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Oct. 25, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show
43:43
Timeless Wisdom - God Made Distinctions
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Is war in the Middle East?
The revival of an ancient conflict recorded in the Bible.
The nation of Israel is a resurrected nation.
So what if there was going to be a resurrection of another people, an enemy people of Israel?
Dinesh D'Souza's new film, The Dragon's Prophecy, offers new understanding of October 7th.
Israel and radical Islam.
We came back to a land that was largely barren and empty.
Now we brought it back to life.
And we're going to keep it.
Watch it now.
Or buy the DVD at saveemnow.com.
Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Here, thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
I told you that Jews have a mission, and that is what animates me every day, the belief that I am a member of the chosen people and that I have a task.
The task is to bring humanity to God and his value system as most clearly expressed in the Torah and most specifically, obviously, in the Ten Commandments.
I believe with everything in me that if people lived by that, it would be a good world.
People can maintain their own traditions, their own even religious practices from a Jewish standpoint, but the values have to be seen as emanating from the God of the universe.
And I want to talk to you about one aspect of the value system that is very controversial and which it's taken me a good part of my lifetime to realize that this is the ongoing great battle between the values coming from the Torah or even what could be called in the broader sense Judeo-Christian values.
And let me explain that word because there are Jews, Christians, and atheists who have problems with that term, all for their own different reasons.
But the usual argument is, and you can see this on the internet on any time that I have used that term in an article, and you will see a whole bunch of comments.
What is Prager talking about the Jews don't believe in Jesus and the Christians do believe and what is he talking Judeo-Christian nonsense?
What these people don't understand or don't want to understand is that nobody ever used the term Judeo-Christian theology.
We use the term Judeo-Christian values.
We do share values.
And the values were expressed most specifically by the most Torah-based society ever created since ancient times, if indeed we had a Torah-based society then, and that's the United States of America.
Read David Galernter's book on America.
He's a Jew who's a professor at Yale who wrote a book on Americanism, which is what I believe in and what I'm writing on as well.
And that is the value system of America is Americanism, and it is founded on the Torah.
That's why there's only one verse on the Liberty Bell, and that verse is from the Torah.
These were Torah-based, Old Testament-based Christians who founded the United States.
This is the quintessential Judeo-Christian country.
Nobody says they believe the same in terms of theology.
But if theology were the issue, then you couldn't speak of any value system because Protestants and Catholics have different theologies.
And Mormons certainly have different theologies.
And it's endless.
An Orthodox Jew is a different theology from a Reformed Jew.
So you might as well not speak about Jewish values because Orthodox Jews and Reformed Jews have different theologies.
So the fact that there are different theological beliefs is interesting, but it's not significant in terms of the value question.
I have come to realize that a big, big, the biggest battle may be over one aspect of this value system, and I want to talk to you about it today.
And if you agree or not, it's not important as much as that I open your eyes to this.
I have certainly mentioned it in passing, not here, but on the radio and elsewhere.
But I want to put it all together for you today.
I begin by doing so by asking the question, what did God create on the second day?
Nobody gets this.
It's very far, not nobody, virtually nobody.
I asked this to a thousand Christians gathered at a huge meeting that I spoke to very knowledgeable Christians, I might add, in Colorado, Colorado Springs.
And I think one person raised their hand.
And if you ask likewise, you ask knowledgeable Jews, because nobody thinks about it.
I didn't get it either, by the way.
I was tricked like everybody else.
It's not a trick question.
It's just nobody realizes because we don't associate anything specific.
What God created on day two is separation, distinctions.
Light and darkness, night and day, dry and wet, land and sea.
And my statement to you is that the great battle that is taking place in Western society today is the battle over distinctions.
That's the great battle.
And it's in every area.
And let me give you five.
One is, which is better than 14.
Just want you to know.
I mean, I really did a lot of narrowing down.
This is actually possible to remember.
First is good and evil.
The most basic distinction of all is between good and evil.
And to you, that may sound so basic as to what?
Is there a battle against the distinction between good and evil?
