I will here only go into the things he called "the basic problems" as these are a full skirmish of attacks on Christian truth.
0:00 In 2016, the New Atheist movement began 0:04 to fall out of fashion as figures like 0:06 Jordan Peterson spearheaded a Christian 0:09 revival among young Western men looking 0:11 for meaning and identity.
So, like me, he thinks the Jordan Peterson approach will fail, it has never been mine since I was a Baptised Christian (and only marginally a few moods of the time before that). But he thinks Christianity itself will also fail:
Why Christianity is failing to 0:44 win over so many young men and why I 0:47 think a pagan revival is not only 0:50 necessary but inevitable.
Namely?
but I think that one of the 1:04 major issues Christianity is facing is 1:07 that it has not yet recovered from the 1:08 blow it was dealt by science.
Meaning, as we will see, Evolutionism.
... things like 1:21 Evolution and how long life has been on 1:24 this planet.
Life has been on this Earth (which isn't a planet) for a few days less than Earth itself has existed, sth like 7200 to 7500 years ...
Christianity runs counter to everything 1:31 that we know about the way the world 1:33 works, both intuitively and 1:35 scientifically.
Sun sets and rises approx. 12 hours apart (the night and day have a disparity that varies depending on season and latitude), and two rises or two sets are nearly exactly 24 h. apart. If you are on or very near the Poles, "setting" and "rising" are inept, since in the Summer the Sun only makes a dip, not an actual "under the horison". This works vastly better with Christianity, partly since the main fasting season is tied to Spring, around the Equinox, and partly because fasting rules are in the hands of clergy, not in the holy book itself, than for instance with Islam. Food satisfies, too much food pushes to disgust. Again, a perfect fit with Christianity. If you sow grains into the soil at the right point, they will (probably) grow up and each one carry more grain, part for next years sowing, part for eating. Again, no disagreement with Christianity.
Did you say
everything we know? You actually meant sth else:
And this is part of its 1:38 selling point. It tells you, "Wait, you 1:39 actually don't have to die. The world is 1:42 suffering, yes, but if you act morally, 1:44 you will gain eternal life, and you will 1:46 see your dead loved ones again for all 1:48 eternity. Actually, Christ is coming to 1:51 save you. Rejoice.
In other words, he counts materialism as part of what we know, and refrains from trying to prove it. He "takes it for granted" as the saying goes, but without gratitude, so, not as a thing acctually granted as a favour. Thank you Chesterton!
But at the same time, 1:54 for young people who are now often 1:56 coming from a position of atheism or 1:59 religious unaffiliation, this makes it 2:02 very unconvincing.
Because they are still strictly affiliated to Scientism.
One of Christianity's 2:05 strengths historically has been that it 2:07 claimed that it was the one sole truth, 2:10 the one true path to salvation, to 2:13 eternal life. But now we can see that 2:17 much of its theology is actually not 2:20 true at all.
Oh, can you, really?
And this may sound like a 2:22 cringe Reddit argument, but it's 2:24 actually something that's a big deal. 2:25 It's actually very hard to get around.
I totally agree, and I'm far from even trying to "get around it" ... prepare for a frontal attack on anything you claim here.
2:27 The history of life on earth shows that 2:29 neither nature at large nor man was ever 2:32 in an immortal perfect state.
History as recorded by whom ...?
There was 2:35 no Eden. This is a big big issue. This 2:38 alone invalidates all of Christian 2:40 theology.
If there had been no Eden, that would invalidate all of Christian theology. But note, I disagree on the proposition you make about Eden's existence.
We also know that man is only 2:42 one species among billions which have 2:45 walked this planet make it quite 2:47 improbable that the whole universe 2:50 revolves around man.
There isn't even any point. If one kind (note, I don't use the word species, which in Linnean connotations would to some exclude pre-Flood races like Neanderthals and Denisovans) is in fact created in God's image, and alone has notional language (I said notional, not pragmatic, there is a difference). THEN. It doesn't matter whether the other kinds are ten, ten thousand or ten billion, that Image of God is still infinitely more important than any other kind.
And there are many 2:52 other issues which evolution and the 2:54 history of life on earth presents for 2:56 Christianity.
Or would present if the Evolution were a solid observation or conclusion or if the "history" were actually recorded, not guessed.
Like we now know that 2:58 there were many other hominids living 3:00 alongside of man and that humanity 3:02 actually interbred with these homminids.
You mean the race called "Homo sapiens", sole survivor of the Flood, interbred with men of other races? Sounds about as much of a problem as a Ku Kluxer claiming Candace Owens is just Adamite on the side of her white ancestry. It would be more interesting if the Klan and its mentor Isaac La Peyrère were in fact right to claim Black people don't descend from Adam or if you were in fact right in claiming Neanderthals don't belong to humanity.
