Jordan Peterson interview: ‘We are weak in the West compared to the Islamic fundamentalists’

From The Telegraph

With his new book, the Canadian academic turns to the Old Testament to explain the necessity of faith to a fallen generation

With this book, Peterson will cement himself as chief theologist to the “cultural conservatives”, a movement spooked by Western decline. Having largely abandoned faith in God, our civilisation appears left with two alternatives: the “hedonistic chaos” of liberalism vs “Islamic fundamentalist suprematism,” which is “not looking so promising either”, though it might conquer us in the end. “We are weak in the West compared to the Islamic fundamentalists.”

So, thinkers are returning to the Bible to rediscover what Peterson describes in We Who Wrestle as “the library of stories on which the most productive, freest, and most stable and peaceful societies the world has ever known are predicated.” Even Richard Dawkins, the atheist geneticist, uses the cultural Christian label – though Peterson calls it naive to think you can have a Christian culture without a foundational belief in God.

“That’s kind of like the idea that you go into Iraq and you take out the dictator and all the freedom loving people turn into a democracy.” The God gap is always filled with bad things, and since it opened up, “We’re not really creating our own values like Nietzsche thought, and we’re certainly not turning into Newtons, we’re degenerating into a fractious immaturity.”

The top comment and reply are pertinent. And rare that the Telegraph allows us plebs to comment on anything even mildly contentious these days. 

• The people in power need to understand that Islam is a political movement, with political aims that are often contrary to our western traditions. Giving Islam immunity from criticism through the Equality Act and other ‘hate’ legislation might not be a problem if there was a handful of its activists in the country but there are millions and the proportion is growing. We are signing our own death warrant.
• They do. Islam means submission. That’s what they want. Total submission. Christianity is about liberation- they don’t want that.