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Oct. 20, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show
01:20:11
Timeless Wisdom - Why God Is So Important
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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Crager.
Here, thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses and classic radio programs.
And to purchase Dennis Brager's rational Bible.
Go to Dennis Craiger.coms.
The uh God cites that I am bringing the plagues so that you will know, you the Hebrews, you the Egyptians, the world will know that I am God.
Remember that the that the that over and above getting the Jews out of Egypt, over and above punishing Pharaoh and the and the slave masters, the issue of the plagues is to state to let the first people know.
These are the first monotheists in history.
The first people to know I am God.
I wish to cover with you the incredibly important subject of why is God important.
I will not make any arguments for God's existence.
That is an entirely separate argument.
And that is already recorded, and you are welcome to listen to it.
I am I am not interested in making that case at all.
It's a separate argument.
It's separate for two reasons.
Number one, God may exist, but his existence not be terribly important.
Right?
I don't know, um a third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals existed in 1928.
But his existence is not terribly significant other than to those who like him.
Okay?
So if I the fact that that third baseman existed is not relevant to you.
You don't really care, nor should you.
So importance and existence are not the same thing.
On the other hand, uh one may even say, well, I don't know if God exists, but I do know how important God is.
In fact, my belief has always been in talking to people who are uh estranged from religion or God and andor God, that the importance of God is more important for me to make the case for than the existence of God.
Only when you know how important God is, will you even care whether or not God exists?
Who cares if it's not important?
So it's more important to know how important God is than it is to hear the arguments for God's existence.
And then and they're rarely made.
It's rarely made.
People talk about God and people talk about prayer and but and and even God's existence.
But but why why so important?
Why is it is it all or nothing?
If there is a God, everything is important.
If there isn't, nothing is important.
I mean, it's it's that is how profoundly predicated the the Bible is, the Hebrew Bible, the the Christian Bible, the Muslim Bible, and uh but for our case, obviously the Hebrew Bible and Judaism are on God.
That modern Jews, that is post-Spinoza Jews, uh the modern era Jews since 18th century, if you will, have thought that somehow or other God is is nice but not essential, or even not so nice, is the greatest Jewish tragedy.
The greatest Jewish catastrophe is the Holocaust and Pogrones.
But the greatest Jewish tragedy is the ignoring of the centrality of God to Judaism.
Uh uh why that has happened is truly separate too, and I and I I don't want to focus on that.
I focus on this question, and it's the only session thus far where I am not doing the chapter with you.
I thought I would do both chapter 10 and this tonight, and the more I made notes, the more I hope I get through this tonight and be able to resume with chapter 10.
That is how important I consider this evening to take this moment to answer the question posed last week.
Why is it so important?
Part of the answer, and I will give you many answers, and and write questions down, because you will help me make this case.
I've never act given this talk as such in all my years of talking.
So you will help me if something is not clear uh to you, or I missed something that you feel was critical.
So I just can't stop in the middle, but please make notes to yourself to ask afterwards.
I'm not, by the way, I am not giving the reasons for the importance of God in necessarily in order of importance.
I will begin, though, with the plagues issue.
Now here is God manifesting himself, and forgive me for saying him.
I do so because my only choices are her, he, she, or it.
They're all awkward, including he.
But we're used to it, so it takes the least attention away from the subject.
I assume that God is male as much as I assume God is uh plays volleyball.
I mean, it it's it's so it's so reductionist of God to give God a gender, as it were, but we don't have a human non-male or female.
We don't have a word, we don't have a pronoun for it.
And it is impossible because God is not a person, but is a is quote, a personality is relatable to.
You can't relate to an it.
As much as you love your computer, you cannot argue that your computer loves you.
If you do, see me afterwards.
I know fine people in the mental health field who could prominently help you.
God is making himself manifest.
You understand why I said himself, that's right.
That was where we were left off.
God is making himself manifest for the first time to more than an individual.
God spoke to Abraham, God spoke to Noah, not just to Jews.
God's first revelation is to Adam, right?
Adam and Eve, although really Adam specifically, and uh and uh Noah and uh Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
That's individual revelation.
Now God is manifesting himself to a community, to nations the Egyptian nation and the Hebrew or Jewish nation.
And how did he decide to do it first?
He did it first with plagues.
That in and of itself is fascinating and almost disturbing.
A God of love, a compassionate God, how does he decide to reveal himself to humanity?
Not to Moses, Moses was a burning bush, but to humanity with blood, frogs, lice, locusts, darkness, hail.
It it doesn't comport with our modern view of the way God should do it.
If you know, if if the editors of the New York Times could give us a God, God would reveal himself very differently.
It would not be through plagues.
Why then was it this way?
And here I come to uh the first reason for the uh significance of God, the overwhelming importance of God.
What God demonstrates with the plagues is that he two things at least.
One, he is God, and no other gods are God, and we will talk about that.
But first and foremost is that he manipulates nature.
This alone would be almost significant enough to affirm God's existence.
It's so important, and it's so contrary to a lot of modern thought, of contemporary, not modern, but contemporary thought, and the way people used to think historically, that God is God and nature isn't God, and there is no God in nature, is radical beyond beyond imagination.
I am convinced, I said I'm not making arguments for God's existence, but I will tell you that it is an argument to me for revelation that something so radical came forth.
People never would have done it.
It is universal, It was universal in the experience of humanity that nature was worshipped.
How could it not be?
It completely controlled us.
If it rained, we drank, if not, we died of thirst.
We didn't have crops, we didn't eat.
If the animals devoured us, then the animals were not propitiated properly.
The weather, animals, anything controlled us.
Floods, uh droughts, right?
So it makes sense to worship.
Also, there is a nobility to it.
You look at a mountain, do you not want to bow down?
I do.
I look at a mountain, oh wow.
That is impressive.
I feel insignificant.
When I visited the Himalayas, I was shaken.
It was a shaking experience.