Of course there is.
It's called moral relativism.
What I think is right is right for me, and what you think is right is right for you.
Let me read to you one of a hundred possible examples.
This comes from a British newspaper, The Guardian, and it was a woman was describing one of England's leading writers, Ruth Rendell.
My friend Ruth Rendell, this was in The Guardian, October 16, 2001.
My friend Ruth Rendell was in a conversation at the Cheltenham Literary Festival last weekend.
Her sell-out audience was conservative and over 50.
Someone asked the question about pure evil, citing the terrorist attacks on America as an example.
So remember, this is a month after 9-11.
With great presence, Rendell replied that we could not categorize such attacks as evil, since they were carried out from the highest motives and in the name of freedom.
The audience hated this reply.
There was a collective and audible shudder.
Yet who reading bin Laden's speeches can doubt it?
There is no cynicism in the man.
He has never heard of the spin doctor.
So this woman writing this article is in praise of Ruth Rendell.
What are you talking about, pure evil?
The guy meant well.
Read his statements.
Read what he really wants for fellow Muslims.
This is how I was raised at college.
This is how you were raised at college.
What are you talking about, good and evil?
In fact, Europeans are very annoyed with America precisely because we do talk about good and evil, or at least some of us do.
And when a president does talk about good and evil, it bugs the hell out of Europeans.
And they say so.
Unlike you, we are more sophisticated.
We know there's no good in evil.
We know that it is all a matter of personal belief.
One man's, what is it?
One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.
And that's perfect.
That's why the left in Europe calls the Palestinian terror resistance, comparing it to the resistance against the Nazis.
They resist the Jews, they resisted the Nazis.
What's the difference?
And this is a basic thing.
You young people who are here, this is what you learn in high school.
This is what you learn in college.
This is what you learn in graduate school.
This is what permeates the movies.
The notion that who are we to judge?
We're no one to judge.
There is no good and evil.
There's rich and poor.
There's strong and weak.
There's the underdog and there's the strong one.
But there's no good and evil.
And we have against that Isaiah saying, woe unto those who call evil good and who call good evil.
That is the biblical response.
In other words, what we have is a fight between modern values in many instances, in most instances, and biblical values.
And we who hold biblical values are considered less sophisticated, less intelligent, and scary, whereas those who reject this and have the opposite are sophisticated, open, tolerant, and intelligent.
That's the scenario.
That's what you learn.
I remember in graduate school of Columbia, I was at the Russian Institute, so I was studying communism.
That's what my field was, communist affairs.
And I wrote my paper, one of my papers, for my professor, who was a Marxist and shockingly a Jew.
And I wrote for him a comparison of Marxism and Judaism.
Now, he had never, I knew he had never received such a paper, that a believing Jew would actually prefer Judaism to Marxism.
To his credit, he gave me a B plus.
I mean, I was shocked.
I expected a D. I mean, I knew he couldn't flunk me.
It had too many footnotes.
But, you know, including German footnotes, and I don't even know German.
But anyway, I remember his reaction.
It was one of befuddlement.
How did somebody who believes in this stuff get into Colombia?
Was essentially his reaction.
It's like, you know, it's not part of the discourse.
We've rejected that stuff, Mr. Prager, 2,000 years ago.
Why are you resurrecting this biblical jazz?
I mean, he didn't put it that way, and I have nothing against him.
And I don't even recall his name except that he was Jewish and Marxist, which is not redundant, but at that time it was close.
And so we are regarded as fools for maintaining a biblical system.
But I just want you to know what it is about.
You can choose what you wish, but please know what the battle is.
You know my belief.
I prefer clarity to agreement.
So let's get clear.
That's battle number one.
God made a world of distinctions.
And distinction number one is between good and evil.
We don't believe in moral relativism.
We do, by the way, let me just, I debated whether to get into this, but a lot of religious people have confusion here too.
They think that because there is such a thing as objective good or absolute good and evil, that therefore there's no such thing as situational ethics.
They confuse situational ethics with moral relativism.
