Richard Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya, still during the English occupation. Son of Englishmen there.
Graduated from Oxford University in biology—where, later, he took prominent positions as a teacher—Dawkins did not reach fame for his brilliant career in the Academy, in the field of Biology, but through his atheistic militancy, in the wave of figures like Christopher Hitchens.
Dawkins has traveled the world—and, at the age of 83, continues to travel—preaching atheism and the idea that religion is one of the great evils of mankind. In lectures, for which tickets run out overnight, with an acidic mood, typically British, ridicules those who believe in God and sells (mainly to atheists) books that seek to convince readers of how ridiculous and inappropriate to the 21st century is to be religious. It seeks to consolidate ideas such as that which Religion and Science are incompatible with.
It is one of the best achievements of the English expression, "to preach to the choir". For those not versed in English (Shame on you), the expression means trying to convince someone of something she already agrees with.
Jordan Peterson was born in Canada, where he obtained his degree in psychology from Alberta University and McGill University, where he taught, and then spent most of the 1990s as a professor at Harvard.
It reached fame in 2016, with ideas considered controversial, by mainstream public, on culture, politics and mainly gender (themes that a segment of the population calls gender ideology and that are studied, by another segment of the population, in a recent academic area called Gender studies). He is one of the main exponents of those who criticize the so-called "cultural Marxism"[1] (if anyone can explain this concept accurately and rigorously, please let me know). Like Dawkins, Peterson lives on subjects that usually ruin family dinners.
With his peculiar way of speaking quickly, but with great pauses, during which he closes his eyes and gesticulates, as if he were trying to look for the right word in a messy drawer full of papers, Peterson has over 8 million and 300,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel and 5.6 million followers on X (formerly Twitter).
By coincidence, vocation, or both, Peterson's audience is mostly composed of young men who find in their speech some comfort, some shelter, in a world that sometimes seems to offer shelter and comfort to everyone except them.
On October 21, a debate was published between both on Peterson's YouTube channel. Moderated by Alex O’Connor, the debate is 1 hour and 32 minutes long and in one week it reached 1 million views and more than 15,000 comments.
"What about the content of the debate?" you ask me. Memes (concept created by Dawkins in The Selfish Gene), archetypes (in the classical Jungian sense) and dragons. Yeah. Both spent approximately 10 minutes reflecting on the concept of "dragon".
What draws attention in the debate is the enormous difficulty in establishing communication. O’Connor, the moderator, did an excellent and herculean work, trying to translate speech—and questions—From one to the other. Nevertheless, in 1 hour and 32 minutes, there were few moments when there was real exchange, a real dialogue. We are used to seeing debates in which there is no dialogue (e.g. all national and international political debates in recent decades). The difference, and something that made this so interesting, is that here we have two highly literate, unquestionably intelligent people (how honest they are is another issue), who were not fighting a public office and did not have the need for politicians to "win" the debate. Yet they were unable to establish dialogue with each other.
Early on, Dawkins asks if Peterson really believed the Bible stories. Rather, it must be said that in recent years, Peterson has become a guru for religious conservatives.—Especially for the younger ones. "Drunk on symbols", as Dawkins accuses, the Canadian psychologist uses Bible stories as examples of perfect archetypes from which he learns life lessons. But, after all, does he really believe the stories? After watching 92 minutes of debate, I still don't know.
Jordan claimed that he believed that the stories were, as I mentioned earlier, perfect archetypes depicting essentially human characteristics. In the case of Cain and Abel, for example, we see classic envy among brothers. None of that answers Dawkins' question. "Yes, but do you believe these things happened?" Peterson finally replies that he does not find it relevant whether or not the stories correspond to historical and material facts, yet without answering the question, but highlighting an interesting question.
Dawkins is a biologist, a materialist. At a certain point, it even says, "I like reality". Peterson's interested in symbols. For him, the symbols of a history and representations of human characteristics—These yes, unquestionably real—It's the most important thing. I don't think one has more appreciation for reality than the other. This is a linguistic problem. More than a substantive disagreement, there is a communication problem.
Peterson has an unbearably verborrhagic speech, with a strange cadence and with the use of excessively complex vocabulary, which does not help at all the exteriorization of his ideas, but at least makes them seem very deep and complex. Let me now commit the same sin that he is often guilty of.
To resolve the linguistic confusion of the debate, it is important to understand that "reality" is a more polysemic word than it seems, as is the case with most words. What Peterson means by "real" is that something matches—in this case, Bible stories—to real questions. Humans are envious, selfless, pretentious, lazy, and many other adjectives that contradict each other. Thus, a story depicting one or more of these human faces is real.
In addition, Peterson speaks of a story being real within his narrative. The New narration Testament, for example, only makes sense if Jesus is, in fact, the son of God and, simultaneously, God and if his mother is a virgin. So, within this story, that is, for it to work as a story and as an archetype, we need to accept these facts. It would be like reading the story of Sisyphus and saying, "How did Zeus become an eagle? That doesn't make sense! No one could turn into an eagle!"
I imagine Peterson's interest in biblical stories can be partly explained and well represented by what Joan Didion wrote in The White Album:
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. A man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. We look for sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the world of five. (...) We live fully (...) by the imposition of a narrative line upon nonsense images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our current experience.[2]
Although this conception of reality makes sense, it is clear that when we use the word in everyday life, we mean something else. Something "real" or "true" is something that happened, or exists physically. That's what Dawkins means when he claims a certain story is false. "Truth is what led us to the Moon," says the biologist, making clear what he means by his questions and statements.
É difícil imaginar que Peterson, de facto, não tenha entendido a pergunta reiterada de Dawkins. Talvez, por algum motivo, tenha algum receio de admitir que acredita na materialidade das histórias bíblicas, ou que não acredita nas histórias e lê a Bíblia como se lê Crime e Castigo ou mitologia grega.
O debate foi menos um debate convencional (foi realizado sem público ou tempo cronometrado para réplicas e tréplicas) e mais uma conversa, embora moderada. Sempre detestei o ímpeto de alguns, ao final de um debate, de determinar uma das partes como “vencedora”. Neste caso, porém, é óbvio quem ganhou o debate. O vencedor foi Alex O’Connor, o moderador. Foi o único que, claramente, entendeu na totalidade o que foi dito por ambos os debatedores.
Porto, 2024.
[1] Para uma tentativa de entender o que Peterson quer dizer exatamente com esta expressão, assista o debate de 2019 entre Peterson e Žižek. Žižek “lava a alma” de muitos (eu, evidentemente, me incluo nos “muitos”) ao expor o quão ridícula é a noção. Mais estúpido do que a ideia de “marxismo cultural”, em si, é achar que há algum tipo de “marxismo” no “marxismo cultural”.
[2] DIDION, J. (1968-78) p. 11.
This text was originally published by the Catholic Policy Society (CPS), defunct since 2025.