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Oct. 25, 2023 - Dennis Prager Show
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Dennis Prager here.
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Hello there, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
So they had a press conference yesterday where members of the World Press were invited to see pictures of what Hamas did to Jews on October 7th that had not been released earlier.
And I have a report here.
That is just worthy of your being aware.
If you don't want to know about it, it's because of my old understanding of evil that people don't want to know about it.
Evil is not dark.
People can look at the dark.
Evil is extremely bright.
So...
There's a reporter who said, I watched Hamas unleash hell from unheard.
The footage bore testament to an ancient hatred.
So he writes, Agari, this is the Israeli who made the presentation, is technically a media mouthpiece, but he veers into rhetoric.
Why did they strap GoPros to themselves?
Right?
As I have said, and I'm not the only one, the primary difference between Hamas and the Nazis, since both wish to exterminate the Jews, one of Israel, one of Europe, and by the way, largely the same number, the biggest difference is that the Nazis tried to hide what they did, whereas Hamas wants it publicized.
The pride they took in it and taken it.
Why did they strap GoPros to themselves?
GoPros are the cameras that video things as things are moving.
This is what the Israeli press spokesman speaking to the world media said.
Why did they call the family of who they murdered?
Because they are proud of what they did.
They called the family of those they murdered?
Were you aware of that?
What, to tell them we murdered your child?
Okay.
He continues, rape, where is Islam?
Burn, where is Islam?
Behead, where is Islam?
They killed babies, old people, sick people.
We won't allow the world to forget who we are fighting.
Hamas wants dead Gazans.
You don't take human shields.
You don't burrow under hospitals otherwise.
This is Hamas, not Palestinians.
He steps off the stage.
The footage starts.
We see several Hamas terrorists sitting on the back of a truck as it enters Israel.
They whoop and cheer.
They fan into the street, shooting at cars.
They drag blood-drenched corpses out of vehicles onto the street.
A female body is thrown onto the road.
Allahu Akbar!
Allahu Akbar!
They cry.
I am, I realize, watching a montage of atrocity.
And it gets worse.
A terrified Israeli man in his underpants.
And his two young children, also in underclothes, run screaming.
Thugs clamber down from a lorry and throw a grenade into the cubbyhole where they have taken refuge.
The father's body falls onto the ground covered in blood.
Terrorists take the two children covered in their father's blood into a room.
Daddy's dead!
one screams to his brother.
It's not a prank.
He's really dead.
I wish I was dead.
I wish I was dead, he screams.
Even within the litany of horror I've witnessed in my career, this is horrifyingly unsettling.
A new scene depicts a man in a football shirt, lying on the ground covered in blood.
He moans in pain.
A terrorist picks up a hoe and starts smashing him over the head, over and over and over again.
Allahu Akbar, he screams, over and over and over again.
Some audio plays and a translation of the Arabic pops up on the screen as a Hamas terrorist calls his father.
Father, I killed ten Jews!
Check your WhatsApp.
I sent you the photos.
Father, I killed ten Jews.
I killed ten Jews with my bare hands.
Check your WhatsApp, Father.
Be proud of me.
I'm starting to lose a sense of time.
A terrified, handcuffed female hostage is dragged out of a truck amid cheering crowds.
We are shown images of the burned babies so small you could cradle them.
in the crook of your arm.
And it's very, very hard for colleges to condemn the greatest evil at the moment.
There's a report out that the student council at Brandeis University...
Let's see, where is that?
I just had that.
The student council at Brandeis University voted 10 to 6. Not to condemn Hamas.
Brand nice universities.
The university that years ago rescinded an invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak about Islam.
She's a black Muslim woman, or at least she was raised Muslim, from Somalia.
And has devoted her life to protecting women living in the Islamic world.
For pro-Israel students at Brandeis University, the two weeks since Hamas attacked Israel had been at least in part a period of relief.
The campus had not been convulsed by the kind of anti-Israel sentiment that was roiling many others.
That changed on Sunday.
When Brandeis student government voted down a resolution condemning Hamas and calling on the terror group to release all hostages.
Only six members of the university's student union voted in student union senate, voted in favor of the resolution, while ten voted against and five abstained.
So 15 of the 21 would not vote for the resolution.
It's absolutely infuriating, said Stephen Gogan, the Jewish sophomore who resigned from his position in the student government over the vote.
The word that comes to mind most is outrage.
Well, that's the word that comes to him.
The word that comes to me is college.
Located just west of Boston, Brandeis was founded in 1948 by the Jewish community and is named after Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice to serve in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Jewish students make up about a third of undergraduates, giving Brandeis one of the highest concentrations of Jewish students at any college in the country.
And their student said it.
Could not vote to condemn Hamas.
Don't ever laugh at Neville Chamberlain.
It's one of the real important lessons to be learned.
It costs a lot more for Britain to confront Hitler in 1938 than it costs anybody to make a resolution against Hamas, and we can't even get that done.
