‘You’re really nothing’: Jordan Peterson roasted in debate against 20 atheists
Controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson has been mocked for bizarre performance in a debate against 20 atheists.
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Controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson has been mocked for bizarre performance in a debate against 20 atheists.
The Canadian author and commentator, 62, appeared on popular YouTube channel Jubilee’s Surrounded series on Monday, which pits one person against 20 audience members who take turns grilling the guest in a rapid-fire debate format.
Dr Peterson — who rose to prominence on the right speaking out on issues including free speech, transgendersim, feminism, religion and Covid — sat down to field questions on topics including Christian morality and Biblical teaching.
But the once-famed debater raised eyebrows online for a number of awkward exchanges during the 90-minute video — including at one point refusing to answer whether he was a Christian.
The Jubilee episode was initially billed as “1 Christian vs 20 Atheists”, before the title was changed to “Jordan Peterson vs 20 Atheists” several hours after it was published.
“You’re a Christian,” one debater named Danny stated, after questioning Dr Peterson on Catholic teaching.
“You say that, I haven’t claimed that,” Dr Peterson said.
“What is this, is this Christians versus atheists?” Danny said.
“I don’t know,” Dr Peterson replied.
“You don’t know where you are right now,” Danny said.
“Don’t be a smartass,” Dr Peterson warned.
“Either you’re a Christian or you’re not, which one is it?” Danny asked.
“I could be either of them but I don’t have to tell you,” Dr Peterson said.
Danny said he was “under the impression I was invited to talk to a Christian”.
“Am I not talking to a Christian?” he asked. “I think everyone should look at the title of the YouTube channel. You’re probably in the wrong YouTube channel.”
Dr Peterson replied, “You’re really quite something, you are.”
Prompting Danny to hit back, “Aren’t I? But you’re really quite nothing.”
“OK I’m done with him,” Dr Peterson said.
In other exchanges, a scowling Dr Peterson appeared to get bogged down sparring with audience members on basic definitions of words.
“Do you believe in the all knowing, all powerful, all good notion of God?” Parker asked.
“What do you mean by believe?” Dr Peterson said.
“You think it to be true,” the questioner said.
“That’s the circular definition … if you believe something you stake your life on it.”
Dr Peterson then refused to answer the hypothetical question of whether he would lie to save his life or someone else’s.
“If you were in Nazi Germany and there’s Jewish people in your attic, would you lie to the Nazis?” Parker asked.
“I would have done everything I bloody well could so I wouldn’t be in that situation to begin with,” Dr Peterson said. “It’s a hypothetical. I can’t answer a hypothetical like that. Don’t play games.”
Clips from the debate quickly went viral on social media, with critics on the left and right roundly mocking Dr Peterson’s performance.
“Jordan Peterson, apparently, is very bad at debating,” one wrote.
“One reason Jordan Peterson is so poor at reasoning is he’s surrounded by sycophants who don’t give him feedback on his extremely flawed arguments,” another said. “Here’s what happens when he tests his ideas against someone who isn’t in his close circle of salad brained pseudointellectuals.”
YouTuber David Pakman said, “Jordan Peterson’s completely humiliating and failed attempt to debate 30 random atheists is a great reminder that he’s really not worth paying attention to. Posited nothing of interest or meaning and simply played semantics games every time he was outmatched, which was often.”
One conservative Christian account wrote, “An atheist keeps on asking Jordan Peterson what makes someone a Christian, repeatedly, and he has no idea. It’s not enough that he’s managed to unite Christians and atheists in being extremely frustrated by his refusal to answer simple and straightforward questions, but he can’t even accurately represent the Christian side, even if he disagrees with it.”
Another said Dr Peterson “can’t even debate children anymore”. “Never seen someone fall off this hard,” he wrote.
Dr Peterson has in the past described himself as a Christian but at other times has declined to discuss his faith in detail.
His wife, Tammy Peterson, converted to Catholicism in 2024 following a cancer battle.
After a rapid rise to fame in 2016 and the worldwide success of his 2018 book 12 Rules for Life, the Canadian psychology professor abruptly disappeared from public life.
His daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, revealed in 2019 that her father had been checked into rehab after struggling with benzodiazepine addiction, which saw him spend eight days in a medically induced coma in a Russian treatment centre.
Dr Peterson joined conservative US media outlet The Daily Wire in 2022.
Late last year he announced that he had fled Canada for the US, claiming that impending hate speech legislation, bill C-63, threatened to turn the country into a “totalitarian hellhole”.
Speaking on his daughter’s podcast, Dr Peterson said an ongoing feud with the College of Psychologists of Ontario had also prompted the move.
“The issue with the College of Psychologists is very annoying, to say the least, and the new legislation that the liberals are attempting to push through, Bill C-63, we’d all be living in a totalitarian hellhole if it passes,” Dr Peterson said.
Bill C-63, known as the Online Harms Act, was aimed at targeting hate speech and holding social media services accountable for reducing the amount of harmful content on their platforms.
The bill garnered backlash among several free speech groups who claimed it would lead to online speech suppression and surveillance.
The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association claimed the bill had the potential to lead to wrongful convictions, while other opponents claimed a complaint could be filed over just the “fear” that someone may commit a hate crime.
The Canadian government announced in December that it was splitting the bill into two separate pieces of legislation to leave out the free speech implications while also ensuring the child protection aspects of the bill.
Meanwhile, Dr Peterson remains in contention with the College of Psychologists of Ontario, which threatened to pull his practising license if he doesn’t complete a social media re-education training course.
Dr Peterson had challenged the order, but Canada’s Supreme Court dismissed his appeal against the college’s decision in August.
After starting his career at Harvard University, Dr Peterson returned to his native Canada to take up a position as a professor at the University of Toronto in 1998.
In addition to teaching students, conducting academic research and maintaining a clinical practice seeing patients, Dr Peterson first began to make media appearances in the early 2000s as an expert guest on TV shows.
He started a YouTube channel in 2013 to upload lectures and interview appearances — but it wasn’t until late 2016 that he shot to global fame after posting a series of videos criticising a proposed Canadian law, Bill C-16 — which made it illegal to refuse to refer to a transgender person by their preferred “gender pronoun”.
His videos quickly went viral, coming just months before the 2016 US election of Donald Trump at a time when the global culture wars were going into overdrive.
Dr Peterson, who describes himself as a “classic British liberal” rather than a conservative, argued that it was an issue of free speech and that the mandatory pronoun law amounted to “compelled speech”.
Rapidly gaining notoriety and amassing fans, he began posting more prolifically on YouTube and social media.
To date, his YouTube lectures and videos have amassed hundreds of millions of views, while his appearances on popular podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience have drawn huge audiences.
— with NY Post
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Originally published as ‘You’re really nothing’: Jordan Peterson roasted in debate against 20 atheists
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