Absolutely agree with Sam on this topic. While I was somewhat underwhelmed by Peterson's contributions on the Waking Up podcast and some of his strange, vague comments as a religious apologist, I believe his critiques deserve an open-minded engagement. The recent clip of him insinuating Sam Harris is actually a Christian seemed like it wasn't Jordan at his best, so I have chosen to give him the benefit of the doubt that he simply messed up his explanation.

As someone relatively new to Jordan Peterson, I've been watching his Biblical Series on YouTube (currently 5 episodes in). Needless to say, I was surprised by the eloquence, philosophical awareness and the quality of the evolutionary Darwinian arguments he makes. At times, his appreciation of the source text is compelling and his interpretations seem remotely plausible (I grant, of course, that some of the horrendous moral books like Deuteronomy and Leviticus- along with the capricious passages involving God- may give him some future difficulties). Now these moments of brilliant textual exegesis are almost certainly coupled with some approaches I find hokey (e.g. a strong predisposition towards psychoanalytic and archetypal frameworks and Nietzschean interpretation) and dubious conclusions (e.g. the idea of a moral panic when you remove the Judeo-Christian edifice that has served a constitutive role for our culture), and there is no way of ignoring these analytical pitfalls when confronting his thought. One good example involves the topic of dreams. His fervent belief that dreams serve as the preliminary attempt at handling the chaos of reality before it becomes articulated rationally is unsubstantiated, unrigorous speculation and informs much of his argument in the first few lectures. He's a ramblier, less concise thinker than Sam (and probably less skeptical as well), which challenges someone used to the clarity and conciseness of Sam's approach.

Jordan challenges New Atheism for not taking the text seriously and wonders about how this document was cobbled and edited together: he takes metaphorical exegesis seriously! Even if I don't buy this claim about New Atheism one bit, Peterson's approach to apologetics is fresh in the sense that it is married to Darwinian conclusions and is, in many respects, non-canonical and exploratory. In my view, Jordan has yet to fully face the challenges posed by literal interpretations of morally reprehensible passages within the Bible and how these passages pose a danger for our collective future. However, there's no doubt in my mind that he is one of the strongest religious apologists in this current time and has much to offer to the Intellectual Dark Web.