04 - Religion, Myth, Science, Truth

A discussion about Religion, Myth, Science and Truth. It was originally recorded by Transliminal in November 2015. Find the original video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Ys4tQPRis&t 0:00 INTRO: PETERSON'S JOURNEY 9:45 RELIGION: CROWD-CONTROL, NAIVE SCIENCE, OR NEITHER? 10:08 "They're straw man arguments" 11:45 Multiple motivational systems, different levels of thinking 13:32 Fundamental presuppositions 14:13 Dawkins vs. Christianity: like a "smart 13 year old boy" 14:44 SCIENTISTS MISREADING RELIGION 15:52 Different systems of thought, different purposes 16:00 More than one basic assumption is possible 17:13 ENTER: DOMINANCE HIERARCHIES 17:19 What's real is what's persistent across time 17:33 Dominance hierarchies and lobsters 17:58 We're evolutionarily adapted to hierarchies 18:14 HIERARCHIES, RELIGIOUS THINKING, AND SUBJECTIVITY 18:42 "Being" as not reducible to material reality 19:12 The road to nihilism and authoritarianism 19:57 DETERMINING THE TRUTH OF A THEORY 20:07 Newton or Darwin? Choose one. You can't have both. 20:20 Nietzsche's "Truth serves life" is a Darwinian idea 20:38 No idea if our knowledge will help us survive over deep time 20:50 Answer to: "But look what we've built with it" 21:20 Crossing Ebola and Smallpox: some science is clearly insane 22:30 Check your assumptions about reality 23:45 Darwinism: truth is what enables survival within chaos, period. 25:03 Dawkins is a Newtonian not a Darwinian 26:09 Reductionism leaves things out. This has consequences. 27:27 The pragmatic problem: truth for what? 28:09 DEEP DARWINISM & RELIGION 28:15 Religion as evolved knowledge about action 29:40 American Pragmatist philosophers: the true Darwinians 30:17 Godel, the stock market and reality 31:02 TRUTH AS ACTION 31:44 Truth from the bottom up: lobsters, wolves, humans 34:27 Ethics: evolved patterns in dominance hierarchies 39:23 Dogs, chimps, and humans: hierarchy navigators 44:45 From dominance hierarchies to archetypes: ancient Egypt 52:36 The soul 55:50 Jung on Christianity, truth and speech 59:07 Truth versus the lie 1:00:52 THE INTELLECT 1:00:52 The totalitarian intellect 1:02:43 Have you made thinking your God? 1:03:38 Attention trumps thinking 1:04:11 EVOLUTIONARY ROOTS OF WESTERN RELIGION 1:04:33 Christ as a metahero 1:04:43 The deep roots of myth 1:07:00 Chaos monsters 1:08:55 Myth as behavioural truth 1:09:37 "Darwin trumps Newton" 1:10:02 "Dawkins is a rationalist...not a darwinian" 1:10:07 Darwinian time, Darwinian truth 1:13:57 Mesopotamian myth as successful behaviour blueprint 1:17:36 FROM NATURE TO HERO MYTHOLOGY 1:19:33 Religious stories model being as a field for action 1:21:13 Our religious task 1:21:47 Religion as hero mythology 1:22:30 "You...don't know that you know the story." 1:23:58 PIAGET AND PRE-RATIONAL MORALITY 1:25:16 We learn to act before we learn the rules 1:26:18 Moses the Judge: observer of emergent moral patterns 1:27:54 "Opiate of the masses" as naive industrial era thinking 1:28:43 METAPHORICAL THOUGHT 1:29:11 Hyperactive agency detection module: it goes deeper 1:31:00 The brain as archetype detection organ 1:32:08 Women are nature 1:33:48 Metaphor, myth and science 1:36:00 SCIENCE AND MORAL TRUTH 1:37:52 Are all scientists devoted to the truth? 1:39:44 How do we judge if science is ethical? 1:42:57 Evil as archetypically real 1:44:06 The reality of good and evil 1:45:09 Science and mythology: which is embedded in which? 1:48:17 EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY AND DEEP TIME 1:49:13 RELIGIOUS METAPHYSICS: OPTIONAL? 1:49:20 Is God an old man with a beard in the sky? 1:51:12 Hurricane Katrina, corruption, and poverty 1:52:12 The significance of the bible 1:53:43 The genius of the sacrifice 1:55:50 INTERLUDE: TRIANGULATING MEANING 1:58:02 END OF RELIGION? 1:58:02 On new atheists' claims of a secular rational future 1:58:29 On new age spirituality 1:58:49 New atheist rationalist optimism so absurd it must be motivated 1:59:18 REDUCING RELIGION VS. EXPANDING EVOLUTION 1:59:40 "[The Jungian alternative]...is terrifying [for people]" 1:59:57 "[Jung's work]...puts enlightenment thinkers to shame" 2:00:17 "Which ideas have you? ... We're like playthings of the gods 2:01:09 JUNG: STUDYING INFORMATION, NOT MATTER 2:02:23 "If you study religion properly, it'll demolish your personality" 2:08:16 METAPHOR VS REALITY: NOT OBVIOUS 2:10:11 Ancients: phenomenologists, not scientists 2:12:24 Religion as spatial 2:13:24 HUMANS: EFFICIENT COMPLEXITY MANAGERS 2:13:48 Reality in terms of resolution 2:15:52 There's lots worse than death 2:16:46 On Becker's "The Denial of Death": smart but mistaken 2:19:40 Death's not the problem, it's complexity 2:21:06 THE MULTICULTURAL DIMENSION 2:27:35 FROM THEORY TO ACTION 2:28:40 Fixing what bugs you 2:29:30 Overcoming the lie 2:31:54 Peterson's experience with truth 2:34:45 The most powerful thing we can do