, then you open up the entire question of what constitutes the underlying reality. Because, see, one, this is something I tried to have a talk with about Sam Harrison. We augured in very rapidly. You could say that reality is that which selects. Now it's not exactly a materialist viewpoint, it's more of an evolutionary viewpoint. And if reality is that which selects, then

what's selected by that reality is in some sense correct. Now that's not, well, this is why you're adding on it. I mean, that's a big claim you're adding on that. I know it's a big claim. I understand it's a big claim, I understand it's a big claim, but it's also the central claim of pragmatism. Let's move it on just a bit, because this is all fascinating stuff. I do want to talk about the book, which I read and really interesting, Jordan, 12 rules for life, very much drawing actually on your biblical series as well.

And that was interesting to me. It's almost like, I don don't know psychological theology or something like that. I'm not sure what term to give it, but you constantly draw throughout it. It's a rule book for helping people to leave meaningful lives, very practical in that sense, but stacked with illustrations and stories from biblical stories, Adam and Eve, the flood can enable and so on. And Jesus as well, why has that particularly been your focus recently to explain life and psychology from this very religious standpoint? Well, I wouldn't say recently, I think I've been doing this

in Spout 1985, but the reason, there's multiple reasons, the reason fundamental reason is because I was trying to solve two problems, three problems, I would say. One would be the problem of how to live in the face of the undeniable tragedy of life. The other is what to do with the fact that malevolence exists. And while those are the two most fundamental questions, and they're interrelated, because what happens is that the apprehension of tragedy is one of the things that drives people towards malevolence. I have a chapter in there called Don't criticize the world until you put your house in order and I draw writings

there from some of the worst people about whose actions I'm familiar with like the Columbine high school shooters and mass murder named Carl Panzeram who's very insightful person and I've tried to track how it is that people develop a malevolent attitude towards being, I would say, towards life. And that's intrinsically associated with tragedy. Well, these great stories that we have, part of the substructure of our culture, are antidotes to both malevolence and tragedy. That's what, and I mean that, I'm not necessarily even saying that they're successful antidotes, but the reason that they were formulated, the deep reason, is as a response to the tragic

conditions of life and to malevolence. And then my experience in delving into these stories, and is that the farther I delve into them, the deeper they get, and that never ends. Just when I think I've got to the bottom of a story, like the story of Kane and Abel, which is like 12 sentences long, I mean, it's so short. It's unbelievable. It has no bottom and that's a really fascinating phenomena I guess it's partly like the Bible is a hyperlinked text You know so that every verse refers to many other verses and so you never get to the end of it in some sense But then it's also hyperlinked with the entire culture around it. And so, and then I also think that because the stories in Genesis,

especially the first part of Genesis, are deeply mimetic in the sense that that you've been describing, that they have a kind of biological depth that's on parallel as well. Yes, they have a life of their own, that's for sure. A life that lasts a lot longer than the mere lives of mortals, let's say. So... And the rules all have quite fun titles in a way. In fact, I think they originally came from a blog post you put up on an internet website, but you've obviously developed them

in all kinds of different ways. Stand up straight with your shoulders back, rule number two, treat yourself like someone you're responsible for helping, number three, make friends with people who want the best for you, and so on. I guess I'd be interested to know what your response having had a chance to look at the book is to this way of looking at life and how we create meaning for ourselves in the process. It's my reaction if you like. It's so full of lovely stories, really interesting thought provoking stories. Wisdom, lots of wisdom all over the place, then the Bible stories, then this, you just don't understand that, you don't get why the Bible is being invoked.

Well I get it in this sense that those stories, many of them are very deep and have something to tell us, but it's the way I think that Jordan kind of slithers from a good idea about this might be a good way to live your life, to this story. I mean, let me give you an example. You talk about, with great knowledge about the evolution, the evolution of the arms race between the size of baby's heads and the size of women's pelvis. And this is something that's always fascinated me.