We have peaks that go to ten thousand.
What is the highest peak in McKinley?
And how high is McKinley?
Twenty thousand, I think, right?
And in continental U.S., how high are the Rockies?
14-5.
Okay.
Okay, hold on.
14,500 feet is the largest in the continental United States.
Double it, and you are in the Himalayas.
Put that mountain on the top of itself.
But it's not one mountain.
It goes beyond anything you can imagine as a range of the Himalayas.
And you stand somewhere miles away and you look at this, and they are the tops are where jet planes fly.
That is how high we're talking.
Now, and I am uh I am not a nature worshipper.
I am a God believer, a god, a supra-natural God, a god above nature, and I am standing there, and I'm this is awesome.
I am insignificant, this is where it is at.
Well, what about the relaxation we feel?
Or the very fact that we are physically part of nature.
We are physically part of nature, right?
We are composed of the same stuff stars are composed of, let alone other animals.
It's very tempting to worship nature and to think nature is everything, and that is it.
But there are a lot of problems if nature is everything.
Problems that Judaism and revelation, revelation of this God came to solve.
One problem of nature is that it's a mall.
Nature does not know justice, kindness, goodness, fairness.
I learned that on Safari in uh East Africa.
It was very, it was, it was actually a problematic experience for me and incredibly instructive.
You can you can learn you rather easily which zebra is most likely to be eaten by a lion when there's an entire herd of zebras, either a baby or an infirm one.
Now, let us imagine that we are part of nature.
Why should we not act like nature does and let us kill our weak?
We would save immense amounts of money if we let our weak die.
Indeed, there are civilizations which did that.
When you were infirm, they would take you out, you'd be exposed.
The Greeks exposed deformed babies.
And the Greeks were an extremely high civilization.
You're you're just not the type of physical baby we want.
We you're just left exposed to die.
That makes sense.
You if you are revolted by the idea of exposing infirm or deformed babies or ugly babies to die, it is solely because of this revelation that you are of this book.
This book said you can't do that.
This book said you have to take care of the widow.
Do animals take care of widows?
Do animals take care of orphans?
I mean, sure, well, there is a species, Dennis, where in fact it's amazing, but you can see elephants that that will adopt a non-blood relative.
There are exceptions to everything.
The rule of nature is, however, you do not take care of the infirmed, because the dominant rule is the survival of the fittest.
Because of revelation, it's supposed to be the survival of the best, of the finest, of the most spiritual.
It's the opposite.
It's not natural.
That's what you need to keep in mind.
The the the Judaism, Torah, Bible, God aren't natural.
The ideas are not natural.
That's why I'm convinced that revelation took Place.
Because we we wouldn't come up, we who are part of nature wouldn't come up with unnatural rules otherwise.
A revelation had to take place to say, wait a minute, don't follow nature.
And so God is above nature and makes his first appearance as manipulative of nature.
The first reason is therefore a moral one.
Natural law is not moral law.
Natural law is survival of the fittest.
Hitler, in fact, uh uh cited that.
Hitler said, We we are the strongest race, and in nature, the strongest dominate, and they kill the weak.
Hitler followed Darwin Morley.
You've heard the concept of social Darwinism, it's let the weak die out.
Every other species that does it, why shouldn't we?
That's one reason.
That's the most obvious reason.
Now there's some less obvious reasons on the problems of nature and why it is critical.
To uh to uh de-sanctify nature.
That's the term I want to use, desanctify nature.
Nature isn't sacred, God is sacred.
One of the names of God in Judaism is Hakadosh Baruhu, the holy one, blessed be he.
Nature is not holy, God is holy, God is above nature.
One reason for the importance, aside from the moral, for the for the de-senctifying of nature, is to so that we learn that like God, we control, we humans should control nature.
Nature should not control us.
We are not to allow nature, human or otherwise, to control us.
Even in modern English, when somebody does something awful, don't you often hear it's only human nature?
And they're right.
It is only human nature to lie, to steal, to cheat, etc.
That's correct.
But if nature is the be-all and end all, why control it?
Allow it to control us.
The God who is above nature and controls it, wants us to control nature.
That's after all what God said to Adam.
You will you will dominate nature, you will dominate what I what else I have created.
Now, of course, this can be taken wrong.
Dominate doesn't mean you throw toxic wastes into rivers.
I mean, that's absurd.
That that's just it's it's it's suicidal.
All right.
The point is not to be destructive, but it is to dominate.
Dominate nature means you control cancer, you control cells that metastasize.
Don't allow them to control you.
And on the and in terms of yourself, don't allow human nature to control you.
You are given the ability by me, who is outside of nature, for you to act outside of nature.
There is a reality outside of nature, and there is only such a reality if in fact there is a God.
I will come back to that when I talk about the personal reasons for its importance.
Therefore, from the biblical perspective, progress is impossible without God.
God makes human progress possible because we can only progress if we control nature, not only technologically, uh but culturally.
And here comes the second revelatory point about God dominant or beyond nature.
Nature works in cycles.
The most obvious being, let's say, the seasons.
The other obvious is animals.
You know, we have two dogs, and I often think you ever have this feeling about uh what if you were put in it in a time capsule and sent back thousands of years, how would you fare?
The odds are very poorly, if for no other reason the B O would kill you.
I often think of that.
I I know I couldn't do well if I were transported for the body odor and and the and the uh emissions of the body that were just rampant all over the place.
I I would have faded on that alone.
Forget other reasons that I wouldn't have done well, and you probably wouldn't either, uh, if We were sent back.
On the other hand, I look at my two dogs and realize if they were put in a time capsule back 5,000 years, they would do perfectly fine.
It would be a non-issue.
They would sniff around just like they do in the late 20th century in front of my house, check for a good urine spots, right?
Deposit their marker, find something to eat, look somebody to rub them and move on.
That's all they do now, and that's all they did then.
