Apologetics: What the Heck was Jordan Peterson vs. 20 Atheists?

Last week, a video from Jubilee went viral, originally titled, “1 Christian vs. 20 Atheists.” This could’ve been an interesting debate had it been done right and an actual Christian such as Frank Turek or Wesley Huff been the one to debate these 20 atheists, but instead, Jubilee opted for one of the worst people possible for this job and that was Jordan Peterson.

Why? Just…why?

This isn’t to say that Jordan Peterson is stupid or anything like that, but he just is not cut out for answering the types of questions that the atheists were asking, especially not in the short time frame that Jubilee provides. Further, he’s not even a Christian. At best, he’s a very confused theist; at worst, a very confused agnostic (sorry, that was redundant) enamored with Christianity. In fact, this became so apparent that four hours after posting this video, Jubilee changed the title to “Jordan Peterson vs. 20 Atheists” and the comments section is pretty much just a grill for roasting Peterson since he totally dropped the ball. Even more embarrassing is that a day ago, Jubilee posted a comment asking if Jordan Peterson is even a Christain, something they should’ve figured out before asking him on.

But we need to restore some sanity here. Here are some of my thoughts on this debate as a Christian and my thoughts on what Jordan could’ve done infinitely better.

#1: Are You a Christian or Not?

I actually felt really bad for the atheists who signed up for this chat. Though I’m not a fan of the rude way the kid who pressed Jordan on his claims of Christianity did it, I was echoing a similar sentiment. Either you’re a Christian or you’re not. If you’re going onto a show that’s advertising you as a Christian, you better be pretty solid on what you believe, otherwise, move along. I feel two comments really summed this up and they were: “To confuse the enemy, first confuse yourself. – J. Peterson” and “This guy is a complete enigma. What does he believe and what doesn’t he believe? Nobody knows. Not even him.”

#2: God is Your Conscience? What?

One of the claims that Peterson made in the section titled “Atheists reject God, but don’t understand what they’re rejecting” was that God is your conscience, and this sentiment is confirmed in Jonah, and I forget what the other book was. I think it was Elijah.

As anyone with even the most basic understanding of the Bible can tell you, God is not your conscience. Nowhere in the Bible does it say this. While God has put a conscience within you as a compass for what’s right and what’s wrong, thanks to our sin nature, our consciences can be hijacked. For example, if you’re a kid in Gaza and your parents send you off to train to be a soldier in Hamas, you’ll be taught to believe that things like raping, pillaging, murdering, etc. in the name of Allah and Palestine is a good thing. This is an example of your conscience being hijacked.

This belief is also antithetical to the Bible because God is separate from His creation. To imply that God is just our conscience makes Jordan’s view of God no better than the atheist view of God, which is that God and religion is just a concept that’s made up by people for whatever reason.

#3: Jordan Won’t Shut Up.

One of Peterson’s major pitfalls in this debate is that he won’t stop talking and over-intellectualizing things. The entire time I was watching it; all I could think was: “Get to the point!” As much as I enjoy psychology and learning how the mind works, when it comes to answer pretty basic questions about Christianity, I don’t care about the psychological gobbledygook. Just give a down-to-Earth, quick answer that everyone can understand. You have maybe 20 minutes to talk to the person that could be shortened if everyone raises their flags. Be concise.

#4: Science’s Role in Morality and Purpose.

This is an interesting one that I’ve debated atheists in the comments section before. The answer here is pretty easy when you have a Biblical worldview, but Peterson still somehow managed to fumble this one too. While I could agree with him on some things, the quick answer is: “Science can’t give you morality or purpose because 1). Purpose is subjective and 2). science can only give facts. It can’t fully explain why we act the way we do, nor can it necessarily dictate our actions.” For example, one atheist brought up early examples of Neanderthals showing empathy towards each other, indicating some sort of morality. However, this isn’t sufficient because science still can’t tell us why we or anything else has empathy or a sense of right and wrong. It can’t explain why if we see a woman being beat up in the street we go to protect her. Ultimately, it can only, maybe, give a theory for why the woman’s attacker was beating her up, but can’t explain why it’s a bad thing to do that, especially if we’re just clever animals.

#5: Why are Atheists Atheists?

This was another one where I could agree with Peterson on some things, but not on others, and – once again – he should’ve been a lot more concise with his answer. One thing I did agree with him with is that ignorance doesn’t necessarily mean rejection of. Another thing that I agreed with him on was that there’s quite a few reasons why someone might turn to atheism. However, this in of itself is a claim that’s somewhat problematic as it should be judged on a person-by-person basis. Some atheists do have an understanding of what they’re rejecting that they reject for philosophical reasons, emotional reasons, etc. Others, however, are ignorant of what they’ve rejected, usually from what they’ve been taught. For example, a lot of deconstructors come from churches that didn’t teach the Bible well. Thus, they already don’t have a good understanding of God or Christ, but because of their bad experiences, they see all Christians as being the same and refuse to hear anything that might challenge their atheism, in which case their rejection goes even farther, turning into willful ignorance. Still others will just turn to atheism as a default setting. To claim that all atheists reject God but don’t know what they’re rejecting, while that might be true in some cases, is a broad generalization.

#6: What is the Purpose of Christianity?

When asked this question, Jordan’s answer was that the purpose of Christianity is to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

*Insert buzzer sound here* Wrong answer.

As Christians, our purpose is to glorify God. Establishing the Kingdom of Heaven is God’s job, not our job. He’ll do that on His timing. We get to wait for it.

#7: What is Worship?

The context of this question was to figure out what Jordan meant in his claim that everyone worships something, even atheists. This is a fair question, but the way he defined it, as many saw, was so incredibly broad that I guess we’re all committing varying forms of idolatry even if we don’t know it. Jordan’s definition of worship was that it’s to attend to and prioritize something in a hierarchy. However, a narrower way of putting it which is what Christians mean by worship is to place that thing above everything else. For example, we Christians put God above ourselves, our relationships, our country, etc. (or we’re called to; it’s much harder done than said).

Jordan should’ve gone with that definition because though the claim is true, it would’ve actually given it more substance in an argument. If we go with the narrow definition of worship I provided and apply it to real life, we can see how yes, atheists – and nihilists, by the way – worship something, be a political figure or party, themselves, the current thing, etc. even if they won’t admit it.

#8: Define *Insert Word Here*

While I can certainly understand wanting to know where your opponent is coming from in a debate, the number of times that Peterson asks someone to define something or defines something a completely different way honestly feels like he’s trying to add fluff to the conversation. As one commenter put it: “Peterson did really well in this debate, depending on your definition of ‘really’, ‘well’, ‘this’ and ‘debate’, obviously.”

#9: How Could God be Moral?

During the last part of the debate (which could’ve been titled “Morality Part 2”), one kid asks Peterson how God could command wars and stuff like we see in the Old Testament as the basis for the question of “How could God be moral if he doesn’t act in His own ethics?” Now, I’ve dealt with this question before with various widely used examples and there’s good reason for why God allowed and commanded those things if you care to do your research. However, instead of explaining any of this, Peterson instead did a sort-of dodge-and-weave around the question and said that he doesn’t “really know what to do with the terrible, blood-soaked, saturated history of the human past.”

Sir, that didn’t answer the question or provide any rationale for why those things happened. Please try again.

#10: Conclusion

Overall, though Jordan said some things I agreed with, the number of things he was wrong on totally outweighed the good to the point where I’m not even sure if I mentioned everything in this post. The next time Jubilee does this, they need to bring in an actual Christian who knows what they believe and can actually defend the faith, not a psychologist who has no clue what he believes in.

Until next time,

M.J.