I think it's meme-driven that we've ended up with childbirth being painful, as I well know, and you probably don't how painful it is for those reasons. But then later in the book, you bring in the story of Adam and Eve and how God says, you know, women will suffer and you know, and so on. And the implication, not clearly stated, but the implication to the reader is, God did it. Now, on the one hand, you're saying, look, we evolved this way. This pain and suffering is an inevitable consequence of the way that that evolution has played out. And in the other, you're kind of alluring people into believing that God

actually made that. And even worse than that, the idea that it at least speaks to me, that somehow we're so bad and deserve all that suffering. Which in other places in the book you try and get rid of that we shouldn't feel bad. We shouldn't feel so wicked and bad. How do you respond to that, Jordan? Well, you asked a little bit earlier about psychological theology. I did this lecture series on Genesis, 15 lectures on Genesis. And it was called a psychological interpretation of the biblical story, psychological approach to the biblical stories, I think.

And I've been trying to do that. Like I'm not a theologian, even though I'm very interested in these stories. And what I was trying to do with, see, I do believe that the Biblical texts are foundational. I believe it in the Nietzschean sense and on Nietzsche, of course, announced famously in the 1800s, 1800s that God was dead and the typical rationalist atheist regards that as a triumphalist proclamation. But that wasn't that for Nietzsche and Nietzsche knew perfectly well and said immediately afterward that the consequences of that was going to be bloody catastrophe because everything was going to fall.

And he predicted the rise of communism, for example, and the deaths of tens of millions of people in the aftermath of the death of God. Because Nietzsche knew perfectly well that when you pull the cornerstone out from underneath a building, that even though it may stay a loft in midair like a cartoon character that's wandered off a cliff for some period of time, that it will inevitably crumble and that it will be replaced by something that's perhaps far worse. Now in Nietzsche hoped it would be replaced by man's ability to recreate meaning spontaneously out of his psyche, for example, which I think is a doomed enterprise, but he knew that in

the interval it would be replaced by both nihilism and by communist totalitarianism, which is a hell of a prediction because it was done like 40 years before the events actually unfolded. Well, you can see it that way, but if that is the case, why do we have evidence that the most dysfunctional societies today are the most religious? And for example, in the United States of America, the higher, if you go across different states, the higher belief in God is proclaimed belief in God, whatever you think that means, the more murders, suicides, marital breakdown,

various measures of dysfunctional society are. Well, it depends on how you define religion in part. I mean, first of all, America is a very religious country. And to think of it as a country that's doing worse than other countries in the world is just not the case. Well, the incarceration rate is higher than any other... Well, true, but so is the standard of living. And it's what would you say? Ability to provide the basic essentials of life for people and the essential freedoms that go along with that.

You wouldn't compare that to an African dictatorship. No, no, no. But most of these studies have been done only in developed societies. But there, if you look at income inequality, that's much worse in the states. So yes, a lot of people in the states have a very high standard of living, but the poorest are really poor. Yeah, I'm in common with our barma of care being dismantled and so on. Well, but nevertheless, let me go back to that point. We know that more dysfunctional societies have higher proclaimed belief, higher attendance

and church and so on. Now, this doesn't fit with what you were saying. Now, Nietzsche's ideas are very profound and interesting, but I just want to stop you from saying that he was absolutely right about somehow if we get rid of God, we're going to be worse because we have very well functioning societies. Well, we were pretty bad in the 20th century. Oh, we were, yes, people were. And we could easily drift that way again. And the been terrible bad things done in the name of God,

and the been terrible bad things done in the name of communism and atheism. I don't think we can, I don't want to weigh them up. You don't weigh them up. You also have to go against this evidence that I've just stated. Jordan, come back on this evidence. Obviously, from her perspective, Sue feels like, actually, we've got pretty stable societies that are increasingly secular these days. So perhaps Nietzsche was wrong, and in fact, we're not going to see this more of a... Well, I would say they're stable to the degree that they're actually not secular. And this is also a Nietzsche observation, and the Dostoevsky observation for that matter is that we're living on the corpse of our ancestors, like we always have. That's a very old idea. But that runs, that stops being nourishing and starts to become

rotten unless you replenish it. And I don't think we are replenishing it. We're in danger of running, we're living on borrowed time and in danger of running out of it. I'd, like, I think that the reason that the Western societies essentially work quite well is because they act out a Judeo-Christian ethic. And one that's essentially predicated, it's predicated on utmost regard for the sovereignty of the individual. So the individual sovereign in relationship to the state, which is a remarkable idea. And one that's fundamentally religious in its essence in my mode of thinking