And President Biden is preoccupied with Islamophobia.
And Hamas, the Gazans, which means Hamas, are getting $100 million in aid.
Maybe if they would have slaughtered more Jews, they would have gotten more money.
That's a lot of bang for your buck.
The biggest feeling I have now, and what I think a lot of other Brandeis students are feeling right now, is disappointment.
All these, my fellow Jews, are disappointed in the left.
God, the naivete among so many American Jews about the left.
Oh, it's painful.
In part, it's because the disproportionate number of Jews went to college.
We'll be back.
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AmericanFederal.com AmericanFederal.com I was supposed to be taking 500 of you to Israel.
So, right.
Today?
Today was the day?
We were going to leave today?
Well...
Well, it's been postponed, not canceled, but postponed until April, I believe.
I would go as it happens.
But I totally understand that it's postponed.
It's a completely correct decision.
You know, I wrote a book 40 years ago, Why the Jews...
I want to understand what is happening.
Please read it.
Might be my least well-known book, but it's not any less important than any other book I've written.
I co-authored it with the most prolific living Jewish writer on Jewish matters, Rabbi Joseph Tlushkin.
We were both about 30 years old.
It's a third edition, but...
Nothing was changed.
Things were added, but nothing was changed.
I could have written the book 600 years ago.
Only the examples might have been different, because they didn't occur yet.
There is a Catholic historian, Edward Flannery.
It was quoted in the New York Times.
He has since died, which makes perfect sense.
He was already middle-aged when I was in college.
And he wrote...
Let's see if I can draw it up immediately here.
Yes, first he wrote a book, The Anguish of the Jews.
23 Centuries of Anti-Semitism.
It came out in, at least here, that edition is 2004, so almost 20 years ago.
And he is a, he was a very well-versed historian and a moral religious leader.
But he made a comment that, Oh yes, he had a, let's see, The Anguish of the Jews.
Is that the book I recited?
Yeah.
Was that the name of the book I just, The Anguish of the Jews?
Or was that a, yeah.
And here it is.
I knew it.
It came out in January 1965, exactly.
A Catholic priest writes of 23 centuries of anti-Semitism.
And he wrote a piece in the New York Times from which we quoted in our book.
And I can get that up.
It's really, really brilliant.
And it summarizes the heart of Jew hatred, which certainly every Christian should be aware of.
And this man is...
Here we go.
I'm going to get it for you, my friends.
Because it's a...
The and Ernest Vanden Haag, another non-Jew.
But I don't know if Vanden Haag was religious.
Obviously, Father Flannery was.
And they both summarized it brilliantly.
There we go.
I'm going to find it.
I am.
Ah, alright.
We're getting there.
Edward Flannery.
It's actually the front quote in my book.
Why the Jews?
The reason for anti-Semitism.
It has a new subhead, interestingly.
The greatest predictor, anti-Semitism, the greatest predictor of evil.
So, And my God, is that true?
It was Judaism that brought the concept of a God-given universal moral law into the world.
The Jew carries the burden of God in history, and for this has never been forgiven.
The Reverend Edward H. Flannery National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
It was Judaism that brought the concept of a God-given universal moral law into the world.
The Jew carries the burden of God in history.
By the way, it's irrelevant how any given Jew is religiously or even morally.
There are good Jews and bad Jews like every other group.
They're atheist Jews.
That's not the point.
The collective Jew carries this burden.
Whether Jews individually feel it or not is a separate issue.
That is why the greatest evil of the time wants to annihilate Jews.
So this tells you something about chunks of Islam today.
It tells you...
About the Nazis in the 30s and 40s of the 20th century.
And it tells you about the left.
Not liberals.
Liberals are just the most naive group living at this time.
But they're not leftists.
They have decided to be blind to the evil on the left.
It was a voluntary decision.
And some are awakening.
Most are probably not.
They still think, many liberal Jews, that conservatives and the right are their enemy.
And there are anti-Semites on the right, but that's an individual issue.
In the case of the left, it hates Israel as much as Hamas does.
That's why they support Students for Justice in Palestine and other neo-Nazi groups.
The Southern Poverty Law Center is another evil organization that liberals quote all the time, as if it has any moral bearing, stature.
And their union came out passionately on behalf of Hamas.
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That's Essential Church.
Hi everybody, I'm Dennis Prager.
Maybe now you're moving way too fast.
1-8-Prager-776.
The non-Jew who is...
Not aware of the universal implications of anti-Semitism, of the lethal variety, is fooling himself.
Hitler and the Nazis were dismissed as the Jews' problem.
Many dismiss, including some prominent conservatives, dismiss Hamas as the Jews' problem.
The ability not to learn from history?
is apparently infinite.
Bright people often write on so many subjects understand nothing about the greatest hatred on earth.
The only annihilationist hatred.
It's amazing.
These are our Neville Chamberlains.
Nice people and good intentions But good intentions on the right are as useless as good intentions on the left.
I have no interest in intentions.
Wow.
