July 6, 2021 - Dennis Prager Show
09:21
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| This is unbelievably important, the Ultimate Issues Hour. | |
| Now you realize, many of you realized earlier, but now you realize even better how important it is to have a clear outlook on life. | |
| Otherwise, you're susceptible to nonsense, which is what is now taught from kindergarten to university. | |
| So we talk about the great issues. | |
| I have one today. | |
| Every one of you, no, no, that's not exactly correct. | |
| The vast majority of you are aware of all the studies that I respect, anyway. | |
| Anyway, all the studies, even the ones I don't respect. | |
| Note the benefits of a religious life. | |
| People are happier, they live longer, they have more people in their lives. | |
| By every criterion, it is a better way to live. | |
| So, what stops you? | |
| Not what stops you from believing in God. | |
| It's not the issue. | |
| I have raised that issue. | |
| That's not the issue. | |
| The issue is what stops you from leading a religious life. | |
| You can lead a religious life while you struggle with the question of God's existence. | |
| They're not the same thing. | |
| Here's a related issue. | |
| People who say, I'm not going to raise my kids with any religion. | |
| I'll let them choose when they get older. | |
| Why don't you say that about anything else? | |
| I'm not going to give my kid music lessons. | |
| If they're interested in an instrument, they'll take one later. | |
| Right? | |
| Why is that different? | |
| Of course, anyway, fewer parents are probably giving their kids musical instruments. | |
| You know that a piano was normative in all but the poorest homes in American history? | |
| Might have been a hand-me-down and needed to be tuned a lot, but some piano... | |
| Not today. | |
| If people played an instrument as much as they play video games, we would have a phenomenally cultured society. | |
| We'd have orchestras in every little town. | |
| You know, John Lennon wrote Imagine. | |
| I imagine too. | |
| I imagine... | |
| I should do that. | |
| I should write a column on what I would imagine. | |
| Yeah, I would imagine every kid got music lessons and joined an orchestra. | |
| I would imagine that kids had strong fathers who told them right from wrong. | |
| I would imagine that kids would go to... | |
| Church or synagogue each week, whether they liked it or not. | |
| Anyway, I'll stop imagining. | |
| I want you to tell me, given the factual benefits of a religious life, and I'm not talking spiritual life. | |
| I don't even know what that means. | |
| I literally do not know what spiritual life means. | |
| If you can explain it. | |
| As opposed to a religious life? | |
| Religious life is a life involved in a religion. | |
| I don't know. | |
| What is a spiritual life? | |
| A life involved with spirits? | |
| I'm not being cute. | |
| What does it mean? | |
| What stops you from being religious, given the benefits that adhere to it? | |
| Now, 1-8 Prager-776-877-243-7776. | |
| Some people will undoubtedly say, well, I just can't believe in God. | |
| Okay, I don't know why you can't believe in God. | |
| My take is, you choose to believe in God. | |
| I made that choice at a very early age. | |
| It's the greatest choice I ever made. | |
| I don't know for certain that there is a God. | |
| I believe very strongly that there is a God. | |
| How could I know for certain? | |
| All evidence suggests there is. | |
| I cannot believe. | |
| In fact, science is my greatest single evidence right now. | |
| Science not only doesn't refute God, science argues for God. | |
| His great book that I just read, Return of the God Hypothesis, by Stephen Meyer. | |
| I mean, I didn't understand chunks of it because of the physics, but it was still worth it. | |
| I mean, the evidence is so overwhelming for a creator and an intelligent creator. | |
| If you saw a computer on Jupiter, would you think it just came there? | |
| Or would you think that an intelligence had made it? | |
| How do you have intelligence from non-intelligence? | |
| I mean, you think it's more rational to believe that we went from rocks to any one of us on its own? | |
| I mean, that's an absurdity. | |
| Charles Krauthammer, when I had him on, said, of all the things that he's ever heard, and he was an agnostic, atheism was the stupidest. | |
| So, I can't believe... | |
| That it's only, oh, I can't believe in God, that's why I'm not religiously involved. | |
| See, my view is, like happiness, you choose to be happy. | |
| I think you should choose to believe in God and choose to lead a religious life. | |
| You have problems with the religion in which you were raised? | |
| Guess what? | |
| Every thinking person does. | |
| I don't know anybody. | |
| Who has no problems with the religion in which they were raised. | |
| Therefore, what? | |
| Therefore, it's not worth leaving a religious life? | |
| What stops people that you know? | |
| I mean, do you realize that, what is it, a third of young people now say they are a nun, N-O-N-E? They don't believe in any religion. | |
| They have no faith. | |
| You think they're happier for it? | |
| You want to know the results of that, in part? | |
| What you saw last year. | |
| The hysteria. | |
| The massive thievery. | |
| Think those thieves are churchgoers? | |
| Think the people who twerk on police cars are churchgoers? | |
| I mean, why isn't it obvious to every thinking person that as we get more secular, we decline as a society? | |
| Why is it that not obvious? | |
| You know why? | |
| People don't want to believe what is rational. | |
| They want to believe what they want to believe, what they have committed their lives to. | |
| So if you've committed your life to secularism, you want to believe it was a great choice. | |
| Well, you know what? | |
| It was a crappy choice. | |
| Sorry. | |
| Doesn't mean you're a bad person. | |
| There are a lot of nice, wonderful, secular people. | |
| But it was a very foolish choice. | |
| For you, for your family, and children in particular. | |
| I know a guy really, really well who doesn't believe in God and goes to church regularly. | |
| That's exactly what he should be doing. | |
| He feels elevated at the service. | |
| Whether he intellectually has made peace with a god or not is a separate issue from having something that elevates him each week. | |
| Are you elevated by something every week? | |
| Something secular? | |
| I'd like to know what it is. | |
| Sunday night football? | |
| 1-8 Prager, 776-877-243-7776. | |
| What stops you, or for that matter, Someone you know well from a religious life. | |
| That's the question of this Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show. | |
| It's sort of the $64,000 question of life. |
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