and that's also predicated on honest speech and there's other predicateds at all as well but those are religious predicates in my estimation. But it doesn't matter. We'll come back to this soon. We'll go to a quick break. I will come back to you. Well, it's time to go to a short break. I'm Justin Briley bringing you the first of our big conversation series, Jordan B. Peterson and Susan Blackmore debating, the psychology of belief, do we need God to make sense of life? And if you're new to the show and enjoying what you're hearing, then you'll love our regular unbelievable podcast bringing Christians and skeptics together for intelligent dialogue and debate every single week. Do check us out at premierChristianradio.com slash unbelievable or find the unbelievable podcast

on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast from. Hello and welcome to the program that brings Christians and non-Christians together with me just in Briarly. For over 10 years as host of unbelievable, I've listened to objections to faith from the world's leading skeptics, and the most common question I get is, how come you still believe? Unbelievable the book is my answer. Telling the story of the show and drawing on hundreds of conversations with atheists and Christians, I explain why I still believe Jesus is the answer to live steepest questions. Get your copy of Unbelievable.

Why after 10 years of talking with atheists, I'm still a Christian at unbelievablebook.co.uk. You're listening to Unbelievable on Premier Christian Radio. Thank you for coming back for the second part of today's show, Special Edition of Unbelievable and something we've been working up to for a long time. We've got a special website that's been created for the big conversation, a newly refurbished YouTube channel, an app, a newsletter, and much more. You can sign up to that newsletter to be notified of new episodes, bonus content, and extra resources at thebigconversation.show. You can, of course, follow unbelievable on Facebook and Twitter too. Facebook.com slash unbelievablejb and twitter.com slash unbelievablejb to follow the show on social media

where we're posting up plenty of info on the big conversation this first program with Jordan Peterson and Susan Blackmore plus some of the short bite-sized video segments from their conversation as well. You'll want to go and check those out too. The big conversation dot show as well where you can get hold of all of that material. Let's return to part two of our first big conversation. Welcome back to the programme. We're talking about the psychology of belief. Do we need God to make sense of life? My guests are Jordan Peterson and Susan Blackmore, and we're talking about Jordan's new book, especially 12 Rules for Life, Anantedote to chaos. We were talking just in that last section about whether faith, religion, Christianity specifically has been of benefit ultimately for people and the world.

There's a section actually, Sue, in Jordan's book where he says this, Christianity elevated the individual soul, placing slave and master, commoner, a nobleman alike on the same metaphysical footing, rendering them equal before God and the law. It's nothing short of a miracle. He has very high view of what Christianity has done for the world, whether or not it's objectively true. What do you take from it? Well, that evidence that I was discussing earlier, that there's plenty of now that the most

dysfunctional societies are also the most believing societies. There are lots of hypotheses about why that is the case, but I would like to challenge Jordan on the implication that he put before, that because a lot of our moral stance today comes from religion, and not all of it does, it has to have that as a basis. I don't think it does. I feel very grateful to live in a country where now at last the majority are not religious. It's just tipped over in the latest polls. And in fact coming up on the train from Devon today,

I got chatting with various people. The assumption that I find here, I don't know what it's like in Canada, is I always start with assuming someone's an atheist and it nearly always turns out to be there. Oh yeah, all that religion stuff, you know, it's very, very common in this country. Now, we have not descended into being a terrible country. We have, you know, it's very, very common in this country. Now, we have not descended into being a terrible country. Yes, we have our problems. We're still fairly early on in the experiment, I suppose, of which we've got around 10 years. Yes, I will wait with interest and hope I live long enough to see. But then if we look at many of the Scandinavian countries, which are way ahead of us in that move. They have wonderful health systems, welfare, state support for people out of work.