Ann in Atlanta, Georgia.
Hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Thanks so much for taking my call.
And I have a question for you.
My perspective is that of a Christian, I'm a conservative.
I very much vote when the issues are related to Israel.
I always vote for Israel, money for Israel.
I have lived in the Northeast.
I've lived in the South.
I've lived in very Jewish communities by basis of my career and where I grew up.
Will the horror of current Israel awaken American Jews to the impact of their constant and deep democratic vote?
I, as a Christian, am voting for Israel, and my Jewish colleagues are not.
I simply can't understand.
Well, they think they are, because Joe Biden came out with very pro-Israel statements in the very beginning.
Now he's in the middle.
We have to be as aware of Islamophobia as if Jews are killing Muslim babies or Christians are killing Muslim babies.
It's sickening.
The whole thing is sickening.
That party is sickening.
And yes, look, it's what I just said.
The naivete of most American Jews.
I'm an American Jew.
I am deeply involved in Jewish life.
And even for me, it is a puzzle, the utter blindness of so many Jews to the evil of the left.
So many of these people are nice people, you know, and good home life and support for charities, a lot of wonderful things.
But when it comes to wisdom, and wisdom is first and foremost about knowing good and evil, it is amazing.
And I'm going to be writing about that.
I had a whole hour, probably two hours on that in the past week.
The articles in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times about how Jews are so disappointed in the left now.
But you're right.
Will it have any bearing on how they vote?
Will they stop giving money to universities, the breeding ground of left-wing Jew hatred?
Some are, and the latter some.
On the voting habits, it'll have minimal impact.
The party of Ilhan Omar and the squad, is there an analogy, is there an analogous Israel-hating group in the Republican Party?
Of course not.
But it won't make any difference.
Fair question, isn't that, Mr. Producer?
Is there an analogous group to the squad, Jew-hating, Israel-hating, pro-those-who-wish-to-annihilate-Israel?
Is there such a group among the Republicans in Congress?
Yes, this is...
You have to look at the world with clarity.
The desire of people to fool themselves is very deep.
All right, go on, go on, go on.
A needed break from the darkness of our time.
The male-female hour, the happiness hour, the ultimate issues hour, though often that is about darkness.
Well, sometimes.
Because that's the human condition.
I don't like fooling myself that it's better than I want it to be.
That it's better than it is, let's put it that way.
Anyway, the male-female hour, the most honest talk about men and women in the American media, of which I am aware.
And so welcome to the show.
I have a light topic.
Well, I take that back.
It sounds light, and it might be.
In some cases, but it might not be in others.
So I will play the phone operator this hour, taking your responses and commenting on them in most cases, hopefully in all cases.
Sometimes I'm left speechless.
So here is my question, and I ask you to call in.
As soon as you hear this, if you have an answer, if you are married, or if you are significantly involved with another and hope to marry, here is my question.
Name an idiosyncrasy of your partner.
That drives you a little crazy.
God forbid, mistreats you verbally or physically.
That's not an idiosyncrasy.
That's just an evil.
I'm not asking about that.
I'm asking about an idiosyncrasy that your significant other Your husband, your wife, your long-term boyfriend or girlfriend has that drives you a little crazy.
Not one that the person has that doesn't drive you crazy.
I mean, that would be interesting, but that's not my question.
And there's a part two, which is much harder for people to answer.
Do you have an idiosyncrasy that drives your partner a little crazy?
It is very hard for people to identify their own idiosyncrasies.
Very hard.
Because what we do, we think is normal.
One of the revelations of marriage...
Is how many idiosyncrasies you realize you have.
Things that you thought were completely normal in human terms turn out to be idiosyncratic in your terms.
Like, if you like...
I mean, this is trivial, truly.
Because this wouldn't drive your...
This wouldn't drive your spouse crazy.
Would you say that ketchup on eggs is bizarre?
Or it's just some people like it and some people don't?
You don't think that's idiosyncratic?
Give me a...
It is idiosyncratic.
It is idiosyncratic.
Alright, so then it qualifies.
It wouldn't qualify for this hour because I can't imagine it driving anybody crazy.
Right?
If your spouse likes ketchup on his or her eggs, what?
What do you care?
Is that fair to say?
It would drive you a little crazy?
You're right.
Okay, that's a good point.
If it drives you crazy, call in.
That's right.
Exactly.
How about ketchup on sauerkraut?
That, there's no question.
Okay, I'm trying to figure out.
If you have ketchup on sauerkraut, you're pregnant.
That's the only possible explanation.
On the other hand, you also have the problem of men getting pregnant, which I do believe is an insurmountable problem, but if you went to college, it's not a problem at all, because men give birth and you believe it.
1-8 Prager 776-877-243-7776 One of the fascinating aspects of marriage...
Is that you learn a lot more about yourself if you're married.
A good friend of mine said to me at least 25 years ago, said, you know, you got married relatively late.
And he said, you know, Dennis, it's fascinating.
