When Peterson argues religion is a useful cultural memeplex, he is presumably arguing for all of (Western monotheistic) religion. This includes a great variety of beliefs, rituals, practices over space and time—I don’t think any of these have really stayed constant across the major branches of Judaism, Christianity and Islam over the last two thousand years. If we discard all these incidental, mutable characteristics, what is left as “religion”?
One possible answer (I have no idea if Peterson would agree): the structure of having shared community beliefs and rituals remains, but not the specific beliefs, or the specific (claimed) reasons for holding them; the distinctions of sacred vs. profane remains, and of priests vs. laymen, and of religious law vs. freedom of actions in other areas, but no specifics of what is sacred or what priests do; the idea of a single, omniscient, omnipotent God, but not that God’s attributes, other than being male; that God judges and rewards or punishes people, but no particulars of what is punished or rewarded, or what punishments or rewards might be.
ETA: it occurs to me that marriage-as-a-sacrament, patriarchy, and autocracy, have all been stable common features of these religions. I’m not sure if they should count as features of the religion, or of a bigger cultural package which has conserved these and other features.
Atheists reject the second part of the package, the one that’s about a God. But they (like everyone) still have the first part: shared beliefs and rituals and heresies, shared morals and ethics, sources of authority, etc. (As an example, people sometimes say that “Science” often functions as a religion for non-scientists; I think that’s what’s meant; Science-the-religion has priests and rituals and dogmas and is entangled with law and government, but it has no God and doesn’t really judge people.)
But that’s just what I generated when faced with this prompt. What does Peterson think is the common basis of “Western religion over the last two thousand years” that functions as a memeplex and ignores the incidentals that accrue like specific religious beliefs?
When Peterson argues religion is a useful cultural memeplex, he is presumably arguing for all of (Western monotheistic) religion. This includes a great variety of beliefs, rituals, practices over space and time—I don’t think any of these have really stayed constant across the major branches of Judaism, Christianity and Islam over the last two thousand years. If we discard all these incidental, mutable characteristics, what is left as “religion”?
One possible answer (I have no idea if Peterson would agree): the structure of having shared community beliefs and rituals remains, but not the specific beliefs, or the specific (claimed) reasons for holding them; the distinctions of sacred vs. profane remains, and of priests vs. laymen, and of religious law vs. freedom of actions in other areas, but no specifics of what is sacred or what priests do; the idea of a single, omniscient, omnipotent God, but not that God’s attributes, other than being male; that God judges and rewards or punishes people, but no particulars of what is punished or rewarded, or what punishments or rewards might be.
ETA: it occurs to me that marriage-as-a-sacrament, patriarchy, and autocracy, have all been stable common features of these religions. I’m not sure if they should count as features of the religion, or of a bigger cultural package which has conserved these and other features.
Atheists reject the second part of the package, the one that’s about a God. But they (like everyone) still have the first part: shared beliefs and rituals and heresies, shared morals and ethics, sources of authority, etc. (As an example, people sometimes say that “Science” often functions as a religion for non-scientists; I think that’s what’s meant; Science-the-religion has priests and rituals and dogmas and is entangled with law and government, but it has no God and doesn’t really judge people.)
But that’s just what I generated when faced with this prompt. What does Peterson think is the common basis of “Western religion over the last two thousand years” that functions as a memeplex and ignores the incidentals that accrue like specific religious beliefs?