I'd be interested in hearing your response to all this, then, Jordan. Ultimately, we can divorce the good principles that we may have had in some respects from religion, from religion ultimately, and still leave perfectly happy. Well, I see a lot of this depends on your definition of religion. Like, I know perfectly well from my own empirical studies that there's at least two disparate sets of phenomena that might be regarded as religious, right? There's the dogmatic element, which is really what Sue's referring to when she talks about the pathology of religious belief. And there's the spiritual element, and the dogmatic element tends to appeal to

people who are essentially conservative in their temperamental nature. And I mean that scientifically speaking, and the meaningful element, the spiritual element, let if either of those exceeds its proper boundaries, then there's a degenerative consequence. Like if the spiritual types get the upper hand, then the structure disappears, and if the dogmatic types get the upper hand, then everything clamps down into too much stasis. So to make a direct claim, say, between the existence of dogmatic belief and the pathology of society, and then to assume that that encompasses the entire relationship between religion and the functioning of society, I think is based upon a narrowing of an unfortunate narrowing of the definition of what constitutes religious. But then back to the idea that our moral claims can be divorced from the religious substrate,

it depends on what you mean, and here we go with the definition, by moral substrate, you know, or religious substrate. Let's say that I regard you as a sovereign individual. Well, the question is, what does that mean? It might just be an opinion. It might just be a meme, it might be reflective of something far deeper, so deep that if we transgress against it, it will be fatal. And my investigations have convinced me that that's exactly the case, that although it may be a rational claim, it may be an enlightenment claim as well,

that there's something underneath it that's so much deeper than that, that to reduce it to mere rationality or to mere enlightenment claim is to do it an immense disservice. And also to fall prey, I would say to the postmodern quandary because the postmodern quandary is, all belief systems are equally invalid. It's something like that.

And that's a real problem when you try to erect a belief system on purely rational axioms. So, and besides that, you can't even do it. It's like, I don't respect you as an individual for rational means. The rationality didn't precede my respect for you. It's way deeper than that. It's embodied, for example. And you have a relationship. Issue with rationalism and the enlightenment and so on, where you feel that those who appeal to that are somehow, we're in this golden age now, are forgetting that it's all built on a much deeper, longer evolutionary psychological history

which is completely different to rationalism, per se. Yeah, well, I see a university professor, let's take Dawkins, for example. He's the sovereign, rational individual, but there's a wall around him. That's the wall, let's say, of his university. And then outside the university, there's the wall of the town, and outside the town, there's the wall of the state, and the wall of the country. And there's just these concentric rings that are protecting him. And he can stand in the middle and say, well, I'm divorced from all that.

It doesn't undergird me. It's like it undergirds you to a degree that you can't possibly imagine. And you're living on the, well, really it is, the resources that have been gathered painfully and bloodly in the past and saying, well, we can just detach ourselves from that and float off. It's like, no, you can't. You don't understand what you're talking about. All that leads me to gratitude for all that we have.

I mean, I recognize that. I recognize that nothing to do with any religious basis at all. I recognize that I could not come on the train here, have a really interesting discussion, meet Justin again, have a nice glass of cool water, you know, without a load of other people doing it for me. That gratitude, which is one of the things that you quite rightly put into your book, it gives good place to it, and it's a very important. That doesn't come from anything religious unless you say because I was brought up a Christian, it came from there, but I don't base it on that anymore. What do you think it comes from? I think it comes from a recognition that I've done a lot of meditation. I've meditated every day for 30 years and I think this has something to do with it But it's observing the inner

Consequences of different ways of confronting the world and I'm much more in recent years in the habit of waking up in the morning Even if it's raining in January and England and looking out and going oh And it's it's a feeling of gratitude not gratitude towards God or towards anybody or anything, just free-floating gratitude. That seems to have a positive consequence. I set the day up better and it's kind of self-appetuating. It pops up again and again. Do you think you can just have gratitude in general or must gratitude always be given towards something and ultimately God? Well, that's a good question. That goes back to our discussion about acting things out.

Gratitude is something you feel towards something. You can say, well, I don't feel it towards anything in particular. And I would say, all right, well, defuse nothing that you feel it towards serves in your psychological hierarchy as your equivalent of God. Oh, no, but it's gratitude. Yeah. This morning, for example, I looked out and it was so green. We've had frosts and it's been white last few days and it was green this morning and it was just gratitude to the universe if you like. It's not really God because it's not a creator, it's not anything I can pray to. I mean, I know I don't know but find it, I know that you tackle in this book that happiness is not an ultimate good.

