Jonathan Pageau and Bret Weinstein can't find each other on Definitions of "Religion" and "Faith"
Part One of my Commentaries on their Recent Conversation
Today's video is the first part of my commentary on the Jonathan Pageau and Bret Weinstein conversation.
After closely watching A LOT of these sorts of conversations I've come to some conclusions about them in general. Familiarity with each other matters A LOT. This conversation was sort of a mess. Lots of looking for each other.
Jonathan Pageau can be difficult for many people to understand because he will often define words in a conversation like this according to the symbolic cosmology he and his brother have been working on.
Pageau and Weinstein met in November 2017 at a conference where they just started getting into the conversation they wanted to have.
Jordan Peterson was there to translate a bit between them.
.Pageau defines "religion" in that event as hierarchy. In this conversation he defined it as "that which holds people together". If you understand his perspective both definitions are valid, but to most casual listeners "religion" already has a few contested definitions.
The most commonly assumed definition of "religion" in the Modernist frame is a set of beliefs, practices, and values that involve a deity, the supernatural and usually some narrative that offers meaning or salvation.
Bret Weinstein understandably starts here and given the context of the setting of a recorded conversation when Jonathan defines religion radically different way it just washes over Bret's filter.
In most conversations like this both parties revert back to set speeches and set pieces that have worked in previous settings and so you wind up with both parties primarily speaking to their audiences in front of the other.
In many conversations like this just coming to some agreement about what they each mean by "religion" would help. The distance between them over the word "faith" was even wider.
Bret Weinstein began with something like the standard new-atheist definition of "faith" as "belief without evidence" which is a strawman. If you're interested in a debate over this usage of the term, see this Justin Brierley Unbelievable debate https://unbelievable.podbean.com/e/peter-boghossian-vs-tim-mcgrew-a-manual-for-creating-atheists/
Jonathan presents a definition of "faith" which took me by surprise. It was deeply embedded in a consciousness of levels of reality. He introduced it with a familiar Biblical definition of “faith”, but you really need to be up on the "levels" conversation that this little corner of the Internet is involved in. It fits perfectly again with his symbolic cosmology but unless someone is familiar with that this definition of faith will be inscrutable.
Again, understandably, Weinstein sort of looks at this like a cow looks at a new gate and tries to move the conversation forward by pivoting. This is understandable. You don't want to get bogged down.
I spend a fair amount of time in this video talking about the metaphorical nature of language via CS Lewis' "Miracles". @BretWeinstein 's "literally false metaphorically true" has some language issues of its own.
Moving forward with the commentary I'm going to apply the "levels" observations that @PageauJonathan was trying to community to @BretWeinstein 's "religion" (worldview) because I think it is a helpful way in.
If you want something to listen to in anticipation of that check out this Dr. Michael Levin podcast that gets into layers of cognition and biology https://pca.st/31zzqio4
The "levels of analysis" approach IS the way into this debate. Jonathan wants to push Bret on the source of "the good" that Bret finds "consciousness" can pursue against the genocidal genetic demi-urge of Bret’s “religion”.
Thanks for you patience and elaboration. I too gave up on the original conversation about half way through. Bret is ~totally a McGilchristian description of a left hemispheric position who cannot contemplate the idea that his beloved, grasped, simplistic map is not the territory ("science, 1001, is the best"). Pageau with his levels is archetypally right hemisphere (in this conversation as re "orthodox" not sure how IMvG would characterise that.. sacred but mapped as it were). Bret engages time and time again in behaviours that are characteristic of right hemisphere damage, complete smugness that he is right and compete blindness to the wider picture (eg that his morality does not come from his genes any more than say his favourite football team (qv John Cleese's great sketch "this is the gene for saying this is the gene for")). Even as a scientist Bret is this very old fashioned materialist compared to a quantum physicist or a say Sheldrakian biologist. After all the human genome project was a catastrophe compared to materialistic expectations of its outcome.
There must also here be another unmentioned context, namely Bret's religious experiences as a child and I assume rejection of Judaism qua faith rather than ethnos/culture.
At least Peterson is happy to say he doesn't know re "God"/metaphysics. Bret kinda predicates that there is no such thing which make him hard to listen to in this context (even if on covid he did great work platforming eg Malone early on).
Scientism is so well know to us that it's mechanical predictability is a tedious listen. I'd rather listen to Pageau taking to say a psychic or a Sufi or a Lama or Styx666, way more interesting, less predictable and far more of a challenge to Pageau than a philosophical materialist. They are the kind of dying species who think they are doing great!
In passing by way of great link in case you haven't seen it, Iain McGilchrist is currently on his channel having hour long conversations about each of the chapters of his latest mega opus. A man who bridges all science/ineffable dividers as he has lived, and continues to live, them both.