I never thought I got into bad moods.
And then I'm married and I realize, wow, I do!
Because, my wife points it out, you learn a lot more about yourself when you get married.
married.
It is one of the important things about marriage.
1-8 Prager 776-877-243-7776.
Idiosyncrasy.
An idiosyncrasy of your spouse that drives you crazy.
So there are two criteria.
It has to be an idiosyncrasy and it has to drive you crazy.
I suspect I will get more calls on that.
Then I will on idiosyncrasy you have, an idiosyncrasy you have that drives your spouse crazy.
Now, since there's nothing I do that drives my spouse crazy, I can't possibly think of one.
That was a self-deprecating venture into humor, my dear friends.
I mean, I know I don't drive her crazy, generally speaking.
I'm pretty easy to be with.
But, let's see.
I would say that they were virtually all confined to my driving.
Which, in my case, is exactly what I would say is her idiosyncrasy that can drive me crazy.
And she is incredibly easy to live with.
But, I... When I speak to couples about that, it is fascinating how many cases we have this of the wife who thinks that there but for the grace of God, she would be dead in a car crash with her husband driving.
1-8 Prager 7-7-6.
And let's go to Tom in Glendora, California.
Hello.
Hey, God bless you, Dennis.
Old Tom.
I know.
I know.
You are a godsend to save this country.
Thank you.
Well, we have two things here.
My wife's idiosyncrasy is far more benign than mine.
Her idiosyncrasy is she is an absolute...
Meet in this freak around the house.
Oh, there's a little piece of something on the floor.
Would you get it?
And that drives me nuts.
But my idiosyncrasy is far worse than hers.
So I'm married way, way up.
I love her.
My idiosyncrasy is I'm too disgustingly impatient.
She'll try to tell me something.
I don't listen well.
I interrupt.
I've tried to work on that.
So, wait, your impatience expresses itself in conversation?
Yes.
She's long-winded, but she's sweet.
Ah, I see.
So you jumped to the end, interrupting her flow.
Perfectly put, Dennis, as usual.
Thank you.
I've had to suppress that, not with my wife.
She gets to the point very quickly.
I mean, the speed of light.
But I have had to curb that in general.
I will fill in the end of a sentence.
And I've had to work on that.
That's an interesting one.
We'll be back in a moment.
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The Dennis Prager Show.
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All right, so the subject here is what idiosyncrasy of your spouse or so the subject here is what idiosyncrasy of your spouse or significant other drives you Not an evil.
If you're a battered wife, that's not an idiosyncrasy of your husband.
It's an evil.
So we're not talking about that.
We're talking about idiosyncrasies.
And what idiosyncrasy do you have that drives your...
Significant other crazy.
All right, everybody.
Let's see.
Yeah, this is a good example, I think.
Josiah in Fort Worth.
Hello.
Hello.
Long time listener.
First time I got in before.
Hey, great.
So go ahead.
Did I lose you?
Sorry.
No, you never lost me.
So the idiosyncrasies actually, Related in the same, it's just the opposite.
So I'm very regimented at work, and I usually have two or three meetings back-to-back-to-back all day long or double booked.
And what drives me crazy is during vacation or any kind of free time, I don't want to have a plan.
I kind of want to do what I want to do when I want to do it in that moment.
My spouse just wants to regiment everything to have a plan during vacation or any weekend and wants to plan things months in advance.
I'm like, I'm not even thinking about this right now.
It's kind of the same related issue, but complete opposite.
Fascinating.
Let me understand.
Where was your last vacation?
Florida.
Okay.
And so literally two months in advance, your wife wanted to schedule what you would do?
Oh, yeah.
Like, it wasn't just like, hey, we should go see this place.
It was like, hey, at 8 a.m., we're going to be doing this.
And I'm like, no, no, no.
We can schedule some trips and make sure we do some things, but I'm not going to...
Wait, so you're not exaggerating.
She, two months in advance, said...
8 a.m.
on this date, we're going to do this?
Yes.
Now, if she were on the phone, what would she say?
She'd agree, and then also I got her one weekend, and I said, hey, pack your bags.
We're going to the airport and just picking a flight.
And that drove her insane because we did a...
Impromptu trips like I would want to do.
It was the worst thing for her.
We had fun anyway.
She'd rather regiment it and know what she's going to be doing.
I'd rather just see something cool on the street.
I am curious.
How does this play out non-vacation wise?
In daily life, does it manifest itself?
Not really.
During the week, it's pretty much the same.
It works so much, so it's, you know, get home, eat dinner, go to bed.
Does she have an out-of-the-house job?
Yeah, a teacher, so they have to be regimented.
Right, but it's interesting because if she's regimented at work, you're regimented at work, you want to be non-regimented on vacation, but she does not feel that same need.
Correct.
Interesting.
So how do you resolve this?
Just more conversations and, you know, hey, let's plan.
Basically, we have to plan the not planned days.
