Best of The Point: Jordan Peterson Tells Dawkins “I Told You So!”

It is typically entertaining when two popular intellectuals get into a public spat. Recently, Canadian psychologist and YouTube star Jordan Peterson called out the famous British biologist Richard Dawkins with an “I told you so!”  

After Dawkins complained on Twitter about New Zealand elevating traditional Maori stories to the same level as Western science, Peterson retorted, “Welcome to the world of post-humanism, sir. A world which you sadly helped birth. … [I]t wouldn’t surprise me at all if the woke polytheistic neopaganists destroy science faster than they destroy Christianity.”  

On one hand, Dawkins is right that the whole genius of “Western” science is that it isn’t just Western. But, as Peterson not so gently noted, Dawkins has spent his career tearing down the religious foundations upon which Western science is built. Without God and all that His existence implies, there is no solid ground for saying that any knowledge, scientific or otherwise, is true for everyone. 

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This Point was originally published on July 12, 2023.