Jordan Peterson, C.S. Lewis, and the “wishful thinking” objection
Regardless of the wishes of the atheist, or the theist, or the agnostic, in fact the God of the Bible either really does exist or the God of the Bible does not exist.
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October 7, 2021 Christopher Kaczor Essay, Features 16 Print
In 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson writes,
I had outgrown the shallow Christianity of my youth by the time I could understand the fundamentals of Darwinian theory. After that, I could not distinguish the basic elements of Christian belief from wishful thinking.
In a recent podcast, he expresses a similar worry, “there seems to be something too convenient about C.S. Lewis, his insistence that [the perfection of Christ] also had to manifest itself concretely in reality at one point in history.”
Is Christian belief a case of wishful thinking? Is it too good to be true, a convenient creed that should be rejected because it is too convenient?
C.S. Lewis provides some insights relevant for these questions, “I didn’t go to religion to make me ‘happy.’ I always knew a bottle of Port could do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend …