Dennis Prager Show - The Benefits of a Religious Life
Aired: 2021-07-06
Duration: 09:21


=== Ultimate Issues Hour (08:53) ===

[00:00:01]  This is unbelievably important, the Ultimate Issues Hour.
[00:00:05]  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.
[00:00:16]  Otherwise, you're susceptible to nonsense, which is what is now taught from kindergarten to university.
[00:00:26]  So we talk about the great issues.
[00:00:27]  I have one today.
[00:00:29]  Every one of you, no, no, that's not exactly correct.
[00:00:34]  The vast majority of you are aware of all the studies that I respect, anyway.
[00:00:44]  Anyway, all the studies, even the ones I don't respect.
[00:00:48]  Note the benefits of a religious life.
[00:00:53]  People are happier, they live longer, they have more people in their lives.
[00:00:58]  By every criterion, it is a better way to live.
[00:01:05]  So, what stops you?
[00:01:09]  Not what stops you from believing in God.
[00:01:12]  It's not the issue.
[00:01:14]  I have raised that issue.
[00:01:16]  That's not the issue.
[00:01:18]  The issue is what stops you from leading a religious life.
[00:01:24]  You can lead a religious life while you struggle with the question of God's existence.
[00:01:29]  They're not the same thing.
[00:01:36]  Here's a related issue.
[00:01:40]  People who say, I'm not going to raise my kids with any religion.
[00:01:44]  I'll let them choose when they get older.
[00:01:48]  Why don't you say that about anything else?
[00:01:51]  I'm not going to give my kid music lessons.
[00:01:54]  If they're interested in an instrument, they'll take one later.
[00:01:58]  Right?
[00:01:59]  Why is that different?
[00:02:01]  Of course, anyway, fewer parents are probably giving their kids musical instruments.
[00:02:08]  You know that a piano was normative in all but the poorest homes in American history?
[00:02:15]  Might have been a hand-me-down and needed to be tuned a lot, but some piano...
[00:02:23]  Not today.
[00:02:26]  If people played an instrument as much as they play video games, we would have a phenomenally cultured society.
[00:02:37]  We'd have orchestras in every little town.
[00:02:45]  You know, John Lennon wrote Imagine.
[00:02:48]  I imagine too.
[00:02:50]  I imagine...
[00:02:52]  I should do that.
[00:02:53]  I should write a column on what I would imagine.
[00:02:58]  Yeah, I would imagine every kid got music lessons and joined an orchestra.
[00:03:07]  I would imagine that kids had strong fathers who told them right from wrong.
[00:03:16]  I would imagine that kids would go to...
[00:03:20]  Church or synagogue each week, whether they liked it or not.
[00:03:25]  Anyway, I'll stop imagining.
[00:03:28]  I want you to tell me, given the factual benefits of a religious life, and I'm not talking spiritual life.
[00:03:38]  I don't even know what that means.
[00:03:39]  I literally do not know what spiritual life means.
[00:03:42]  If you can explain it.
[00:03:45]  As opposed to a religious life?
[00:03:47]  Religious life is a life involved in a religion.
[00:03:51]  I don't know.
[00:03:52]  What is a spiritual life?
[00:03:54]  A life involved with spirits?
[00:03:57]  I'm not being cute.
[00:03:58]  What does it mean?
[00:04:01]  What stops you from being religious, given the benefits that adhere to it?
[00:04:10]  Now, 1-8 Prager-776-877-243-7776.
[00:04:17]  Some people will undoubtedly say, well, I just can't believe in God.
[00:04:23]  Okay, I don't know why you can't believe in God.
[00:04:27]  My take is, you choose to believe in God.
[00:04:31]  I made that choice at a very early age.
[00:04:34]  It's the greatest choice I ever made.
[00:04:37]  I don't know for certain that there is a God.
[00:04:40]  I believe very strongly that there is a God.
[00:04:42]  How could I know for certain?
[00:04:44]  All evidence suggests there is.
[00:04:48]  I cannot believe.
[00:04:50]  In fact, science is my greatest single evidence right now.
[00:04:53]  Science not only doesn't refute God, science argues for God.
[00:04:59]  His great book that I just read, Return of the God Hypothesis, by Stephen Meyer.
[00:05:09]  I mean, I didn't understand chunks of it because of the physics, but it was still worth it.
[00:05:16]  I mean, the evidence is so overwhelming for a creator and an intelligent creator.
[00:05:25]  If you saw a computer on Jupiter, would you think it just came there?
[00:05:30]  Or would you think that an intelligence had made it?
[00:05:34]  How do you have intelligence from non-intelligence?
[00:05:39]  I mean, you think it's more rational to believe that we went from rocks to any one of us on its own?
[00:05:49]  I mean, that's an absurdity.
[00:05:52]  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.
[00:06:03]  So, I can't believe...
[00:06:08]  That it's only, oh, I can't believe in God, that's why I'm not religiously involved.
[00:06:15]  See, my view is, like happiness, you choose to be happy.
[00:06:20]  I think you should choose to believe in God and choose to lead a religious life.
[00:06:27]  You have problems with the religion in which you were raised?
[00:06:30]  Guess what?
[00:06:32]  Every thinking person does.
[00:06:35]  I don't know anybody.
[00:06:37]  Who has no problems with the religion in which they were raised.
[00:06:44]  Therefore, what?
[00:06:47]  Therefore, it's not worth leaving a religious life?
[00:06:50]  What stops people that you know?
[00:06:58]  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.
[00:07:08]  They have no faith.
[00:07:12]  You think they're happier for it?
[00:07:14]  You want to know the results of that, in part?
[00:07:17]  What you saw last year.
[00:07:20]  The hysteria.
[00:07:23]  The massive thievery.
[00:07:26]  Think those thieves are churchgoers?
[00:07:31]  Think the people who twerk on police cars are churchgoers?
[00:07:38]  I mean, why isn't it obvious to every thinking person that as we get more secular, we decline as a society?
[00:07:47]  Why is it that not obvious?
[00:07:48]  You know why?
[00:07:50]  People don't want to believe what is rational.
[00:07:53]  They want to believe what they want to believe, what they have committed their lives to.
[00:07:58]  So if you've committed your life to secularism, you want to believe it was a great choice.
[00:08:02]  Well, you know what?
[00:08:04]  It was a crappy choice.
[00:08:06]  Sorry.
[00:08:06]  Doesn't mean you're a bad person.
[00:08:08]  There are a lot of nice, wonderful, secular people.
[00:08:11]  But it was a very foolish choice.
[00:08:14]  For you, for your family, and children in particular.
[00:08:22]  I know a guy really, really well who doesn't believe in God and goes to church regularly.
[00:08:30]  That's exactly what he should be doing.
[00:08:33]  He feels elevated at the service.
[00:08:36]  Whether he intellectually has made peace with a god or not is a separate issue from having something that elevates him each week.

=== The $64,000 Question (00:41) ===

[00:08:44]  Are you elevated by something every week?
[00:08:48]  Something secular?
[00:08:49]  I'd like to know what it is.
[00:08:53]  Sunday night football?
[00:08:57]  1-8 Prager, 776-877-243-7776.
[00:09:03]  What stops you, or for that matter, Someone you know well from a religious life.
[00:09:11]  That's the question of this Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
[00:09:17]  It's sort of the $64,000 question of life.