What 3:13 about these other hominids? What about 3:14 hominids that we interbred with? We are 3:17 part of these species. Do they get 3:19 salvation? Do they have souls?
I don't know if Noah had a Neanderthal mother or some daughter in law of his had a Neanderthal father (either way, the Neanderthal would not transmit the one gendered ancestral marker, Y or mitochondria, and the person on the Ark would not transmit the other, a woman having no Y chromosome and a man certainly having mitochondria but not transmitting them). But I do know the mother of Noah and the father or fathers of his daughters in law descended from Adam and Eve. They were candidates for salvation or damnation, just as much as the persons on the Ark. And dito for the Denisovan somewhat more distant ancestry, or so I presume.
A Neanderthal who ate other men is presumably in Hell. A Neanderthal who ate mainly pine nuts (as the twelve in El Sidrón, whom God may have remembered in the twelve sons of Jacob and the twelve apostles), can very well be in Heaven. (Yes, we can know what they ate bc dental calculus).
and the 3:21 discovery of life on other planets, 3:23 which I think we will soon learn is 3:25 actually not at all uncommon, will only 3:27 add to this theological dilemma.
Didn't people like Jules Vernes and Flammarion think it would already be a fact by 2000? Why the delay?
But seriously. "Discovery" means either going there or them coming here and actually
proving they are from one of the planets around α Centauri or whatever.
Have you considered the physics of space travel, apart from comic books and the George Lucas brand of fantasy? Voyager has taken 50 years to get less than one light day up, and
your cosmology proposes α Centauri is four light years away. 4 * 365 * 50 = 73 000 years. A space ship is not an ideal living environment. Supposing no God intervened, just what would naturally happen, a crew on such a Voyage would kill each other off in quarrels about who gets to reproduce and who gets to be killed for not wasting air. Even if you built a space ship as big as a hotel, supposing you could propel that into space.
Any creature about our capacity would on α Centauri's surrounding planets face about equal problems coming here. Any creature "advanced" enough to make it would very arguably be a spiritual creature and could as easily be a deceptive demon.
Suppose instead α Centauri is about one light day away, it would still take 50 years with present technology, but any planet around it would be about as small as the planets in the charming
The Little Prince. I e, not a place where life could have evolved in rude competition. Only a place where life could have been placed or preserved by God Almighty.
This is 3:30 not something that's going to go away.
Nor is it something that's going to come, given the constraints that won't go away, unless it's demons. Or, if we are very lucky, two space travellers still upcoming, Henoch and Elijah. But Apocalypse 11 indicates, they won't be as appreciated as they should be, by most.
3:32 Now, you can get around this by taking a 3:35 symbolic approach, which is what Jordan 3:37 Peterson did. And I think that's partly 3:40 why he was so popular. He managed to 3:43 basically sidestep the new atheists, the 3:45 Sam Harris types, by taking a symbolic 3:48 approach and moving the conversation 3:50 away from what is literal, away from 3:52 science and evolution to questions of 3:55 meaning and purpose.
There can't be a literal meaning and purpose unless there is a literal truth. You can't have
"Reincarnation is my purpose, but I believe there is no soul that survives the body" just as much as you can't have
"heaven is my purpose, but I believe there is no soul that survives the body" and just as much as Krishna's soul (according to a poet in a dream) or Hercules' ascending to Heaven or Olympus and being hailed as divine can't be your purpose if you believe there are no souls and there is no Hindoo Heaven or abode of the gods in Mount Olympus.
And I'm not at all 3:57 against taking a symbolic approach when 4:00 I talk about the meaning of pagan myths. 4:01 I do this all the time.
Well, I don't, respecting old pagans more than Nietzscheans, I prefer taking their myths literally and see where exactly they went literally wrong.
But again, 4:04 Christianity makes a claim to absolute 4:06 truth. So this is a big issue, 4:08 especially for Christianity.
Or for Scientism, your actual religion. The actual purpose for which your pretended religions are taken only symbolically.
And if you 4:10 take a symbolic approach, Eden was not 4:13 literal. It is just representative of 4:15 man's state before higher consciousness, 4:18 before knowledge.
Er, no. If Eden is not literally true, it is literally false. And if Eden
is literally true, then "man before knowledge" is literally false. Man before language is literally false. Which I think I have proven (and Tomasello hasn't tried to disprove me) independently of the Christian story, though the actual event putting man with knowledge after a sheer absence of such a thing isn't independent of the events in the story.
Then that also means 4:20 that salvation is not real. There's not 4:22 actually any heaven or hell. And that 4:24 again causes a big issue for 4:26 Christianity's claims.