The interesting thing about that, the interesting and important thing about that is that's what people did.
People lived every generation just like the previous generation.
There is no movement.
This is not a moral point I'm making, it's a human point.
You simply repeated what they did.
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In the previous generation, maybe you built in some cases more buildings, uh, and uh which which was some achievement, but essentially, most culture, especially at the time here, repeated what had happened earlier.
And this is called cyclical history.
This is not my point.
I got it from Henry Bamford Parks, who wrote a very important book many years ago, when he spoke about the radical change and transformation of the world through Hebrew monotheism, and he spoke about the introduction of a linear history.
What God's revelation did was introduce to humanity linear history.
Instead of going in cycles, you go, which indeed to this day characterizes much of Eastern thought.
Right?
The purpose is not to progress in this world, it is to personally leave the cycles of life by reaching enlightenment.
I am making no negative judgment on what are in very profound views of life that exist in eastern thought.
I'm merely telling you of the radical change brought about by revelation.
There is a you are to move forward forward, not cyclical, in this world, not in the next.
In this world, history, you humans should move forward.
Uh, and one manifestation of that is called the messianic idea.
That one day there will be a messianic age, a messiah age.
What how does that differ from now?
It radically differs.
The world will be good.
In other words, there is something to aim for on this planet, not leaving this planet on this planet.
Move forward.
What we take for granted that the next generation will hopefully create something better than we have, was introduced by this idea by revelation and linear history.
Another reason for the importance of desanctifying nature is to well, I told you it's it's to not allow nature to control us but to control it.
So not another reason, but rather another manifestation of the battle is the Torah's radical, and I keep using that term because it is opposition to magic, witchcraft, and superstition.
Because all of them imply that God is not in control of the universe.
If I pick up a doll and I stab it and something happens to you, that means I control the world, not God.
God is in control, not voodoo, not magic, not witchcraft.
Any of those things is utterly rejected by the Torah.
So the first element, and I will move on from there.
The first element in the in the overwhelming significance of God is to de sanctify nature.
Nature is controlled by God, and you ultimately are to control it too, but only for godly ends.
Right?
To be able to make uh biological and chemical weapons to destroy whole cities of innocent people is not what God wants when it's us to control nature.
Clearly, we have the ability to use it utterly destructively, as indeed belief in God could be used utterly destructively.
That's a given.
Nothing powerful can only be used for good.
Nothing.
Okay.
So the first is uh is nature.
Number two.
With, and this is the only one that I have really spoken about constantly, so I will not make this point uh frequently, or I will not embellish it greatly at this time.
God introduces morality.
I already told you about not allowing nature to determine how you treat people, right?
If you follow natural law, you let the weak die.
I I command you to take care of the widow and the orphan.
I command you to love the stranger.
All of that is unnatural.
It is not natural to love people that are that are strangers to you.
I do not I do not believe that racism is taught as much as it is inherent.
I believe that it is inherent to fear those who are different.
You have to learn not to.
Uh when uh when white Americans, when Europeans arrived in Japan, they were loathed, uh not because Japanese kids were taught loathe the different, they didn't even know the different existed.
Japan was a fairly impregnable island, certainly vis-a-vis Europeans, but as soon as Europeans showed up, as indeed when Europeans saw Indians or saw blacks, it goes in all directions, but it does go in all directions.
That's the point.
The idea that racism is endemic to white civilization is a lie, it's a total lie.
It is endemic to human life.
You must teach people not to fear the different person.
You don't have to teach them to fear the different person.
It comes, it comes the way it is.
Look at our kids, look at our little children cling to their mommy, right?
When a stranger shows up who looks like mommy, what is simply not mommy?
We are grown-up children.
Our instinct is only to cling to that which we are familiar with.
God introduces the moral.
The moral is non-existent without God.
Let me explain.
That doesn't mean that atheists cannot develop a concept of right and wrong.
They certainly can, and it certainly doesn't mean that everybody who believes in God is decent.
That's all nonsense, and I won't even bother with it.
Anybody who believes that well, nobody believes that.
I can't even, it's so preposterous that I can't imagine anybody believing it.
My point is not that religious people are good or believers are good and non-believers are bad.
It is that if there is no God, there is no good and evil.
There are subjective opinions, but there isn't an objective.
For further information on this, I beg you to read or or listen to if I think it's on tape, my debate with the professor of moral philosophy at Oxford in England.
We debated this very issue, and and he was he was tremendously honest to his position.
And he acknowledged at the outset, Dennis is right.
If there is no God, all good and evil are subjective opinion.
He as an atheist, he was honest enough to acknowledge that.
And then he pointed out problems with religious positions, which I acknowledge to be totally fair.
But but he acknowledged what most secularists don't acknowledge today.
If there is no God, all morality is subjective.
I think kicking children is good, you think kicking children isn't.
If there is no God who says, Thou shalt not kick children, then how do you know?
There is no basis.
It's just my thought versus your thought.
I like Buicks, I like torture.
That is all it is.
If there is no transcendent, objective moral standard that emanates from something that's transcendent, not from within nature.
So God is necessary for morality to exist, and since the Torah is preoccupied with that question in Judaism in its totality, is clearly God is of the utmost significance.
The next part of morality is justice.
There is no justice if there is no God.
There is no justice for a number of reasons.
Number one, there is no there is no judge.
You can't have justice without a judge.
What is Abraham's first description of God?
Hashafate call arts loya semishpop?
Will the judge of all the earth not do justly when he argues with God at Sedom and Gomorrah?
The very first depiction of God in human term, if I have it right, if I remember correctly, is Shofaq.
God is a judge.
That's the Hebrew word for judge.
How do you have justice if you have no judge?
How do you have justice if you have no code?
Imagine entering a courtroom with no code and no judge.
Actually, in some cases in America would be uh an improvement, I'm sorry to say, but that's a separate issue.
That the world would have none of this.
