- Hey, guys.
It is day two of Vlognukkah, where I'm uploading
daily videos for the eight days of Hanukkah.
And I thought today I would just do a unscripted
chat about my relationship with religion.
Completely by coincidence, 'cause I do wear
this hoodie all of the time.
It is my Zion Canyon Utah hoodie,
which is obviously like the home to Mormons.
So, good.
Fun times.
I wish I was sitting down.
Why did I choose to stand up to talk about this?
I just wanna be like chill.
This isn't going to really be a debate video about
whether or not God exists or this is the right way
to do things, this is the wrong way to do things,
and I'm right, you're wrong.
I'm just going to talk about my personal experience
with religion and how I kind of see the world.
And I would just love to hear like
your thoughts and opinions in the comments.
In kind of just, I'm interested.
Like I'm really interested.
As you would have gathered by now
by the whole Hanukkah thing, I'm Jewish.
Being Jewish is passed down through the mother,
so my mum is Jewish but my dad is not.
Being Jewish for me has always been a really
significant and important part of my identity,
but I have never believed in a god.
I've been raised as a secular Jew,
which to me means that it's part of
my culture and it's part of my heritage.
And for me, it's about family and tradition.
I went Ha-da, which is like Sunday school,
up until I was 12.
I didn't have a bat mitzvah, but that was because I couldn't
be bothered and my mum was kinda pretty chill about it.
I just said, "I don't wanna do one,"
and she was like, "Cool."
I learnt how to read Hebrew,
even though I can't understand it.
I can read some of the letters.
And a lot of the songs and prayers,
I just kind of have memorised,
even though I don't really know what they mean.
I think it means even more to me
because of my German Jewish identity.
So I'm like a quarter German, so I'm barely German.
But my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather
both grew up and lived in Germany.
I know that my great-grandmother came to England
before the Nazis rose to power and so she
kind of just stayed in England whilst
that was all happening and didn't go back home.
And then because she was from east Germany,
she couldn't go back home until the Berlin Wall fell down.
And then my great-granddad, I'm not entirely sure,
but I think it was maybe during the second world war
or something, he managed to escape.
And my great grandparents met in England.
And my great-grandmother is still alive.
She's a 102 years old on the 31st of December.
She's an incredible woman.
By the way, the light is gonna change 'cause there's
a window right here and the sun is just setting.
So a lot of my Jewish identity is also very much connected
to Germany and the Holocaust and my great grandparents.
But like I said, I don't believe in God.
My dad is from a kinda Christian family, I guess.
Like his dad or like grandparents and uncles,
there's a lot of priests, I think, in his family.
I'm not entirely sure.
I'm pretty sure his family is Protestant,
but I was never really raised Christian at all
because I was mostly raised Jewish.
But then we did like Christmas and Easter because they're
just like such a part of kinda British culture as well.
But I will say, I was heavily influenced
by my dad in terms of my Atheism
and just growing up being really adamant
that there was no such thing as God.
I very much grew up in a Liberal, Atheist, Jewish bubble.
Didn't really know any religious people, never met anyone
that identified as a Christian until I was 17.
And I'm ashamed to say it now, but when I
was a teenager, I genuinely believed that
people who believed in God were stupid,
people that believed in God were less intelligent than me,
and I was better than them because I knew the truth
and the truth was that there's no such thing as God.
And that didn't change at all until I went to university.
So, in my first year at uni, I lived in halls,
and you're just put into a big block of flats
with loads of other first year students,
and a large portion of the people that
I lived with in my halls were Christians.
And then when we moved out into houses in second year,
I lived with other Christian women.
And these women are some of my best friends and they kind of
just changed the whole way I think about religion.
Basically what happened was, I met these women
and I suddenly discovered that religious people
aren't stupid and actually they're really intelligent
and everyone has their own reasons and stories
behind why they may believe in a god
or a certain religious text or whatever it is.
And we had loads of conversations about it.
