All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 22, 2026 - Dennis Prager Show
01:31:28
Timeless Wisdom: God and the Good
|

Time Text
Can We Be Good Without God? 00:09:02
Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Here are thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
Hi, this is Dennis Prager, and as always, I thank you for subscribing to my CDs, tapes, or however you receive my talks.
The one you're about to hear, I gave to an evening sponsored by the Christian, by the North Park Christian Academy in Valencia, California.
And it was a lecture series fundraiser that they had organized.
And the topic they requested me to talk on was, do we need God to be good?
Or do we have to believe in God to be good?
Or whatever related topic it might be.
And it's a very important topic.
But I do need to tell you that there was so much laughter on the part of the audience in this tape.
There was a lot of humor in this talk that I'm a little self-conscious because it almost sounds like I inserted a laugh track.
But I promise you I didn't.
This is really the audience reaction.
So while there is a lot of humor, it's a very serious topic.
And I do hope in particular you will share it with anybody who has problems with the issue of linking God and morality, God and goodness.
So here goes, and as always, a big thank you from me.
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Dennis Pricker.
Always a little uneasy when people like me before I speak.
I'm so used to talking to people who don't agree with me that I get nervous because I can only blow it.
You know, it's much tougher.
By the way, did you like the drama that I organized?
That as I came up, the lights went on.
Did you notice that?
A certain Genesis effect that we had there?
Jeff, I want to thank you.
I want to say your students in the fifth grade are very lucky to have you.
And I said to Liz that when I watched the movie, Those Kids Are Lucky Kids, they are very lucky kids.
And I'm going to explain why, I guess, tonight.
You asked me to speak on Can We Be Good Without God and secular education versus religious education.
You know, there's something very touching here.
Josh Abrams, who works with your school, was attending the banquet and fundraiser for a school, a Jewish school that I'm on the board of directors of.
And here I am at a Christian school.
And when he noted that to me, I said, only in America.
And it's true only in America.
I was on Larry King Live a few weeks ago.
And the other, there was a distinguished evangelical Christian on and a Roman Catholic priest.
I was the Jew.
And I'm always the Jew.
Now, one time I'm just going to show up and say I'm a Methodist.
Actually, it happened once.
I came early to an ecumenical thing, and they put me in the Methodist chair or the Protestant chair.
So I don't look Jewish, I guess.
So, you know, I'm too tall to look Jewish.
So, you know, I told them I could, in fact, I really, at this point, I could make the case for Christianity.
But I didn't feel it was right since I was supposed to do the Judaism part.
But I've had a lot of fun and interfaith dialogue.
At any rate, and then there was a Muslim gentleman and Deepak Chopra who represented, I assume, moral confusion.
And that wasn't officially what he was there to represent.
He did represent it well.
At any rate, at the end, at the very end of the hour, it was a whole hour, and the subject was, is religion the problem?
And I argued that, in fact, well, I'll tell you what I argued in the course of my talk.
But at the very end, Larry King mentions that, you know, it's something very nice to have here this Christian, this Jew and this Muslim seated together and liking each other.
And I said to him, just what I said to you, only in America, Larry.
And people forget that.
It's a big trouble to me that we forget the unique greatness of this country.
It doesn't seem odd to you to have a Jew come up at a fundraiser and evening for a Christian school.
It doesn't seem odd at all.
Everybody's happy about it.
It didn't seem odd to have Christians come to my Jewish school and help us raise funds.
It doesn't seem odd.
When I initiated the rally on behalf of Keeping the Cross in the county seal of Los Angeles, which the voted out, it disturbs them.
It's remarkable what disturbs them.
At any rate, there were a lot of Jews there.
There were rabbis with Yamulkas there.
And I have said over and over, I mean, this is, again, it's unique.
This is America.
You know, Jews fighting for the cross.
I mean, this is, you know, you don't know, perhaps you don't realize how dramatic that is.
And I remember in my early days, I began public life at the age of 21 because I was sent to the Soviet Union because of my knowledge of Russian and Hebrew to visit with Soviet Jews and see what was going on and bring in religious items, smuggle them in, and take out names of Jews and dissidents who wanted to leave.
And I remember how many Christians came to Soviet Jewry rallies.
And it was my initiation into this remarkable and again uniquely American cross fertilization of Judaism and Christianity while each staying true to its faith, nevertheless understanding that we are building something together because we share so far more than we differ on.
