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June 27, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
01:20:30
Yesterday and Today
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello, my friends!
It's July 4th weekend coming up because it's next Tuesday.
And I think about that with regard to how Americans are responding to its birthday compared to a hundred years ago.
There was a particularly stupid article, I think it was in the New York Times, by a psychologist.
I brought this to your attention last week, who said, I think there were two authors, two academics, I think.
And it was that we are programmed to think the past was better when in fact that's just nonsense and it is this built-in foolishness, if you will, in the human condition.
Now, there's no question that there is an element of that.
In the good old days, I always mention that good old days, the acronym is G-O-D, God.
Some people worship the good old days, and they're not worth it.
In the good old days in the 20th century, 100 million people were slaughtered, nearly all by communists and the rest by Nazis.
So I am aware of the danger of the good old days.
On the other hand, it is...
It is truly an absurdity to dismiss the idea out of hand that things were better.
Things were better in the United States.
Were they better for everyone?
That's the immediate retort by people who don't think clearly.
Of course it wasn't better for everyone.
That is correct.
If you were a black in the South, for example, there were Jim Crow laws.
You couldn't even eat at a lunch counter in some places.
Of course that's true.
If you were a gay human being, you were harassed and you were looked down upon as a human being.
I'm totally aware of that.
To say that the times were better isn't to say they were better for every single person in the country.
They weren't.
But for the country as a whole, moving in the direction it was, it was a country that would no longer persecute gays or have segregation laws.
It was moving in that direction.
What we needed to do was to fix that, and we did.
But we lost almost everything that was good.
That's the point.
So I'm thinking about how July 4th was celebrated in the past.
The parades in virtually every city.
You took your kid to a parade.
Oh, it's America's birthday, kid.
Junior.
You've got to be proud of this country because there's no place that has ever reached the freedom and opportunities for people that America has.
And that was true until the left, composed of the bored, the empty, the angry, the spoiled, decided to tear it down.
And they're doing that.
How many parades will there be this July 4th?
It's coming July 4th.
By the way, there's a lovely ceremony for July 4th developed at PragerU about 10 years ago, and you can get it at PragerU because I'm a big believer that rituals are what keep nations and religions alive.
Rituals are very important.
Talking about the past versus the present, in my town in which I live, actually, in my town in which I live is redundant.
In the town, no.
Can you do in twice?
No, the town in which I live, that's correct.
I'm sorry for annoying you, ladies and gentlemen, with my slight obsession with proper grammar.
It is.
It's a slight obsession.
I acknowledge.
But it hasn't reached OCD status.
In the town...
Nope.
The town in which I live has a YMCA, which a lot of events take place.
And I noticed yesterday, it doesn't say...
Any longer YMCA. It says, the Y. I wonder how many of you have noticed that.
And how many of your towns or cities has a YMCA renamed itself subtly, and nobody seems to notice, understandably, because it was called the Y, even when it was known as a YMCA. But it's now the Y. And if you want to know why it's the why, we all know the answer.
Because YMCA stood for Young Men's Christian Association.
And there were two things wrong with Young Men's Christian Association.
Men and Christian.
So, it's not exactly...
The most popular name of an institution any longer.
But certainly one could say America was more religious in the past.
That's a fact.
I mentioned yesterday, if they built the Supreme Court today, would they put a sculpture of Moses carrying the Ten Commandments inside the Supreme Court?
The religious foundations of this country are what made it great.
It's an interesting question, so given that there were other Christian countries, all of Latin America is Christian, Catholic specifically, why did we develop as we did?
And that's a very worthy question.
I've thought about that a lot.
I think one of the reasons is the founders were profoundly rooted in the Old Testament.
That is a very healthy thing for Christians to be.
The Liberty Bell has a verse from the Old Testament, from the Torah specifically, and from a book that people are completely non-familiar with, Leviticus.
You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.
I believe I got that right.
Thank you.
That was a correct translation.
I think it was from King James, which remains as good a translation as exists with a handful of mistakes that are simply products of its time.
And they did a magnificent job.
So, I don't think it's a function of built-in pathology in the human race that we think here.
This is where it is.
Yeah, it was from the New York Times.
See if I can open this here.
Yeah, well, we will.
It's like it doesn't ask what is true, the piece.
Your brain has tricked you into thinking everything is worse.
This just appeared last week in the New York Times.
Alan Mastroianni, an experimental psychologist.
And the author of the Science Blog, I guess, at the New York Times.
Yeah.
Perhaps no political promise is more potent or universal than the vow to restore a golden age.
And then they give examples.
And, of course, it's an attack on MAGA, Make America Great Again.
As if it was not greater?
Was there more freedom in the past or today?
You know, I will read to you.
