Jordan Peterson’s reflections on Twitter on reading Steve Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis

Readers will recall the well-known Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson

On The Return of the God Hypothesis he has tweeted,

Reading Stephen C. Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis. It’s a difficult book, well-written, densely informative. He claims (p. 211) “without functional criteria to guide a search through the vast space of possible sequences, random variation is probabilistically doomed.“

Reading Stephen C. Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis. It’s a difficult book, well-written, densely informative. He claims (p. 211) “without functional criteria to guide a search through the vast space of possible sequences, random variation is probabilistically doomed.

Is this an accurate claim? He makes the case very carefully. It’s not often that I encounter a book that contains so much that I did not know….

Which neo-Darwinists effectively address critiques of neo-Darwinism’s putative inability to deal with the problem of combinatorial explosion with regard to protein folding (to say nothing of DNA mutation)

I lack the capacity to substantively critique Meyer’s claims. What about the fact, however, that micro-evolution at least is often observed? Take Covid variants as a painfully evident example. Is that not a consequence of random variation and natural selection?

But those assumptions add immense complexity to what was once a theory typified by its elegance. If you have to posit whole universes to maintain the credibility of your assumptions is that not a problem?

The responses under the tweets are most interesting.

But now …

Jordan, if you believe Meyer is right or even partways right or is making a good case, stand your ground. You have already faced some of the most incomprehensibly vicious mobs that Cancel Culture has spewed and you are still standing. Follow the evidence, not the crybullies. You, of all people, can afford to and it would do immense good.

You may also wish to read:

O’Leary for News’s profile and review of Peterson and his 2018 book Twelve Rules for Life: Do the stitches hold?

and

In Big Tech World: the journalist as censor, hit man, and snitch. Glenn Greenwald looks at a disturbing trend in media toward misrepresentation as well as censorship — on the campaign to take him down.

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