I have been very touched by this in my life, and as I get older, the more I realize that if America is saved, and I don't mean theologically saved, I mean physically saved.
I mean, if America is to remain America, I believe it will only happen with a Jewish-Christian alliance that will do it.
And it would be the first in history because unfortunately, since the time of Jesus, it's been competition.
And in Europe, a lot of persecution.
But in America, it's quite the opposite.
It's a massive amount of cooperation, and increasingly, those who take Christianity seriously and those who take Judaism seriously realize how much they are together, not apart, let alone opposed to each other.
So that's my belief that we will either save this country, because no civilization lasts forever.
I don't take America for granted for a day.
We can easily fail.
We could become a Western Europe and fade.
They're fading.
This is the last gasp of Western Europe as Western civilization as we know it.
I have talked to Western European major figures and thinkers on my show.
And I said, listen, let me just posit my thesis to you.
Secular Ideas Debated 00:05:46
Maybe I'm so far away from Europe geographically that I don't see it clearly, but it seems to me that you will either have a civil war or turn Muslim in the next generation.
And they said, it seems that that's pretty inevitable.
I don't wish either upon them.
It's not a wish.
It's just Europe doesn't stand for anything.
It stands for pluralism, but pluralism doesn't mean anything.
It's like standing for air.
We're all for air.
Civilization doesn't survive on air.
It survives on values.
Of course, pluralism, big deal.
Of course, it's wonderful.
You can't get more pluralistic than tonight.
A Jew speaking at an event for a Christian academy.
I mean, that's pluralism.
So it's a non-issue.
Of course, we're all pluralistic whatever that means.
But that's not a value.
It's a nice thing.
It's nice to have.
But it doesn't support something that you live for or die for.
Does anybody ever die for pluralism?
Does anybody fight for pluralism?
Anybody tuck their kid into bed and say, you know, pluralism loves you?
You know, it has no content.
Pluralism is form, not content.
So we have people of different facial, racial compositions.
Whoopee-doo.
And that's nice, but it's big deal.
It's no content to it.
It's just it's form.
So this is why we're together.
We have a content that we share.
The question is: do we have to believe in God to be good, or do we need God to be good?
I debated this at Oxford years ago with a professor of moral philosophy who was an atheist, shockingly.
And I want to say, though, and I said it that night, I said, it is a joy for me to debate good people and good debaters.
Some of you may have heard my debate with a gay writer on the show last week, an hour with a gentleman who wrote a book on behalf of same-sex marriage.
And we obviously differ and differ strongly on that, but it was such a pleasure to debate a decent, eloquent purveyor of his ideas.
I don't like debating jerks or dummies.
It's not even good for the cause because it's so obvious that you won.
I get a lot of letters.
Why don't you bring the best of the other side?
And I keep writing back, I do bring the best.
And I do, I do.
By the way, it's not a compliment to me that I'm a great debater.
It's simply that we have better arguments.
Although, you know, my real theory as to why I feel I have always done well in debates with people on the left and people who are atheist, it's that I was far more familiar with their arguments than they are with ours.
Because we who are religiously oriented, we are immersed in secular culture.
Every movie, every television show, every newspaper, every billboard, the entire society is saturated with their ideas and thinking.
So we confront their ideas all the time.
Unless they seek us out, they never confront our ideas.
You go to university, you don't get religious ideas.
You get secular ideas.
Go to high school, you get secular ideas.
Go to elementary school, you get secular ideas.
In fact, and apropos of your own school, it's very interesting that I turn the tables because they're never turned.
They're always in one direction.
And I note all the time that there is a secular brainwash in our society.
I fully acknowledge if somebody went to religious Jewish or religious Christian schools from kindergarten through graduate school, it's fair to say they were religiously brainwashed.
I fully acknowledge that.
But why don't they acknowledge that if you go secular school from kindergarten through graduate school, you've been secularly brainwashed.
They never think that way.
You can no more be too secular than you could be too thin or too healthy.
You know, it's just, oh, it's beautiful.
Secular is intrinsically beautiful.
But when I talk to these people who have gone through secular education their whole lives, they don't know how to answer.
I debated, in fact, I debated a man who just wrote a book, Religion is the Problem.
I think that's the title.
Religion is the Problem.
And well received, of course, by all the secular reviewers and so on.
So I had him on.
Stanford Media Fellows Debate 00:03:47
Since I didn't read his book, but I read his op-ed piece that appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
And I just, I love debating these guys because they're so certain that there were no arguments against their secular brilliance.
And I, and those of you who know my show know I work very hard never to humiliate either a caller or a guest.
It's a very important religious principle in my life, never to publicly humiliate somebody.
And I didn't humiliate him, but I did in fact win, okay?
I mean, I don't know what to say.
So he actually, this was a first, he called my producer and said he wants to come back on.
He realizes he lost.
He wants to do better next time.
And I'll have him on a second time.
That's fine with me.
I don't mind.
There's a certain masochistic streak in him.
It's fine with me.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Popular, happy, well-rounded kids across America are being exploited online through a sinister scheme that leaves them broken, defeated, or worse.
January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the U.S.
And to raise awareness, SalemNow.com is offering Sexploited in America, the four-park talkie series from AGA Media, at 50% off.
Sexploited in America now, just 499 at salemnow.com.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's timeless wisdom.
All of this is, though, by way of explaining to you what's going on.
We do have better arguments, but they never hear them because they think there are no other arguments.
When I went to Stanford, I don't mean as a student, but to speak two years ago, I think it was.
I was what they call a media fellow at Stanford for a week.
So I broadcast from Stanford and I met students and had professors on.
Then I spoke to students.
So I gave a big talk on my last night there.
And the Stanford Daily, to its credit, had a picture of me and the write-up on the front page.
I didn't even know if they'd cover it.
But they did.
And it was very interesting.
To their credit, they quoted students as saying after the speech, boy, in three years here, or another student in four years here, we never heard these things.
It was a defense of America, by the way.
They've never heard a defense of America at Stanford in four years.
But that's true.
That's true.
They don't.
Just here it's imperialistic and homophobic and racist and killed Indians and is now killing Iraqis and kills and this and that.
And kills for oil and kills for imperialist aims.
That's just normal.
That's the normal thing.
A listener, I don't know where in the country, but I was just checking the email, which I check voraciously.
I learned so much from listeners and emailers from my articles, sent me a copy of a page from a college brochure.
I don't remember which college, and it's irrelevant.
And you know, they show students, good-looking students, with quotes, right?
And so there's a nice-looking boy at whatever college.
Living Example of Faith Loss 00:15:19
And here's the quote, to sell the university to parents.
Basically as follows, it's really opened my mind coming to whatever ex-college.
Before I came, I was conservative.
And now my mind has been opened.
So it's actually a selling point that we make leftists out of rightists here at our college.
And so that's the state of education.
Now, let me explain something, because I had, you would think you may have inferred a challenge to your own school when I said I acknowledge that if you go from elementary school through graduate school in religious education, you could be said to have been Christian or Jewish brainwashed, just as you could be secular.
Let me tell you my vision for education.
I think that children should be given an immersion in religious values.
I don't believe in universalism at the age of 11.
I believe in it as you get older.
My vision, this is the way I tell to Jewish audiences on behalf of Jewish schools, and it applies identically.
There's no alteration in the idea.
My vision is that of the caterpillar and butterfly.
In order for a caterpillar to become a beautiful butterfly that flies into the world and brings its beauty into the world, it first has to enter a cocoon.
And what I tell in Jewish life is I say, you know, too many of the Orthodox, that is on the right religiously, think that we should all stay in the cocoon forever.
And too many on the left think that we could start out as butterflies.
And it's wrong.
Children need a cocoon.
Then they can go into the world, as indeed you teach them anyway.
You don't have the cocoon problem that a smaller community like ours might have.
But that is important.
A child needs to have that.
To have some immersion in something that gives the child an identity.
This is what you are.
You're not just human.
I came out to Los Angeles when I was 26 in order to become the director of a Jewish retreat and educational center in Simi Valley.
And in the summers, we had college students, 80 college students, two sessions each four weeks.
They would live there for four weeks.
They came from every sort of background, mostly Jewish, but every sort of Jewish background, in other words, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, secular, leftist, very leftist, extreme leftist, ultra-leftist.
And so they came for four weeks, and I was the director, and it was astonishing to see them as they would hear these ideas that they had never heard.
But what really got me was what I tried a couple of the sessions.
I don't, my own pedagogic style is not game-playing.
Others do very well with it.
I'm not a fan.
But there was one thing I did the first night of the Institute.
I would say, go into one of four corners in the room.
What do you first feel as your identity?
Religious, American, human.
And what was the third?
Maybe there were three corners.