It's an amazing story.
A professor was dismissed for saying what he's been saying all his life.
He's a biology professor.
That your chromosomes determine whether you're a male or a female.
Double X or XY. And they suspended him.
Was that not a better time, Mr. Mastroianni?
Just curious.
Was that not better?
You feel safer wherever you live today, if you live in a big city?
Or did you feel safer in the past?
This has been true for decades.
My mother would tell me frequently that as a young woman, she would take the subway at midnight.
Alone.
Never thought of crime.
In New York City.
More on that.
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There's that article, I mentioned it last week, but with July 4th coming up and thinking about America in the past, I didn't go through this particularly in depth.
So he wrote this piece, the science blog man at the New York Times, and he wrote it with his colleague, One second here.
I don't understand why that thing...
Whoops.
Okay.
I believe there's a bug, a set of cognitive...
He wrote it with his colleague Daniel Gilbert at Harvard.
I believe there is a bug, a set of cognitive biases in people's brains that causes them to perceive a fall from grace even when it hasn't happened.
So, the issue here...
Has it happened?
If people believed 50 years ago that things were better prior to their age, then there is some evidence that there is this psychological predisposition to think of a better age in the past.
But what if the age of the past was better?
The reduction of everything to a psychological infirmity is, shall we say, questionable.
I believe there's a bug, a set of cognitive biases in people's brains that causes them to perceive a fall from grace even when it hasn't happened.
As I said, what if it has happened?
I and my colleague Daniel Gilbert at Harvard have found evidence for that bug, which we recently published in the journal Nature.
Very, very prestigious journal, by the way.
While previous researchers have theorized about why people might believe things have gotten worse, we are the first to investigate this belief all over the world.
To test its veracity and to explain where it comes from.
We first collected 235 surveys with over 574,000 responses total and found that overwhelmingly people believe that humans are less kind, honest, ethical, and moral today than they were in the past.
Well, let's take the United States, the country we all know best.
Would you say that the average American was more kind, honest, ethical, and moral two generations ago, let's say?
Can we measure that?
For example, how often have I brought to you Data about the increase in cheating in schools?
How rampant it has become?
Are you not aware of the fact, are these authors not aware of the fact that far more people lock their homes today than they did in the past?
Were they foolish?
Would you say that San Francisco is worse today than in the past?
Well, it depends.
If you collect fecal specimens, it's a better place.
If you like to measure and do urine analysis among strangers, San Francisco is like utopia.
If you're into the economics of decline, it's a...
It's a place to study.
Are these people serious?
What they're doing is they're using science to say to you, not so codedly, you a-holes who think that MAGA, who think make America great again, means something when it never was great.
That's the whole point of the left.
It never was great.
But this is a way of saying, oh, we're not political.
We're scientists.
And we want you to know that the brain just makes up this glorious past.
So I'm curious.
Are crime statistics relevant?
It's quite something.
The amount of theft in stores.
is the greatest in recorded American history in cities across this country.
If you go to New York City, let's see, Vaseline is behind a locked window.
Powder, shaving cream, shampoo, it's all behind a locked window.
Oh, but why would we think things were better in New York in the past?
Why would we think that?
Because, they tell you at Harvard and at the New York Times, your brain is programmed to think that.
You're deluded.
New York is great.
San Francisco is great.
Election integrity is great.
The treatment of children.
Is great!
Yeah, okay.
That's right.
You are a product of some quirk in human psychology.
That's this article.
People have believed in this moral decline at least since pollsters started asking about it in 1949. They believe it in every single country.
So the question, I don't deny that there is a predilection for people to think it was better at some point.
Although, it depends whom you ask.
If you ask a Jew who came to the United States after the Holocaust, gee, was it better in the past?
They might say, what past are you referring to?
The last 20 years?
They would ask, or they would just say, what are you out of your mind?
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I began this hour talking to you about July 4th weekend coming up.
Next Tuesday, I believe it is, precisely July 4th.
And how much more meaningful it was in the past.
And it triggered my reading to you from this piece that I had only passingly mentioned last week when it came out.
The New York Times by its science blog editor and a professor at Harvard.
Things are better today.
The notion that it was better in the past is a function of a psychological quirk in the human being.
That's the gist of the article.
So the question is, is it really?
Do you believe?
Rationally?
Forget psychology.
Really?
There are ways in which things are better, but the overall...
Do you know the highest depression rates of young people, especially young girls, are the highest in American history?
Is it fair to say that when young people were less depressed, things were better?
Or is that a psychological quirk, dear professors?
It's so amazing.
Listen to the scientific way that they proved this.
So, about data, let's see.
Let's go on now.
Okay.
We also found strong evidence that people are wrong about this decline.
