good morning Hank it's Monday nerdfighters often ask us if we're religious a topic we've been reluctant to discuss over the years mostly because the quality of discourse about religion on the Internet is atrocious that said many nerdfighters know that a decade ago I worked as a chaplain at a Children's Hospital and I was also briefly enrolled in although I never actually attended the University of Chicago's Divinity School so today I'm going to share everything I have to say about religion hopefully that will lead to a productive and thoughtful conversation although given the history of the internet and conversations about religion probably not okay hey so I would submit that almost all human lives are usually lived in a state of like functional nihilism very few of us believe that human life is devoid of all meaning and that all we should do is answer to our base urges and fulfill our basic desires and try to distract ourselves from pain or fear or unpleasantness but almost all of us act as if we believe that like I have this massive parallel processing unit that sits on top of my neck that I could use to like contribute to cancer research or write a novel or puzzle through quantum mechanics and I have this amazing body that I could use to plant trees or fight wildfires or harvest food for the poor and Grover that time I said I have an amazing body I don't mean that I have an amazing body I mean everybody as Ike it's amazing what our bodies can do but I don't usually do any that stuff ain't most of my free time is spent like watching television playing video games or searching for wools Christians Muslims atheists whatever all of us share this worldview almost none of us would abandon our comforts to help others almost all of us would acknowledge that much of our time each day is wasted in short Hank if we just judge humans by their actions we look like a bunch of nihilists but we aren't nihilus because we all feel called to make the world better to understand and observe the universe to make art to bring beautiful things into life to contribute in some way to the human experiment everybody wants their lives to matter to have meant something that call to meaning is the foundation of religious worldviews but it's also the foundation of successful secular worldviews which is why I don't really care to debate the existence of God with people I can't imagine you wake up in the middle of the night in your houses covered in smoke and you hear an invisible voice shout your house is on fire Hank in that situation I would find it like totally uninteresting to have a discussion about where that voice was coming from and how it got the house and was it god or a fireman I would just you know leave in short Hank for me at least debating the mere existence of God is a way of avoiding the deeper and more devastating question of how we are going to bring meaning to human life I think that's broadly speaking the point of religion religion is essentially a response to revelation and that revelation almost always calls us to embrace meaning or if it doesn't innately exist than to create meaning but that's also true for atheistic humanism we are all facing the same question what are we going to do with our consciousness will we seek to fight poverty or climate change or disease or war or spend all our resources ensuring that we have a beautifully manicured lawn with absolutely no weeds sorry I'm not a bit of a lawn kick at the moment because my next-door neighbor is not terribly happy with me for leading the country for two months during the lawn growing season it's just grass dude actually it's not just grass that's his problem it's also a lot of dandelions so what are we gonna do about consciousness and how are we gonna balance our urge to be more than nihilists with our need to blunt the sharp edges of consciousness with funny stuff like Paula Deen writing Paula Deen writing me or humpy Hank those are interesting questions Hank and nerdfighteria has been talking about those questions for years now some of us through religious lens some of us through a secular lens but the lens doesn't interest me as much as the questions sorry this video didn't contain many jokes to make up for here is a baby rhinoceros also as penance I will eat 36 disgusting sandwiches on Friday Hank don't forget to be awesome I will see you on Wednesday