(January 4, 2025 at 2:59 pm)Tonus Wrote: Yeah, that comment from him is a good example of the tightrope that he walks. I've seen other interviews (I think Rationality Rules had a video about it) where his explanation of his concept of god and of some of the Biblical stories is unlike anything I ever heard in church or from other Christians. More like phsychiatry than religion. I think guys like him want to straddle the line; they don't want to have to earnestly defend the wackiness of the Bible, but his audience is probably mostly Christian and he doesn't want to alienate them. It reminds me of a few other conservative voices who try to never mention religion unless it's superficial.
I think the political right is coming to a crossroads with regards to Christianity. There are still a lot of Americans who are devout believers, and the GOP cannot afford to abandon that demographic (although their support for Trump makes me think that they are a lot more forgiving than might have been expected). But I think that demographic is shrinking, and if they really want to become a 'big tent' or attract more rational thinkers, they have to know that their leading voices will, eventually, be non-religious, if not outright atheist.
Peterson tries to hide the fact that he's Christian, and you're right it's a pretty odd version of Christianity, because his schtick is giving his opinions a veneer of academic and professional respectability. If he admits that he's taking a religious standpoint then the first half of "Doctor" Peterson starts dangling precariously. The sniff test is that all of his opinions seem to come straight out of the best parts of Leviticus. He also doesn't believe that atheists exist, because we have morals and those must come from some "transcendent being".