And I struggle this way. It's not an ultimate goal. I didn't say it wasn't an ultimate. All right. There's a big difference between the right, you pick me up correctly on that. Nevertheless, we are happiness-deaking creatures. And I have found through practice and growing older that acting gratitude, thinking gratitude, feeling gratitude makes me happier and seems to kind of rub off another people.

I don't think we are happy in seeking creatures and I think it's a low goal. Not because there's something wrong with being happy because, you know, thank God if you get to be happy now in that. But I don't think that that's what we seek. I think we seek a meaning that's deep enough to sustain us through tragedy. And that is way different. Do you know when I hit some, I, I'd tragedy is too strong a word. I think that I'm, but if when I, when I, when horrible things happen to me or I feel or I read some terrible thing going on in the world, yes, those are tragedies going on in the world. My response is, nothing matters. It's all empty and meaningless. This is how the world is. Get used to it. Get

on with it, girl. That sounds like a very Zen Buddhist way of dealing with me. I guess it is. Well, it's a paradoxical way, though, because the first part of that is nihilistic and the second part isn't. So how do you reconcile those two things? Why get on with it, girl? Because, oh, well, here's another thing. I've often done this with my students. Let's suppose you become nihilistic. Nothing matters.

There's no point in doing it. I mean, I think we live in a point as unit first. What are you going to do? And I say to them, like William James in, he's a wonderful thing about getting up in the morning. But that's a slightly different point that team makes there. But I say to them, okay, tomorrow morning, when you wake up, think it's all pointless, there's no point in doing anything. Now, what are you going to do?

Well, actually, you're going to need to go to the Lou. You're going to get out of bed and you're going to go to the bathroom. When you're there, you'll think, well, actually, I'm hungry. I think, I think I want to go down to the kitchen. I probably should put my slippers on. Why don't I get dressed? You're going to have something to eat. And then you think, I'm bored. And you go to university and go into your lectures. And we are not creatures who will just not do anything. To me, to go through that process, which I've done in the past, a lot, and it's just natural now, is a very positive way

of living, to accept the meaningless and ultimate emptiness of everything and accept that this creature here, this thing, this evolved creature, just will get on with life. But you're not accepting the meaninglessness of it, even by going through those actions that you describe. You don't think so? No, no, because you're acting as if those things are meaningless. Yes, I am. So are you pretending that they're meaningful? Pardon? Are you pretending that they're meaningful. Yes, I am. Right. So, are you pretending they're meaningful? Pardon?

Are you pretending that they're meaningful? No, I'm not pretending. I'm my way of putting it would be that those meanings are constructed by myself and others. They're personal. And they're because of the kind of creatures we are, because of the mean, that's in the structure. I'd like to do a response. Neither is your desire to use the loop.

None of that's constructed. No, no, but the fact that there is a loop is possible. Yes. Thank God for that. Yeah. No, no, but the fact that there is a Luke is positive. Yes, thank God for that. But see, God would do that. Sorry, that's important. Well, you see, see, so imagine this, you have the proximal meanings that you describe that are sort of a priori, right? They're handed to you. You might consider them as needs or drives, although they're not. They're personalities. That's not the right way of conceptualizing them. But then there's the intermingling of all those needs and drives, let's say.

And that constitutes a new layer of structure, because it isn't just that you have to eat and that you have to use the washroom and that you have to have something to drink and that you have to be warm enough or cool enough to survive. It's that you have to do all those things at the same time in a situation where you're going to have to propagate that across time and you're going to have to do it with a bunch of other people. And it's always been like that. And so what that means is that out of those

proximal meanings, higher meanings arise. And you might say, well, those meanings are arbitrary. And I would think there's a religious meaning. I don't even say they are arbitrary, but I would say they were constructed. It's very interesting reading very interesting. What do you mean by constructed? Well, they are a consequence of a moment of a medic evolution, of the language that people have brought up in, the culture they live in, the arguments they have. What about the biology that they're given? Well, we start with the biology and the memes build on top of that. How do memes are built on biology too?

