Christ vs Mohammed: Which One Created a Safe Space?

Canadian professor of psychology, Jordan Peterson is a new discovery for me. In some ways, he’s the new Martin Luther in the increasingly corrupt Canadian soviet, where speech is now compelled rather than free. It is a tragedy that Canada has followed the path of tyranny and distrust of its people.

Here, Professor Peterson compares the behavior of Christ and Mohammed; he also points out that Islam is a political ideology – i.e., it’s not primarily a religion at all.

His interviewers, who agree with him, bring up the fragmentation of Christianity after the Reformation. It wasn’t peaceful at all (no dissolution of power ever is). Their obvious ignorance of the long bloody religious wars that followed on the break-up of the Catholic Church’s stranglehold on European culture is surprising. However, the larger track of the conversation is correct: Islam limits freedom.

In fact, Islam doesn’t even recognize freedom except to see it as dangerous. Just as Canada now sees freedom of speech as dangerous. Compelled speech is the first step toward a totalitarian state. Wait till the government starts rewarding people for turning in violators of that law…wait till other strictures on freedom follow.

[If our readers know the origin of this podcast interview (someone named “Kyle” is mentioned) please put the information in the comments.]

I’ll be posting other videos by Dr. Peterson in the future. He’s a real iconoclast who is willing to pay the price of his beliefs.

50 thoughts on “Christ vs Mohammed: Which One Created a Safe Space?

  1. Dymphna, I’m glad you’ve discovered Jordan Peterson, a man of rare integrity, for sure. I first came across him while watching TV Ontario’s The Agenda, where he was often a guest. His views on a variety of subjects always seemed to me to be refreshingly candid and accurate. He came more abruptly into the spotlight last fall when he refused to follow the direction from his employer, the University of Toronto, to call transgender people by their preferred pronouns. From there, the storm has grown, and he has become somewhat of an international folk hero of free speech.

  2. He says, @01:05, that he’s ignorant about Islam and that it’s pretty complicated.

    Hold it right there.

    If there’s one thing about Islam that’s quite clear it’s its pure binary nature. There are no shades of gray. It is black versus white from beginning to end. The House of Islam v. the House of War.

    • Binary, or as Dr Warner on his site emphasises, Dual. This is a different thing from gray for it is both black and white at the same time so its apologists are able to logically argue that it is a religion of peace simultaneously as others are able to point out it is a religion of war, and it is a religion and a political ideology simultaneously. Western binary logic does not have a way to handle this duality which makes Islam such a slippery eel, made even more so of course by liberal doses of dissimulation and obfuscation by the apologists, who hope to emphasize the supposed peaceful Islam in order to deny their fear of the intimidation they know lies within Islam.

      I stumbled across Dr Peterson’s material via a Youtube search on Biblical symbolism and thence to his other material. In regard to the former I find he does tend to waffle but is very much more direct in his discussions of the practical application of psychological concepts to current social and sexual issues.

      • I stumbled across Dr Peterson’s material via a Youtube search on Biblical symbolism and thence to his other material. In regard to the former I find he does tend to waffle

        Hmmm. Religious symbolism is by its very nature a waffling kind of experience. Nail it down and you kill it. But without its lived experience, life is impoverished indeed. As would be life without sight to view the beauty of the world or the aesthetic pleasures the great painters left us. But describing the experience of the Flemish painters, say, is a waffling thing. Waffling and wondrous. I wish I had developed my aesthetic language skills to the extent Mark H has…

  3. Dymphna, you’ll be plenty busy going down that rabbithole. There are hundreds of hours of lectures and interviews on his youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/JordanPetersonVideos

    He just published his interview with Ayaan which is very interesting in the context of this blog but I especially recommend his series on the bible stories and his personality series. The maps of meaning series is a good intro to the rest of his work.

    • Thank you. I look forward to many months of learning. Haven’t felt so intellectually engaged since reading/listening to Dr. Fred Siegel, who writes for City Journal, among others. And before him, there were a few, very few, totally engaging professors during my time at college.

  4. Peterson is the last intellectual of the West. I help him through Patreon and we all should do the same. He is helping psychological millions of young adults abandoned by the Western institutions.

    • He is by no means the last intellectual, or the only one. You just have to dig for them. They turn up mostly in areas of great turmoil, where speaking the truth is dangerous.

      I found his Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/jordanbpeterson

      It takes forever to load on our connection but I look forward to reading it.

      There’s a subreddit, too, but I lost track.

      Did link up GoV with his Twitter feed.

  5. There are a few “intellectuals” of Islamic belief in the “West.” Salim Mansur at Western University in Ontario, Canada is one of note.

    • I was tempted to search out the person at first, but what exactly is he going to tell me? That there is somehow an overall benefit to humanity by practicing or studying islam? All he ends up doing is acting as a smoke screen for the islamists, which ends up serving the interests of the islamists. It is rapidly becoming a binary issue. Pick you side, there is no middle ground.

      • Professor Mansur has called himself a “dissident” Muslim. A published volume of essays is titled “Islam’s Predicament …” (2009, Mosaic Press). In the piece ‘Enlightenment’s Dusk? The West’s Decline …’ Dr. Mansur finds that the enemy of the Enlightenment’s crusaders for the freedom to reason individually continues as the collectivist hive of deference to ‘authority.’
        I hear Mansur saying we are in serious trouble with worship of islamist idols.

  6. Prof. Peterson often talks about origin of religions from cognitive perspective; it is always brilliant.

    However, one of the driving forces of religions is pragmatic, which in ancient world was synonym of (para)military.

    Note – the most archaic deities are simply mighty monsters dominating the food chain.
    Among tribal people, there are cults of Bear, etc.
    First prototypes were certainly dinosaurs, aka “dragons”. It is all continuity.

    These gods had natural and prevalent right to demand human sacrifice, at any time, and therefore in general, to demand obedience, in particular having control of tribal taboos.
    On the oher hand, the Moral Foundations theory defines 5 main taboos – harm, impurity, disloyalty, disrespect, and injustice.
    So here it is, voila, – this is how the Monster becomes head of the culture.

    Monster, or those speaking on his behalf, decide how and to whom these taboos are applicable, what is the punishment for disobedience, etc.
    Note in brackets, that selective lift of taboo on someone who is de-humanized, an enemy, was undoubtedly boosting cultural/cognitive progress for millenia.
    Such things, having deep roots in animal kingdom, – like lethal duels, cannibalism, mob killings, spectacular executions, fratricide, infanticide, human sacrifice, torture, slavery, etc.
    Every invention in the field of atrocity was an advantage to tribe.

    So, briefly – Islam is essentially Archaic, which romantic person may even consider a synonym of Satanic.
    There is very ancient beast in the heart of Islam.
    Great thinker like Prof.Peterson, isn’t needed at all to notice that.

    • Peterson discusses religion on far more than just a cognitive axis. Otherwise, he wouldn’t see Neitzche’s and Solzhenitsyn’s contributions to our understanding of religious matters as crucial, which point he makes repeatedly.

      At its heart, all spiritual knowledge begins as an archaic grasp of *something* transcendent; sometimes it grows up to encompass much more than that – thus the Western [Greek] foundation of Truth, Beauty and Benignity. Add to that the slow maturation of the Jewish tribes and their moral foundation and you’ve got the tenets of Christianity after Paul and before the Johannine gospel.

      For that, Peterson warns about the necessity for metabolizing (my word, borrowed from the English Objectivists) Truth and then speaking it in in the particularity of time and place: Logos…i.e., “In the beginning was The Word…”

      • BTW, to see embodied language regarding transcendent Beauty, read Mark H’s comments on architecture, music, etc. His heartfelt response to beauty is certainly a good example of spiritual experience.

      • I try to look at it from POV very distant in time.

        “In the beginning was The Word…” – for me, this sentence simply describes appearance of spoken language.
        Were they modern humans?
        No. Somebody like Erectus, rather.
        Were they religious, – in a sense I described?
        Most likely yes.