Uh, and uh, and by the way, that is why on Yom Kippur, it is believed in Judaism, God judges the whole world, not just Jews.
The entire world is judged.
The uh there are so many onslaughts against Jewish monotheism going on in the world today that you realize how radical it still is.
Because the idea that you're being judged is very, very uh annoying, obnoxious to people.
Judgmentalism are the worst things someone can be called, and believe me, there are some judgmentally obnoxious people.
That is absolutely correct, but no judgment is frightening.
Gee, I'm sorry, I just don't take a position on it.
I'm neutral.
What does that mean?
There are things that must be judged, human behavior that must be judged, but there is another reason.
How do you have justice?
What is the pre-existing uh sinequanon, without which you do not have it?
The indispensable ingredient, universality.
The only way you can have justice is if we are all bound to the same laws, correct?
Universal God, remember, this is the first time in history, the Jewish revelation is the first time in human history a people has come up with the idea, or if you will, revealed to have having had revealed to the idea that God is universal.
Egyptians had their gods, Babylonians theirs, and Japanese theirs, and everyone had their gods, and and Meso Mesoamericans had it, had their gods.
Here is the revelation of a God of all the earth.
It's incredible, it's totally new.
But do you now realize why that's important?
Only if God is the God of everybody, is there a code for everybody?
Is there justice for everybody?
The standards are universal because God is universal.
No thou shalt not murder is universal, thou shalt not steal is universal.
Keeping kosher is Jewish, and it is so labeled as such.
that there are universal laws that are applicable to everyone and everyone is judged by.
There's also no justice for another reason, and that is, of course, that if there is no God, you are not judged for your behavior in this world when an earthly court didn't get to judge you.
Right?
Let's be honest.
The great majority of truly great evildoers have not been punished in this world.
then this world is inherently unjust if there is no God.
Meaning a God who somehow makes this justice after this life.
And that is a central tenet of Judaism that many Jews are uncomfortable with or simply rejected.
But if you reject it, you must then at least be honest enough to acknowledge this world is a cesspool of injustice.
That truly, in fact, the worse the behavior of people, the less likely they are to be punished.
You're more likely to get caught if you embezzle than if you uh if you were a uh a mass murderer uh during wartime, right?
Who's who's gonna get you?
The Nuremberg trials were a very rare phenomenon, and the vast majority of Nazi murderers were never touched.
Right now they're trying to get net uh Serbian mass murderers uh in The Hague.
They don't they I don't they had one, I believe.
The chances of getting others are are minimal.
If you imbezzle, there's a good chance you'll get caught.
Then you pay the earthly justice.
But for horrific evil, as Stalin one once put it, uh one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.
And unfortunately, there was a lot of truth to that.
Number four, if I'm counting correctly, well, whatever numbering, because it it do your own numbering, and I won't give you a number, I'll say next.
Next God, the existence of God means the existence of the holy.
The idea that there is holiness is unique to God-based ideas.
A secular individual can theoretically be more, but cannot be holy.
Holy is I wish to elevate myself to God.
God is the holy one, blessed be he, as Judaism calls him.
I want to be like God.
Leviticus 19, I believe it is, uh, you shall be holy, because I, God, your God, I'm holy.
Be like me.
But if there is no God, who do we be like?
Or to put it very directly, we have two choices.
We can act as if we are in the image of animals or in the image of God.
It is a daily, indeed, minute by minute choice that every one of us can make.
In which image, because I am, I am totally created equally in both images.
I am just as much in God's image as I am in animal's image.
In which image will I behave at this moment?
Is the is the ongoing question for every human being.
Now, I I believe that within uh there are times where like an animal is okay, within guarded guarded uh rollings, where where even Judaism will allow it, as for example, the bedroom of the husband and wife.
Okay?
Uh it it takes a type of mentality that I personally do, and I mean this with all sincerity, do not relate to, who would want that even there, at all moments only holiness and God-oriented thinking take place.
Some people may achieve that.
I like uh it's it's remarkable to me.
I I I don't know, I don't know.
I'm trying to find the right words, and I'm not sure God even wants that.
I think God wants railings and they are merited.
But I don't I I think that, in other words, I the image of animal isn't to be obliterated, but you ought to be aware of it and aim for the image of God in one's behavior.
That is your choice.
And I I offer secular examples all the time, which I'll be very quick because I have said this frequently.
Eating is a classic example.
Sex is the most obvious, but take eating.
Because it'll make it's less, it's less uh uh uh intense of an of a of a subject.
Uh you can eat like an animal or you can eat like we would say like a human being.
Right?
Well, why do you say if you have a son, you know what I'm talking about?
Daughters somehow generally eat right from the beginning.
I don't understand it.
And it's it's really.
But if you have a boy, I always say boys prove evolution.
You basically have a gorilla.
You do.
There is no question if I had a dollar for every time I told my son, eat with a utensil.
I could retire.
It goes I it goes into the tail.
Well, I couldn't retire, but I could I could do well for a year.
It goes, it goes into the tens of thousands of times, there's no question.
It's so unnatural to do so.
Fingers in the food, slobbering, wiping their hands with on their pants, uh, wiping their nose with their arm.
It's a particularly beautiful trait in young boys.
Uh and and so on.
Now, that's not evil or in all, but why don't we want them to do it?
And it's not high hygiene, you're not gonna die wiping your hands on your pants.
It's that, or slobbering over your food.
It's that you want, you don't want your your fellow humans to act like an animal.
Your your dog buries his or her face into the bowl.
You don't want us to do that because there is an instinct we now have, thanks to the holiness concept, not to act like an animal, to in fact make a real separation between between us and the animals.
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It's financial and spiritual support when you need it most.
Join CHM today by visiting chministries.org slash wellness.
That's ch ministries.org slash wellness.
Health insurance rates in America are surging, leaving millions without affordable options.
But Christians don't need to waste money on a broken system.