Please bear with me.
It's slightly complex, but it's still nevertheless clear.
It's a wrong confusion.
Morality is not relative to the individual, but of course it is to the situation.
A Christian who hit a Jew in the Holocaust, it was demanded that he lie to the Nazis if asked, are you hiding Jews?
So of course lying became a good, absolutely good act at that moment.
So of course the situation determines good or evil, but it's not relative to the individual.
In other words, there's still an absolute good in that circumstance.
You with me?
That's key.
So yes, the circumstance does determine it, but it determines it for every human being who would be in that circumstance.
We don't believe in cultural relativism.
So that clitoridectomy is wrong, period.
The fact that your culture does that to little girls doesn't make it right.
It just makes it your culture.
But in our age, multiculturalism announces no culture is better than another culture.
So who am I to judge clitoridectomy?
Ironically, the same people in San Francisco who tell us not to judge clitoridectomy want to ban Jewish circumcision.
I mean, which is quite remarkable.
Look, I've had these people on my show.
Many years ago, I had the head of No Cirque on the show.
And I said to the guy, you know, I'm very respectful, but I'm also direct.
I said, you know, with all respect, I think you're a very bored man.
So he said, well, why do you say that?
Said, well, anybody who's devoting his life to recouping his foreskin has a lot of time to kill.
I mean, you know, let's be honest.
I mean, with all respect, I've been troubled by many things in life.
That is not one of them.
I just want to be on record as saying I'm at total peace with not having foreskin for the record.
But it disturbs some people, but that's trivial.
But clitoridectomy is not trivial.
And so one of the dangers of multiculturalism is moral relativism.
Well, our culture says this, your culture says that, who's to judge?
So, number one is good and evil of the distinctions that God and the Torah make that we are to carry on in this time.
Next is God and man.
Humans have wanted to make themselves gods from the very beginning of creation.
Every story we have, people love to see themselves as gods.
And they love to see the gods as mortals.
So the gods before the Jewish God or the God, there's no Jewish God, the God the Jews introduced.
God isn't Jewish.
God is universal.
But before the God of Judaism, of the Torah, people believed that basically what you had in heaven were supermen, supermen.
They were men.
They had sexual desires.
By the way, it's one of the most incredible things, the utter and absolute desexualization of God in Genesis.
There is no creation story in the world with an utterly desexualized God before Genesis.
He has no gender.
He copulates with nobody.
He is utterly beyond that realm.
We take it for granted today, but all of this is a radical innovation, radical.
No one thought like this.
Reason number 88, I believe the Torah is divine.
For that innovation alone, God and man are separate.
God is God and man is man, and the attempt to make people into gods, what do we have when we make all here is the best example of modern life making men and women into gods.
And I will bring a controversial example in.
I acknowledge it's controversial.
And that is where we do not ask, what does God want, but ask, what do I want?
That's when you become a God.
If you are the source of right and wrong, then you are God.
You may be God for you and God for those around you, but you are God.
God is either the source of morality or you're the source of morality.
It can't be both.
So you become God.
There are nice people.
This is not an attack on such people, but let's be honest.
Either God is the source of right and wrong.
Now, that doesn't mean we always know.
Sometimes we have to figure it out.
Sometimes even there will be debates among God-fearing people.
But it's a very big difference.
And I speak to young people here in particular because David Brooks had an article in the New York Times recently.
Young Americans don't ever even think in this way of asking what is right.
They ask what do they feel like doing.
What is right means there is right that is above me.
But if there is a right and a wrong above me, then there's got to be a source of right and wrong above me.
But if there's no source for right and wrong above me, then right and wrong are not above me, and they're in my heart.
I decide what is right.
Now, I'm not going to get into the issue, but what I want, but if you're prepared to face a challenging example, it is the abortion example.
Who decides the worth of a human fetus?
God or the mother?
There you go.
I don't even, I'm not going to debate the issue.
It's not to me, the issue is not abortion.
The issue is to give you an example.