Some pretended Catholics would dispute that. Fr. Sébastien Antoni presumably thinks there is heaven and purgatory, since otherwise being a Catholic priest (of very doubtful validity) would make no sense. But perhaps he denies Hell, and in doing so, wreaks unbalance into the scheme about Heaven.
Because,
if Heaven and Hell existed, but Adam and Eve didn't, the "God" who set that up would be about as unjust as Calvin's. And if Hell didn't exist, the "God" who incarnated in Jesus and said Hell was real, would be about as dishonest as the Oracle of Delphi.
While pagan 4:29 morality rests in this world, how we can 4:31 observe the world actually works.
Oh, you mean the Stoic and Epicurean moralities that Pagans rejected in favour of Platonism even before they became Christians?
Because if you go North, you'll see Celts fighting without shields because they believe reincarnation and death is just an illusion, and you will see Vikings commit suicide because dying by a sword qualifies for Valhalla, but dying from sickness for the bleakness of Hel.
The 4:33 cycles of order and chaos, life and 4:36 death, ancestry, these concrete 4:38 observable things. Christianity's 4:41 virtue, morality, all rests on this 4:44 idea, this narrative that we were once 4:47 immortal in Eden.
Loads of commandments actually do rest on observable things. People who have sex but no children tend to live old age lonely. People who have no children but
also no sex have an option of a monastic community. Or living a hermit's life.
To allow homosexuality, contraception, abortion is actually to allow people to "have sex but no children". Thereby causing this problem of loneliness.
To illustrate the weakness, check this by Snarky Jay:
HOLLYWOOD KILLED the MENTOR Archetype... And It’s RUINING Stories.
Snarky Jay | 1 Aug 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uFzivpfrBY
My response is, Malthusian Demographics killed the respectability of Mentorship and my life is ruined by failed mentors who a) won't allow me to mentor anyone and b) don't have enough people to mentor without drafting me against my will and every inclination. They should have invested in grandchildren instead!
20 to 24 were by sex 4.6 / 4.7 % in 1977, when Obi Wan Kenobi was a golden era for the Mentor archetype. They are 3.4 / 3.2 % now. If we count "mentor age" as anything above 60, omitting 100+ which was and is less than 0.1 % for either sex the percentages were in 1977: 6.3 / 8.4 % from 60 to 94, and in 2025 are: 11.5 % men from 60 to 94, 13.1 % women from 60 to 99.
Normally, mentorees should outnumber mentors. This means mentors (and mentor wannabes) outnumber mentorees. Someone answered her video like this:
It's because one of the chief duties of a mentor is to point out their student's flaws and mistakes, and these stories are written by narcissists who absolutely cannot tolerate having someone point out their flaws and mistakes.
That might be what one becomes if one has too many mentor wannabes spending too much of one's own life telling one one's flaws and mistakes, not agreeing between them and not seeing when their comment is superfluous, because that would make
them superfluous. The reason mentorees should outnumber mentors is so that a mentoree could spend lots of his time at work simply doing his work, including his flaws, and only a smaller part pruning off the flaws. What we do with pleasure, we do well, taught Aristotle. But too much mentoring and too much pointing out of real or supposed flaws destroys the pleasure.
So, mentor wannabes backfire against the gut reaction by labelling those who disagree with being mentored by them as "narcissists" and to make that word stink, they also label very manipulative and hurtful people, people who invent flaws and mistakes to put the other down, as "narcissists" ...
A situation which could have been avoided if some people back in their own (often enough) mentoree age hadn't been so eager to use a certain rubber contraption and if their mentors hadn't appreciated how less time spent with children not yet existing means more time spent with mentors already not quite as golden as Obi Wan Kenobi. Wonder if this contributed to Alec Guiness converting?
@purely_catholic
The Amazing Catholic Conversion of Alec
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/n2Qmc8NJetQ
It's on record that the confidence he inspired in a Norman boy when dressed as Father Brown contributed a lot.
We have fallen and we 4:48 will again receive salvation in heaven.
That's actually misrepresenting "salvation" since we believe the broader concept involves justification, well before we die, usually, sanctification starting with justification over many years. And then finally also the salvation from which one cannot fall, dying in Christ. And those who yearned most for it have contributed lots to earth, it's probable Medieval Christendom would not have existed if in support of St. Clothilde there hadn't also been St. Genevieve, and if she hadn't helped to ward off Attila, before Clothilde's husband arrived. Your world view won't allow for this, but I believe that the prayers of Genevieve were helped by the prayers of St. Simon the Stylite.
4:51 Of course, if we follow Christ or we 4:53 will go to hell. And if that's not true, 4:56 then none of its morality makes sense. 4:57 It all falls apart.
Not as drastically as secular morality, to be sure. See what I said about mentors and mentorees!