Oh, here's their evidence.
They didn't mention a single thing that I did.
Crime, depression.
The abandonment of quality of life in so many cities.
No, none of that is mentioned.
By the way, is airline service better today?
Just out of curiosity.
We also found strong evidence that people are wrong about this decline.
We assembled every survey that asked people about the current state of morality.
Okay, this is how they established it.
It's almost silly.
Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?
That's it?
That's how they established whether or not the country is in good shape?
Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?
I would say that if you asked this in Germany in the 1930s, with the exception of Jews, which is a tiny percentage of the population, maybe 1%, that nearly every German would say, I was treated with respect yesterday.
Would you say that the Nazi era was a moral improvement?
That it was a quirk in human psychology?
To have said in 1936, let's say, you know what?
It really was better before Hitler came to power.
Oh, that's a psychological quirk.
That's what we teach at Harvard.
Isn't that amazing?
That's the way they established it?
This thing is the ultimate gaslighting.
Oh, you...
Think you're seeing San Francisco in decline.
If you live in San Francisco and think it was better 10 years ago, let alone 50, that's a psychopathological idiosyncrasy.
Within the past 12 months, have you volunteered your time to a charitable cause?
That's an interesting, it's a good question.
I'd love to know what the answer is.
Are people volunteering more for charitable causes today than they did 25 years ago?
I wonder.
I don't have an answer.
How often do you encounter incivility at work?
Oh, I must say, Sean encounters it every day.
I mean, they didn't ask him, obviously.
Oh, man.
You didn't expect to be respected.
Is that what you said?
Is you showing that you've adopted my expectations rule?
All right.
Well, so you're pleasantly surprised every day.
Because some of us respect you.
We took a vote the other day among all five people who work on the show.
And three to two, they said they respected you.
That's big.
All right.
So this is what we're taught.
The whole thing has a political interest.
Don't delude yourself about making America great again.
It was never great.
Hey everybody, I looked up apropos of this article that it's just a matter of psychological quirk that you think that things are I looked up apropos of this article that it's just a matter It's not true.
It's just your psychological makeup.
So I just put in, cheating has it increased.
Here's a perfect one.
NPR. Which is ideologically aligned with the New York Times.
Reports of cheating at colleges soar.
Soar.
Not increase.
Soar.
During the pandemic.
Okay?
But why would I think in any way that there was a greater sense of personal morality 100 years ago or 50 years ago?
Why would I think that?
Because in order to soar, it means it was at a lower rate in the past.
The questions that they asked, were you retreated with respect today, is such a bizarre question with regard to the society.
Well, anyway...
That's what people are taught.
As long as we believe in this illusion, they conclude, we are susceptible to the promises of aspiring autocrats.
I told you it was political.
You think they have anybody in mind when they say aspiring autocrats?
Yeah.
Donald Trump and any other Republican.
Who claim they can return us to a golden age that exists in the only place a golden age has ever existed, our imagination.
Yep.
As any woman dating today can tell you, the number of young men who want to take care of a family and marry is so large that...
They don't know whom to choose.
The pickings are so rich.
Right?
45% of young people at college believe that there should be no free speech for hate speech.
But things weren't better in the past when people did believe in things being better, in things being Believe in free speech, period.
Talking about free speech, there is a story I want to bring to your attention.
And that is, you may have heard the story about Nazis who were in front of a synagogue.
I'll get you the exact detail.
Details right now.
Yes, it was in Georgia.
And let's see, Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Georgia officials outraged over neo-Nazi gathering outside Cobb Synagogue.
So you might have seen the pictures, you might have heard the story.
Some particularly loathsome human beings.
They harassed Jewish worshippers at a synagogue this past Shabbat, this past Sabbath.
Two Georgia synagogues, actually, with Nazi flags.
So, if you actually read the piece, or any piece on it, let's see if they give the number here in the Times of Israel.
Neo-Nazis gathered outside two synagogues and distributed anti-Semitic flyers in a residential area.
In the U.S. state of Georgia over the weekend, in a white supremacist harassment campaign that came during a surge in anti-Jewish far-right activities in the U.S. of recent years.
Wow.
The Times of Israel has certainly taken on New York Times vocabulary.
The antagonists were apparently from outside the communities.
What is important here is, you know what, I am, it was Chabad actually, one of my favorite organizations in the world, in front of whose synagogue this took place.
So the Chabad response, let's use this unfortunate incident to increase in acts of goodness and kindness, Jewish pride, and greater Jewish engagement.
There's a...
Sweet response.
Let's have increased acts of goodness and kindness.
It's interesting that this piece does not give you the number.
I'm going to look up the Daily Mail piece.
And I think it gives the number of people.
Let's see if that is accurate.
Neo-Nazis, there we go.
This was the way they put it.
Yeah, here it is.
They had the number in the very top of the piece.
Around a dozen Neo-Nazis stood in front of a synagogue in Marietta, Georgia on Saturday evening.
Couldn't have been Saturday evening because, well, only a handful of Jews go to synagogue Saturday evening as opposed to Saturday morning or Friday evening.
But anyway.
They were members of the Goyim Defense League, which accuses Jewish people of controlling the world.
If you know anything about the Germans and the Nazis, the pathetic band of Nazis around Hitler.
Anti-Semitism appeals to losers.
George Gilder, who is not Jewish, wrote a profound book on this, The Israel Test.
These are people who resent people who have made more of their lives than they have.
We'll be back.
The Dennis Prager Show Hello everybody, I'm Dennis Prager.
And it is a joy to be with you and an honor.
I never lose sight of that.
I was just about to tell you about a very important piece that I just read in the Wall Street Journal the other day.
And guess what?
I'm going to talk to you about something personal.
I'll need my wife's help here.
Would you send me, I assume she's listening, the clip from that Belgian, the note from that Belgian man, because I have a thought that I'd like to share with you.
That is a big deal in my...
Trying to understand life and my role in it.
In a nutshell, a Belgian man wrote a note, and in it he basically said, all through his 20s, he's now 40, No, not Belgian.
I take that back.
Portuguese.
I don't know why I said Belgian.
It's from Lisbon.
Lisbon, Portugal.
A Portuguese man.
Through his 20s, he had heard about me and he accepted the left-wing dismissal of me as a hater.
That's their big one.
I'm a hater and all these other terms that media matters and all...
Virtually all these left-wing professors who opposed my coming to Arizona State a few months ago.
He said, I believed it, and then for whatever reason, he actually began reading and watching and listening to me.
And he said, my biggest regret is that I listened to them and wasn't able...
To hear you and read you.
And since I've begun that, he's really, he's watched every single fireside chat, listens to the show, reads my books.
He's even gotten into the rational Bible.
I say even because that's not common for people who are secular, which I believe he is, or was.
So I want to share with you a thought that I had about all of the attacks on me, and they are legion.
So I told you, I have a motto.
If you don't let compliments go to your head, you won't let insults go to your heart.
It's a very important attitude to have in life, and I have that attitude.
I am complimented a great deal, and I am...
I've insulted a great deal.
And I am deeply appreciative of the warm things people say to me.
Please understand that, but they don't go to my head as everyone in my life, and probably even you who are not in my life, but are in my life, if you hear me a lot in some way, know as a fact.
In fact, I've often said to intimates in my life, I would like to be a prima donna for a day.
I want to know what it feels like.
So, it's never been an issue.
I've never had to fight the inclination to be arrogant.
I've had to fight the inclination to be lazy.
I have a whole host of fights, but that's not one of them.
Professors and leftists are all that people hear about me, all of which are lies.
Every single attack is a statement taken out of context, which constitutes a lie.
They know nothing about me.
They have just taken a handful of citations.
For example, the professors in their letter...
Protesting my coming to Arizona State University said, Dennis Prager said that heterosexual AIDS is a myth.
I never said that in my life.
They lied.
It is a hundred percent lie, my friends.
I said the, what I have said is that the hysteria over heterosexual AIDS, that was a myth.
Of course there was heterosexual AIDS. Never denied it in my life.
But they lied about its prevalence.
So they simply took a distorted version of what I said.
The examples are legion.
So what is my point?
There is only one thing that does bother me with regard to all the attacks.
And I'm more aware of them than most of you are because it's against me and I follow them on the internet and because the Arizona State University example, which has gone viral because the woman who invited Charlie Kirk and me and the others has been summarily fired by Arizona State.
What bothers me is not the attacks.
The attacks only mean I'm effective.
They don't attack the ineffective, obviously.
In some ways, the attacks are a statement that I, not in some ways, they are a statement that I have been effective.
People don't attack people who have no impact.
Oh, good.
I won't thank you.
I just got the note on my IM. I'll read that to you in a moment.
What bothers me, and it does bother me, is that the attacks stop people from reading me and hearing me.
Or watching me.
Every vehicle for communication I use.
That does bother me because I could help.
People have a richer life.
I do.
A clearer understanding of life.
So I will read to you what this man in Portugal wrote.
It's quite powerful.
Okay, here we go.
I'd just like to thank Dennis.
Somehow...
For the wisdom I've received from him the past two years or so.
I remember being in my early 20s and hearing about Prager being a right-wing extremist and this and that.
But after starting listening to him now in my 40s, I realized none of that was true.
Watched all the fireside chats.
Watched all Dennis and Julie.
You should all watch Dennis and Julie.
You will love it.
You should have your young children or grandchildren or niece or nephew watch it.
Julie's 23. It's an amazing, unique program, Dennis and Julie.
And let's see.
So I watched all the Fireside Chats, watched all Dennis and Julie, and listened to the radio shows now and then, as well as the five-minute videos.
The No Safe Spaces documentary, that was the Adam Carolla Dennis Prager film.
The book on happiness and understanding that there is definitely a source of morality, and so on.
My girlfriend and a cousin also got addicted after I advised them to have a go.
I've also been a bit disconnected from religion since my teens.
But Dennis' approach to it made me reconsider some views.
I'm reading his Rational Bible series after finishing the book on happiness and understanding that there is definitely a source of morality and truth above government.
And while not being an American, I've come to realize how special your values are, finally understood the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and so on.
Overall, the contrast versus socialist Europe where I live, and concerning how so much of that is being eroded now.
A bit of random rant here.
I don't think I'll ever meet Dennis in person, so maybe you can thank him for me, just for bringing some sanity and wisdom in this current chaos.
Just wanted to say thank you, Nuno, in Lisbon, Portugal.
How many people have not had access because of the hate directed to me?
1-8-Prager-776 Hello everybody, you're listening to The Dennis Prager Show.
I thought I'd share that with you, thinking about the note that I just received or saw from a man in his 40s in Portugal.
And he had not allowed himself to listen or watch me or read me because he was told I was this right-wing extremist.
And that's what the professors at ASU and these people on the internet who call me a hater...
Have you heard a word of hate?
I hate evil.
I admit that.
But...
Do you think...
Does anybody listening think the purpose of my broadcast is to do harm?
How many marriages have I helped?
How many people have I helped on the happiness issue?
My whole agenda is goodness.
Sounds corny, but I'm prepared to be corny.
When I think about my life, and it's been a blessed life, obviously, when I think about it, I think about that's...
Probably the greatest regret that I have, the number of people who have been deprived of some really helpful, good, yes, even wise things that would enrich their lives because of the lies the left has told about me because they know if people do hear me, there's a good chance.
They will actually take what I say seriously.
Has anybody been affected by me and become a meaner human being?
Just curious.
Versus people affected by the left, how many of them have become meaner human beings?
Children who come to have contempt for their parents because their parents are not woke enough.
Anyway, that's the regret.
And so in that sense, they've had some victory.
They deprived this man in Portugal for much of his life from thinking about even listening to one thing I said.
Because they told him I was a right-wing extremist.
Very touching piece.
And it's a very personal thing I'm sharing with you because that really, I have very few regrets and it's not something I can control.
So I don't regret what I did, but I regret that it happened.
That's why I try to go to as many college campuses as possible.
And of course what they try to do is minimize the number of students who will attend.
They tear down the posters of my coming...
And it's not just me.
It's any prominent conservative.
They don't want them to hear us.
Isn't that amazing?
Isn't that obvious then that they're the liars?
Do we give a damn if kids hear a left-wing speaker?
Do right-wing kids go around tearing down posters of all the left-wing speakers who come to colleges?
Of course not.
We don't fear if they hear them.
We fear if they don't hear us.
Every left-winger knows in their heart that if they hear us, we'll be effective.
That's why they hate PragerU.
Oh, you know, don't be deceived.
It's just five minutes, but it could change a person's mind.
You don't want to watch this propaganda.
That's what it is.
They are so afraid of having...
An articulate conservative organization or individual show up.
Was it half a million dollars that Berkeley had to spend or so they claimed when Ben Shapiro went to speak there?
The only thing the left is right about is fearing kids hearing us.
They have every reason to be scared out of their minds.
The 39 professors at Arizona State University who wrote a letter protesting vehemently my appearing, Charlie Kirk appearing, that's what they fear.
Any exposure, one hour, of a conservative can undo all the lies that these professors teach every day.
The liars are the ones who suppress dissent.
Just know that.
Truth-tellers do not censor.
Liars censor.
So their response is, oh, really?
Well, you censor books in elementary schools.
Yes, that's correct.
You don't want books censored for six-year-olds?
Really?
Is there a time in American history when books for six-year-olds were not censored?
So that, too, is a lie because it has nothing to do with the issue.
This is really a big lesson.
I have mentioned all of these points in passing, but never fully.
That is the one regret that I have.
That the left has made it difficult for more young people to hear what I have to say.
Because they're scared witless, and they should be.
I can undo your four years of lies, of woke crap, in an hour.
That's correct.
And they know it.
1-8 Prager 776-877-243-7776.
Yep, such it is.
It's hard to do good in this world.
This is a good example.
But I've done my share, I think.
The regret is that, as I said, more have not been touched.
Many have.
PragerU has a billion views a year.
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Hello everybody, Dennis Prager here.
It was a really personal half hour that I just engaged in.
And if you draw any, well there are many conclusions you can draw from all of that, but One ought to be that you say to young people that you know, why don't you give this guy Prager a chance?
If you're open-minded, what do you have to lose?
Aren't you interested in knowing what's being said by people you think you don't agree with?
Alright.
Marietta, Georgia, and John, hello.
Hey, Dennis.
I just wanted to get back on this thing that you brought up on the synagogue in Marietta.
We live about two miles from that synagogue, and my wife was driving home and drove by there, and there were only about a dozen people there.
They did have a Nazi flag out.
Oddly enough, that synagogue is across the street And the participants in that march, if you will, parked their cars in the parking lot of our church.
And when my wife got home, she's pretty distressed, so she texted our pastor, who sent his wife over there to basically tell them, get the heck out of here.
You know, get your cars out of here.
We want no part of you.
So, anyway, I just wanted to confirm some of the facts that you had read.
Well, thank you, and please thank the pastor's wife and anyone else who objected to them.
He confirmed what I had read to you.
There were a dozen.
It's made international headlines because it's so rare.
A dozen.
There are 350 million Americans.
I'm a Jew.
I've been fighting anti-Semitism my life, my whole life.
Wrote a book on it.
Why the Jews?
The reason for anti-Semitism.
So I'm well aware of the subject.
And I tell my fellow Jews, do not fall into the trap of thinking that 12 people represent anybody.
These are pathetic human beings.
And they are as hate-filled toward America as they are toward Jews.
Because celebrating the Nazi flag is to say that every American who died at Normandy Beach was basically a fool.
They were fighting the Nazi flag and they died on Normandy Beach fighting the Nazi flag.
But we, a-holes here at the Georgia Synagogue, we know better.
The Nazi flag was good.
You were pathetic for dying at Normandy Beach.
That's the message.
I mean, they're celebrating the people who slaughtered our people on Normandy Beach.
You've got to be a really, really sick human being to parade with the Nazi flag.
I mean, that's like an advertisement.
I am very, very sick.
Okay.
Just for the record.
Certainly there's a lot of sickness going around, however, of that I can assure you.
You know, there is an interesting question that I have.
Is there more, and I don't know the answer to this, is there more random murder today than there was in the past?
I don't mean street crime.
I'll give you an example here.
Let me see.
I see pieces like this every single day.
I would say virtually every single day.
And, well, darn.
That's what happens when I have a lot of pieces around.
Let's see.
Yeah, here it is.
This is...
Neighbor 41 is arrested...
This is just yesterday.
Neighbor 41 is arrested...
In stabbing deaths of elderly couple found alongside mother 97 after failing to turn up at church to renew their wedding vows.
So, how do you, how does this explain?
Christopher Ferguson, 41, was arrested Monday evening for the triple homicides.
I'll talk about that when we come back.
Hello everybody, it's the Ultimate Issues Hour.
There is so little talk about the great issues of life in the life of a young person in America.
When do they discuss the big, grand issues?
Where does morality come from?
The purpose of life.
Good and evil.
Death.
Religion.
It's all gone.
For the...
I won't mention.
We all know what is there.
The there being school.
Anyway, here's an issue that has plagued me all of my life.
And I'm not sure that I have a better answer today.
Than I did in college.
I started thinking about it in high school, and I came to a realization, and I have basically held on to that all of my life.
No matter how many books I've read about it, I'm reading another one now about it.
I'm going to have the author on.
I don't happen to agree with him, but it doesn't matter.
And the question is, reconciling a good God with all the unjust suffering of human beings.
It's called theodicy.
It's a specialized arena of theology, and it is the question of a good God and so much...
Suffering, unjust suffering on earth.
Two types, man-made and natural.
Cancer and earthquakes being examples of natural suffering and murder and torture and rape being examples of man-made or human-made suffering.
So, virtually every...
Explanation that I have read, I don't agree with.
Not because I theologically differ with them, but because I logically differ with them.
My approach to God is virtually entirely rational.
The story is told in the book that I'm reading that Elie Wiesel, the world-renowned Late figure who was the author of many, many books, many of which are classics like Night, his novel.
He went through the Holocaust.
His father was murdered, among others.
He was a very young man, and he became the face of the Holocaust.
Became one of the world's most renowned figures.
So, the story is told that Elie Wiesel was giving a speech, and then the man started badgering him from the audience about how could he possibly believe in God after the Holocaust.
And he just kept badgering him, give me a break, you can't believe in God, there is no God, it's obvious there is no God.
And the author of the book...