If the mother decides and is the only decider on whether or not the human fetus has any worth, then she is God.
There is no other way of putting it.
I can't figure out another way.
If God means the source of right and wrong, the woman has been rendered God.
Men have no say because they don't get pregnant, a very odd belief, I must say.
Either right and wrong should never be based on gender.
But so they're disqualified.
God has no say.
It's even said it's between a woman and her conscience.
So the woman becomes God in that instance.
And only that woman, not a thousand women, that one woman.
If I want it, it is infinitely precious.
If I don't want it, it is not worth anything.
It is tissue.
That's a god-like status.
Now, there are people who will say, look, but there are ways of having abortion correct even in God's eyes.
That's fine.
But when there is no God involved, when you don't ask, is it right?
Is there a source higher than me from which I get right and wrong?
You have become God.
That's the biggest area.
There's another area, number three, and that is God and nature.
God in Genesis 1 is above nature.
God says, let there be a universe.
God is not part of nature.
With all respect, God is not in trees.
I admit that the trees reflect the divine, but so do rocks.
So does Jupiter.
So does your pet hamster.
I fully acknowledge that.
But God is not there.
God is outside.
We have a divine spark, but God is outside of nature.
And this notion that, you know, goddess Earth, you hear it all the time, goddess Earth.
Time magazine had a cover with Goddess Earth.
This is Judaism came to, ironically, Judaism came in part to destroy nature worship.
We are now reverting to what existed 3,600 years ago before Abraham, nature worship.
And we call it sophisticated.
That's the irony.
But I don't even understand nature worship.
The law of nature is the survival of the fittest.
There's no moral law in nature.
Nature is utterly and totally amoral.
You're weak, you get eaten.
I remember my first safari when I was in my 20s.
I went to Africa.
I was on safari.
And it just, you could predict after a while, you got good enough to predict which gazelle, which zebra, which wildebeest was going to be the next, in the next couple of days eaten.
It was the weakest one, the straggler, the oldest one.
That's all.
They were destined to be eaten.
What is our human rule with regard to the weak?
Put them in a hospital.
Take care of them.
The society owes the weak obligations.
What in nature owes the weak any obligations?
I don't even understand nature worship from a moral point of view.
I understand it aesthetically.
I'm as moved by nature as anybody else, but it has no morals.
So the battle is over whether you have ultimately a Torah-based worldview, a biblical-based worldview, or not.
This was example number three: Goddess Earth.
Number four, if you think these were controversial, here's the most.
And that is man and woman.
Man, male and female, he created them.
God created Adam, male and female.
He created them, Genesis 1.26.
A woman shall not have on male items, and a man shall not wear women's clothing.
Deuteronomy 22:5.
Let's go back to the creation.
God creates us male and female.
So here's an interesting thought for you, which in preparing I came up with.
The creation, actually, it's thanks to Nachum Sarna, who is one of the great guides of my life in his Genesis, but he makes a different point based on this point.
And that is that God creates animals, correct?
Do animals have male and female?
So why didn't God say God created animals, male and female?
He created them.
Why does he only say that with regard to humans?
Because only in humans does the male-female distinction matter.
That's why.
We are to preserve the male and female distinction.
We're not animals.
We're created in God's image.
And this distinction is a divine prerogative, a divine directive.
I don't know if you know this, or if you're a very regular listener to my show, you do.
Increasingly, colleges and governments as well, state governments, offer three options in applications under gender, male, female, and other.
It's not funny.
It is part of the war against male-female distinctions.
Massive numbers of public high schools now have cross-dressing day as a matter of routine in schools.
The rationale behind it is boys should know what it feels like to be a girl, so they should wear a dress.
See, because the danger is we're developing too many masculine males in society, so they want to undo that possibility that we have overdone.
I'm being sarcastic.
Ask women who were dating if there's a surfeit of masculine males out there, and you will understand why it was sarcastic.
But anyway, they will have cross-dressing days.
It's considered Dury Gurnau at schools.
A man went on U.S. Airways a couple of months ago wearing a brawn panties.
