The God Debate

By Leo Gura - June 1, 2018

Here’s an interesting debate between Jordan Peterson (theist) vs Matt Dillahunty (atheist). I usually don’t like listening to debates because the truth of the matter never comes to light, but this one was about as good as debates get on this thorny topic. Of course the truth still didn’t come out. Not even close. Both sides fundamentally misunderstand what God is. In fact, neither side actually defined what God is in nearly 2 hours of talking! Rather absurd. But still eye-opening to watch just to see the epistemic mistakes being made. Interestingly, although Matt Dillahunty seems to make more sense and be more “reasonable”, Peterson is closer to the truth, although still wrong in many ways.

The problem is that neither man has actually become conscious of God, so both are speaking about a topic they have virtually no experience with. Peterson has come close, but not deep enough to really understand what God is, why it is, and what the ramifications are. Neither of them take seriously the possibility of direct consciousness of God. Peterson comes close (he mentions mystical experiences and psilocybin), but still too indirect about it. The whole debate is beating around the bush.

So I decided to do a little analysis of where each man goes wrong and where each man is right. Not to ridicule or judge them, but to help onlookers get some real traction on this God issue. Otherwise the debate is a total waste of time. You will listen to it, but you won’t actually make any progress towards understanding God, or the numerous subtle mistakes the mind makes when thinking about God. So watch the debate, and then read this analysis.

Where Matt Dillahunty is wrong:

God = Reality. You are misunderstanding what the word “God” is pointing to. God is not a bearded man in the clouds.
God is not a belief or concept, God is consciousness. Consciousness is infinite and formless so you cannot grasp it with mind or language or science.
God is empirical, but because God is Nothingness AND equivalent to reality itself, it is devoid of attributes and IS reality itself! So the “proof” you seek is your own existence.
Don’t confuse “God is Nothingness” with “God does not exist”, as if it’s a validation of atheism. Nothingness exists. Atheism is wrong.
Atheism is a religion. It’s a secular, rational ideology. So by going from fundamentalist Christian to atheist, you merely changed the content of your religion.
God is: consciousness, existence, Being, Nothingness, Absolute Infinity, YOU!, infinite intelligence, infinite power, eternal, omnipresent
God is not rational and cannot be “made sense of” because reality is an infinite strange loop.
You can become directly conscious of God.
God cannot be “proven” objectively because reality is subjective. In the same way that you cannot prove that you exist without appeal to subjectivity. Subjectivity is not a bad word, it is not a mistake. It’s fundamental to reality. There is no reality beyond subjectivity.
Mankind has understood what consciousness is and what God is, very clearly, for over 5000 years. The problem is that the mind cannot grasp it.
Science cannot be done without language. And language cannot grasp being because it is a 2nd order thing, therefore language cannot grasp God.
You’ve turned skepticism into a dogma, falling into the very same trap from which you think you’ve escaped when you left fundamentalist Christian religion.
What you believe morally is largely irrelevant, what matters is your level of consciousness. The reason you can be an atheist and not kill people is because you’re at Spiral Dynamics stage Orange consciousness. Creating a moral humanist code is irrelevant. Consciousness is the overriding factor. If you give a humanist moral code to stage Red or Blue consciousness, they will not follow it. Humanism is only possible at stage Orange or above.
Study Spiral Dynamics and realize that you are stuck in classic stage Orange consciousness. Rationalism stuck inside itself.
True spirituality isn’t static like fundamentalist religion. True spirituality is free of dogma, free of beliefs — even moreso than skepticism. Skepticism taken to its ultimate conclusion becomes spirituality and reveals God. But you’re not seeing that because you’re not being skeptical enough! Skepticism goes full-circle, but you gotta take it MUCH deeper. Start doubting whether objective reality exists.
Let go of atheism, skepticism, rationalism, science, and your judgments about mysticism. It’s okay. You’ll be much better off. Your consciousness will skyrocket.
There are not multiple gods, there is only one God, because it is Absolute Infinity, so nothing can be outside it.
There are higher levels of consciousness which you have never accessed which will recontextual what you call “physical reality”.
Consciousness is not a product of the brain, the brain is a creation within consciousness.
The brain does not exist. It is a hallucination within consciousness. Consciousness exists without need of brains.
You misunderstand psychedelic experiences because you are interpreting them within the materialist paradigm. That is, you assumes an objective external reality exists.
Your use of skepticism (as Peterson quite brilliantly points out) is incomplete. You are not being skeptical enough about rationality, skepticism, materialism, and pragmatism.
We are not physical creatures in a physical reality (explicit axiom made by Dillahunty) which is demonstrably false.
Conflation of Spiral Dynamics stage Purple & Blue religion with stage Turquoise mysticism. Fundamentalist Christianity is being confused with mysticism and nonduality.
Misunderstanding of the origin of religion.
Consciousness is NOT a biological phenomena.
You should be much more skeptical about the boundaries your mind draws between objects. They have no objective reality.
Science has never proven the existence of an objective external world. All scientific measurements are relative to the instrument used, and relative to your consciousness.
You should be much more skeptical about science and the materialist paradigm.
There is no acknowledgment that atheist/skepticism/rationalism constitute a paradigm — one paradigm out of infinitely many.
Lack of experience with psychedelics. A few LSD trips is NOT going to cut it, especially for a hardcore rationalist/skeptic like you because you’re framing everything in the context of “physical universe, physical brain”. The point of psychedelics is to use them to help you to undermine this materialist context.
Misunderstanding of mystical experience. You describe your own mystical experience, but I would not call that a mystical experience at all. That’s like a drop in the ocean. You need to go much deeper. A mystical experience is not merely “some nice feeling one gets in a passionate church congregation”. There are many depths of mystical experience, and what you described is weak-sauce. Not even 1% depth.
Lack of understanding that reality/truth cannot be symbolized or captured via language or concepts.
Reality absolutely cannot be described with a set of true/false proposition (as Dillahunty claims). This is what the Logical Positivists tried to do in the early 1920’s and their efforts were completely shattered by Quine, quantum mechanics, Godel’s incompleteness theorem, post-modernism, chaos theory, and developments within philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and epistemology. Wittgenstein tried to do what Dillahunty claims, and latter in his life he admitted it was an untenable and naive idea. Peterson was correct in asking Dillahunty, “Are you sure you want to go there?” Dillahunty shows a lack of familiarity with the last 100 years of philosophy of science & epistemology.
Reality is not causal. Cause and effect do not hold at higher levels of consciousness.
Science is as much a hallucination as the strawberry he hallucinated on LSD.
The point of psychedelics is not that you believe the hallucinations, but that you realize that EVERYTHING is a hallucination, including you sitting there right now.
Sam Harris is wrong about God. He is not awake. Please stop citing him as an authority.
Death is a conceptual hallucination. Be more skeptical about birth and death.
There is no meaning or value to survival. Survival and life is not better than death. Peterson did a great job of pushing Dillahunty on this point. Peterson was right.
The purpose of life is not survival. Life has no purpose. Survival or self-preservation is completely irrational and one should be very skeptical about the mind’s desire for self-preservation. You cannot understand Truth so long as you are attached to self-preservation and survival.
Pragmatism isn’t a feature, it’s a bug.
There is no such thing as reality without consciousness.
Matt Dillahunty is God. The problem is that your present level of consciousness keeps your stuck within the ego-mind.
Mystical experiences are not “merely subjective” — they are not “experiences” at all. They are Absolute consciousness.
Science and skepticism are hallucinations within a dream. It is possible to awaken from them.
Dude, you need some 5-MeO-DMT up your ass
Religion is NOT about morality, or society, or feeling better, or belief — religion is about METAPHYSICS.
How do you know that you exist? You should be much more skeptical about this. Try to prove that you exist and see what happens.
Evolution is not in contradiction with God. God is infinitely evolving.
The distinction between “natural” and “supernatural” is completely arbitrary and bogus. Everything is natural. Everything is supernatural. Your very existence is supernatural. You’re just used to it, so you call it “physical” or “natural”.
Likewise, the distinction between “physical” and “spiritual” is pure nonsense. Everything is spiritual. Everything is consciousness. Consciousness renders physicality in the same way that a movie screen renders a concrete wall or a video game renders a solid floor. Solidity and physicality are not features of reality, they are a relationship between apparent objects within consciousness.
“Mystical” isn’t a bad thing, it’s a good thing. Reality is fundamentally mystical. Quantifying and modeling reality, as science likes to do, does not remove its mysticism. It just makes you take it for granted. Everything is in fact mystical if you bother to examine it closely.
You need to study more serious nondual teachings like: Zen, Buddhism, Tantra, Kriya yoga, Sufism, Christian mysticism, etc.
All religion is based on truth, the problem is, the Truth is so radical the ego-mind cannot bear it, so it quickly corrupts it into silly myths, beliefs, rituals, customs, and dogmas. These days, after thousands of years, most religious teachings are bullshit, but they were originally based on Absolute Truth.
Metaphysics comes prior to science or physics, such that if your metaphysics is wrong (and it is) then your science and physics will never unravel the essence of existence, and your science will be crippled until you go back and get your metaphysics right.
Science has never proven the existence of: 1) an external objective world, 2) the self, 3) boundaries between objects, 4) the universal validity of reason. So why aren’t you skeptical about all those?