So one of them, I'll never forget the very first time I did this.
One said, I don't fit into any of them.
I said, you have a different primary identity, not Jew, not American, not human.
Oh, oh, the fourth was man or woman.
Okay, so the fourth was man or woman, which is, that's all right.
It's a primary identity as male or female.
Listen, right now that's actually politically incorrect.
Well, I sometimes feel female.
I feel, you know, I was female, now I'm a male.
Who are you to make such categorical definitions?
God knows what trouble I'd have today with male or female.
But in any event, one student raised her hand and she said, I don't identify with any of those categories as my primary identity.
I said, no, not Jew, not American, not male or female, not human, but, she said, living being.
I said, living being?
You have more in common with a zebra than with an American?
I mean, yes, yes.
Living being.
So now let me tell you, a child that grows up whose primary identity is living being is in trouble.
And I mean it, because it's not, it's not, it's good.
Of course we should feel we're living beings, but you don't have that much in common with an ant.
You know, you don't.
Let's be honest.
In fact, one of the great teachings of our religious tradition called Judeo-Christian, of our Bible, is in fact that we are very different from animals.
It's one of the things lost in secular society, the distinction between us and animals.
It is good to have a strong identity and know who you are.
And the more the better, by the way, not just one.
It's good to feel strongly American and strongly Christian or strongly Jewish.
These are very good things to have.
And American education doesn't give any of that to kids.
They don't feel strongly American, and they certainly don't feel religious.
They're living beings.
World citizens.
Like, oh, I don't want to make it political.
So I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I.
Okay.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Popular, happy, well-rounded kids across America are being exploited online through a sinister scheme that leaves them broken, defeated, or worse.
January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the U.S.
And to raise awareness, SalemNow.com is offering Sexploited in America, the four-part talkie series from AGA Media, at 50% off.
Sexploited in America, now just $4.99 at SalemNow.com.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
So the question on the table is: can we be good without God?
And the answer is, yes, of course we can.
There are good people who don't believe in God.
There were good pagans.
It's acknowledged.
Everybody acknowledges that.
You're denying reality if you deny that there are any good people who don't believe in God.
Of course there are.
But their goodness doesn't emanate from their atheism.
There were good people who believed that the world was on the back of a turtle.
But the world resting on the back of a turtle doesn't lead to goodness.
In other words, they can coexist, but they're not causative.
You with me?
So of course there are good people who don't believe in God, just as there are bad people who do.
I mean, that's we get in trouble.
Listen, truth is on our side, so always tell the truth when you debate.
Yes, there are good people who don't believe in God.
That is correct.
What's your point?
That we don't need God?
Maybe Mr. X or Miss X doesn't need God to be good.
That is possible.
That is possible.
They may, for a whole host of psychological, emotional, philosophical reasons, do what is generally good in their lives and be very trustworthy in business and other ways.
That is true.
But the question is not can there be a good individual?
The question is, can there be a good society?
Can goodness be sustained societally or over generations?
That's the question.
Can that take place without God?
And the answer is no.
That doesn't work.
By the way, the God I'm talking about, and this is getting more and more important given how much evil is being done in one version of God's name at any rate in the world today, is the God of the Hebrew Bible, the God of Israel, which of course Christians worship.
And that's the one I'm talking about.
And that's the only one that has been known.
I mean, when we say God, that's the God that people have talked about.
Not talking about just a higher power, as much as that has done impressively good work in 12-step programs and so on.
But when I'm talking about God, it's not as vague as higher power.
I'm talking about the specific God who is above nature, who revealed himself in the Bible, who gave us laws such as the Ten Commandments, etc.
I'm very specific as to whom I'm talking about.
Dropping that God does not lead to goodness.
Dropping that God leads to evil.
I tell you, I came across a quote which I read on the air now twice.
I should do it probably every week.
I really should.
I was reading a book on the history, the terrible, terrible, tragic history of the Jews of Germany.
It's a fascinating story of the Jews of Germany.
And without getting into it, one of the most famous German Jews was a man considered one of the greatest German poets and philosophers who ever lived, Heinrich Heine, H-E-I-N-E.
And he was a secular Jew, as most of the Jews were.
And Heine said in 1834, and the reason I wrote it down, but the reason I can remember it to write it down, is that it was 99 years before Hitler came to power.
And he said, the man was as close to a prophet as we can get.