Well, by definition, they are... Well, I would fall into the Dawkins in saying, well, talk about genes as biology, talk about memes as culture, that's all I meant by dividing that. But let me say this. Yeah, but I don't accept that division. I don't think that's the exact same thing. But I want to get back to what we're saying about reading. Reading your book made me think a lot about what you mean by meaning and your claim that we should have a meaningful life, or

strive for a meaningful life, that meaningfulness is important. And I kept asking myself, do I, do I live that way? What meanings does my life have? And you know, if I think for something like, well, that most of my striving goes into writing my books. And is that meaningful? And again, I have the same response when I ask myself that question. It's just what this body does. It's... Then you should listen to the body

and stop listening to the thing that's criticizing it. And what would the body say? It would say, write your book and try to be as clear as you possibly can about it. Yeah, but that's what I do. And that's exactly what I do. And what I said at the beginning is that the atheist types act out a religious structure

and criticize it. No, there's no religious structure. Oh, we can't do this big at least. Let me get into this question because I didn't want to get to this because you have a fascinating part in your book. Jordan, where you do say this, you're simply not addressing atheists. You say you're simply not an atheist in your actions and it is your actions. Or if you are a lookout. And it is your actions that most accurately reflect your religious beliefs, what do you mean by that?

Are you saying that no one is really an atheist deep down? I didn't say no one was. I said that most of the people who claim to be atheists aren't. So this is why like Dostoevsky's Kramin punishment, because we're Skolnikov tried to act like an atheist, right? He took the ideas that were floating around, that Dostoevsky took the ideas that were floating around in the late 1800s, which are still the ideas that we're discussing today.

One most fundamental idea, I suppose, being after Nietzsche's announcement of the death of God, that if there is no God, then anything is permitted. That was Raskolnikov, Raskolnikov's the criminal in crime and punishment, the murderer. He gets away with his murder, technically, but not psychologically. And he decides that if there's no God, anything is permitted.

But this doesn't have to be true. But that's a person in a character in a novel. I don't think that that's so. Well, let's hear the end of that story. And what do you take away from what Dostoevsky has to say about? Well, Dostoevsky's take was too was that there was a moral law that Raskolnikov was breaking even though he rationalized his way through it like he committed the perfect murder Right, he murdered a woman who people would have voted to murder and then he got away with it

And he did it for good reasons at least reasons that he could rationalize as good and then he got away with it But it destroyed his soul and the Dostoevsky's right about that. And one of the things I like about Dostoevsky is compared to Nietzsche's, because I think Dostoevsky is the profonder of the two, is that in the brother's Karamazov, for example, Ivan is the atheist, and Ivan is every one, everything you'd want a man to be, like seriously, and Dostoevsky, man, he doesn't straw man his opponents. The most powerful characters in his books are always the opponents of what he himself believes. And Ivan is always arguing with Aliyosha,

who's his younger brother, who's a monastic novice yet, and really can't articulate himself for it. Well, he has nowhere near the poor forest or charisma of Ivan, but Aliyosha wins the drama, even though he loses all the arguments. And that's where Dostoevsky is so great. It's like, and this is what you're doing in your life. You're acting, look, you're acting all the arguments. And that's where Dostoevsky is so great. And this is what you're doing in your life.

You're acting, look, you're acting out the logos season. That's what you're doing. You're writing books to illuminate the world. You say, well, I don't believe in the face of the meaning of this. Don't you think it's kind of offensive to say to me that that I'm not an atheist when I am? I, I, I, why don't you answer me this question? Why do you think I don't go around murdering people?

Why do you think I go around trying to be, um, I don't know you well enough to know. Because I could have done somebody else. I think the reason that people don't do it is because they're too cowardly. Oh, that could be a reason. It could be that I don't murder be. I'd really know.

No, I'm not necessarily saying you. No, it's possible. It's in fact highly likely at sometimes in your life if you're a normal person. It's a very strange claim you make. I say that I do not believe in God in any of the various forms that I have read about God or the forms I was brought up with or accept perhaps something like the cloud of unknowing. I mean, when you sit on the top of the mountain and everything you know about God, you throw into the fog of forgetfulness

or whatever the phrase is, there's nothing left. Okay, that's about the only God that I could have any connection with or feel anything for. So I live my life without that belief. I think in the way I tell you that about this body just being an evolved thing that gets on, it has no free will, it just does what happens. And that's another, that's another inevitable claim of atheist materialism. Yeah, no, you are telling me.