So I say, okay, if you want to do some stuff on these days or an event or go see a museum or whatever, we need at least three days where we don't have a plan so that way we're both actually realizing.
Oh, so that's what you've done?
You've had planned days and unplanned days.
Yep, and basically unplanned days or whatever, wherever the wind takes us.
Yeah, I get you.
Well, that's a nice solution.
By the way, I am more like you, just for the record.
But it doesn't matter.
Idiosyncrasies are idiosyncrasies.
So that was a good resolution.
Some days we'll know 8 a.m.
we're in line for...
The Museum of Sculpted Turds.
If some of you know to what I am referring, others you have no idea.
The Dutch Museum, the museum in the Netherlands that had a giant exhibit of sculpted turds.
That's what they called it, turds.
Poop.
All right.
And you do want to get in there early because clearly the crowds are.
Quite extensive.
Chicago, John, hello.
Hello, Dennis.
How are you?
Thank you so much for what you do, and God has definitely sent you here on Earth for a reason.
Thank you for everything.
That's very sweet of you.
Thank you.
We actually met one time at a cigar function with Dan Proft sometime in Chicago.
Yeah, well, I've done them a number of years now.
Nice.
Well, thank you for taking my call.
I guess getting ready to it.
My wife and I, we've been married for 38 years, love each other, and we've had a wonderful marriage.
But we do drive each other crazy once in a while.
And my issue with my wife is she cannot see some of the things that's going on.
Even though I try to explain it to her, she doesn't want to hear it in terms of what's going on with the education system, with the future leaders of tomorrow.
But I get a perspective for everybody.
She is a high school teacher.
She's been her whole life.
And I try to explain a couple things, but she gets to the point, it's kind of like putting your head in the sand, and she's asked me not to talk about political things, including of all the poor decisions that's been going on the past few years.
Hold on, I have a question for you.
I'm very interested in the answer.
We'll be back!
Male-female hour.
Hello, y'all.
Dennis Prager here.
Welcome to the third hour of the show.
Just had a lot of fun on the male-female hour.
Very needed in these very dark times.
Mike Johnson, Congressman from Louisiana, has just been elected Speaker of the House.
Thought I'd bring that news to you.
Wish him good luck.
There are divisions in the Republican Party.
I prefer it to the monolithic nature of the Democratic Party.
When you can't say anything bad about Kamala Harris, it does not speak well for your party.
Or, for that matter, Joe Biden.
There's a piece in the LA Times.
Did you see this?
The Stanford scientist who said there's no free will.
You sent it to me?
Yeah.
I want you to hear this because this is something I have been talking about all of my life.
Many, many years ago, I read a book by a Russian, I think he was a Jew, a Russian Jewish philosopher whose name eludes me.
The only reason I mention it is I never want to take credit for an idea that isn't mine.
I consider that a theft.
When people say to me, oh, Dennis, there's a great idea, I'm going to steal it.
I'm so tempted to say, yeah, but it says, thou shalt not steal.
And his idea, which the moment, the exact moment I read it, I knew it was true.
That if only people who believe in God believe in human free will.
The belief in human free will is dependent upon belief in God.
If there is no God, there is no free will.
We are just mechanisms.
Because people with higher education are often so foolish, and even stupid, because they have learned silliness.
Oh, the religious, you know, they have unsophisticated views.
We secular, we have sophisticated views, which of course we all know, like men give birth.
This is another example, not even understanding that if there is no God, there is no free will.
They don't even understand that.
The average atheist with a college education who would hear me say that would actually say, you want to hear something stupid from this conservative prager, this religious guy?
And then, as if it were ipso facto stupid, When in fact it is a fact.
If there is no God, there is no non-physical reality.
If there's no non-physical reality, then everything we do has a physical reason.
So there's no free will.
Free will is dependent upon a me that isn't just physical.
So here's a piece in the...
In the LA Times, Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky.
There he is.
He is the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery.
He looks like an idiosyncratic guy with a big gray beard.
Okay.
This is the article.
Just aspects of it.
After more than 40 years studying humans and other primates.
I love that.
Humans and other primates.
That's true.
If there's no God, we're just another primate.
That's exactly right.
Sapolsky has reached the conclusion that virtually all...
Wait a minute.
Whoa, I missed the word virtually when I first read it.
Wait.
Virtually all?
The point is irrelevant.
As soon as he acknowledges there is any free will, then his entire edifice crumbles.
Wow.
Well, anyway, but it's still worth hearing.
Either the writer got it wrong and he believes all human behavior, or...
This really does compromise the point.
Virtually all human behavior is as far beyond our conscious control as the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells, or the beating of our hearts.
Get that?
We're not aware of what we're doing.
Any more than we are when we have a seizure or when our heart beats.
This means accepting.
You've got to hear this.
This is the key.
This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
To which, of course, one poses the question...
God, I'd love to have him on.
Invite him on.
What the hell?
He might come on.
If a person shooting into a crowd has no control, and by the way, I don't mock the idea.
