Lately I have been investigating the work of Jordan Peterson which I have found to be of great value. Indeed, I have to admit that I am being persuaded but trying to keep a critical mind and balance between doubt and belief.
I thought this is a strong argument for a more sophisticated understanding of the function of religion that would be quite fun to throw to the LessWrong community for an attempt to dismantle ;)
You can find his lectures online on YouTube. The 'Maps of Meaning' series is a fairly detailed exposition of the concepts. For a quick taste you can watch the Joe Rogan podcast with him (they talk a bit of religion in the last hour or so) though in this kind of format you inevitably only get a sketch.
Have fun!
Jordan Peterson seems to work within a "meta-narrative" view of the universe, where everything follows a grand plan, but the major difference he has with other "meta-narrative" philosophers is that this grand narrative is what he terms as "Darwinian." You will find that this "Darwinian" conception of the world to be completely at odds with the optimization view of evolution which is articulated very well in almost all of the evolutionary biology literature. Almost everything he bases his philosophy on seems to be based on a catastrophic (though quite common) misunderstanding of Darwinian evolution - essentially the view that things evolve according to some master plan where everything is constantly improving or moving according to the whims of some evolution fairy. Because he takes an extreme pragmatist view of "truth", the "truth" has to square with the results of evolution - but this can only work if his understanding of evolution were correct. But given that it's a gross mischaracterization, it's fairly easy to see that his particular pragmatist view of truth cannot be correct, or else we would be given numerous examples of conflicting "truths." For example, one biological adaptation could be useful for survival in one environment and totally useless or even deadly in another. Or, it could be useful for survival in the current situation, but ultimately lead the species to its extinction in the long run. In my mind this totally erases all possibility for a Darwinian meta-narrative.
Jordan Peterson is an excellent speaker and quite interesting to listen to, mostly due to his almost encyclopedic knowledge of mythology and literature. But this makes him an expert of mythology and literature, but I would hesitate to extend his qualities beyond that. I think his popularity is basically due to a few factors, namely, that he possesses some charisma, he fights against identity politics (but doesn't seem to be far-right in any sense), and his "hero archetype" serves to amplify his perceived qualities in a way (because, as a somewhat theatrical person, he appears to try and emulate that archetype).
I do not see how a directional "meta-narrative" or master plan is needed for an understanding of Peterson's view. What he is saying is that our mythology preceded rationality and its qualities reflect behavioural patterns and attitudes that allowed adaptation, survival and growth. Morality, for example, did not emerge through rationality but through acting out patterns of behaviours and experiencing the results according to the underlying qualities of nature. The patterns that produced beneficial results were encoded into stories, rituals, myths ... (read more)