He was allowed on U.S. Airways in a bra and panties, a male.
I don't think a woman should be allowed in brawn panties on U.S. Airways, and that would be very interesting if they would have allowed that.
But in any event, they allowed him, and the spokeswoman for U.S. Air said, we don't have a dress code, which was clear.
For this, we didn't need a spokesperson, you know.
But it's, you know, well, well, big deal.
So what?
He's just expressing himself.
There's no concept of it's violating some basic idea in society.
I don't care what a man does privately in his bedroom.
That's totally his business, and it should never be our business.
But once it's public, then it's the public's business.
We are fighting tremendously this distinction between male and female.
That is what the same-sex marriage argument should be about, but it isn't, because a lot of people who argue against it argue other things, some of which are valid, some of which I don't find valid.
But the real, real issue to me has been it has nothing to do with gays, believe it or not.
Nothing.
Whom I only wish well I have in my family, and I love them.
I have a lesbian niece and her partner.
They are part of our family like everybody else.
It's a non-issue and we adore them.
That's not the issue to me.
My wife and I are extremely friendly with a same-sex male couple who have, through surrogates, had two kids.
And while we want male and female marriage, once it happens, we embrace those children like any other children.
Having said that, however, the battle over same-sex marriage is unbelievably significant because the ultimate statement of same-sex marriage is clear.
It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman.
That's what the ultimate message is.
The issue is portrayed, understandably, as gay rights.
But there is another issue that is, to me, transcendent.
Do we shatter or preserve male-female distinction in society?
And if we shatter it, what price do we pay?
And I think we pay the price that George Gilder wrote in a book that deeply impacted me in my 20s called Sexual Suicide.
I think we're risking an implosion in society because we can't yet predict what will happen.
We're playing God here.
We're undoing God's separation.
Now, you may say, great, it's about time because God's separation stinks and I can't stand his biblical values.
Anyway, that's fine.
But it's my task to tell you that this battle is going on.
Are we going to preserve the male-female distinction or not?
If you say marriage between two is all that matters, what you're saying is it doesn't matter if you marry a male, it doesn't matter if you marry a female.
Sex doesn't matter.
Number matters.
By the way, you know it's been changed from sex to gender.
I point this out periodically.
It used to be sex, MF.
It's now always gender.
Why did they change it from sex to gender?
Because gender is malleable, sex is fixed.
That's why.
And they don't believe in fixed sex.
It's not fixed.
It's whatever you want it to be.
There was an article recently, just in the last two weeks, which I reported on the show, of a young woman, seventh grader, a seventh grader.
And the whole thing was about her.
And she said to the reporter, Some days I wake up, I feel like I'm a man or a boy or male.
I don't remember what she said.
Sunday's female.
That's it.
And that is considered among the sophisticates of our society as an achievement.
That this girl, or excuse me, this person, or if you will, perchild, because person has son in it, this perchild does not feel, why should she be bound by her anatomy?
That's the argument.
Big deal, anatomy.
Who cares?
It's what you feel.
Everything is feeling.
Back to feeling.
It's what you feel.
You feel like you want to save your dog before a stranger?
You save your dog.
You feel like you want to have an abortion?
Abortion is right.
You have an abortion.
It's all feelings.
There is no right and wrong.
So this one was the second, this fourth one is man and woman, another separation being attacked.
In fact, there's a word for it.
People like me are called heterosexist.
And I am a heterosexist.
I do.
I do believe that the hetero is the preferred.
I fully acknowledge that there are gay people, homosexual people, who have not chosen their homosexuality.
I do believe that.
I don't know why anybody, I don't know, first of all, how you can choose to be attracted to a sex you're not otherwise attracted to or de-attract yourself to the sex you were attracted to.
On the other hand, it is also malleable.
Both are true.
In some cases, it's fixed.
You and I know of famous people who came out, women came out as lesbians, and then five years later decided to marry a man.
They have retracted their lesbianism.
By the way, you don't get that with males.
Very rarely.