        Bible encmpasses tribal stories from different aeons.

        Stoning to death is the religious way of execution not by chance, but because it is very ancient – coming to us from times where stones were known not only as the only tools, but the only thing using which was discriminating “us” from other animals.

        David’s slingshot came from times when bow and arrows weren’t known.

        Isaac’s sacrifice story was told to convince people to abandon human sacrifice.

        I think Truth, Beauty and Good as determinants of civilization, are relatively recent.

        In formative times, there were Myth, Fear, and Evil everywhere and for all.

  7. Professor Peterson is quite correct on his stance regarding gender-based pronouns. The pronouns have always described the biological gender of the entity being referred to. Eunuchs of old were sometimes referred to as “it” as they were without a biological identity. Nowadays, the person who is undergoing a sex-change therapy would be neither male nor female until the ‘therapy’ was completed. An example would be the son of your mother’s sister who undergoing a biological gender change. Until the change was completed he would properly be referred to as “Cousin It” as he was neither truly male nor female.

  8. A dialog with Muslims? What would be the point?

    I want them to simply go up the gangplank, then over the horizon.

  9. Dymphna,

    I’m thrilled that you have discovered Professor Peterson. His clarity of reasoning and lucid arguments make for some very interesting content. This brave soul has been pretty much center stage over at Vlad Tepes Blog for the past several months.

    [Professor Peterson] also points out that Islam is a political ideology – i.e., it’s not primarily a religion at all.

    It is thrilling to see this meme going more and more mainstream. This is the first step towards stripping away all Constitutional protections that Islam currently (and fraudulently) enjoys.

    • Amen. Perhaps someone has mentioned him before in the comments and I simply wasn’t aware of it. The B keeps up with Vlad’s doings so, of course when I mentioned Peterson, he said, “oh, yeah”…or words to that effect. I’d never have come across him but for the soviet law re compelled speech that passed in what used to be Canada.

      Dr. Peterson is following some of my first academic deep interests – i.e., the way he handles Jewish and Christian Scripture, which I discovered waaay back in another life when I was auditing classes at Wellesley College (townspeople could do that then. I don’t know if they still can).

      • Dr. Peterson is following some of my first academic deep interests – i.e., the way he handles Jewish and Christian Scripture, which I discovered waaay back in another life when I was auditing classes at Wellesley College (townspeople could do that then. I don’t know if they still can).

        If time permits, please elaborate.

        Regardless, I sincerely believe that Peterson’s work can be of immense value to GoV. Your personal enjoyment of his excellent dissertations is a delightful icing on the proverbial (Counterjihad) cake.

        Warmest regards,

        NorseRadish

    • as I mentioned above, Islam is Archaic religion.
      essentially, that hindered societies practicing it, from developing potential for Compassion.

      it isn’t only Bible that recorded and formed the evolution of moral sense.
      in the West I mean.

      Allah is archetypical Father.
      Muhammed as well, but mixed with “Shadow” or “Trickster”.

      Christ is archetypical “Son”.
      Mary is “Mother” and Magdalene is “Maiden”.

      but then, – the painter creates “The Execution of Lady Jane Grey”.
      and musicians then write “Lady Jane”.
      a step from patriarchy to female-friendly and child-friendly society.
      thousands of such steps.
      nothing like that exists in Islam.

      • Islam is a supremacist ideology – proto-Stalinism, perhaps – that came out of the Arab desert raider tribes. It is a destroyer and a parasite.

        • yes nomadic tribes are closer to hunter-gatherers, more ancient type.

          also, “ideology” is the modern mask of shamanism.
          it may be more or less vile and/or destructive.
          Islam is more vile and Postmodernism is less, but both are destructive.

        • Islam is a supremacist ideology – proto-Stalinism, perhaps – that came out of the Arab desert raider tribes. It is a destroyer and a parasite.

          Permit me to say that this is one of the more restrained and polite descriptions of Islam that I’ve read in many years.

