Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief

by Jordan B. Peterson

When one gives up Christian belief [for example] one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality.... Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and comp/ete view of things. Jf one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequence left in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know what is good for hirn and what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows. Christian morality is a command: its origin is transcendental; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticize; it possesses truth only if God is truth-it stands or falls with the belief in God. Jf [modern Westemers] really do believe they know, of their own accord, "intuitively," what is good and evil; if they consequently think they no longer have need of Christianity as a guarantee of morality; that is merely the consequence of the ascendancy of Christian evaluation and an expression of the strength and depth of this ascendancy: so that the origin of [modern] morality has been forgotten, so that the highly conditional nature of its right to exist is no longer feltY If the presuppositions of a theory have been invalidated, argues Nietzsche, then the theory has been invalidated. But in this case the "theory" survives. The fundamental tenets of the Judeo-Christian moral tradition continue to govern every aspect of the actual individual behavior and basic values of the typical West...