[ Featuring Jordan Peterson ]
So there's a line in the New Testament where Christ says
That no one comes to the Father except through him
Which is a hell of a thing for anyone to say
I am the way and the truth and the life, that's another one
Here's the idea: it's as if there is a spirit at the bottom of things
That is involved in the bringing to being of everything
People talk about evolution as a random process but that's not true
The mutations are random, but the selection mechanisms are not random
What are the selection mechanisms?
Human females are very sexually selective
That's why you have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors
So the male failure rate for reproduction is twice that of the female
How is it that males succeed differentially?
Females reject
They rejected on the basis of what?
And the answer is, well something like competence
How is competence defined?
Well men put themselves in hierarchies and they vote on each other's competence
Let's say you decide to follow the best leader in a battle, well then you don't die
Like he might get all the women, but you don't die
So at least you're still in the game, and it might be the same if you're following the greatest hunter
And the greatest hunter wouldn't be the person who is best at bringing down game
It would be the person who is best at bringing down the game
And sharing it and organising the next hunt and all of that
What that means to some degree is that
There's a spirit of masculinity shaping the entire structure of human evolutionary history
That's what that means
It's the spirit of positive masculinity that manifests itself across epochal ages, millions of years perhaps
And it actually has shaped our consciousness, actually
It's like the essential spirit of all the great men who defined what greatness constituted, that's a spirit
Well, that's a purely biological explanation
Well that's God
God is the highest value in the hierarchy of values
That's God. God is how we imaginatively and collectively represent
The existence and action of consciousness across time
That's God
God is that which selects among men in the eternal hierarchy of men
That's God
God is what is that which eternally dies and is reborn in the pursuit of higher being and truth
But then there's another possibility too which is that
That's actually reflective of a deeper metaphysical reality
That has to do with the nature of consciousness itself
I think that's true
I believe the biological case and I believe the biologically reductive case
But I don't think that exhausts it
There's a metaphysical layer underneath that that the biology is a genuine reflection of
And that's the macrocosm above and the microcosm below
We are really reflective, including in our consciousness
Of something about the structure of reality itself, and that might involve whatever it is that God is
Well that's God
God is the future to which we make sacrifices
That's God. God is the voice of conscience
That's God
God is the source of judgement and mercy and guilt
That's God
God is what calls and what responds in the eternal call to adventure