Notice, it's very important that you understand, I'm not mocking the idea.
I'm only noting that there is no secular case for free will.
There is none.
There has to be a non-physical aspect to the human being in order for there to be free will.
Free will means you are not governed entirely by neurons and other things that But of course, if the man who shoots into a crowd has absolutely no free will, then why punish him?
See, I have a feeling that Professor Sapolsky would have an answer to that.
He might say, well, we punish him.
So that another guy not shoot into a crowd knowing that he'll be punished.
Why doesn't it work?
Because if no one has any free will...
Well, yes.
Oh, yeah, right.
Okay.
So, exactly.
Well, then why does that not...
If punishment affects behavior...
Then we have free will.
I won't do X because Y will happen to me.
Why is that not free will?
It would seem to me.
Well, no.
Oh, I see.
Yes, that's the old answer.
Well, you have to punish him because you have to protect society.
Okay.
Then...
Why do we keep people in who shoot people at 26 and they're now 76?
Nobody thinks they're going to shoot again.
By the way, a lot of people think they should be let out, which is one of the reasons I'm for capital punishment, because over time it almost never happens that people are in forever.
Anyway, it means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians Just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane.
But the drunk driver...
So that's an interesting question.
How responsible...
Because you can't be responsible if you don't have free will.
How responsible is a drunk driver who kills a pedestrian?
So the answer is, I assume the answer is, they are responsible insofar as they decided to take the drink and then drive.
His answer would be, they didn't have freedom to choose to drink, and once they drank, they certainly had no free will.
So I'd like to ask that of recovering alcoholics.
If you're a recovering alcoholic, how do you regard the drunk driver who killed somebody?
Is he completely innocent?
Back in a moment.
There's an article in the LA Times about...
Our not having free will, which is exactly what every secular person should believe.
If there is no God, then we are only physical beings.
How could physical have any free will?
Does, for example, a cow have free will?
Does a tree have free will?
Does a box have free will?
Of course not.
Because it's just physical.
It is an interesting question about animals.
Do animals have free will?
It's hard to imagine that they do.
They're governed by instincts.
And I don't have any problem with that.
But humans, created in the image of God, according to those who are biblically oriented, Does have free will.
We know the difference between good and evil, for example.
Well, some do.
A vast majority of people do not know the difference.
They tend to teach at college.
So he is saying, let's be honest, he's a professor at Stanford, and I've been reading from the article here.
So he said, except that a man who shoots into a crowd is no more in control over his fate than the victims whom he shoots.
He continues, the world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over.
We've got no free will.
Stop attributing stuff to us.
That isn't there.
Spoken like a true secularist, except he's more honest than most.
There are secular people who believe that we have free will, and they have not been thinking clearly.
My life has been dedicated to teaching the consequences of secularism, as I've said, for 40 years.
If it's impossible...
The article says, if it's impossible for any single neuron or any single brain to act without influence from factors beyond its control, Sapolsky argues, there can be no logical room for free will.
Right?
No single neuron or any single brain acts without influence from factors beyond its control, so there's no free will.
Abundant evidence indicates, this is what the article says, abundant evidence clearly written by a secular writer.
Abundant evidence indicates that people who grew up in homes marked by chaos and deprivation will perceive the world differently and make different choices than people raised in safe, stable, resource-rich environments.
Really?
Did you know that?
This blanket prediction?
How you grew up is the determinant of how you will behave?
There aren't healthy people who grew up in chaotic and deprived homes?
And there aren't sick dudes who grew up in stable, resource-rich, safe environments?
It's like, of course, it's like, oh, exactly like poverty causes crime.
This is the liberal mind.
This is not even the leftist mind.
This is the liberal mind.
This is, I knew in college I was dealing with nonsense.
Just nonsense.
These are the examples.
Oh, really?
You know how people will behave based on the home they came from?
Really?
It's like all the people I quoted it by not knowing I would even see this article.
I quoted it.
Jim Carrey, right?
Not Jim Carrey.
What's Carrey's first name?
Candidate for president.
John.
Might as well be Jim.
John Kerry, yes.
Terrorism, it's the result of poverty.
Right.
The 9-11 terrorists were all from upper middle class homes.
Oh, God.
It's just amazing.
Wisdom begins with fear of the Lord.
Boy, is that true?
There is no wisdom in the secular world.
None.
N-O-N-E, N-O-N-E, N-O-N-E. Not the writer of this piece, not this obviously well-intentioned.
I have nothing against this guy Sapolsky.
He is a product of secularism, as is the writer.
People who grew up in homes marked by chaos and deprivation will perceive the world differently and make different choices than people raised in safe, stable, resource-rich environments?
That's a blanket statement.
Often, I could live with that, but just to make that statement?
A lot of important things are beyond our control, but like everything, the writer writes, we have no meaningful command over our choice of careers, romantic partners, or weekend plans.
If you reach out right now and pick up a pen, was even that insignificant action somehow preordained?
Yes, Sapolsky states.
