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Photo: Jordan Peterson, via YouTube.

Here at Evolution News, Ive written about the popular public intellectual Jordan Peterson, whose political controversies have unfortunately often overshadowed his fascinating contributions to the cultural discourse on religion, science, and psychology. Although Im unconvinced by his attempts to weave together an evolutionarily grounded unifying narrative of all these things, Ive always admired him and always learn something from his lectures.

When I interviewed Stephen Meyer for his new book Return of the God Hypothesis, we chatted a little about Peterson and various other public intellectuals who seem to stand on the shores of theism with one foot in and one foot out. Commenting here on Jonathan Van Marens recent survey of these New New Atheists (which also included figures like Douglas Murray, Tom Holland, and Niall Ferguson), David Klinghoffer expressed his hope that this might be a new window of opportunity for intelligent design to gain a hearing in the public square.

That wish has now come true at least for the Canadian rock-star professor, who tweeted out his positive first impressions of Meyers Return of the God Hypothesis this weekend. Its a difficult book, Peterson wrote, well-written, densely informative. He claims (p. 211) without functional criteria to guide a search through the vast space of possible sequences, random variation is probabilistically doomed. (This is in reference to the groundbreaking experimental work conducted by Douglas Axe.) Peterson followed up that tweet by asking his followers Is this an accurate claim? He makes the case very carefully. Its not often that I encounter a book that contains so much that I did not know

Its refreshing to see such intellectual humility from a figure with Petersons status. But not all his followers were thrilled. The more colorful replies dismissed Petersons quote from the book as intelligent design nonsense, gobbledygook, absolute rubbish, etc. One thanked Peterson for making it clearer once again that you are nought but a Christian zealot. How are we still having this discussion in 2021? one follower sniffed.

Others were more polite but still took issue with the claim, repeating well-worn objections. Even rare events can happen, replied one follower. You just have to play for long enough or simultaneously. Someone else echoed this, saying the rare and improbable are happening all the time in the universe.due to its vastness. When a 1:1000000 event could happen any time and in a self propagating system you only need that one event to start the ball rolling.

Of course, its trivially true that rare events can happen, but probabilistically speaking, when weighing likelihoods this is very thin gruel indeed, and thats precisely Meyers point. Someone else objected, Its not a scientific hypothesis, unless we can test it. To which someone else correctly replied, Then you just got rid of history and the scientific method itself!

Some tried a slightly more clever tack, one follower suggesting the quote is double-edged, since he could flip it to say without functional criteria to guide a search through the vast space of possible sequences, random variation is probabilistically the best option for success. He followed up that if you assume things like the many universes theory, or cyclic time, then random variation becomes probabilistically sound.

But as Meyer discusses in the book, those sorts of things are not insignificant ifs, to say the least! Indeed, they have the classic look of ad hoc assumptions, like Ptolemys epicycles of old. Peterson agrees, retweeting with the reply, But those assumptions add immense complexity to what was once a theory typified by its elegance. If you have to posit whole universes to maintain the credibility of your assumptions is that not a problem?

Hmm!

Not all reactions were negative. One follower said that he had just seen a video about the immune system from Kurzgesagt and found it difficult to believe the complexity of this system is the result of random processes. While materialists insist science will find answers in time, he suggests maybe science will lean towards the creationist argument.

A European follower agreed that straight forward evolution as developed from Charles Darwinis mathematically impossible, pointing other followers to the roundtable discussion on combinatorial explosion with Meyer, David Berlinski, and David Gelernter.

Peterson himself mentioned the combinatorial problem in a later followup tweet: Which neo-Darwinists effectively address critiques of neo-Darwinisms putative inability to deal with the problem of combinatorial explosion with regard to protein folding (to say nothing of DNA mutation) @StephenCMeyer?

Needless to say, hell have a long wait for the answer to that question! In reply, Meyer explained:

Neo-Darwinists largely ignored the combinatorial search problem associated w/ novel protein folds. As evolutionary biologist H. Allen Orr admitted this problem was almost entirely ignored for two decades by molecular evolutionists. But protein scientists like the late Dan Tawfik (Weizmann Institute) called protein fold origination close to a miracle. He showed protein folds loose thermodynamic stability after a few mutations & long before they can evolve new folds.

Of course, Peterson was trained with the same assumptions of naturalism and materialism shared by other evolutionary thinkers. This has tended to make him reach for naturalistic explanations of everything by default. He has shown respect for theists, but like Carl Jung before him, he generally frames their belief in psychological terms, where God is a product of our own collective unconscious rather than a distinct, personal, creative entity. Its not that he closes the door on traditional theism. He just hasnt yet felt comfortable opening it beyond a crack, at least not publicly.

