AI Summary
5 min readPresent or Absent We Wrestle with God
In a 2019 lecture from his tour archive, Jordan Peterson opens with a striking observation: even committed atheists shake their fists at the sky, not at the ground. When Stephen Fry angrily cited children with bone cancer as evidence against God's existence, Peterson noticed something the actor likely did not intend — moral outrage presupposes a moral standard, and shaking a fist at heaven presupposes someone to be angry at. "Even if you're atheistic, you wrestle with God," Peterson argues. "Even if you're atheistic, you're at least unconsciously in a relationship, because why else bother with the anger?"
The story we cannot escape
The lecture's central claim is that human beings cannot perceive the world without first imposing a hierarchy of value upon it. Peterson grounds this in perceptual science: your eyes cannot focus without deciding what matters. When you are on a date, you suppress the conversation at the next table to hear what your partner says. You do this with every glance. "You don't see and then act," he says. "You cannot see without acting."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:28) **Introduction: Why This Lecture Series Now** - Peterson explains his health prevents podcasting, so he's releasing tour lectures weekly.
- 2 (02:35) **The Core Thesis: Present or Absent, We Wrestle with God** - Peterson opens with the idea that human destiny is to wrestle with the divine, whether one believes or not.
- 3 (04:09) **The Stephen Fry Anecdote and the Problem of Suffering** - Peterson recounts a debate with Stephen Fry, who used the suffering of children (like Dostoevsky's Ivan) as a moral argument against God.
- 4 (09:12) **Ivan Karamazov's Argument and the Danger of Pride** - Peterson dissects Ivan's famous rebellion against God, noting his intellectual pride is his fatal flaw.
- 5 (13:34) **The Microcosm: Dawkins, Evolution, and the Soul** - Peterson links Richard Dawkins' evolutionary biology (an organism is a microcosm of its environment) to the medieval Christian idea that the soul reflects the cosmic order.
- 6 (19:51) **Science as Prayer: The Hypothesis and the Calling** - Peterson argues the scientific method mirrors prayer: admitting insufficiency, seeking a revelation, and checking the aim.
- 7 (30:33) **The Problem of Value: Why Facts Can't Guide You** - Peterson explains David Hume's "is-ought" problem: facts alone cannot determine action. Perception itself requires a hierarchy of value.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Hi, everybody. I’m pleased to let you know that we’re going to release a lecture a week from my extensive tour archive, beginning this Sunday and then repeating every Sunday after that. This allows me to do something interesting and useful while I’m otherwise incapacitated. My health is such at the moment that I can’t really return to podcasting or public lecturing. But we recorded these with the express intention of preparing them for release, and we’ve all determined that this is a very good time to do that. So that’s what’s going to happen. I hope you find them useful and compelling. They’ll be particularly attractive to those of you who liked my early YouTube work that was very lecture focused. It’s a return to my roots, I suppose, in some ways. And I’m as happy as I can be under the current circumstances, given my ill health, to be participating in this process and to have these lectures prepared for release. Thanks a lot for your continued attention and support. - Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
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