Sapolsky's honest.
He is confronting the logic of a godless world.
No free will.
Therefore, no good and evil.
How can you describe somebody who is completely not responsible for what he did as having done evil, let alone being evil?
Yes, Sapolsky says, both in the book, His new book, and to the countless students who have asked the same question during his office hours.
What the student experiences as a decision to grab the pen is preceded by a jumble of competing impulses beyond his or her conscious control.
Maybe their peak is heightened because they skipped lunch.
Maybe they're subconsciously triggered by the professor's resemblance to an irritating relative.
Back in a moment.
Hello, y'all.
Fascinating piece in the LA Times about eminent professor of biology at Stanford, who's written a book just come out, that we have no free will.
And I pointed this out all of my career, 40 years on radio.
If you're an honest, secularist, humans have no free will.
Therefore, you should really effectively dispense with the terms good and evil, because if you shoot into a crowd, and he uses that example, if you shoot innocent people in a crowd, you are no more responsible for killing them than a tree is for falling on a person after a storm.
It goes on with a...
I'm reading this in real time.
So it's really fascinating how it validates my point.
Sapolsky was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household in Brooklyn, the son of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
Religion shaped life at home.
That all changed on a single night in his early teens, he says.
While grappling with questions of faith and identity, he was struck by an epiphany.
That kept him awake until dawn and reshaped his future.
God is not real.
There is no free will.
And we primates are pretty much on our own.
So, you see?
That's exactly right.
God is not real.
There is no free will.
That's right.
If you believe God is not real, there is no free will.
I salute Sapolsky for his honesty.
He doesn't drive me crazy at all.
The people who drive me crazy and who elicit contempt for me are the people who say there is no God and there is free will.
They don't know what the hell they're talking about.
That was kind of a big day, he said, with a chuckle, and it's been tumultuous since then.
All right, let's go to some of your calls, and I'll go more with that later.
All right, let's see.
I had the alcoholic question.
Eric in McKinney, Texas.
Hello.
Dennis, you're a national treasure.
God bless you.
Thank you again.
I've been sober in AA for 28 years, and I'm calling as a recovered alcoholic.
Sober in AA, but I'm not speaking for AA. And what I can tell you is the unrecovered alcoholic, like I once was, has no choice about whether they're going to drink or not because they suffer, as I did, from an insane mental obsession.
So, no choice.
Gonna drink no matter what.
No matter what the consequences, no matter how many DUIs, no matter what.
The true alcoholic has lost the power of choice whether they're going to drink.
Now, all that said, of course, if someone drank and kills someone in a DUI crash, they would, at a minimum, be guilty of manslaughter.
So, I'm kind of coming in on both sides.
Well, guilty of manslaughter is a judicial...
I'm asking you the moral and the intellectual one, given that he, in your view, had no choice but to drink, how can we blame him for killing someone behind the wheel?
Well, I can say that, again, I don't speak for AA, but in AA we say that I am responsible for my own recovery.
So I have to admit, first, I have a problem, and then I have to pursue the solution to that problem.
And in AA, we spend a lot of time trying to spread that very fact, that there's this thing called alcoholism, what it is, and then that there is a solution.
Now, much of the world doesn't like the fact that the solution in AA is spiritual, God, a higher power.
And I can tell you that...
When I got to Step 10, 28 years ago, I had an experience, called a spiritual experience, of the certain sudden realization of God in me, which solved my problem.
The obsession was expelled.
And I knew I had nothing to do with it.
All I was doing was desperately following these 12 steps, and boom, it happened.
Just like it says in the...
But why did you decide to follow the 12 steps?
Because I was going to die drunk and alone.
Suffering, in other words.
Well, okay.
So then, you did have control.
You did have some free will on whether or not to drink.
I'll keep you on.
I grapple with this issue.
It was present in my family life.
Hey everybody, Dennis Prager here.
Fascinating piece in the Los Angeles Times.
A professor of biology, neurosurgery, neurology, if there's such a thing.
At the Stanford has come out with a book that we have no free will.
And I salute him because he is one of a handful of honest secularists.
A lot of people say there was no God and still believe in free will.
Even he realizes they're connected.
There's no God, then all we are are physical beings.
Physical beings do not have free will.
Artificial intelligence doesn't have free will.
Let alone trees.
So the question arises because he says you cannot blame a drunk driver for killing someone.
Because he had no choice in whether to drink and no choice about whether to drive.
So we have a recovering alcoholic in Texas, Eric.
And so you hold what you acknowledge are somewhat conflicting positions, that there's no choice for the alcoholic in drinking, but there is a choice in what?
Whether to drive?
I didn't quite follow.
Well, first let me say once again, I don't speak for AA. I'm just speaking about my experience.
I know.
We're not thinking you are.
Go ahead.
Okay.
So the unrecovered alcoholic has lost the power of choice over whether he's going to drink.
I could stay dry for days or weeks, but eventually it would become so unbearable I'd have to drink again just to keep from blowing my brains out.