He said, and I'm paraphrasing now, wait till, I warn you, French, he was living in France, I warn you, when Germany is unified and feels its muscles, a havoc will be unleashed upon you and humanity, the likes of which have never been seen.
The gods will thunder in their destructiveness.
And he continued, the only reason it hasn't happened yet is because of Christianity, which works as a break by giving the Germans conscience.
This is a secular Jew writing in 1834.
And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.
As Christianity lost its hold, Nazism arose and did unleash the greatest havoc known in history, moral havoc in terms of the Holocaust and World War II.
So Europe is a living example of what happens when belief in this God that I'm talking to you about dies.
Communism and Nazism supplanted Christianity in Europe.
It's like goodness didn't supplant Christianity.
Nazism and communism did.
Ah, but I'm told a thousand times a day in letters and on the air when I debate, well, what about now?
They're not Nazis or communists in Europe.
They're just good secular people.
And they are secular.
They're very secular.
Are they that good?
I would take America 100 years, 100 times over Europe as a society doing good in the world.
You see, I'll give you, and I will give you an example.
The only reason I hesitate is because people will think I have a vested interest because I'm Jewish.
But since I'm speaking at a Christian place, maybe it undoes the vested interest argument.
So I give you one great example of America's uniqueness over Europe, and that is protection of Israel.
Europe would sell Israel to the dogs in 10 minutes for a pot of oil.
It is a non-issue to Europe, a non-issue.
Why does this country protect Israel?
Because of the power of the Jewish lobby?
I always hear that.
Oh, the Jewish vote, the Jewish lobby.
So let me talk to you just for a moment about that.
For those who don't know American politics, the Jewish vote goes Democrat.
George Bush has owed nothing to Jewish voters.
Now, you may say, of course, Dick Cheney, on the other hand, given the power of the Wyoming Jewish community, all 23 in Cheyenne have had a real big impact.
The idea is ludicrous.
What do George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice owe Jews, American Jews, politically?
Nothing, zero.
They do it because it's right, not because there's anything in it.
And what about oil?
One of the great arguments against America is sending its young to kill and die in Iraq for oil is there are two spectacular arguments.
One, we could have gotten all the oil we wanted from Saddam, just like France and Germany and Russia and China did.
They made terrific deals with him.
If we wanted oil, we could have bought it.
End of issue.
We're the ones who pushed for sanctions.
Not them.
They pushed for oil.
And the other is Israel.
If we're not interested in oil, why would we protect the one country in the Middle East that doesn't have any?
Ask that to your smart-alecky son or daughter when they come home from UCLA.
Why Protect Taiwan? 00:13:07
Why do we protect Israel?
Why do we protect Israel?
Because we follow what's right.
We believe that the extinguishing of a little tiny state that has freedom in the midst of a sea of darkness, I'm sorry to say, I really am sorry to say, is the right thing to do.
There's no comparison between us and Europe.
Europe would let Taiwan drown.
Why do we protect Taiwan?
For oil?
What's Taiwan's natural resource?
Rocks.
A lot of nice rocks in Taiwan.
I was there.
It's a gorgeous place, but it's mostly rocky.
We protect Taiwan because it's right to protect Taiwan.
Why did we die in South Korea?
Die in the tens of thousands in South Korea.
For oil?
What's South Korea's major resource?
Kim Chi.
I ate it 20 years ago at the Seoul airport.
I'm still burning a little.
It's so the moral inversion of the understanding of America is just, it's sickening.
It's truly sickening.
How much this country dies for what is right, as opposed to Europe, which couldn't care less.
Just give them a nude beach and they're the happiest folks in the world.
That's it.
That's what makes him tick.
Another example of, if I need one, about how a world without God doesn't produce moral goodness is the university.
Of course, there are some decent people at universities, obviously.
But as a totality, the university is the most morally backward, confused, inverted place in America.
And I say that with, again, great sadness.
I love learning.
I have a home with 4,000 books.
I love learning.
But the university is not dedicated to learning any longer.
Maybe in the natural sciences, but it isn't in the liberal arts.
It's dedicated to training secular nihilists to deconstructing the Western world and deconstructing art and deconstructing morality.
This is a very important thing.
I look at the fruits of ideas.
Listen, I want to tell you something.
I'll be totally open with you.
If the secular world produced a lot of good people with morally strong beliefs, I would feel challenged on the need for God for goodness because the first thing I have to do is tell the truth.
Maybe we would need God for other reasons, for meaning, for purpose, for a sense of fulfillment, for a connection to the world, but not for goodness.
