How many rating points do you think studying openings is worth 100? 200? If you play e4 and just played 1.f4 all year without looking at lines or f4 games, how much would your rating go down?
IF you were capable of memorizing all of those, then it would be worth hundreds of rating points. If you could memorize the King's Indian, and all of the Ruy Lopez courses (there are multiple), and knew all of the lines out to 15-20 moves, that would be hundreds for black.
So if you were to memorize a deep white opening and a deep black opening for each for each e4 and d4, it would have to be worth up to maybe 1000 rating if you were lower intermediate, and maybe 500 if you were upper intermediate.
That's not how chess works. I've experimented with openings I have never used before. I lost a few points but not many. You might start with an unfamiliar position, but the longer the game goes the more your playing strength will kick in. That's also what I've heard from other players. Try it. Play 100 games with an opening you're not familiar with. Maybe the London or the Scandi. ;-) I don't think that your rating will plummet more than 50 points.
@jmpchess12: Good post. I agree with most of what you've said.
However, Ben Finegold's statement is obviously a bit tongue in cheek. I don't think he really recommends playing h4 and Rh3. I just suppose he is probably frustrated seeing beginners blundering every other move but asking him about openings. Similarly, in the forum there is every day a post from a 900 player about which opening to play. In contrast, I rarely see posts like "How do I improve my pattern recognition?" or "How do I do puzzles the right way?".
It's a bit like beginners asking in a guitar forum "Which guitar sounds the best?" but not "Which exercises will improve my play?"