No choice.
Once I could admit that I had a serious, progressive, chronic, fatal illness called alcoholism, I went to AA and got into recovery.
And I recovered from alcoholism by taking the steps, and this power greater than me I call God expelled my obsession for alcohol.
I've been a free man for 28 years.
In AA, we often say, I'm responsible for my own recovery.
I have to take the initiative to follow the 12 steps, to take the 12 steps.
So what I'm saying is that the drunk driver, in my view, is certainly guilty of manslaughter.
And I would, you know, you said you want to talk about the legal and moral argument.
Morally, he's committed a...
A crime.
A sin against his fellow men.
He's killed someone in a drunk driving accident.
Right.
But I don't understand how you reconcile that with the belief that the alcoholic has no choice but to drink.
Well, let's go to the second question.
Did he have a choice whether to pick up those car keys or not?
Okay, so that's where you hold him responsible.
The car keys.
Yes.
Not the drinking.
Right.
Okay, fair enough.
I just wanted to get an answer from people who have undergone this.
But of course, then there is always the question, why did you choose to become sober?
And, well, he said, because he didn't want basically to die.
As I've been told, for alcoholics, there are three possible choices, generally speaking.
Death, prison, or sobriety.
But the very fact that you could choose at a given point to become sober means that there is an element of choice.
And I fully understand that the alcoholic has less freedom about drinking than I do because Drinks don't affect me in the same way that they affect an alcoholic.
An alcoholic, the first time he drinks, wants more.
The non-alcoholic does not.
And needs more, and more, and more.
Okie dokie, let's see here.
Hmm.
Santa Clarita, California, Steve.
Stephen, hello.
Hi, Dennis.
Hi.
I do encourage you to invite Dr. Sapolsky to speak on the show.
I did two of his courses from the teaching company a number of years ago, and this is not a plug for the teaching company, by the way.
They were called Stress in Your Body and Being Human Life Sciences from the Frontiers of Science.
If you know anything about the teaching company, the professors are engaging and extremely well-versed in their subjects and articulate well.
So I would think he would make a great guest.
I'd love him.
I'm announcing I'd love him.
It'll be interesting to see if he accepts.
There are professors who won't go on a conservative show.
I would be surprised if he doesn't.
As you know, you read that op piece in the L.A. Times because he must have a good publicist who they're trying to publicize his book.
One other point.
You mentioned about his Orthodox Jewish background.
I'm a religious Jew myself, a member of Chabad, and I would be most intrigued from knowing that he was born in Brooklyn, raised in an Orthodox Jewish family.
What was the epiphany that he had as an early teen that made him think this way?
And I certainly hope, since you obviously are quite knowledgeable on this subject, to query him about that as well.
Yeah.
Well, listen, by the way, you know what a fan I am of Chabad.
I just have to throw that in.
They're the greatest Jewish organization.
And a great organization, period.
Why do people who grow up in evangelical Christian homes or traditional Catholic homes or Mormons in good standing grow up and then reject the belief in God?
Hey everybody, final segment.
Read to you a piece in the Los Angeles Times on this professor of biology.
Professor Sapolsky says we have no free will.
And as one who doesn't believe in God, he's right.
If there is no God, there is no free will.
People understand so little about life.
And that especially includes PhDs.
I'm not talking about him.
He does.
He's honest.
There is no God.
There is no free will.
He doesn't drive me crazy because he's honest.
It's the people who don't believe in God who think you could still believe in free will.
It's the people who don't believe in God who still think that we can make a moral world.
That's the idiocy of our time.
Peter T. Tse, a Dartmouth neuroscientist, author of the 2013 book, The Neural Basis of Free Will, which I have to admit, I have not read it, but it does not make sense that there is a neural basis of free will.
This is a guy who wants his cake and eat it.
We're only neurons, but we still have free will.
But it is what it is.
Says that Sapolsky is a wonderful explainer of complex phenomena, however a person can be both brilliant and utterly wrong.
Those who push the idea that we are nothing but deterministic biochemical puppets are responsible for enhancing psychological suffering and hopelessness in this world.
Yes, but that's irrelevant.
The question is whether they're right or wrong, not whether they induce hopelessness.
It's a non sequitur.
Yeah.
Saul Smolanski, a professor at the University of Haifa in Israel, author of the book Free Will and Illusion, rejects the idea that we can will ourselves to transcend all genetic and environmental constraints.
But if we want to live in a just society, we have to believe that we can.
This is what I don't have respect for.
Yes, we have to believe that we have free will.
Even though we don't.
So when I tell people, even if you don't believe in God, you should act as if you do, they laugh at me.
Which do you think, Professor Smolanski, the philosopher at the University of Haifa, will produce better people?
The people who don't believe in free will, but make believe they do?
We're the people who try to believe in God even though they don't and thereby have a Ten Commandments from something above them saying, do not murder and do not steal.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
See you tomorrow.
Dennis Prager here.
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