Where Matt Dillahunty is right:

Fundamentalist Christians are nutcases and you were right to leave that tradition.
You are a legit atheist. Peterson should take your word for it.
Atheists don’t have to be immoral murders and thieves. As long as an atheist is sufficiently conscious, he will not be too selfish/evil.
Skepticism is a good impulse. (But it must be taken all the way, which you are not doing.)
Survival and pragmatism runs the show. (But there is something beyond survival and pragmatism, which you are not yet aware of.)
Humanism is good. It’s better than what came before it. (But mysticism is even better!)
Throwing Sam Harris off the stage is a good intuition

Where Jordan Peterson is wrong:

Morality is a human invention. Evil does not exist. Bad does not exist. Meaning does not exist. Value does not exist. (This is Peterson’s biggest mistake. These assumptions corrupt his entire understanding).
Morality comes from consciousness.
Religion is not about meaning, goodness, morality, creating a sane society, or psychology — religion is about METAPHYSICS.
Dillahunty is a true atheist. It is silly to deny Dillahunty’s atheism.
The evils of Marxism have little to do with atheism. Evil comes from lack of consciousness or selfishness, NOT atheism. Lack of consciousness and selfishness is independent of one’s religious beliefs. A religious person can be just a “evil” (selfish) as an atheist.
God is infinite degrees of freedom. Infinite freedom means infinite “evil”, it’s inevitable, so stop resisting it. Marxism was necessary. Post-modernism was necessary.
Society will not fall part without religion. Stop worrying about society devolving into chaos. There is a greater intelligence at work. So relax.
Please study Spiral Dynamics. You are resisting aspects of stage Green, which is holding you back.
The Marxism and Stalinism of the 20th century was Spiral Dynamics stage Blue, not Green! You feel threatened by the dangers of excessive Green, but Green is not that dangerous. What you should really worry about (if you want to worry) are the excesses of stage Blue. The Nazi’s, Marxists, and Stalinist’s of the 20th century which lead to tens of millions of deaths were not modern SJWs, they were stage Blue. Stage Blue, in excess, leads to authoritarian states (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Roman Empire, British Empire, etc.). Modern soy-drinking SJWs are not going to form an authoritarian state. So you don’t have to defend against this with God.
God and the devil are the same thing. God is the devil because call is everything. So God loves both good and evil equally, which in effect converts all evil into good. In God’s eyes, there is no such thing as evil. Evil is a selfish, egoic reaction against things in the world which would threaten your survival.
It is possible to be a moral atheist. It is possible to a “good”, humane atheist. Atheism does not mean you will be a murderer.
BEING is far superior to meaning. Drop your attachment and clinging to meaning, goodness, and value. Goodness is the natural state of BEING once the concept of “bad” is eradicated.
Nihilism isn’t a bad thing, it must be fully embraced until it goes full-circle into divinity.
True morality comes from a complete surrender of ego and mind, such that there is nothing left to defend. No intellectual positions.
Too much conceptualizing, too much academic literature have created a wall between you and God.
If you want to really follow in the footsteps of Jesus, surrender all judgment. Especially all intellectual, academic judgment.
You are still taking intellectual positions, when you need to start surrendering them to move closer to God.
You are still in reaction against elements of Spiral Dynamics stage Green and stage Orange. Green must be surrendered to, not criticized.
Jordan Peterson is God. The problem is that your present level of consciousness keeps you stuck within ego-mind.
Dude, stop playing the academic game. You need: meditation, yoga, self-inquiry, 5-MeO-DMT. You are very close to grasping God, but you first need to stop waging all these intellectual wars. Stop reading books. Stop arguing.
God is not a psychological issue, God is a metaphysical issue. You cannot get to God through psychology, or philosophy, or literature.
Study more serious nondual teachings. What you’re really after isn’t Christianity or religion, you’re after Nonduality, Awakening, Enlightenment. It’s very difficult to get enlightened by studying Christian books. Christian books tend to be very corrupt, confusing, and misleading. Turn to more pure sources, then you can return to Christianity and fully understand it. The corruption is very easy to filter out once you’ve awoken a few times.
Let go of morality, good/evil, right/wrong, Christianity, academia, and judgment about post-modernism. It’s okay. You’ll be much better off. Your consciousness will skyrocket.
There is a palpable bitterness & anger which sours your message. Try doing some shadow work on it, or yoga, or psychedelics. Jesus’ most important demonstration was embodiment of love. Your work would benefit enormously if your tone was more loving, less hostile, less aggrieved, less serious.
Don’t take your worldview so seriously. It’s all ultimately conceptual and meaningless. But you are on the right track and closer to awakening than Matt Dillahunty.
Watch out, your work is sometimes being used to empower Spiral Dynamics stage Blue people, which could create the very authoritarianism which you worry about.
Religion is not about metaphor or myth, it is about METAPHYSICS. The reason religions all around the world use metaphor and myth is because BEING/Truth/Absolute/Nothingness/Infinity cannot be symbolized. Mystical experiences are “direct”, which means nothing about them can be said. Truth is prior to language. Thus metaphors and myths are employed.

