This was going to be a comment but it kept going and going, so it gets its own blog post.
Groundwork: I want to be clear that I'm not hatin' on @Xoic or the video's creator. I think ideas are good, period. People should have more ideas and think more in general, and both Xoic and the creator are very smart people who have lots of ideas. That said, I wholly disagree with the video.
The video in question: . Good for context.
Problem 1: You cannot take Jesus out of the Church.
Sorry Jehova's, but there is no virginal scripture. The essayist suggests people not learn from organized religion, but mysticism/spirituality derived from source texts. It's a Martin Luther appeal. However, books like the various bibles and koran have only proliferated and lasted generations due to organization. The best that essayist can say is for people not to look to recent organized religion.
Problem 2: Paraphrase: "Meaning requires religion, and lack of meaning makes people abuse substances and seek shallow pleasures, therefore a lack of religion is an illness to the individual."
That's a hard beg. "Meaning requires religion" is the lynch pin of the entire argument, and it's scrawny. Meaning can be something as universal as trying to improve health. Health is a real thing; you don't have to adopt any religion to recognize it and there is nothing supernatural about it. Meaning requires only requires its observation and a personal sense of agency. That will involve philosophy, yes, but certainly does not require the religion aspect of philosophy. Matter matters, we perceive matter, and we already have emotions (short and long-term) hard-coded into us to know what materials and matters mean to us.
My thoughts:
Humanity into its nihilistic adolescent stage. It isn't just religion people don't believe in anymore, everything else has been torn to shreds. We're taught to dismiss a good chunk of our history, our ancestors, our parents, our nations, to accuse entire sexes of transgression—of course it's hard to find meaning! Everything is bad, unworthy. The only thing that is sacred anymore is groups (they are liquid, you can retroactively join and remove members), which is why everyone tries to join one kind of category or other.
Jesus is the training wheels. He's perfect and he's dead. Dead people stay perfect. You strive to be like Jesus and perfect, but of course never attain it. The human psyche has to learn that a person's failings don't limit his successes, that you can strive strictly for someone's positive qualities. Humanity has to outgrow Jesus (and the other analogues) and find ironclad meaning by accepting the imperfection of self and heroes while still working to reduce said imperfection.
True strength comes not when your idol can't be torn down, but when you have the constitution to independently maintain a drive for good even when your best idol has been rightfully torn down. Humanity isn't there yet. It needs to learn.
If this is offensive to anyone please note that I accept your offence as fully justified. I also have no credentials or authority. I might not even have an education, and am merely a random person soapboxing that has no effect on anything.
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