Now that hes giving Meyers work a hearing, he may have invited a new barrage of flak. But the good doctor has already proven himself capable of taking more than a bit of heat. In my post analyzing his podcast with Lawrence Krauss, I said that it seemed Krauss was content to stop searching, while Petersons search didnt seem to be over. Im happy to have been proven right.

Read more from the original source:
Jordan Peterson Discovers the God Hypothesis - Discovery Institute

Have you seen the opening moments of Euphoria? Rue Bennett, played by Zendaya, is pushed violently from her mothers womb straight into the aftermath of 9/11, nursing in the dim glow of a television tuned into George W. Bushs bullhorn speech. Bennett narrates the early days of her own life.

And then, without warning, she says, a middle class life in an American suburb.

Euphoria is not a happy show. The feted HBO series captures a generation drowning in the postmodern muddle of middle class life in an American suburb, where teenagers are addicted to their phones and to pornography. Rue is addicted to prescription drugs. She takes fentanyl. She overdoses.

After our military killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, Stephen Colbert joked about the medias obsession with shark attacks during the summer before 9/11. Was that all we had to worry about? Of course not, and not by a long shot.

Yet for millennials, the joke might resonate. I took an Advanced Placement exam the day after we took bin Laden out. The end of my carefree childhood coincided perfectly with the dawn of the new world. Euphoria intentionally spotlights a generation born straight into that world, where sharks were permanently relegated to low-priority status.

The fluidity of gender is predicated on the fluidity of truth, which itself demands moral relativism. This is the postmodern muddle. Alongside failed wars, a Great Recession, and ambient tech addiction, its the world our experts hath wrought. Its the only world Gen Z knows.

Euphorias dreamy purple haze depicts the pain of the America Without Family, God, or Patriotism, described in a 2019 Atlantic headline.

In 1998, Derek Thompson wrote, The Wall Street Journal and NBC News asked several hundred young Americans to name their most important values. Work ethic led the waynaturally. After that, large majorities picked patriotism, religion, and having children.

Twenty-one years later, Thompson continued, the same pollsters asked the same questions of todays 18-to-38-year-oldsmembers of the Millennial and Z generations. The results, published last week in The Wall Street Journal, showed a major value shift among young adults. Todays respondents were 10 percentage points less likely to value having children and 20 points less likely to highly prize patriotism or religion.

Theyre also less likely to trust authorities, or companies, or institutions, Thompson added. But thats good newsour authorities, companies, and institutions are not to be trusted. They lied to us about Afghanistan to protect and further their failed strategy. They lied to us about Wall Street. They lied to us about Silicon Valley. They lied to us about opioids. Whats worse, they destroyed our faith in reality itself.

There is nowhere for Gen Z to turn as it watches the scenes from Kabul flicker across their iPhone screens. Where should they find hope? If truth is relative, where does that leave God? Somewhere behind porn, Instagram, and prescription drugs used to get through the day.

Woodstock 99, a new documentary on the festivals failed 30th anniversary attempt, shows what presaged a dark turn in the new millennium. That trend may be dark, but all hope is not be lost because family can persevere, God is real, and America is truly great. Truth and a shared consensus on what it looks like are powerful.

When Gen. Mark Milley testified to Congress in June, he spoke of our responsible drawdown in Afghanistan. He also had some bizarre thoughts on critical race theory, signaling the militarys pivot to a different form of jingoism. After his testimony, the chattering class chattered about wokeness.

It was entirely fair, and thats exactly the problem. In an incisive piece of satire, Andrew Stiles wrote under the headline, American Triumph: The Most Inclusive National Embarrassment in History.

The U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan has quickly become the most embarrassing national security debacle since the Vietnam War, Stiles noted. Perhaps more importantly, however, the debacle is one of the most inclusive of its kind in American history.

Jordan Peterson is a bestselling author because he tapped into a gnawing discontent with the pains of postmodernism, accelerated by tech oligarchs and accentuated by neoliberal blunders. The kids in Euphoria might listen to his podcast. They might oscillate between hardcore pornography and Wikipedia searches. Either way, they wont find what theyre looking for until we recommit to reality itself.

Of immediate concern are the many American lives lost or haunted by this tragedy, and the lives of those who joined us in the fight. The future feels almost as bleak. Like every generation, the Zoomers who end up in charge will lie about wars. But lying is made all the easier when theres no belief in truth.

When The Atlantic spoke of an America without God, it was talking about public perception. America is never without God, and thats the truth.

The rest is here:
How Scenes From Kabul Play In The Post-Truth Minds Of America's Young - The Federalist