Why Jordan Peterson Is Wrong about Faith

In this episode of New Ideal Live, Onkar Ghate and Ben Bayer discuss a recent podcast in which Jordan Peterson interviews the Catholic bishop Robert Barron and claims that values are possible only through an act of faith and that the highest ideal is sacrifice.

Among the topics covered:

Why groundless faith in a God is fundamentally different from rational trust in other people;
Whether Judeo-Christian religion is fundamental to Western culture;
Why faith isn’t a necessary starting point of practical and epistemic justification;
The issue of whether we are all seeking to do good, or some people are just evil;
The absurdities demanded by faith in the Christian idea of the incarnation;
The evil of how faith demands a morality of sacrifice;
The harm of believing out of faith;
Whether the fear of social isolation is rational;
Whether there’s a conflict between Objectivism and Jordan Peterson’s ideas.

Mentioned in the discussion are the entries “Atheism,” “God,” “Faith,” “Reason” and “Religion” in the Ayn Rand Lexicon, Ayn Rand’s essay “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” and a panel with ARI intellectuals and Jordan Peterson on “philosophy and the human soul.”

This podcast was recorded on June 23, 2021. Listen to the discussion below. Listen and subscribe from your mobile device on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher. Watch archived podcasts here.