Very, very rarely.
But that is the ideal.
You're a lesbian for five years, that's fine.
We had a woman on from McGill University a number of years ago.
She wrote in her school newspaper at McGill, I came here heterosexist.
I believed that I should confine my love life to men.
But here at the university, I learned how heterosexist that is, and now I include women.
And I had her on the show.
I said, so in other words, it's entirely because of the university that you now include women.
Correct?
That's correct.
That's it.
End of issue.
I don't think that that's an achievement.
I think it was good if she was able to confine her love in that regard, erotic love, to males.
And finally, the holy and profane.
This separation, which plays no role in secular society.
It's so hard to explain to young people that even I, who think I'm good at explanations, often find myself speechless.
This is the closest I ever got.
I had three teenage girls in the back of my car many years ago, and we were behind a van, and the van had the bumper sticker, S happens, but it didn't say S happens.
It said the word, right?
So I mumbled something to the effect, what a jerk.
A jerk, put on a bumper sticker with an expletive.
And the girls behind me were shocked.
First, I was making a moral judgment.
That was immediate shocking.
But secondly, what's wrong with that?
What's wrong?
We use that word all the time.
I said, yes, that's exactly what's the problem is.
So they said, well, what's wrong with it?
And then I came up with this, which apparently made some, I don't praise my ability beyond its own ability.
I think I moved them somewhat on the Richter scale of understanding.
I said, what do you think of water pollution?
Disgusting.
What do you think of air pollution?
Disgusting.
So I said, well, I believe that you have a soul, and I believe in soul pollution, and that is soul pollution.
And to my amazement, they went, huh.
Which was an amazing achievement when I reflect on it.
Was he from Leeds?
They what?
Was he from Leeds?
Oh, were they from Leeds?
Why?
Oh, the guy in Leeds.
Yes, they were related.
They were distant relations.
That's very good.
You know, don't make me think about my previous speech.
E-minor.
So they were, all of a sudden, at least I made this point that registered.
Maybe you do have a soul, and maybe it could be polluted too.
That's what we don't have in our society now.
In fact, the more pollution, the better.
Our galleries, art galleries, are used, in fact, often to pollute.
In fact, I will, so I have a one-sixth difference that I want to get to.
Sorry about that.
In fact, I have two more.
But I kept you along.
It was very effective.
Holy and profane is huge.
It is huge.
I'll be very open.
Being open, I have found, is a very, very good thing.
It's not always easy, but it's because then you know me, and if you know a person, you trust them, it's a good thing.
You know why I got married when I got married in my 32, first time?
Why I got married?
I got married in large measure because there was a voice in me that was saying, Dennis, you're trying to lead a good life, but you're not trying to lead a holy life.
My religious background started talking to me about the social life I lived.
And I was very careful about being ethical and being right and all the other things that should be expected from anybody in a dating situation.
But nevertheless, you know, people are willing and people are open.
You do things, right?
And I'm not saying this with shame or anything.
But I did have a voice in me that said, it's time to take what you preach about holiness serious.
And in Judaism, marriage is called kiddushing, which means holy.
It is a holy act.
And so I decided, okay, you know, no more of this.
I'm going to get married.
And I got married.
But my point is, it makes a difference if you think in terms of holy.
And I've given it my working definition of holy is that which approaches God and distances you from animals.
Animals are the quintessence of the unholy.
It doesn't make them bad.
But there's no such thing as a dog acting holy.
And nor is it expected to.
We are expected to.
And that is to write.
And I always give the example.
It's been my best example.
Person sticks his face in a bowl of food.
What do you say to him?
Is he doing anything immoral?
No.
Is he hurting anybody?
No.
Is it unethical?
No.
But you would say he's eating like an animal or he eats like a pig.
What's wrong with eating like a pig?
The answer is we're not supposed to eat like pigs because we're humans.
That's why we have utensils.
We are supposed to elevate from the animal and go toward the divine.
That's our task.
It's so foreign from the way people think today.