Because all these secular places are producing all these morally aware, clear, thinking, good, decent people.
But they're not.
The secular world is a moral wasteland, largely.
Largely.
By the way, the religious worlds have not been great either.
But there is a religious world that has been particularly good.
It's the one that we happen to live in, the United States of America.
I mean, it has not been problem-free.
There are people who defended slavery biblically.
There are people who defended segregation, racial segregation biblically.
Of course that will happen.
Absolutely.
Just like the Presbyterian Church USA defends divesting from companies that do business with Israel biblically.
The left does what others tended to do now, the religious left, and we'll come back to them.
I know for a fact belief in God or religion doesn't guarantee goodness.
Of course it doesn't.
Not even our faiths.
Of course not.
There are plenty of morally confused Christians and Jews.
But it's my best bet.
God doesn't guarantee goodness, but the death of God guarantees evil.
Okay?
That's in one sentence, a nutshell.
If you have to go home, you heard the key.
God, faith in God does not guarantee goodness, but the death of God guarantees moral confusion and therefore evil.
That's the point to be made.
So when the opposition points out bad religious people, I say, you're right.
By golly, you're right.
Absolutely correct.
But this is very interesting.
This is the reason, ironically, the guy that I defeated in the debate wants to come back on, ironically, the reason I did was because he had a lot of intellectual honesty.
That's the irony.
His intellectual honesty got him in trouble because he acknowledged that he said that there really is a moral problem emanating from a lot in the world of Islam without condemning all of Islam.
And he said he, you know, he's very, you know, he acknowledges that, and nobody's acknowledging it at the universities today, which he holds up as a great model.
So when we got on the air, I said, let me just ask you then, how do you deal with the fact that the only people prepared to say there are moral issues emanating real problems from the world of Islam tend to be religious Christians in America and religious Jews for that matter?
Not your whole secular world has taken a nosedive on the issue of threats coming from Islam.
They're still just chatting about pluralism.
That's their answer, pluralism.
And he, well, he didn't have an answer, but he acknowledged it was true.
He said, well, he said, oh, yeah, I remember his answer.
It's true Christians are saying this, and they're right, but for the wrong reasons.
I said, I don't care why people are right.
Right on the greatest moral issues of our day is right.
You don't like their reasons because they believe in the Bible and the Bible tells them this.
You have a better reason?
So, in answer to the question, can we be good without God?
The answer is clear.
Some individuals, yes.
Society, no.
I look at Western Europe.
I look at the American university.
And I run back to religion and God.
By the way, I wrote an article.
And if you don't know, I do write a column each week.
It's free.
I beg you to get hold of it each week.
It's good intellectual ammunition for the values that I assume most of you hold.
And one of my columns in the last year was How I Found God at Columbia.
Your laughter is proper because that's the last place you would find God.
But it is, no pun intended, the God's honest truth.
This is exactly what happened in my life.
I was raised a religious Jew, and that obviously had an impact in my belief.
I have no question.
But I have always challenged everything that I was taught.
That's my nature.
I need to find out if it's true or not on my own.
And I didn't become an atheist at any point in my life, but the greatest single thrust toward my passionate arguing for belief in God came at Columbia.
I was puzzled by the fact that so many of my professors were morally my favorite term is moral idiot, but it sounds so demeaning.
I don't know what to say, though.
They were moral idiots, so I'll say moral idiots.
I mean, to think, I mean, I'll be perfectly precise.
To say that the United States and the Soviet Union were moral equivalents, you have to be a moral idiot.
A free, democratic, prosperous nation versus a society run by tyrants who allow you no freedom of any type, assembly, religion, speech.
I mean, there's no comparison.
And yet I was at Columbia at the School of International Affairs, and it was taken as a given that they're just two superpowers.
One has one way of life, the other has another way.
Who are we to judge?
Then also I was taught that men and women are basically the same.
It's the only belief I knew that was even stupider than the moral equivalents of the U.S. and the USSR.
Which is remarkable when you think of it.
I was 22 years old.
I didn't even have a sister, and I certainly had no children.
But it struck me as so obvious, and I don't mean physically, that men and women, it is not true, by the way.
He has it a little wrong.
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus.
it implies that they are from the same solar system.
That's just, it's not true.
It's not true.
Men are from one universe and women are from another universe.
Anyway, I just knew this, and yet I was taught by these great intellects that if you raise a girl with soldiers and trucks and guns, by golly, she'll play with them.