          With that in mind, it behooves me to refrain from providing the sort of elaboration that makes me so unpopular elsewhere.

          Plainly put; Islam’s refusal to exercise even the slightest restraint—in terms of cruelty, barbarity, and slaughter—only serves to assure that whatever retribution or (massively disproportionate) retaliation will be of dimensions that should rightfully disgust the civilized world.

          What horrifies me above all is that so many of this world’s relatively complaisant Muslims may well have to pay the ultimate price for the intransigence of their fellow (and all too often, unopposed) coreligionists. This is the most repulsive crime of all.

    • The whole freedom of religion argument is totally flawed. Are Aztecs allowed to practice their religion which includes human sacrifice and cannibalism? The United States was founded on Christian principles and law. Our entire body of law is Christianity based. It’s about time someone recognizes it. If you are not a Christian, too bad, these are the founding parameters we expect you to obey. The leftist, all religions are to be respected equally argument will lead to total chaos. Nihilism does not work.

      • That’s a strawman argument. Of course human sacrifice and cannibalism are regressive and against our laws. You pose license in place of liberty.

        • “Just because you have the right to say something, does not make it the right thing to say.”

  10. I am not even reading this thing. Have been following Jordan Peterson for some time and have recommended him to my students. Certainly a brave one with too much brain. Islam is the symptom. Cultural Marxism is the disease, said with a euphemism.

    In the words of Peterson himself, look at what you don’t want to admit. Look at your darkest place. That’s what’s killing you.

    Let’s see how high your bar for free speech is. I have lost interest on you since some time, and only come here for the daily news. Losing interest on that as well.

    • Try Dr Peterson’s personality self-assessment. With all your academic degrees, you’ll no doubt already have figured out where you land on the disagreeable spectrum…

      I’m always interested in what you have to say; sometimes – as now – I learn something. If you like Peterson, there is some part of you that is redemptive. That’s encouraging.

  11. The video in this post is quite interesting in that I haven’t seen it before, the search function on youtube not returning it, least not on from the parameters I’d tried, and it is more explicit than most all of what I’d heard him say concerning Islam and Mohammed but expected there would be more thoughts not made explicit.

    This made me intrigued when watching the videos taken in his small lecture theatre, one can see his students as opposed to his self funded formal presentations of his understanding of Biblical symbolism where I do feel he waffles, in that in one topic he will talk for 45 minutes about what would seem to belong in one of the other topics (going on the presentation titles). The whole subject does need a thematic spiral approach whereby one returns to a previous topic to unearth deeper layers of meaning utilizing other concepts, and perhaps this is what he is doing.

    Anyway as to the small lecture theater : a lot feature a muslima in a blue hijab sitting in the front row, at the left hand end (Dr Peterson’s right) and I wonder how she squares what she is learning from this mine of wisdom from the teachings in her religion.

    • Note that I made the same demur re the break-up of Roman Catholicism and the on-coming Reformation when I posted this clip. I pointed to the obvious ignorance of history of those who were interviewing Peterson.

  12. From the department of useless information:

    What is it with those pesky Geminis lately – courageous, original, intelligent, leaders….;)

    Dr. Peterson, Donald Trump, Aung San Suu Kyi, Pauline Hanson (a courageous Australian politician)……

  13. I’ve been subscribed to the professor’s youtube channel for about a year now. He is a good man, by Plato’s definition, and speaks common sense and plain truth. He ain’t afraid to stand by his words either; his youtube channel, JordanBPeterson, was taken down for a couple of days earlier this year until a twitter storm got it reinstated.

    I believe he has a Patreon account also, should you want to throw a couple of bucks his way. It funded his latest research project after canukistans uni axed his funding.

    He is DEFO a man to watch D.

      • Hi D, like I said he is a man to watch.
        His videos on the Bible are great, he raises questions that we should all ask ourseleves.

        • I agree, especially for those who believe atheism is “settled science”. It’s not. It’s an aggressive consensus, for the most part and that point of view is pressed onto college students as a matter of course. There are a number of scientists who are theists, but they learn to keep their opinions to themselves.