Christian Healthcare Ministries is an alternative to health insurance at half the cost.
With CHM, fellow believers contribute monthly to help pay each other's medical bills while lifting one another up in prayer.
It's financial and spiritual support when you need it most.
Join CHM today by visiting ch ministries.org slash wellness.
That's ch ministries.org slash wellness.
Similar to animals is a natural movement, but it's not the monotheistic revelation idea of the Torah.
So the holy is the is another critical element in uh uh in the in the the existence of God.
Next the abstract.
The idea of an invisible God that there is a reality beyond what you see is essential for abstract thought.
Right?
There is something real, but you can't touch it, you can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't hear it, uh, you can't taste it.
In other words, the five senses, which is all we have, cannot acknowledge God.
Right?
If you, God forbid, lost all five senses, you would still you could still thoroughly perceive God just as thoroughly as without your senses, as with your senses.
God is not dependent upon that.
The the revelation of an invisible God opens the mind and civilization to abstract thought, to understand uh that there is, as I said, a reality beyond what is seeable uh what is in empirically based.
The notion that only the empirical is real, which is the scientific atheist's argument against God, hey, I can't measure God, I can't see God, etc., is a non sequitur to those of us who believe in God.
I know God can't be measured, but God still exists.
But ladies and gentlemen, woe unto anyone whose entire life is predicated on believing and living for only the empirical.
Can you measure love?
Can you measure friendship?
Can you measure in fact the things you most care about?
Feelings, for example?
Are they measurable?
Woe unto us if we only live in an empirically verifiable world.
Nothing else is real.
The same parent.
Otherwise, we're s we're we're not.
Doesn't mean we can't work out some modus for envy, some way of living and not killing each other.
But I am truly your brother if only by the basis of we have the same father in heaven.
If you will, father, mother, same parent, whatever language you wish to use, that's what makes us siblings.
If it's taken seriously, related to that is the awesome idea of image of God, that we are all created in God's image.
This too is utterly dependent upon revelation of God's existence.
Why am I why am I worth anything?
Right?
I there I begin as dust and I end up as dust.
Why am I worth anything?
Because I'm created in God's image.
I don't mean this as an as a nice feel-good point, though you should feel good about it.
But but just logically, I have often argued the Nazis, when they took Jewish skin and made lampshades from it, were not doing something bizarre.
They were doing something incredibly evil, horrific.
But all they did, if there's no God is rearrange molecules.
That's all they did.
I like your skin, I want it for a lampshade.
It's only when you acknowledge, wait a minute, every person is in the image of God, so you can't sacrifice people.
You are in the image of God and I am.
When you take that seriously, you are it is overwhelming.
It is truly overwhelming.
It makes us all brothers and sisters as one thing, because we are the child of God, but it also makes us infinitely valuable, and that is why I'm not going to make the case for capital punishment.
I am only going to tell you that that is what the Torah says in Genesis, when it instructs capital punishment for murder.
You must take the life of a murderer because in God's image man is created.
Letting murderers live according to Genesis means that you you have allowed the image of God to be destroyed with impunity.
And that cannot be allowed.
When you commit murder, you have murdered an image of God.
That's not true if you kill an animal.
And I think vegetarianism is very noble.
But animals are not created in God's image.
You are, and I am, and when you believe that, when you truly do, it's it's it's difficult to be cruel.
It's still manageable, but it gets more difficult to truly perceive every one of us.
That makes us infinitely valuable.
Otherwise, we're not, we're fire.
If we're not created in God's image, what are we?
We're animals with a brain.
But it's no big deal to kill animals, and it's no big deal to kill us.
And even if you say, well, it's a big deal to kill animals, right?
It's a big deal to kill mosquitoes.
I mean, let's not be, let's not be silly.
It's not a big deal.
The big deal is us.
We are created in God's image.
I have not emphasized personal elements because I don't know why.
I should, but it's not my bent because I so want to appeal only to your brain and not your heart in making and advancing the case tonight.
But I but let me appeal to both with at least this element.
No matter how many friends and relatives and family you have, to a certain extent, we all walk this earth alone.
With all the love, and God knows personally I have been blessed with with with family and friends.
But in the ultimate analysis, I am I, and my wife is my wife, is she is she, and my kids are my kids, they are they, my friends are they?
In the final ultimate analysis, we are alone.
There is a certain aloneness to life, and we don't like that.
We are created, the rhinoceros is created to be alone.
It is.
I I one of the things I learned in Africa, they're very lone animal.
Uh they're also very stupid animal, and I and I suspect that by the way, there's probably a relationship between those two facts.
Uh we are meant to be with others.
Why solitary confinement torture?
If they gave you all the most delicious food in the world, you'd still go nuts.
If you were sustained, you had a great bad air-conditioned room, for all the food you wanted, exercise, you'd go crazy.
You need unique people.
We also need God.
There is in the final analysis, even if you are blessed with friends and family and you are alone, how much more so if you are not so blessed, and many people are not, and walk through life more alone.
For example, people who have who will live very long.
It's a curse to live very long in some ways.
Everybody you loved died, but there is still God, and and being the child of God and knowing, yes, God loves you, is very powerful.
Uh they didn't have that concept in ancient Egypt.
Ra loves you.
Right.
It's it's it's I'm glad you left.
I mean, the point is getting through.
Ra was the sun god.
I mean, if you tell an Egyptian the sun loves you, you think you're crazy.
You don't talk like that.
But we do.
We, the inheritors of this revelation do.
It is not, it's a very familiar phrase that I am love.
This simple me, this frail me, is a in God's image, so I have infinite value, and B is loved by God, and that's that's powerful.
Next, this God gives life meaning.
If there is no God, life is simply random.
Randomness prevails.
By sheer fluke we came, the universe could not care less.
Do you know how small we are in the universe?
Uh some a scientist was telling me, because I had conjectured upon this at a synagogue talk I gave, and you know how small an atom is very small.
