Even though at the moment there are too few of us, and we are spread too far apart, to massively make the world a better place right away, I still consider it record these videos and write these articles.
Should we succeed in pushing the right button and herald the Day of Discovery, with these videos and articles available we'll be able to hit the ground running.
One of the buttons I've been pushing (and please feel free to share in the comments what buttons you've been pushing) has been generating and posting YouTube Shorts with clips from the real videos.
Every clip includes a “Related Video” that people using the YouTube app can click on to watch the complete video.
YouTube comment culture is so bad that people sometimes leave completely out of context comments on these Shorts which are themselves out of context.
I don't usually post them but when I have something to say that I think YOU will find interesting I post the meaningless comment and respond to it so that I can share with you here something that I think you'll find worth reading.
This mini-mini clip received a quality-free comment of that sort which I allowed through and responded to in all seriousness.
As I did this for you today (and for who-knows-who tomorrow?) I really hope that you enjoy it.
A fellow opined:
It would be ridiculous to waste time responding to that unless I thought it was important to get a few things on the record.
If you agree, please continue pushing buttons until that day when the rest of the world joins us in knowing, caring, and acting upon these things.
The YouTube conversational marketplace unfortunately encourages low quality comments.
Because of that, I have no idea whether you Richard are a child or Richard Dawkins. That comment alone gives me no idea of who I'm responding to.
So basically my options are either to "play to the audience" by strawmanning you into a silent punching bag for my audience's amusement or to respond to whatever my imagination (with nearly zero information) assumes of you.
In this case I assume my response should be aimed less at a Ricky Geevais type blowing off steam with copypasta so he can imagine the reaction of annoyed religious people, also not straight at a 60 year old lifelong devotee who has, after years of doubt, proudly coming out and fearlessly saying what she thinks, but in the general direction of a boy betweens 14 and 24 who is saying this because he's so goddamn bored that he wastes time engaging in meaningless anonymous internet spitball fights.
[ I estimate the odds of the comment author resembling that description (more or less) at around 20%. I have so little information to go by that my best guess isn't even *likely*, just the winner by plurality through being more likely than any single other type. ]
In the event that I'm wrong and the writer (or a new reader) doesn't much resemble my best guess, you'll be interested in watching the video from whence this clip came.
The day before I posted a floater video (under 2 minutes) called:
"Rabbi Shocks World: Atheists Aren't Wrong!"
See, my watchership is a diverse group of individualists.
One of the very few things many have in common is that probably 85% of my audience grew up speaking religious language and carrying those words with a certain level of awe and meaningfulness.
And probably at least 50% still do.
[As an aside, I doubt that I have a single follower or subscriber whose thoughts and understand of these words are "standard issue". There's a certain kind of person drawn to me and they are never "standard issue" folk.]
The reason why I atttacted more people who take religion seriously (even if only intellectually) is because what I'm doing is best motivated and best explained with religious terms have no equal in any of the cultural languages in common use today.
But that's a pity.
There are true and beneficial expressions within this language that people who are on the outside of it are missing out on.
So it seemed evident to me that the increased number of (people who call themselves) atheists among my followers and subscribers on Substack the better.
We can help inspire you with possibilities and motivations well beyond the limits placed upon you by a language cleansed of meaningful religiosity, and you can help ensure that in our excitement we remain rational.
I can tell you as a Rabbi that God did endow us with the pleasantly practiced and provenly useful ability to be rational in order to mess with us via demanding that we believe things that offend that blessed and delightful sense of rationality.
Our community NEEDS people who have no awesome or positive sentiments for the word "God".
It's a word we use often and, for all its power at representing to us the incomprehensible ALL, we need people whose awe is to The Truth to keep us from - in our enthusiasm and faith - straying beyond the realms of the demonstrably UNTRUE.
On average, YouTube displays my videos to only 1% or 2% of my 23,000 subscribers (which is why I recommend subscribing on substack which includes all videos and articles) but even so, that video did well.
So the next day I recorded the video from which this YouTube Shorts mini-clip was taken.
It's called:
"NEW! For Intelligent Skeptics Only"
2 amazing people subscribed thanks to this video, so while I think that to do any REAL good we need to be conversation with millions of people, the ratio here of viewed to joined is high enough that once millions of people DO watch this and similar videos, I can bring us all together to have the conversations we need to have. Live and in person.