I would ask them loads of questions about their faith
and they would ask me questions about my faith in terms of
Judaism, but also then my lack of in terms of the Atheism.
We had these really caring and loving
and curious conversations about it that were non-judgemental
and just really fascinating and I learnt so much.
I also went to loads of Christian events at university,
but a big part of that was probably the free food.
You're a student, you gotta get free food wherever you can.
Thank you, Jesus.
So what was interesting for me actually was that
my dad was going through a similar transformation
in terms of how he viewed religion at the same time
as me but completely separately, like I'd moved out.
And my dad was like such a huge influence in
my life in terms of how I felt about religion,
in terms of the negative feelings I had towards it.
And then me and him like, just both
separately changed at the same time.
My parents had a couple people from the Democratic
Republic of Congo staying with us in Manchester
because of reasons that I won't go into.
But my dad would drive them to church every Sunday
'cause they were Christians and they wanted to go to church.
So my dad started making friends at church and it gradually
kinda grew on him and he was starting to enjoy it.
And then he would sometimes go on his own.
It was then really interesting coming back home and me
and my dad both having these conversations about religion
that were so different to the conversations that we would
be having about religion like six months before that.
I've still never really played
with the idea that God exists.
Like to me, he just doesn't exist.
I don't feel his presence at all.
And actually, since then, I have gone
to church on Christmas morning with my dad.
Mostly out of like a support for him
and wanting to know a bit more about his life,
since I've moved out and don't really
get to see him on a day to day basis.
But also because there's loads of cute babies
at church and so that's really great.
So here's one of the things that I
still find really tricky about religion.
I'm definitely a lot less judgemental of religious people.
I still have to check with myself every time it comes up,
but definitely better, definitely working on it.
The thing that I still find really difficult
is organised religion, is the history around religion,
and the things that people do in the name of God.
(sighs)
Just historically, all of the wars that have been
started over religion, all of the violence
and all of the hatred and all of the anger.
There's something in me that thinks that there's something
fundamentally wrong with religion, like all religion,
if people can draw such hateful conclusions from them
and start wars and be violent in the name of God.
And there are wonderful religious people that
don't believe in any of that stuff at all
and are lovely and are kind and are charitable
and are accepting and all of those good things.
I find it really hard to understand.
I'm trying to understand, but I find it really hard
to understand how there can be one group who are
really violent and really hateful and then
a really accepting and loving and kind group
who both say that they are of the same religion.
And one group is saying, "No, that's not Christian."
"You're not Christians," or, "You're not Muslims."
"They're not Muslims."
To me, that's confusing.
I can totally respect someone's individual faith,
but then as soon as I zoom out and as soon as I start
to see just religion and religious groups
and the organised religion and also just the general themes
and the patterns and everything that
kind of at its core has been caused by religion,
all the bad things, I just can't ignore that.
I find it really difficult.
So how I generally identify now is, one, as Jewish,
as an Atheist but also as Agnostic.
So, an Agnostic Atheist, I think.
There's gonna be loads of you who are like philosophy
or theology students who are gonna tell me that
the meanings that I've put on these words is wrong.
But this is how I understand their meaning, so bear with me.
So Atheism is the belief that there's no God.
Being Agnostic means you don't know.
The reason why I say that I'm an Agnostic Atheist
is because the Agnostic bit is about knowledge
and the Atheist bit is about belief.
So, I don't know.
I don't know if God exists.
I have no idea, couldn't tell you.
I've got no evidence for his existence
and I've got no evidence for him not existing.
But even though I don't know if there is a God,
I don't believe that there is.
Like, I feel like exhausted from just
talking about it because I'm like, oh.
Okay, right.
I'm gonna leave it there.
Please give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it
and I would genuinely really love to hear
your thoughts in the comments on all of this.
Please don't argue with each other.
Please don't say mean things, just be open
and kind and have a discussion, have a debate.
Happy Hanukkah and I'll see you tomorrow.
Bye!
(fun chill music)
(children cheering)