Jordan Peterson is famously cagey when asked if he believes in God, and his responses can be annoying. But the more I think about the question, the more I understand where he’s coming from. <\/p>\n
For example — Let’s say someone claims to believe in materialism. That’s what he’ll say if you ask him. That’s the way he believes that he thinks. But he also believes a lot of other things that are inconsistent with materialism, and he acts consistent with those other beliefs. <\/p>\n
Does he really believe in materialism? You could say he does or you could say he doesn’t. Its not a straight-forward question. <\/p>\n
I’m sure all of us have been in situations where we say something radical, and someone (maybe your mother) says “You don’t really believe that!” And … maybe you really don’t. <\/p>\n
In other words, there may be a disconnect between what we tell ourselves and what we actually believe. In fact, it seems very likely that there is. We create all these deceptive self-images to flatter our egos. But it’s not who we are in a pinch. <\/p>\n
What we say we believe — and what we tell ourselves we believe — might not be the same as what we actually believe. <\/p>\n
I’m not suggesting that we always question ourselves about everything, so that if someone asks, “Do you believe in ghosts?” you have to say, “I don’t think I do.” <\/p>\n
But there may be certain beliefs that are so deeply wired in our minds that we still believe them despite protestations to the contrary. For example, the sophomore may insist he doesn’t believe in other minds, but … he really does. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jordan Peterson is famously cagey when asked if he believes in God, and his responses can be annoying. But the more I think about the question, the more I understand where he’s coming from. For example — Let’s say someone claims to believe in materialism. That’s what he’ll say if you ask him. That’s the … Continue reading “Do we know what we believe?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1973"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1975,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973\/revisions\/1975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}