And if you raise a boy with tea sets and dolls, he'll play with them.
I didn't believe it.
I was 22.
I just knew this is nonsense.
Boys don't play with guns because they're given guns.
They're given guns because they play with guns.
No boy ever walked around and said, you really want a tea set.
Doesn't happen.
It doesn't happen.
It's so easy to prove all these things, by the way.
You just, you, you ask, take any kid, take any five or ten-year-old to a toy store, big toy store.
Ask the boy, where are the dolls?
I've tried this, and they go, what dolls?
Ask the girl, where are the soldiers?
Or where are the guns?
And she'll say, what soldiers?
She knows the huge section for dolls.
He knows the huge section for monsters and attack devices and water guns that can rival the geyser at Wyoming.
I have a painful admission to make.
I have not been entirely capable of withstanding the onslaught of the university.
So I actually imbibed the idea of don't give your boy toy guns.
With my first boy, I did not buy him toy guns.
I feel so stupid telling you this that this is like a public confession of utter foolishness on my part.
However, I have one saving grace.
I do change my mind when the evidence is overwhelming.
Everything in the house became a gun.
Everything.
And finally, one night at dinner, when he made the rye bread slice into a machine gun, I just knew this is the end, and then I just bought him all the toy guns he wanted, if only to spare the food.
So what happened?
Because I was taught this nonsense, America-Soviet moral equivalence, boys and girls basically the same, and much more, I walked around with one great puzzle while doing my graduate work at this Ivy League University, and that was, why are these people so foolish?
Wisdom Begins with Awe 00:05:53
How could they have such good brains and be so foolish?
And I give you my word, one day while walking in the big square on 116th and Broadway, I don't remember what it was called, but that big green thing, and around you are the statues of Greek thinkers, I think it is.
Anyway, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, seemingly, a phrase I had uttered in Hebrew at my Jewish school when I was a child came back to me.
I memorized it because we said it by rote.
And it's from Psalms.
And it is in Hebrew, Reshit Chochma Yir Atadunai.
Wisdom begins with awe of God.
And my life pretty much became clear at that moment.
Oh my God.
No God.
No wisdom.
Now, look up here at your banners at this Christian school.
Wisdom, virtue, purpose, courage.
Now, There is no secular school that I know of that has wisdom as one of its mottos.
Wisdom is a non-ish, it's a non-word.
Knowledge is worshipped in the secular world.
Wisdom is worshipped by those who worship God.
Big difference between knowledge and wisdom.
My computer has more knowledge than anyone on earth, but it has no wisdom.
I often ask it for advice.
Nothing happens.
By the way, it's very interesting: courage, purpose, wisdom, virtue.
I was thinking, what would a secular school have?
And I was thinking, as an example, they would have, and it's not a joke.
They have, words are important.
Very important.
Even if we don't live up to them and no one lives up to their highest words, you can't.
But you still have, you know what you're to aspire to.
Instead of courage, the big word today is compassion.
That would be up there.
Purpose, I don't know what one word would be instead of purpose, but it was fascinating.
The one non-God-oriented member of that panel on Larry King, Deepak Chopra, ended, and you could see it for free too.
Go to Larry King Live, see the transcript of the September 29th, 2004 show, and you will see what he said.
That we just realize there's no purpose to all of this.
If the whole world were destroyed, it would not matter in the least.
Secularism is purposeless.
Of course it is.
Only God infuses life with purpose.
That doesn't mean no secular person has a sense of purpose.
They kill themselves if they didn't.
They wouldn't get out of bed, make money, go to work, raise your children.
They have many noble purposes, but that's not the purpose of life.
Life itself has no purpose.
My life, I have given subjective purpose, take care of my children, whatever.
And that's existentialism.
But there is no ultimate purpose.
If I saw those four words, though not one of them had anything to do with God, I would know it's a religious school.
First, as soon as I saw wisdom, I knew it would be religious.
Secular school would have knowledge.
Courage, likewise.
It's not a secular virtue any longer.
Purpose, again, it's all look inside.
You know, there's no purpose that would evolve.
And then virtue, oh, virtue, my God, that's.
Virtue is supplanted by, you know, do your own thing.
So every one of these was a giveaway that this was a religious school.
They will argue that you don't need God to be good.
Reason suffices.
Reason does not suffice.
Let me tell you about reason for a quick moment.
Reason is amoral.
