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What is God, Psychologically? — According to Jordan Peterson
Why God is More Than Just “A Man in the Clouds”
When most people hear the word “god” they think about something like a deity, meaning a supernatural “man in the clouds”. However, the idea of God is a lot more complicated than simply a man in the clouds (and I did a podcast episode with Stoic author Kai Whiting on this topic). God can mean just a plethora of different things and we’re very ignorant to consider it only as a deity.
How Jordan Peterson Defines God
Dr. Jordan Peterson perhaps put this best. He’s a well-known clinical psychologist, after all, and we’re looking at this from a psychological standpoint. His idea is that god is whatever the highest good for you is. It’s an ideal, essentially. If you can imagine what the perfect person would be, and then you define what qualities they have that make them perfect, you’d have something like a god.
“I act as if God exists and I am terrified that He might.”
Jordan B. Peterson
God in Stoicism
Psychologically, god is whatever is at the top of your hierarchy of values, and for the Stoic, it’s accepting your fate, not fearing death, and living by the cardinal virtues — in one word…
