Host>>> Recently Jordan Peterson went on Jubilee's Surrounded to debate 20 atheists at the same time and it was—it's fair to say—a little bit confusing. So let's crack on and see what light we can shed on this whole messy thing.
Before we get started, I do just want to acknowledge that a debate setting such as this one is really quite tricky. It's high pressured, stressful and you're bound to end up giving weaker versions of your overall argument. So just take this as an analysis of Peterson's specific claims in this debate.
Peterson>>> "My first claim is that atheists reject God. But they don't understand what they're rejecting."
Host>>> As a non-believer myself this claim strikes me as quite fun. So let's see how it goes.
Cade raises an objection. Cade suggests there are two different ideas of God at play here and says that Peterson broadens the definition of God beyond what most believers conceive God to be and indeed what most atheists conceive God to be. Peterson claims the opposite, he suggests that atheists have a reductive idea of God and that this is what they're rejecting when they say they are atheists. This leaves it open for the atheists to not disbelieve in Petersonen's God but to disbelieve in some other caricaturured god.
This is how Peterson defines the word god (drawing from the book of Exodus).
Peterson>>> "The divine is fundamentally unknowable. It's a pinnacle experience and that people in their finitude have to be shielded from a comprehensive vision of the basis of reality."
Host>>> Peterson rules out the more cartoonish ideas of God like an old man in the sky and then says the following.
Peterson>>>
"It's the same claim for example that you're a finite creature and that when you face something that in the final analysis is unknowable and that you have to establish a relationship with it regardless of your inability to perceive or even withstand perceiving the whole."
Host>>> I don't fundamentally have a problem with this definition I don't think it's Peterson's whole definition of God as we'll come to later. But you can just define terms by stipulation within the context of a debate my math textbook defines a graph in a way totally at odds with everyday speech but that doesn't matter because it tells me what it means the trouble is that here Peterson seems to want to say that there is something more correct about his definition of God this would then justify the claim that atheists do not know what they're rejecting they would not be rejecting this more substantial idea of God that Peterson claims to put forward but it's not clear whether Peterson has established that his definition is in some way better there can be good reasons to prefer one definition to another in a given context if we assume that the basic purpose of language is to communicate ideas to one another then we can evaluate the utility of a definition based on whether it coheres with the way the term is generally used within that context or as it's sometimes put meaning is use but under this criterion Petson's definition of God is pretty at odds with how most atheists and indeed a large amount of theists understand the term for example St Thomas Aquinus famously defines God along many properties in sum contra entitles god is eternal incorporeal divinely simple all perfect omniscient personal and has free will sure he says these are analogous properties and that they will mean something different when they're applied to God versus when they're applied to a human but this is still significantly more detailed than a definition of God as merely something defined in our relationship to the infinite aquinus is also clear that God is not merely being itself or reality but something over and above everything else that exists to quote Aquinus directly we may conclude that God is not being in general but individual being that is God is defined as an individual he's not an old man sitting on a white cloud but his characterization is nonetheless very substantial Aquinus sets out a clear set of propositions for his definition of God and they've remained pretty much the gold standard for descriptions of God within Catholicism which is the largest Christian denomination in the world when Aquinus says "The fool saith in his heart there is no God," this is the kind of God he's talking about my problem with Peterson's definition of God here is not that it's incorrect you can stipulate definitions however you like but that it seems believing in this kind of God is totally compatible with what most atheists state that they believe the God that most atheists reject is the God of Aquinus rather than the God of Peterson for example I do not believe in God but I would be perfectly happy to say there might be mysterious pinnacle experiences that are impossible to fully comprehend from a first person perspective i would just call them mystical experiences i'm also happy to say that we are finite beings constantly in confrontation with the infinite in our everyday lives we are continually navigating this vast realm of infinite possibilities for our actions we could make a cup of tea or we could go to the shops or we could start working on the first draft of the great American novel or we could run off to live in Fiji as we live we reduce this set of infinite possibilities down to a singular set of actual things that we do so yes in this sense we are in confrontation with the infinite but I don't think that atheists in general deny this or if they do this isn't because they're atheists but because they believe something else so I don't think the claim "Atheists do not understand what they're rejecting can be justified on this premise." Peterson seems to want to say something like "Atheists reject God but God is partly a confrontation with the infinite or the unknowable."
But atheists don't reject that so they must be misunderstanding what they're rejecting but this is not how most atheists understand God and they're not strawmanning the theist position by doing this i would wager that most theists mean something closer to Aquinus's definition of God than Peterson's after all Aquinas is potentially the most influential Christian theologian ever the trouble is and this will become a bit of a theme in this video when an argument simply degrades into two people using the same word in different ways then no substantive argumentation can actually take place.
Peterson isn't even really disagreeing with his interlocutor he's simply using the word atheist in a way that is totally unfamiliar to the atheist he is talking to. We come across a similar issue a couple of speakers later with Greg.
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"When Debate Becomes Disaster | Jordan Peterson vs. 20 Atheists".
YouTube. @unsolicitedadvice9198. 1 June 2025.
