 Hi everyone, it's MJ and in this video, I want to talk about Jordan Peterson. In particular, he's video called The Introduction to the Idea of God and it's a great video, but it's two hours and 38 minutes long. So I want to try and make a very quick summary of what is discussed in this video. Now, very quickly, let's look at Jordan Peterson. I mean, normally you've got these two extremes. You've got atheists and you've got apologists. And then Jordan Peterson comes along and he's kind of like in the middle. He's in the middle because he takes the Bible very, very seriously like an apologist, but he doesn't believe that God is real and so he's kind of like an atheist. And what he's done is he's made 12 of these monster videos that are two and a half hours each on the biblical stories, which I'm busy going through and I'm busy making notes and summaries and they're really awesome. So hopefully this video encourages you to go check them out. Now I must just give a little bit of a bias warning. I mean, I'm probably more on the apologist side than the atheist side. I believe in God. I try to be cynical. You'll know from my financial videos, I'm quite cynical of the financial system and I try to incorporate that in all that I do. But anyway, enough about me. I just wanted to give a quick little bias warning. In this video, I want to talk about just three big things. We want to look at Jordan's opinion on the Bible, who his main influences are for this video and his idea of God. So hopefully we can get this done very, very quickly. But there is a bit to go through. Like I said, this is a two and a half hour video that we're trying to summarize very quickly. So on the Bible, what does Jordan Peterson say about on the Bible? This is his introduction. He says that he's amazed at its durability and he admits that he doesn't understand it and that he wants to learn about it. And he says that's the whole purpose of these talks is to try and help him think about this thing and figure it out. He says he has deep respect for the Bible and he's got this little picture in his presentation where he talks about how hyperlinked the document is, you know, how the New Testament keeps referring to the Old Testament. Now each book kind of refers to each other book and it paints quite a pretty picture. He also wants to analyze the psychological significance of the Bible and he says that the Bible aids us in self understanding. He does say that the stories are not historical, but he does say that the Bible is older than prehistory. So before people had even learned to write down, he says these stories were before then. He does say that the stories are not empirical science, but instead the stories investigate the structure of being. He calls the Bible a comedy as it has a happy ending and he says critics need to take it more seriously. He also says the Bible is the best idea we have come up with and he wants to extract some of its practical value. So that's Jordan Peterson on the Bible. Those are his opinions. Let's look at his influences and I do apologize for probably going to mispronounce everyone's name here, but we've got Carl Jung. We've got Frederick Nisha. We've got Dostoyevsky, the guy who wrote Crime and Punishment and we've got the famous guy Freud. Now, what is interesting about Jordan Pearson's influences and why call them his influences because these are the people he keeps referencing throughout the two and a half hours is if we look at the Russian guy and Carl Jung, they are Christians. They say that they believe in God. Carl Jung might not be Christian, but he does say in one of the videos on YouTube that he doesn't believe in God. He knows God and the Russian guy was a Christian Orthodox in Russia. But then the other influences are very well known. Atheists. I mean, Nisha is one of the famous guys for saying God is dead and Freud also was very, very much anti the existence of God. So it was quite nice seeing Jordan having this balance of influences. But from the psychologist, he kind of takes this idea. He combines Jung and Freud together to give him this idea that is God is the ideal formed in our dreams. So the idea is that people were observing the world and it was all chaos. And when they went to sleep, their mind figured everything out and they dreamt up God in a very powerful state. And when they fought other nations, this idea of God kind of kept growing and growing and merging all these ideas together. And it was always tending towards the ideal. So that's what he gets from the psychologist. From the other guys, what he's basically saying is he's looking at the moral consequences if God disappears. So he looks at crime and punishment. He looks at the words of Nisha. And he kind of says, you know, religion is very important as a moral framework. And all hell will break loose if God had to disappear. And like I mean, one of the examples he gives is he says, God was the ideal that kept kings moral. So kings weren't the highest authority they had to keep, you know, or they had to be answerable to God. And this was one of the reasons for the success of Western civilization, according to Jordan. Now we're going to move on to his idea of God. And like I say, he's taking it from the Bible, the Christian Bible, which is Old Testament, New Testament. And the Bible, it's it's a little bit confusing for some people because, you know, there's one God, but he's represented in three times, God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Spirit. And this was my favorite part of the talk was Jordan's summaries of each of these these elements or things. He will refer to them as it's. So yeah, just to trigger warning, don't get offended or feel like it's blasphemy by referring to God as an it. But here we go. God the Father. He's got 14 points. He says you can enter into a covenant with it. It responds