Peterson’s Logos Argument, or why Atheists aren’t Atheists — Unearned Wisdom
Many months ago, “logos” was re-popularized by Jordan Peterson, who has used it as a weapon against atheists. To Peterson, “logos” proves that atheists only think they are atheists — they are just fooling themselves. In a debate he had with Susan Blackmore, Peterson said that “secular” societies are built on top of Christian foundations like true speech and the sovereignty of the individual.
Peterson argued that most people who think they are atheists don’t act out their atheism. Writing a book is acting out the logos (Susan is an author). Writing is an attempt to illuminate the world, and that is based on the Judeo-Christian tradition — it is based on the culture of the word, the revelation of the true mode of being through written form.
Susan Blackmore is contributing to the Christian mission despite what she says. Indeed, what one says and what one acts out are often entirely different, and the latter is much more telling of a person’s true beliefs according to Peterson.
Is this another instance where Peterson is playing language games with people the same way he did with Sam Harris when they got stuck on the notion of truth for two hours?
I decided to find out more about “logos.” Where did it come from? And why does Peterson claim that Christianity has a monopoly over the written word? Wasn’t there a democracy in ancient Greece? What about Plato? Surely, Plato was not a Christian, and yet he tried to illuminate the world, and he did so through the written word. Was he unknowingly a Christian?
‘Logos’ translates to ‘reason’ in Greek. The term originated in ancient Greece in the sixth century B.C with Heraclitus, who linked the logic of the cosmos with human reason. The Stoics defined the logos as an “active rational and spiritual principle that permeated all of reality.” To them, the logos was providence, god, nature, and the soul of the universe. But this term has permeated many traditions, with ideas about it found in Indian, Egyptian, and Persian philosophical systems.
In the Biblical Gospel of John, Jesus Christ is identified as “the Word” (logos) incarnated or made flesh. This idea has its origins in the Old Testament. The frequently used phrase “the Word of the Lord” symbolizes God’s activity and power, and the Jewish idea that wisdom is the “divine agent that draws man to God and is identified with the word of God… In the same way that the Jews saw the Torah (the Law) as preexistent with God, so also the author of John viewed Jesus, but Jesus came to be regarded as the personified source of life and illumination of mankind.”
Early Christian theologians and apologists tried to express the Christian faith in terms that were familiar to the Hellenistic world and to convince them that Christianity was superior to the best of pagan philosophy.
“Thus, in their apologies and polemical works, the early Christian Fathers stated that Christ as the pre-existent logos (1) reveals the Father to mankind and is the subject of the Old Testament manifestations of God; (2) is the divine reason in which the whole human race, so that the 6th-century-BC philosopher and others who lived with reason were Christians before Christ; and (3) is the divine will and word by which the worlds were framed.”
Reference: https://www.britannica.com/topic/logos
That is the basis for Peterson’s argument — the presupposition that anyone who has ever engaged in logic was a Christian, because there is no difference between reason and the incarnation of Christ since Christ was the logos.
But Harris, Blackmore, and other atheists probably don’t believe that Christ is the eternal logos, and yet they probably see themselves as logical.
John Gray, author of Straw Dogs would agree with Peterson. He has even accused Nietzsche and Heidegger for being post-theists, atheists who could not shake off their hidden Christian beliefs.
Atheism is a late bloom of a Christian passion for truth. — John Gray
It is clear to Gray that Christianity initiated mankind’s obsession with truth. A pagan does not sacrifice the pleasure of life for the sake of mere truth, for it was not unadorned reality, but artful illusion that they are after.
And among the Greeks, the goal of philosophy was happiness, not truth. The worship of truth is a Christian cult.
Christianity lashed out against the pagan tolerance of illusion, by claiming that there is only one true faith. They gave truth a supreme value it did not have before. And it made disbelief in the divine possible.
The long-delayed consequence of Christian faith was an idolatry of truth that found its most complete expression in atheism. If we live in a world without gods, we have Christianity to thank for it — John Gray
It would seem that Peterson’s argument would work only if you had Christian presuppositions. That is, if you did believe that Christ was one with the logos. This would lead many to suspect that Peterson wasn’t trying to convince Harris or Blackmore that they were wrong but was trying to appeal to Christian listeners.
But could Peterson be accused of such a dishonest tactic? And even if he did, could he be blamed? In the words of comedian Ricky Gervais, when asked about his controversial behavior as a host during the Oscar ceremonies “Why would I pander to audience of 200 wealthy celebrities in a room when there are 200 million people at home watching?”
If Peterson himself was not pursuing truth, such a tactic would be ingenious.
But this accusation is an unfair one — it is wrong to assume that these arguments have been constructed to pander only to Christians. John Gray, as he makes quite clear in Straw Dogs, is an atheist himself, and he agrees with Peterson.
The idea of Logos is old, and no particular belief system or ideology has a monopoly on the natural capacity human beings have for reason and language. But it may be true that Christianity deserves credit for the spread of literacy, because of its obsession with the truth.
When Thomas Paine released “Common Sense” in 1776, much of the reading culture comprised of Protestants — a time that Neil Postman has called the “Age of Exposition.”
And a frequently cited idea of Nietzsche is that Christianity was responsible for the disciplining of the Western mind.
To make the leap and say that Christ is the incarnation of the Logos, and to say that atheists or other religious groups are secretly Christians because they read and write is a radical argument, but not a completely unfounded one.
There is no compelling reason for rational people to pursue truth as the highest value, at the expense of their well being. For most people today, it still makes no practical sense.
Categories Tags Opinion, debate, jordan peterson, Philosophy, sam harris philosophy
Originally published at https://unearnedwisdom.com on March 8, 2019.