It says that Elie Wiesel at one point finally said to the man, just please tell me, do you want an explanation or a hug?
And he said it was very effective, and that's the end of the story.
I'd like to tell you my approach to the exact same issue.
I have the entirely opposite approach of that story.
I believe that people want explanations more than hugs.
That has been my life's journey.
Giving explanations.
I remember this vividly when I was lecturing already in my 20s, and I was at a synagogue, and I was talking about faith in God, and the same thing exactly happened to me.
Now, I'm old enough that when I was in my 20s, there were many Holocaust survivors living.
They were my parents' age, after all.
So one man got up and also did a very similar thing to me, Oh, even more so.
He said he had lost his family.
They were murdered by the Nazis.
And how could I possibly believe in God?
And I gave him some answers.
I'm not saying my answers were right, but I gave him answers.
And then somebody then asked me afterwards, Didn't you see the man, he wanted, he was reaching out for sympathy.
He wasn't really asking for an answer.
And I said, I'm sorry, I differ with you.
I think exactly what he was doing was reaching out for an answer.
So, I don't have the answer or the answer.
I have an answer.
I don't have a the answer.
To the whole issue of human suffering and God.
I only have thoughts on it.
I don't have answers.
But I certainly deal with it in a rational way and not in a huggy way.
I am sure that these people get hugs.
Most of them had spouses, had And or other relatives.
Most had children.
Most had friends.
I don't think they lacked hugs.
I don't think they wanted a hug from me.
A total stranger.
And one moreover who was half their age.
I think they wanted explanations.
So, that's the question on the table.
How have you worked out the question of God and unjust suffering?
1-8 Prager 7-7-6.
So let me offer you the standard responses of people.
One is, the amount of unjust suffering on this planet shows there is no God.
An obvious response.
Another one is a, as I move toward traditional responses, the response of Rabbi Harold Kushner, whom I knew very well, is a wonderful human being, wrote the international best-selling, almost classic, When Bad Things Happen to Good People.
He lost his own son to a terrible disease, the rapid aging disease.
That gave his book a great deal of credibility.
His basic thesis, he had many, but the one he's known for is either God is all good or God is all powerful.
God cannot be both all good and all powerful.
If God is all good and all powerful, then he would stop all this suffering.
If you were all good and all powerful, wouldn't you?
So, since he was not prepared to compromise on God being good, Kushner's view was God is not all-powerful.
God himself is limited in what he can do, such as the world that he created.
There's nothing he can do about the earthquake.
There's nothing he can do about the Nazis and the Communists.
They have decided to do it.
So he dropped the all-powerful since he wasn't prepared to drop the all-good.
I actually went to his house.
I think I was in my 30s.
And I recorded it, but I, of course, lost that recording, which is a tragedy.
And I actually debated the issue with him at his home.
He was a generation older than me.
He was a very good man.
And it did not make sense to me that you had to compromise on either the all-good or the all-powerful.
God is all-good, and God is all-powerful.
The fact that He doesn't intervene to stop every example of unjust suffering among human beings does not compromise His power or His goodness.
If God intervened every single time there was a problem, life would be meaningless.
You're about to be hurt by a mugger.
I'll make sure to break the guy's arm.
I mean, life becomes truly silly.
So I... I don't accept the atheist answer, and I don't accept the famous Kushner answer, either he's all-good or all-powerful.
So, where do I come down?
On the issue of reconciling God with all the unjust suffering, where do you come down is also part of the issue.
Back in a moment.
How do you reconcile a good God with all the unjust suffering in the world?
It's the problem of theodicy.
That's the subject of the Ultimate Issues Hour, which is the third hour every Tuesday.
So I gave you some responses that I reject, and now those were from, if you will, the theological left.
Atheism and God is not fully capable.
In other words, God is not omnipotent.
Those were some.
I believe God is omnipotent and I believe that God is all good.
What I believe is that God allows bad things to happen.
That is the nature of the world in which we live.
God stopped all bad things.
Life would be absurd.
There are those who believe that any bad thing that happens to you has been God's will.
I have no answer to that.
I don't believe it.
But I have no proof that that is wrong.
I don't have even theological proof.
It just doesn't make sense to me.
God wanted that five-year-old to die of cancer.
God wanted the six million Jews to die, every single one.
And the ones that didn't die, he specifically chose to save.
I don't believe that either.
By the way, if you do believe it, I don't have any problem with it.
Or with you, let's put it that way.
But it doesn't make sense to me, and my vehicle to faith is reason.
That's why I call my Bible commentary the Rational Bible.
I think it gets worked out in an afterlife.
The staggering injustices of this life are worked out in the next.
I don't know anything about it.
The only time I ever think about what happens in heaven, if you will, or the afterlife, the only time I think about it is when people ask me.
