Dennis Prager Show - The Religion of Safety
Aired: 2021-06-29
Duration: 04:32


=== Consequences Of Secularism (03:37) ===

[00:00:00]  Be safe.
[00:00:03]  That's how I see it.
[00:00:05]  The safe choice is not to have children.
[00:00:09]  In fact, the safe choice is not to get married.
[00:00:13]  The safe choice is to take few risks in life, live as much as possible for the moment, and that is what has become the dominant ethos of our time.
[00:00:29]  Another example, please put it under the heading of consequences of secularism.
[00:00:37]  Religious people have more kids.
[00:00:39]  Everybody knows that.
[00:00:40]  You don't even need a study for that.
[00:00:42]  Every one of you knows that.
[00:00:44]  You meet somebody with four or five children, let alone more.
[00:00:48]  You have every reason to assume they are either a Mormon or LDS, as they prefer.
[00:00:55]  An Orthodox Jew, a religious Catholic, or an evangelical Christian.
[00:01:01]  Right?
[00:01:03]  How many secular people do you know who have five or more children?
[00:01:07]  The odds are zero.
[00:01:10]  Certainly true for me.
[00:01:11]  They exist, but they are so rare as to be unknown to the vast majority of us.
[00:01:19]  So this is just another example of...
[00:01:22]  The consequences of secularism.
[00:01:26]  You know we are living in the age of the irrational.
[00:01:30]  Never in American history has the irrational been so dominant as today.
[00:01:37]  And that, too, is a consequence, ironically, for those who believe that secularism ushered in the age of reason of, in fact, of secularism.
[00:01:50]  In other words...
[00:01:51]  There's far more rational thinking among religious Americans than among irreligious Americans.
[00:02:01]  I'm not talking about religious beliefs.
[00:02:04]  Religious beliefs are not all fully in the realm of reason.
[00:02:09]  That's true.
[00:02:10]  That's why they're called faith.
[00:02:12]  But when you apply it to society, there's no comparison that you will get far more rational responses to life from more religious people than non-religious people.
[00:02:24]  and Why have children?
[00:02:29]  Why is this couple wrong?
[00:02:31]  They want to travel more.
[00:02:33]  They want to dine out more.
[00:02:35]  They don't want to have to take care of somebody all the time.
[00:02:39]  Right?
[00:02:40]  Why have a child?
[00:02:42]  You have a secular answer?
[00:02:45]  Well, there actually are a couple of secular answers.
[00:02:49]  That would apply whether you're religious or secular.
[00:02:52]  How about this to begin with?
[00:02:54]  Purpose of life is not to avoid difficulty.
[00:02:58]  The purpose of life is not to play it safe.
[00:03:01]  The purpose of life is not to have as much fun at any given moment as possible, since fun and happiness are not the same thing.
[00:03:10]  There are tremendous risks in having children, especially if you send them to an American school.
[00:03:15]  They may end up an a-hole.
[00:03:17]  That's just the way it is, unfortunately.
[00:03:20]  There are actually more risks in having a child today than at any time in American history.

=== Why Ask About Happiness? (01:10) ===

[00:03:25]  Except the risks in the past were that they wouldn't live past childhood.
[00:03:29]  That's true.
[00:03:30]  Today, it's that they won't be a decent human being or think clearly because they went to school.
[00:03:38]  It's a different risk today than in Abraham Lincoln's time.
[00:03:45]  You want to grow up?
[00:03:48]  That's the argument for marriage.
[00:03:50]  I'd like to grow up.
[00:03:55]  There is no human being that I know of, and probably that you don't know, who does not believe that they matured as a result of marriage, even if the marriage was awful.
[00:04:09]  Same thing holds for having a child.
[00:04:13]  Also, isn't the arrogance of these people who write the study, how do you measure happiness?
[00:04:20]  What do you do?
[00:04:21]  You ask people who decided to have no children, are you happy?
[00:04:24]  And you ask people who have children, are you happy?
[00:04:28]  And then you make the comparison?
[00:04:30]  1-8-Prager-776.