Try having a conversation with someone and acting that out. Yeah, but you're telling me that this isn't true. I'm having a conversation. Well, isn't what Jordan is saying is you may believe that's the case, but you don't act your life as if you don't have free will. That's the point. Or you don't treat anyone else as if they don't have free will. Because they would be so.

Why do? I do. I do. I mean, if I think about why you are here now, I just think about all the reasons that brought you here. And you probably have a nut bringing in a place where you live and your wife and your children and everything else that's brought you here that makes that body there say the things it says. I have found and the eye of course is a kind of another illusory thing that I have to use the word. I have found that by looking at for example my husband or my children as evolved creatures living their life they do because of the circumstances they're in, I can feel much more forgiving, much more understanding because I can see what they're doing and why.

Do you demand of them better behavior? Come on. I hope so. Well, demand of them. I mean, I don't go around saying you're, but I mean, if any of them do something that I, I'll tell them that I think that what they've done I mean, my daughter recently did something that I really felt I suddenly realized that in a very old-fashioned sense I'm head of the family because her father's dead and Grandparents are dead and I'm the only one of this generation left and I had to make a stand and say you don't do that now Yeah, absolutely. I mean, all these things, I think, are part of...

We're needing to post things out. And I know, I know, we've had not long enough, but Jordan, just come back to this because I want to hear why ultimately, despite everything that Sue said there, you still think she's behaving as though there is, in some sense, a god or some ultimate meaning, even though she protests that, no, that's... Why would she say she's behaving as though there is, in some sense, a God or some ultimate meaning, even though she protests that now that's that's why we say she's acting out. Well,

for example, the act of writing a book. I mean, the Judeo-Christian culture is the culture of the book. It's the revelation of the proper mode of being in written form. It's not only that, but it's it's it's a large part of that. It's the culture of the book. You're acting out the culture of the book. It's thousands of years old, and the voice, the true voice in the culture of the book is the logos. That's what it is, technically speaking. And so she's acting out the logos and writing a book. And then she says, well, I don't believe in God. It's like, okay, that's fine. The logo, of course, acting like you do is far more of a loop. In the new testament is brought into the fine. The logo, of course. Acting like you do is fine. And in scripture, in the New Testament, is brought into the Word.

And it, of course, is related to... The Word that brings order of the Philist. And to Jesus Christ, as the sort of personification, almost of that. Right, he's the archetypal manifestation of the logos. I mean, these are all big words and things. I mean, a lot of people will be asking, what do you actually make of, in Christian terms,

the figure of Jesus? Do you believe that he was, in Christian terms, the figure of Jesus? Do you believe that he was in some sense divine? Was there, you know, when you look at what the Bible tells us about Jesus? Well, one thing you might ask yourself is, do you believe that each individual is divine in some sense? And I would say, well, perhaps not, but you act as though you do. And our law acts as if it does. It's predicated on that idea, because the sovereignty of the individual is the divinity of the individual. There's no difference between those two

things. And I can make an absolutely brutally clear case for the development of that idea. Historically, I've traced it back to Mesopotamia, at least in its earliest written forms, originally the only real sovereign individuals were the sovereigns, emperors and pharaohs, but the idea of the sovereign individual descended down the hierarchy of power, soffers, right? The emperors and pharaohs. But the idea of the soffered individual descended down the hierarchy of power, so to speak, until with Christianity it was universalized. We're each soffered individuals, and that means that the law itself is written as if we each contain a spark of divinity. And so then I think, well, what is that divinity? And in the Christian world, you'll see, well, that's the logos, that's the true speech

that brings forth habitable and good order from the chaos of potential. And in your view, whether she likes it or not, Sue is at some level a benefactor of that reality of what it does. Not a nor a contributor. Not only a much better than merely being a benefactor, an active contributor.