To believe in 4:59 Christianity is to have blind faith in a 5:02 reversal of all of the laws of nature at 5:05 the last moment for the sake of man 5:07 alone.
More like a reversal of one process in nature, that being death. But also, the faith isn't blind, we saw the first fruit of the Resurrection and His linen shroud.
Also not "for the sake of man alone" since: a) it's for the Glory of God, b) angels will rejoice at our resurrection and c) lower creatures will be released. It says there are no animals in heavenly Jerusalem, not that they don't exist anywhere on earth.
Christianity calls on 5:13 you to forgive your enemies, betray your 5:15 own family, give up tribe, tradition, 5:18 nation, wealth, and worldly power for 5:21 the sake of a promise otherworldly 5:24 reward in heaven. But these things which 5:26 Christ asks you to renounce in the New 5:28 Testament are all the things necessary 5:31 for a people to survive and thrive in 5:33 the real world, which makes Christianity 5:35 even more unconvincing in this time of 5:37 crisis in the West.
A people can consist of Christians without consisting only of people making the extreme sacrifice of some Christians. Because those extreme sacrifices are not required of each Christian. Also, I would dispute that leaving or trying to change your "tribe" would constitute a betrayal.
To renounce tribe, 5:40 family, tradition, to forgive your 5:42 enemies, is to depend wholly on the idea 5:45 that you will be granted a personal 5:47 immortality in heaven as a reward, and 5:50 that the fate of your kin and your 5:51 descendants on earth will not matter 5:53 because the world will end anyway.
Those who renounce family for Christ a) don't have children (most of the Apostles), b) take their children along (St. Peter is said to have taken his daughter St. Petronilla along) or c) leave their children in good hands (St. Nicolas of Flüe). As to tradition, by now our traditions are Christian, so it's you Symbolic Neo-Pagans and also Literal Science Believers who are renouncing them.
When you can't take revenge and sometimes even when you can, forgiving your enemies is the better option for your children (note, for some concerned with my own case, forgiving enemies and submitting to them are two different things). When Kriemhilde wanted revenge on Hagen and even her brother Gunther, this meant Hagen killed her son Ortlieb.
We 5:56 have to remember that every Christian 5:58 since Christ all the way through the 5:59 Middle Ages believed that the end of the 6:02 world, Revelations, was coming very 6:04 soon, like in their lifetime. This was a 6:06 belief held all the way throughout the 6:08 Middle Ages.
No. It was a belief that the end times
could come very soon.
Epistola Adsonis ad Gerbergam reginam de ortu et tempore antichristi states that as long as the principal kingdoms of Christendom, namely France and Germany stand, Antichrist isn't coming. France as a kingdom, depending on how you count, fell between 1830 and 1870. Germany in the sense of Holy Roman Empire fell when Charles I left Hofburg in Vienna. By the way, it's Revelation, not "RevelationS" ...
And if you think that the 6:10 world is going to end in your lifetime 6:12 or shortly after, that obviously is 6:14 going to change how you act very much.
Not necessarily. Or, if you really insist, there are some long term projects which the Middle Ages had the good sense to leave alone. Like space travel "for the sake of our future" (arguably Nimrod's project in Babel, even if he totally lacked the means and know-how)
6:16 Now, I know there will be lots of people 6:17 in the comments saying that I am 6:19 mischaracterizing Christianity or that I 6:21 don't really understand it. They will 6:23 point to the warrior values of medieval 6:26 Catholicism. But I am specifically 6:28 talking about what Christ himself tells 6:30 you to do in the New Testament, not 6:33 later paganized versions of the 6:35 religion.
I disagree with the notion that Medieval Catholicism was "Paganised" ... if you think you have a point about the imminence of the Eschaton, actually "this generation" means the Church. And it hasn't passed away before all these things come to pass.
Meanwhile, as you take Paganism "symbolically" and Hercules as "an ideal" (and you taught me poor old Nietzsche did so), St. Paul mentioned when you worship Hercules (creature) instead of God Almighty (Whose might inexhaustible was deduceable to Pagans), you risk ending up as a pansy. See Romans 1. So, arguably, Nietzsche did a lot to put our civilisation and our tribes into danger, and I don't mean by being one marginal inspiration to Hitler among others.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Bpi, Georges Pompidou
St. Nahum
1.XII.2025
Sancti Nahum Prophetae, in Begabar quiescentis.
PS. The video of which I answered the first section is this one:
Why A European Pagan Revival is Inevitable
The Ark | 29 Nov. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YttBKKCvtr8
And the stats I gave are from the US census, over here in Europe, the greying of society is even worse than in the US./HGL
PPS, in the film Cromwell, Sir Alec Guiness didn't play the title character, but King Charles. May also have helped his conversion./HGL