That's how small it is.
It's this small.
An Adam, he told me, an atom is to us, is to any is to, or did he say it's either to to us individually or to all the humans on on earth.
Yeah, no, no, it's just individually as we are to the sun.
You are the size of an atom compared to the sun.
Now, there are hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of billions of sons.
So we are in the universe incomparably insignificant compared to one atom, is to us.
That is therefore very sobering if there is no God.
By, as I said, by fluke, we arrived.
Uh one uh paleontologist, the best known one, Stephen J. Gould of Harvard, who does uh who does not uh is either agnostic or atheist and has written a lot on evolution, has said that if you turned the tape back, we would not even come out again.
Humans would not come out again.
So, in other words, even evolution didn't design us, where even a fluke in one major evolutionist thing, other evolutionists think if you turn the clock back, we would end up uh existing.
But in any event, we really are produced by uh the great metaphor, X number of monkeys on X number of typewriters will give you Hamlet.
Okay?
That's all we are.
It is sheer blind chance.
Then what is the purpose of life?
When you say, oh well, the purpose of life is to do good, is to love, is I don't know, is this to build a beautiful bookcase with my hands, whatever it is, to raise children, but what does that mean?
It's a it's a purpose you invented.
You'll die and they'll die, and in a five billion years, it'll all blow up.
No matter how many backups of your hard disk you've made, it will all blow up.
So if there is no God, let's acknowledge it we're fooling ourselves when we think there's a purpose.
That is why I am convinced the arts of the 20th century have been so chaotic.
As in what?
Again.
How is it now?
Boy, this thing is I'm not going to keep it in my pocket.
Not that you folks care, but I are we fine?
Good.
Where was I?
Oh, yes, art in the 20th century.
The the cacophony of so much modern music, the the splashing of paint on, no, there's no order, it's all random, it's chaos, it's there's no meaning.
It's it's it's art without meaning, it's music without meaning.
Even if it's even if you like it, the issue is not whether you like it.
There may be something powerful in a meaningless painting.
I mean that with without any uh uh sarcasm.
What it is, it's an expression of meaninglessness, it's the antithesis, if you will, of Bach, where there is such order, because he was such a God believer.
Every note had its place.
It's the quintessence of order, and passion.
There's a passionlessness in modernity, in in the modern arts, because of the of the of the of the uh departure from God.
What is there to be passion?
You can't, you can be a brilliant artist, but not a passionate artist if life is meaningless.
So we have passionless chaos, often brilliantly depicted.
I don't doubt the talent.
But that's but it it but that's what we have.
And now even it's gone from the arts into the the uh liberal arts, where you have deconstruction.
Nothing means anything.
There are many professors who teach their students in Western universities that what you read doesn't mean a thing.
You think it means something, it doesn't.
It's called deconstructionism.
Without God, you have the ultimate deconstruction.
God is the ultimate constructor, and no God is the ultimate deconstruction.
It's chaos, it's nothingness, hevel varate, empty and meaningless.
Back to Tohu Vavohu, before God created order.
God makes order.
No God, no order.
Random chaos.
Next.
Next.
Thank you.
Only if there is a God, I said, I'll any of us, someone, right?
Because God gives us worth being the child of God and being created in God's image.
But there is an even I don't know if it's deeper, but more convincing reason, perhaps.
Who are you?
Let's say you're you're uh, well, let's take me, all right, because I'm the one person that all of you know.
Who is Dennis?
Well, if there is no God, I'll tell you exactly who I am.
I am the sum total of nature and nurture.
I am the sum total of my genes of what nature has has endowed me with, and what nurture, my environment, has made of me.
What else?
Well, in an entirely physical world, there is no else.
Skinner was very clear about that.
There is no else.
We're fooling ourselves.
We're very sophisticated.
Uh creatures, creations of nature and nurture.
But that's it.
Whether you go with the sociobiologists and say nature is predominant, or you go with Skinner and say nurture is predominant, whatever it is, that's all I am.
You and I are essentially robots.
We delude ourselves because who wants to look into a mirror and say, How are you doing, robot?
It's too depressing to think that way.
All I am is the product of genes and environment.
Only if there is a God, a non-physical reality, am I endowed with autonomy, with being something beyond just there is really a Dennis.
There really is a me.
Oh, I'm I'm certainly shaped by nature and nurture, but I'm not fully determined by him.
There really is an I. There's a there's an essence Dennis.
We call it soul.
There's a soul in me.
There's a soul in you.
Most of you probably feel that.
Most of you feel you are more than nature and nurture.
Now, of course, some scientists would say you feel that because you you couldn't go on if you really faced the hard truth that you're just a robot.
Or because maybe you really are in touch with the fact that there is a you that isn't just your genes and your uh and your environment.
There's a soul, but if there's no God, there's no soul.
There's just the physical specimen that is named Dennis, who has no more essence than uh then the rhinoceros.
The only difference being I think I'm important, the rhinoceros doesn't self-delude.
That's the only difference between us and animals if there's no God.
They don't delude themselves that there's meaning, that they have an essence, that there is something afterwards, they don't care to clip to create anything, just rub me and feed me.
And there are people who live that way, by the way, who only live rub me and feed me.
And it's interesting, in that in light of that, Maimonides, the greatest Jewish philosopher in history, had a fascinating answer to the question of does God intervene in individuals' lives?
And he said, in some individuals' lives.
In other words, if you don't touch God, if you don't touch your soul, why should God touch you?
If you just live to be rubbed and fed, you'll be rubbed and fed and die.
But if you live for more, then more is available.
That is the choice you make.
To be in touch with your soul, to be in touch with God, or not to be.
The uh there was a uh a Jewish philosopher, uh Lev Lev Shestov, who made me aware of this point, which is related to the above, but yet another point.
No God, no freedom.
Why not?
Based exactly on what I had just told you.