Where Jordan Peterson is right:

God exists, and this is no mere belief or speculation.
Without consciousness, there is no reality or objective world.
Consciousness is deeply mysterious, irreducibly so. Consciousness is fundamental.
Consciousness is not localized to the head or brain. The entire universe is consciousness.
Science does not have an account of consciousness, not even close, not even partially, not even in theory.
Atheists make many groundless assumptions about reality and take many axioms on faith. Atheism itself is an act of faith. Reason is an act of faith. There is no reason why you should trust reason. In fact, there are many reason why you should distrust reason. Reason is weaponized by the ego-mind to for the purpose of self-preservation. Reason doesn’t care about truth.
The world cannot be boiled down to a set of true/false propositions (as Matt Dillahunty claims).
Psilocybin is the real deal and psychedelics should be taken seriously. (Try some 5-MeO for an even realer deal
Mystical experiences are to be taken seriously. They are far more than just “experiences”.
Sam Harris is wrong.
It is not obvious that killing oneself is such a bad thing.
Self-preservation is unreasonable. There is no reason to live a good life or to be moral.
It is true that God is etched into the heart of every atheist, because every atheist IS in fact God! He just doesn’t realize it yet.
Skepticism must be taken all the way. Nothing is self-evident to the true skeptic.
Rationality is a tool of the ego, and will often produce evil.
Those left-brain vs right-brain studies are legit and important. The left-brain is involved in symbolic, linear thinking whereas the right-brain is involved in non-symbolic, intuitive, non-linear thinking. The left-brain must become subordinate to the right-brain if one wishes to discover the ultimate existential truths about life. The left-brain serves the ego, so anything it says regarding truth must be suspect.

If I was participating in this debate, the first words out of my mouth would be: “Everything in this debate room is God. You are God! God is Nothing and Everything. God is not a bearded man in the sky, God is consciousness. It is possible to become conscious of what consciousness is. Religion is not a matter of belief or old Bible stories. The origin of religion is the direct consciousness of consciousness.” Okay, now we can have a productive conversation. Without such a frame, the discussion will devolve into vague intellectual abstractions, as it did.

Click Here to see ALL of Leo's juicy insights.