And I tell them I have no idea.
How could I know what any other life than this one is about?
Your six-year-old child dies.
I do believe you'll be reconnected.
Is the child six?
Does the child get older?
I don't have any answers to any of those questions.
But I do believe in the God of the Bible.
And now let's hear what you have as answers.
Okay, let's see.
Prescott, Arizona, Michelle.
Hello, Michelle.
Hi, Dennis.
Thanks for taking the call.
First of all, I was raised completely religious.
What religion?
I was Lutheran, and my two uncles, one was Unitarian and the other one was Presbyterian.
So, yeah, really heavy religious background.
And I had a son who was top 99th percentile in all of the testing.
It was brilliant.
Also extremely athletic.
MVP in everything he played.
And started getting sick when he was 15. And died by the time he was 16 from lymphoma.
We did have some religious people come in and say this was God's will.
And I gotta say, I totally disagree with that point of view.
So do I. There is no logical reason that that would happen when you have people like Hunter Biden skating by on everything.
This is not reasonable at all to believe there's a higher power who's all-powerful and loves you when they would let something like that happen to someone who provided so much to the world.
That's where we differ.
I agreed with you till now.
Why would you like the world to have, would you like God to have made a world where suffering, unjust suffering was not possible?
Yeah, the children...
Yeah.
But to adults it would be okay?
Well, my husband's currently dying from cancer, too.
So, you know, at least he had a life.
Right.
So the tragedy is worse with a child, but the unfairness is equal.
He doesn't deserve it, and you don't deserve it.
See, I don't think there is a knowable answer to us people.
But you only have really two alternatives.
To believe that there is a God or believe there is no God.
Well, I believe the latter.
Right.
Well, my heart goes out to you for both the suffering and for your conclusion.
I don't believe that the suffering means there is no God.
It means that there is a God with whom I have problems with this God.
Yeah, what would be the purpose of him inflicting suffering on someone that good?
You're right, he didn't inflict it, in my opinion.
There is not a single piece of evidence, logically or theologically, to assert that he inflicted it.
Maybe he's crying along with you.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, you asked for opinions.
I'm just giving you my opinion.
Well, I thank you so much for calling.
If after the death of a loved one...
Well, I'll finish.
Hello.
Dennis Prager here.
Ultimate Issues Hour.
Probably...
If there is one that I've done the most, it's probably this subject, but I'm not sure of that.
It's hounded me since I was in high school.
I don't have a perfect answer, but I know how many answers I do reject.
Reconciling God and all the unjust suffering.
My last caller lost her terrific teenage son to lymphoma, now losing her husband, and now she's lost God as well, or she may have lost God earlier.
That's very sad.
The whole thing is sad.
I'm just thinking.
That's the reason for silence.
I'm trying to phrase it so as to make it palatable.
There is no God is not any more logical a response to the suffering than any God-based response.
I think part of the problem is this.
When people say, as my sweet last pain-filled caller did, that you can no longer believe in God, as one writer put it, well, what God do you no longer believe in?
Presumably it is the God who would not allow unjust suffering to take place.
That's the God you no longer believe in.
But I never believed in such a God, so it doesn't affect me quite the same.
Now, if I were in a Nazi death camp and all I saw was torture and degradation and mass murder, children gassed in their mother's arms, what would I say then?
Well, it's an interesting question.
I've asked myself that.
I have no answer.
I don't know how I would have responded.
But they did do a number of studies of Holocaust survivors and found that percentage-wise the number of believers in God among Holocaust survivors was the same after the Holocaust as before the Holocaust.
But it wasn't the same people necessarily.
A fair number of atheists became believers and a fair number of believers became atheists.
The percentage stayed the same, but not the individuals.
So I don't know how I would have reacted, but I can only say that I don't expect God to bail me out or bail my loved ones out.
So that God's existence or the faith in that God is not threatened for me.
Since that's not the God I believe in.
I believe in the God of the Bible, where there is not the slightest implication that he will intervene in every single person's life where there is suffering.
It isn't even hinted at, to best of my knowledge.
So, I... I don't know where people get the idea from.
And anyway, how can you hold that idea when you know how many people have suffered and God didn't do anything for?
That's not his job.
What's his job?
Well, his job is to be there with us when we're suffering.
And his job is to give us, this is my biggest belief in God's job, His job is to give us a roadmap on how to live a good life so that there is a lot less unjust suffering.
That's what I do really believe.
That's the God I believe in.
The God who makes demands upon me rather than the God upon whom I make demands.
That's how I see God.
So I don't even have the question, why did God inflict cancer on that 15-year-old boy?
Because I don't believe for a second that he did.
Dennis Prager here.
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