          • I agree, especially for those who believe atheism is “settled science”.

            Oh, puhleese! Pardon me, but Atheism is just too spiritually barren to even claim the high ground of pure or “settled” >cough< science (a much richer source of brilliance).

            Then again, maybe that’s just little old me.

            PS: All Atheists are welcome to protest or argue.

          • there is no aggression in statement “there is no God”.

            on the other hand, religious people say “there is God”, and then they specify what they mean: “God is almighty”/omniscient, “God is benevolent”, “God is punishing” and so on.
            These statements are all aggressive, in slightly different ways.
            And then they always conclude: “God is on my side”.

            Other words, “God” is the mind game used as tool for projecting aggression.
            In excellent agreement with “His” origin and career.

            As to the attempts to merge “God” with Compassion, this is different story – this reflects progression from Patriarchy to more humanized world.

            Patriarchy is hell.
            Patriarch is by definition a victor warrior.
            There is no such thing as “defeated warrior”.
            Therefore – The Patriarch is rapist, looter, executioner, child killer, cannibal and tyrant.
            We can’t squeeze that from our genes, so we keep it for ourselves, and sometimes tell others “you know what.. we have God.. The God is on our side”.

            no thanks I prefer atheism.

          • Your interesting assertions cover far more than atheism, but to take your first statement, benign atheism is fine. The loud, aggressive kind has its parallel in the theist who “evangelizes” whether one wants to hear it or not.

            How “patriarchy is hell” follows from your assertions is less clear.

            All cultures have archetypes that culminate in one of three forms: “patriarchy”, “matriarchy” or “anarchy”. Indeed, all cultures embody aspects of each of those three; there are no other ‘choices’, though as young children we tend toward the last.

            As for God, and whether or not s/he’s on our “side”…you might try reading Carl Jung’s expositions on the subject. Just for starters, we all contain more than one “side” – as you learn quickly if you raise a child.

            Isn’t it wonderful that you get to have your preferences without interference?

  14. Dr Peterson is often posted by The Rebel (for whomTommy Robinson now reports), albeit usually in short snippets.

    • After watching him – he wears himself out just thinking his way through some of the material – I can see why they use “short snippets”.

      • That’s sort of what I was getting at. At the moment I’m watching his exposition of The Lion King and with this structure to keep him on track it is great material. He does tend to follow up on side topics but this adds to the background and the theme brings him back on track.

  15. Dymphna:
    by “Patriarch” I mean someone who is next in hierarchy, after the Monster.

    Source of religion is not in Scripture, or Bible, neither in paradoxical nor in orthodox doctrines from “holy books”.

    Source of religion is within us, – it is our evolutionary past.
    Religions drive psycho-types, as you drive your car.

    Call it shamanism, ideology or whatever.

    We now are more educated, thanks to many clever people, – starting from Nietzsche, then Popper, and now people like Pinker, Haidt, and certainly Prof. Peterson.

    We are obliged to choose the best among options our nature currently allows.

    I understand why you like Prof. Peterson – he is very bright, as preacher.
    Every good lecturer must be, to a degree, but for him it is the matter of substance.
    But please don’t forget – he is scientist, first-foremost. Rational, Darwinist, likely a Positivist.
    So, what he preaches is scientific epistemology and Secular Humanism.
    At least I see it this way.

    • This comment is much clearer, but we disagree on some points. He’s not a positivist, for one thing. Jungian psychology and positivism have little or nothing to say to one another.

      And Jung would balance the anima/animus in the human psyche.

      Please define humanism: he has said in several places that your adjectival form is a harm.

      Also, please define “science” in the sense that Peterson uses it.

      • I like myself looking modest when facing philosophical infinity.
        🙂

        humanism and science are like porn, – immediately recognizable.

        no atrocity was committed in the name of humanism.
        very little in the name of science.
        that should be part of the concept I believe, if not directly in definition.

  16. What’s wrong with a “Catholic stranglehold”?
    I think it’s called Christendom. And it served Europe well.

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