Where is your freedom of choice if you're only the product of genes and environment?
You don't have any.
You may think you do, but you don't.
Whatever you do has has been determined by nature and nurture.
Only with God, Shestoff brilliantly points out, do we actually have any autonomy?
There is a me who can go beyond nature and nurture.
And you get to that by touching God, by touching the non-physical, the non-nature, non-nurture part of you.
That is why they have still not come up with non God-based 12 step programs.
It is one of the great challenges I offer people on my radio show who tell me it's not necessary, God.
And I go, really?
Then why with all our sophistication and all our methadone can't we get people off drugs without God?
Why is every 12-step program the only widespread programs that do detoxify people?
From gambling to to drinking to drugs to sex as as as alcoholisms, as addictions.
Why are they all based on getting in touch with the supreme being?
Because only then am I free to conquer nature nurture.
Nature nurture alone I'm addicted.
I cannot from within overcome because the within is addicted.
How do you ask an addict to stop being addicted?
It's like asking a tulip to stop being a flower.
You with me?
That's all we are.
Only when you are in touch with that which is beyond nature and nurture can you conquer your nature nurture, which in your case was made to make you an addict, or selfish, or or or whatever your your particular demon might be in life.
That's big.
That autonomy is available.
That's why God really is the God of freedom.
And that is why Judaism does not hold that the Jews are free getting out of Egypt.
That's only part one, as we'll study.
Getting the Torah, getting the law at Sinai to liberate ourselves from nature nurture is the biggest part of the Exodus.
Is the is the is the is the point of it, frankly.
If we are part of nature, how can we conquer what we are?
It's like asking your dog to stop licking you.
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Only if there is God the Father, but this is a separate point, because after all, that still doesn't mean we're equal.
It only means we're related.
Only with God is there no man as God.
That's why God has to fool around with Pharaoh.
Pharaoh is man God.
If God could fool around with Pharaoh, that means Pharaoh is only a man.
That means no man is God.
That means all men are created equal.
And that is exactly why we have that in the founding documents of this society.
And says, endowed by their creator.
That was how it was understood.
If you're not endowed with your creator with equality, why are you equal?
You know we're not equal otherwise.
Some are more talented, some are better looking, some are every good trait more.
I mean, it's it's it's prima facie on the face of it absurd to say we're all created equal.
What are you giving?
I can't play violin like him.
It's not an issue.
Even if I were even if I worked hard.
He's gifted.
I don't have that gift.
But we're equals because God made all of us equal.
There's no human above any other human.
This God, the deed sanctifying of nature and de-deification of man that came along with this God in Egypt, this God of the plagues, started the path, and it's a very long path, toward democracy.
Toward the idea that, wait, there is no divine right ultimately unless you know God reveals himself at any one moment.
I want this person to lead.
But other than that, no, we are all equal.
And finally, might is not right.
It's to teach human beings that might isn't right.
A uh a variation, if you will, on social Darwinism.
Right is right.
And what God says is right is right.
Uh not by power and not by uh might, or not by sword, but by spirit alone.
Right?
From the prophets.
It is not power that matters.
Oh, power matters.
If if this world is the only world, then might is right.
But if might were right, then the Jews were fools for for remaining Jewish when they had so little power and got so hurt by it.
The only thing that enabled Jews that most consistently hated and persecuted group in the world to persevere was the belief that it didn't matter if you were weak.
That if you were with God, not God with you, if you were with God, Lincoln made the good, good distinction, then it didn't matter.
Yeah, you win this battle, and you were in this program, and you in this persecution.
I mean, it mattered, obviously in this world, the pain and suffering was awesome and horrific, but in the ultimate scheme of things, that isn't what matters.
What matters is are you, as it were, with God?
Not as it were, are you?
It's just tough to speak this way because it's language that is so abused so frequently.
So I I conclude by starting by returning to the beginning.
From Genesis, from Genesis one, the single greatest purpose of the Torah was to teach that God is God.
The battle against polytheism, many gods, false gods, nature gods, is the battle of the Torah.
I agree with Hillel, the great rabbi of the first century of the common era, or second century, who uh who in the famous story was asked by a pagan, could you summarize Judaism while standing on one leg?
And he said, Yes.
Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself.
Uh the rest is commentary, now go and study.
He he could have said, but the pagan wouldn't have understood it, so his answer is right.
He could have said, God is God, the rest is commentary, Now go and study.
But it would mean nothing.
It would mean nothing to people today.
But in the final analysis, that is why the Torah came into being.
That is its fight.
You will see it repeatedly.
From Genesis 1 to the end of Deuteronomy, the war against other gods, the war against false gods, the war against superstition and witchcraft and magic.
That is what it is about.
And if the Jews fail it, the Jews will suffer like anybody else.
I lament with the deepest sadness.
The absolute ignorance among most Jews today that that is the reason for their being.
To be, ironically, it was taken over by another group, Jehovah's Witnesses.
That is what Jews are supposed to be, Jehovah's Witnesses.
When a Jew stands on Friday night and says the kiddush, this the uh the blessing over the wine for the Sabbath, he stands, all stand when he or she says it.
And the reason is in the ancient world you stood when you gave testimony.
What is the testimony you're giving when you stand up and recite the kiddush over the wine Friday night?
Well, what is the there are two paragraphs in the Kiddush?
And the first is from Genesis that God created the heavens and the earth and rested the seventh day.
Every Jew who keeps the Sabbath is bearing witness to the fact that God created the world.
It is a literal witness bearing.
Why are why aren't you making money today?
Why aren't you working today?
Why aren't you acting normally today?
You're doing you're just you're just renewing your soul today.
Why?
Well, because God did, and I'm imitating God, I'm in the image of God.
It is a bearing of witness, it is a it is a statement of testimony to God.
It all crumbles in the Jewish biblical view without God.
It is the issue.
I pray that I brought something that I photocopied, but God doesn't always answer prayer.