It's no easy thing to write a book and to get your thoughts straight and to put them forward into the world. But she couldn't do it without this idea in a sense of God that I know. She doesn't need the idea even, it's embodied. It's, she's asking it out. The one, one of the consequences of the way I've been thinking

about it and some Harris talks about this too, is the way I think about it prevents me going, oh, I'm so clever, I've written a brilliant book. I mean, it doesn't always. I have those thoughts come up, but I've got quite good at seeing them coming up and going, oh, there comes that thought again, because I'm taking the view that these books are,

the memes are doing it through this organism here. And I have fun. That would be the eternal logos manifesting itself. Or are you, you want to invest in this stuff? No, but I'm not playing games. Like that's the oldest language we have for that sort of thing. And the logos that I'm talking about is the integration of those motivational forces

that you were describing. It's not merely a meme. That's where Dawkins is wrong about that. There isn't biology and memes. The interactions matter. They're crucial. They're crucial. Some of these memes are Millions of years old, but you slid away

If I can bring you back to to Justin's question really because you slithered out of it I think in your question was it was Jesus different from the rest of us by saying all we've all got a spark of divinity But do you then believe that Jesus was somehow divine in a sense that's other than what I am? What was it, you know, did he do miracles? Was he, you know, all of that stuff that makes him... Quick answer and then we'll finish with a final question. Quick answer. How about this?

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. That's a miracle. That's the separation of church and state in one sentence. So there's a miracle for you. We separation of church and state in one sentence. So there's a miracle for you. We're going to go for a final question. I'm going to ask you for both of you, which is the question we began with. We're talking about the psychology of belief. Do we need God to make sense of life? Your one minute answer begins now, Sue. Absolutely not. That will do for an answer. Okay. Do we need God to make sense of life, Jordan? Well, God is what you use to make

sense of your life by definition. This is one of the things I learned from Jung. The highest value, you have a hierarchy of values. You have to. Otherwise, you can't act or you're painfully confused. You have a hierarchy of values. Whatever is at the top of that hierarchy of values serves the function of God for you. Now it may be a God that you don't believe in or a God that you can't name, but it doesn't matter, because it's God for you. And what you think about God has very little impact on how God is acting within you, whatever God it is that you happen to be, let's say, following. It's been fascinating to share this time with you both. Thank you so much for being with me on the program.

Sue and Jordan all the very best. Thanks very much for the invitation. I've enjoyed it. Nice talking with you. Thanks for having me. I've enjoyed it. Nice talking with you. Thanks for having me.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that interaction and can I encourage you to go and watch and share the video of today's show. And you'll see just how expressive Jordan and Sue got during the course of their conversation. It's available now at the Big Conversation website. And while there, you can sign up to the unbelievable newsletter to be notified of new episodes, bonus content, and extra resources. That's theBigConversation.Show. The next edition on video and podcast of our Big Conversation series

is going to be Stephen Pinker, the Harvard atheist psychologist, in conversation with Christian guest Nick Spencer. They're going to be debating the future of humanity, have science, reason and humanism replaced God. And here's a little promotator of what we heard today and will continue to hear in future editions of the Big Conversation. Are you saying that no one is really an atheist deep down? Now we'll continue to hear in future editions of the big conversation. Are you saying that no one is really an atheist deep down?

I didn't say no one was. I said that most of the people who claim to be atheists aren't. My response is, nothing matters. It's all empty and meaningless. This is how the world is. Get used to it. The first part of that is nihilistic, and the second part isn't. So how do you reconcile those two things? But humanism is grounded in our universal humanity.

That we're made of the same stuff. We're the same species. We all are sentient. I don't doubt that many, many of my friends are committed to human dignity or human equality. I can't see as it were where the deep foundations for that arm. Nature is a wash in purposes. They emerge from the bottom up from a purposeless process. That's the genius of Darwin's idea. That's a heroic project. It is. It is, but I don't think it's a possible one.

Something that makes us connect with that thing that is outside of our cell. I can't put a name on that or call it God. That experience of an encounter with the reality of the resurrected Christ. Was life changing? Well, among the voices you heard coming up on future traditions of the big conversation were Daniel Dennett and Keith Ward, Darren Brown and Reverend Richard Coles, we heard of course Jordan and Sue

and of course Stephen Pinker and Nick Spencer, Stephen Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. We'll be joining us on the next program to debate science, reason, humanism and God with Nick Spencer, research director at Theos and author of books such as The Evolution of the West, How Christianity Has Shaped Our Values. Don't miss that coming soon from the unbelievable podcast and the Big Conversation series. Do check us out at thebigconversation.show and the unbelievable podcast wherever you get your podcast from.

big conversation series. Do check us out at thebigconversation.show and the unbelievable podcast wherever you get your podcast from.