Oct 21, 2026 · 59 min · 12 segments
What happens when you stop learning about other religions from Christian apologists and actually read their sacred texts? In this episode of Intrinsically Ordered, I'm joined by River Ward…
One of my favorite quotes online or I should say one of my favorite clips online is of someone asking Jordan Peterson, do you believe in God? And he goes, well, it means what do you mean by do and what do you mean by you and what do you mean by believe and what do you mean by God? I love it for two reasons.
One, because I think the first questions of what do you mean by do and what do you mean by you are meaningless questions in a certain sense and speak to the sort of faux profundity of Peterson.
But then there's other two questions of what do you mean by believe and what do you mean by God? I find to be some of the most central questions that I ask on a day-to-day basis, as well as my online platform.
And so sort of what sparked this conversation is talking about what do people mean by God? What does it mean for something to be a religion versus a cult? I think maybe we can start with the most basic question, which is also the hardest question of comparative religion, which is what is a religion?
You know what? I just started reading a book that I really should have read a long time ago, which is The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, kind of a foundational religious anthropology text.
And I actually just highlighted there are many, many definitions for what religion is.
Houston Smith, my favorite author of religion, has a great definition as well, but this one, I think, just like perfectly sums it up, really, if I can read this.
William James writes, "'Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.'" To me, that that really captures it.
When I think of religion in the experience sense, not the institutionalized sense, and those are two very different, but of course, very connected things.
I think of this like deep personal relationship with whatever an individual might consider the divine and the practices that revolve around that relationship and those thoughts and feelings and perception of what the divine is.
I did a video last year with a Catholic YouTuber where he took me to every denomination's church in a weekend.
But yet the message, the cosmology, the tenor, the what these things mean of every denomination was so wildly different.
And I think the temptation when it comes to religion is to superimpose our own framework of what we understand the divine to be onto every single other religion that's out there.
What inspired you to sort of take an anthropological approach to these questions of religion and spend so much of your time asking questions about what everyone conceives to be the divine?
One of my favorite quotes online or I should say one of my favorite clips online is of someone asking Jordan Peterson, do you believe in God? And he goes, well, it means what do you mean by do and what do you mean by you and what do you mean by believe and what do you mean by God? I love it for two reasons.
One, because I think the first questions of what do you mean by do and what do you mean by you are meaningless questions in a certain sense and speak to the sort of faux profundity of Peterson.
But then there's other two questions of what do you mean by believe and what do you mean by God? I find to be some of the most central questions that I ask on a day-to-day basis, as well as my online platform.
And so sort of what sparked this conversation is talking about what do people mean by God? What does it mean for something to be a religion versus a cult? I think maybe we can start with the most basic question, which is also the hardest question of comparative religion, which is what is a religion?
You know what? I just started reading a book that I really should have read a long time ago, which is The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, kind of a foundational religious anthropology text.
And I actually just highlighted there are many, many definitions for what religion is.
Houston Smith, my favorite author of religion, has a great definition as well, but this one, I think, just like perfectly sums it up, really, if I can read this.
William James writes, "'Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.'" To me, that that really captures it.
When I think of religion in the experience sense, not the institutionalized sense, and those are two very different, but of course, very connected things.
I think of this like deep personal relationship with whatever an individual might consider the divine and the practices that revolve around that relationship and those thoughts and feelings and perception of what the divine is.
I did a video last year with a Catholic YouTuber where he took me to every denomination's church in a weekend.
But yet the message, the cosmology, the tenor, the what these things mean of every denomination was so wildly different.
And I think the temptation when it comes to religion is to superimpose our own framework of what we understand the divine to be onto every single other religion that's out there.
What inspired you to sort of take an anthropological approach to these questions of religion and spend so much of your time asking questions about what everyone conceives to be the divine?
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