to sacrifice. He spent, he spends quite a lot of time talking about the sacrifice thing and how amazing it is that humans were able to figure out that if you give up something now, you can get up something more in the future. He says the discovery of the future was a big achievement in humanity. And what we know from material science is we spend a lot of time trying to figure out the future. So I guess that's the small little relevance to this actuarial channel. Anyway, coming back to the points, he says God, the Father, answers prayers. It transcends time and space. It punishes and rewards. It judges and forgives. And like I say, he's getting all of this from the Bible stories. This is his very big summary that we're going to be unpacking in the rest of these videos. We does get interesting is that he says God is not nature. And it's interesting if you've read his book, Maps of Meaning, he talks about mother nature or nature being a feminine entity and a masculine entity being a God like figure, bringing order to this nature. And I know that has upset some people. But this is, this is Jordan Summary. He says God built Eden for mankind and then banished us for disobedience. That's the famous Adam and Eve story, which is one of my favorite stories of all time because it's just, yeah, it's an incredible story. He says God is too powerful to be touched. God grants free will. Distance from God is hell. Distance from God is death. God reveals himself through dogma and mystical experiences. And then he also says God is the law. And he gets he gets very excited about the Bible and the legal system. He says this whole idea that mankind was made in the image of God, that both man and woman have got a sense of divinity in them. He says has been one of the cornerstones of the legal system that says everyone is equal. Everyone has a certain amount of basic rights. And he says that has been a great foundation on which to build legal systems. And he gets very excited seeing that in the Bible. Moving on to to God, the sun. He says God, the sun speaks chaos into order where he's bringing a lot of this from is from the New Testament book, John, where it says in the beginning God was with the word and the word was with God and all this type of stuff. And also with the Genesis story, where God says, let there be light and there was light and how God talks or he speaks order into the chaos. They say he speaks chaos into order. So it should be the other way around. God speaks order into the chaos. This one was quite interesting. God, the sun slays dragons and feeds people with the remains. That was interesting. I don't know if he's pulling that from revelations or if he's referring to when Jesus breaks up the fish and feeds the people. That one's an interesting one. Says God finds God, the sun finds gold. I mean, there is a story of Jesus who he has to pay taxes. He tells the disciples to go fishing. They catch a fish and there's some coins inside the fish's mouth. Jesus rescues virgins, Mary Magdalene. Jesus is the body and the blood of Christ. Jesus is the tragic victim and scapegoat and eternally triumphant redeemer simultaneously. And he says that's a very, very big idea. Jesus cares for the outcast. Jesus dies and is reborn. Jesus is the king of kings, the hero of heroes. Jesus is not the state, but is both the fulfillment and critic of the state. And that's from God. So in the New Testament, Jesus does come a lot of or a lot of confrontation is with the Pharisees and with the old legal system of the Jews and how Jesus doesn't. Well, he's critical of some of the rules, but he's also fulfilling it as well. It's like I said, it's a very religious, fascinating. It gets it makes me very excited. Jesus dwells in the perfect house. Jesus is aiming a paradise or heaven. Jesus can rescue people from hell. Jesus is the foundational stone or the cornerstone that was rejected. Jesus is the spirit of the law. And like I say, these 15 points, Jordan puts in his his video and then, like I say, spends two and a half hours discussing these. And now we're going to end it off with looking at the third party of the Trinity, which is the Holy Spirit. He says the Holy Spirit is akin to the human soul. It is the prophetic voice. It is that still small voice, like your conscious or whatever. It is the spoken truth. It is called forth by music. It is the enemy of deceit, arrogance and resentment. It is the water of life. That's an interesting one. It burns without consuming, which is interesting because then that references the story of Exodus with Moses talking to the burning bush and it is a blinding light. That's also a reference to Saul's conversion on the road to Damascus. So it's very interesting. And what I love about this is Jordan has taken the whole Bible. So he's read the whole Bible and he has created these summaries. So I really, really appreciate the summaries. And talking about summaries, this has very much been just a summary of his entire video, which I said it was two hours and 38 minutes and 29 seconds long. So I have simplified it. I do encourage you guys to watch the video and let me know if I've left out anything major out. I probably did leave a lot out, but that's great for you guys to go and explore in his actual video. And now, yeah, I mean, let me know, did you enjoy this? Like, should I make a summary on the next video? And should we maybe do it like every Sunday? We release a video like this or did you guys not like it? And I should rather stick this on my actuarial philosophy course on you to me and keep it away from the actuarial science channel. Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below. Like I said, I'm trying something new. This guy's been fascinating me on YouTube and just wanted to chat more about it. But let me know your thoughts and I'll see you guys soon for another video. Cheers.