And this is, even though it's on his behalf, he I blew it.
I had photocopied what Maimonides said, and I because it was such a beautiful way to end.
Maimonides, in the in the beginning of his speaking of the laws of Judaism, speaks that everything is predicated on God and his being the creator of it all.
It is not something you can take or leave.
You can take or leave a lot of things.
That's the central issue.
When you go through the list, which I hope you do, of I don't know, 20 items of awesome significance, any one of which would make God's existence critical, you realize how important it was for humanity to come to acknowledge God.
And the impoverishment and the grasping at straws in our own lives that occurs when we don't.
The peace that you're given.
I wonder, you know, if it's even if inner if true inner peace is even available without a God orientation in one's life.
I you know, I I I hasten to um say that, you know, I can't I can't say, obviously, because I don't know all five billion people, and there may be someone in Paraguay who who has done it, and I haven't met him or her.
I don't think it's possible.
The when you think of people who have attained a peace, and it's very uncommon, very uncommon even for people who deeply believe in God, it is God-oriented.
It doesn't mean you therefore stop functioning, but it means that you have been Capable of liberating yourself, and here is where Eastern thought and Jewish thought are at one.
The concept of enlightenment available in Buddhism, which is a profound religion, is not identical, but the ability to see this world as not what matters goes too far from a Jewish perspective in Buddhism.
You have to battle cancer, you have to battle evil.
Not that many Buddhists would not necessarily, but there is a piece with suffering that Buddhists have that is not that is alien to the Jewish this worldly uh crusade, as it were.
Let me end, therefore, by answering a riddle.
If what I said is true, if God is the be-all and end all of the Torah and of the of the Jewish mission and Judaism, why don't Jews know this?
Why are Jews the most secular group in the world?
Literally, certainly in this society.
The statistics are funny when you look at them.
Percentage of people, you know, Catholic backgrounds who don't believe in God, percentage of uh of Protestants and percentage of Jews, the graph goes off the chart, or if not doesn't believe in God is fully secular, or where God is just not relevant.
You think of all the professors, the disproportionate number of Jewish professors at colleges who are utterly secular, for whom God is a nuisance or a stupidity, even.
How did this happen?
From the by the people who brought this into the world.
I think there are many answers, but I think the deepest answer is the paradox of Judaism.
While Judaism's be-o and end all ultimately is God, its focus is utterly here on this world.
The Hasidic Rebbe had a great, they call it a vote, uh, a thought, means a word, a great word on this on this idea.
His chassidum came over to the Rebbe and said, Rebbe, you say this, God created everything for a purpose.
That's right.
So why are there atheists?
And they thought they stumped him.
And he said, Well, why is there atheism?
And he said that there's a reason because the next time you see a poor destitute human being, you should think like an atheist.
God, there's no God to help him, I have to help him.
That was told, that's told by Hasidim who are ultra religious, who are God intoxicated.
What happened in Jewish life in part, in large part, but not it's not the total reason, was that the this world orientation of Judaism overwhelmed and ultimately obliterated the God-centeredness of the of the way it began.
And so you had a terrible bifurcation in Judaism of the religious becoming leaving this world, and the rest of Jewry leaving God.
And that is the split you have almost to this moment.
And so Jews, Jews, as you know, disproportionately organize and are members of social movements, right?
Everyone, socialism, Marxism, feminism, environmentalism, disproportionately Jews are founders, members, activists.
Will the religious mission has been retained by a lot of Jews.
It's entirely secular.
Everything that matters is this world.
The personification was Karl Marx, the father of Marxism, who loathed Judaism, grandchild of uh of Orthodox rabbis, both sides, Orthodox rabbis was grandparents, loathed it.
The entire purpose is this world and now.
We must fix this world What's the name of the uh left-wing Jewish magazine in America at this moment, Tikun?
Repair.
The idea of repairing the world, which is noble.
The problem is, it comes from the Hebrew phrase, le taken along the Malchut Shadai, to repair the world in the kingdom of God.
But if you drop the kingdom of God, you get secular repairing.
Secular repairing has gone awry.
Not always.
Not by intent, because it the children of Marx gave us gulag.
Communism was a messianic movement to repair this world.
And Jews were disproportionately involved in it.
I lay the blame equally all over because religious Jews, the God-oriented Jews, seem to abandon this world.
To this day, many Orthodox Jews, and certainly not all by any means, but many argue that the Israeli army is not necessary.
If all Jews studied Talmud and Torah all day, they could not be vanquished by Arab armies.
I don't believe that.
Nothing in Judaism holds that.
But you have this the God-oriented and the world-oriented.
But Judaism is God-oriented and world-oriented.
And if only the this world orientation wins out, it's not good.
And it won out.
And so Jews are uncomfortable with God talk.
I never heard God loves you until I heard Christians say it.
Right?
If most Jews ever hear that talk, they hear it from fundamentalist Christians.
God loves you, or even non-fundamentalist Christians, Christian.
Yet Judaism started the ball rolling.
The Torah started the idea of a loving God and of a God we should love.
Jesus says the great two, the great two commandments are love God and love your neighbor, and God blessed Jesus for saying it.
But Jesus said it is a Jew.
He was citing the Torah.
This was not new to Jesus.
He was quoting Torah.
But how many Jews is there?
Is there a Jewish professor from Harvard to UCLA who would say the great commandments of life are to love man and love God?
I can't conceive of one, of one Jewish professor, of one Jewish writer at the at the New York Times or or Washington Post speaking like this.
And so it's a problem.
For them too, it's a problem.
Personally, because you can't be f you can't be happy with a this world only orientation.
It's too bad a world.
It's too unredeemed.
It's too frustrating.
And then you get angry because you didn't fix it in your lifetime.
That's the case for the God-centeredness and why God starts his revelation to humanity playing with a man God and nature gods.
Thank you very much.com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and plastic radio programs.
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