An example is cursing, as I gave the example of the bumper sticker.
The amount of public cursing today, where prominent people will use the F word in dialogue, and I don't mean in a private conversation or an expletive because a piano bench fell on them.
I'm talking about just in normal talk, even to the press.
That's why, by the way, I'm against public nudity, not on sexual grounds, on holiness grounds.
San Francisco, which is the most secular and radicalized city, had, for example, recently another nude-in where just people would walk in the streets naked.
I want you to think, before hearing me now, what would you say?
And obviously don't answer out loud, but what would you say was wrong with that?
What is wrong with people walking in the streets naked?
You would be hard-pressed to come up with an answer.
You'd say, well, it's indecent.
But why is it indecent?
What makes it indecent?
Because you declare it indecent.
What makes it indecent?
And because we are in an utterly radically secular age, it's not indecent.
In fact, it was very interesting.
They interviewed business owners.
Said, do you mind this?
Mind this?
He said, you know how many tourists this brings?
We wish they would do it every day.
That's all they cared about.
So it was good for business.
The naked were not freezing to death.
It was a nice day in San Francisco.
What's wrong with it?
Nobody's asking you to walk on that street.
You don't like it, right?
Does they say turn the TV off?
But what it is, is the death of any concept of the holy.
See, if you show your genitals, you and an animal are on the same plane.
That's the Torah's answer.
That's the answer.
Nobody said anything about a bathing suit.
But when you show your genitalia, you have declared, I am an animal.
For in the secular world, there's nothing wrong with being an animal.
In a Bible-based world, there is something wrong with being an animal.
You make your choice, but I'm here to tell you the difference.
Number six.
I get out of five.
It's number six out of five.
That's right.
Where are you back there?
He sends me an email after my Rosh Hashanah talk.
He goes, I noticed that you stopped counting after three, and you just kept saying next, the next.
You were entirely right.
I was self-conscious after the night before with 14.
That is exactly what I did.
I didn't bother responding because I thought it was disgusting.
The sixth one is human and animal.
It's one I make, I've just made now by implication, so I don't need to develop much at all.
Animals are precious.
We are to care for them.
We are not to inflict gratuitous suffering, but we're not to act like them.
There is a reason that Hugh Hefner chose the bunny rabbit as his symbol.
He could have chosen a whole host of symbols.
He chose an animal known for regular and frequent intercourse.
That's it.
So let's all be like bunny rabbits.
Why not?
I don't think that there is a secular response to that question.
If nobody's hurt, if everybody agrees, why not?
And finally, there is even a war against beautiful and ugly as a distinction.
It is now commonplace in galleries and in museums for places to show not only what I consider ugly, okay, so you could say there's a matter of difference.
But tell me this: at the Dresden Museum of Fine Arts, there is a major exhibit, and it includes a sculpture.
And the sculpture is a German policewoman crouching and urinating.
And there is a puddle beneath her.
It's a sculpted puddle beneath her.
That's at the Dresden Museum of Fine Arts.
Almost all the great museums in the world have something scatological in them.
Something to do with defecating or urinating or urine.
The crucifix in urine is a very well-known called Piss Christ by an American artist, so-called artist, Andre Serrano.
But when I argue, they say, look, you know, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
There are people at the Dresden Museum who think that's a magnificent sculpture.
Okay?
So even there, beauty is, and beauty and ugly.
So there's no difference between a urinating policewoman and a Michelangelo work of art.
No difference.
You prefer Michelangelo, I prefer the urinating policewoman.
Who's to judge?
People hate standards.
With this, I conclude.
That's what it's about.
That's why God had to hold Sinai over the heads of the Jews and threatened to drop it on them.
They didn't want standards.
That's exactly the point.
Who wants standards?
It is much easier to live a life where I make up for me what's right.
Whether it's in art or whether it is in morality.
I make up for me what is right.
That's the ultimate.
And then you really are God.
And on this day where we affirm that God is the king of kings of kings, that's the choice one makes for one's life.
Who ultimately is God in your life?
This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
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