It's not immoral and it isn't moral.
Reason alone dictates neither good nor evil.
If you want to be good, you should use reason.
If you want to be bad, you can use reason.
If you want to build hospitals, you use reason.
If you want to build gas chambers, you use reason.
As I frequently say in debates, there were too few, tragically, too few non-Jews in Europe who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
But there were non-Jews who did.
Not one who was ever interviewed said the reason was reason.
Well, I rationally thought through and realized that on rational grounds, I should risk my life for a Jew who I never met.
People who did so did so out of faith.
Either faith in God, that God wants them to risk their lives to save a stranger, or even just faith in goodness, which transcends reason.
But nobody did it because it was rational, because it wasn't rational.
Dog's Rational Argument 00:15:25
Goodness is not always rational.
When your kid comes home and says, or a kid says, all the kids are cheating in class, I should cheat too, that's a rational argument.
They're using reason to defend their argument.
I don't know how many of you heard, it's a tremendous show when I talked about my brand new $450 cell phone PBA device that within three days of purchasing I dropped in the toilet.
Don't ask how it happened, but well, you probably should explain, lest you think it was odd.
I was in Minnesota three days later at our Minnesota station, and I was at the Minnesota Hotel, and I brought along my wife and our youngest child to visit the Minnesota State Fair.
I woke up in the middle of the night, had no idea where I was, and I thought I was at home, in fact, and I walked into a closet.
So I didn't want to turn on the light to find the bathroom because I would wake up the family and would wake me up.
I wanted to retain some sleep.
So I took my new PBA device, turned it on, and that lit my way.
And it lit its way right into the toilet.
One of the disadvantages of being a male became clear.
Anyway, this was the question.
By the way, I want to tell you something.
Happily, except for one dog, nothing has ever died in my hands except that cell phone.
I saw the light fade in my hand.
It was painful.
So I raised a question to my family.
I said, listen, I just go to Verizon here in Minneapolis, tell them the phone broke, which is true.
It's true.
And get a new phone.
But if I tell them I broke it, I'm out 450 big ones.
So what should I do?
Well, my wife said, of course, you've got to tell them the truth.
My son said, are you kidding?
Tell him it broke.
In his defense, he's 11.
And that's almost every 11-year-old that I asked said the same thing.
That's why conscience develops over time.
That's why you need to be educated.
But he did the rational thing.
What's the big deal?
Anyway, the thing is, I don't mind that my 11-year-old.
I'm very confident.
Not totally confident.
One should never be totally confident vis-a-vis one's children, or vis-a-vis oneself for that matter.
But in any event, I posed this question on the air.
Would you say it broke or would you say I broke it?
And fascinating, fascinating emails and callers.
A young student called and she said it happened to her and she said it broke.
And so many people said it's a big company.
What the hell do they care?
So long as they keep your account right.
And they're rational.
By the way, that is rational.
It is an entirely rational argument not to have said, I broke the phone.
Why not?
What they most want is your account.
They don't make money on the hardware.
They make money on the account, on your paying the bills each week for internet access or wireless access, telephone access, etc.
There's a very rational argument not to tell the whole truth.
But those of us who believe that God wants us to tell the whole truth have no choice.
It's as simple as that.
And by the way, it is as simple as that.
Arguments end.
If you really ask, what does God want, or as many of you ask, what would Jesus do?
Would Jesus a cheat?
I don't think you think so.
It's a very appropriate question to ask.
Would Jesus show up at Verizon and say, broke?
But it is if these are the examples are endless of reason versus right.
Reason doesn't always suggest the right thing to do.
Obviously, God does.
Reason doesn't.
If reason were enough, it would be great.
But even when reason does suggest the right thing, it hardly compels it.
Reason doesn't judge me.
Reason doesn't love me.
Reason didn't create me.
God did.
So I have a lot more of an obligation to God than I do to this abstract notion of reason.
And by the way, how do I know I'm using reason correctly?
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Popular, happy, well-rounded kids across America are being exploited online through a sinister scheme that leaves them broken, defeated, or worse.
January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the U.S.
And to raise awareness, SalemNow.com is offering Sexploited in America, the four-part talkie series from AGA Media, at 50% off.
Sexploited in America, now just $4.99 at SalemNow.com.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
The atheist professor, university professor of the humanities at Princeton, says that we have a month after the birth of a baby to kill it if we consider it sufficiently deformed.
I mean, we're now in pure infanticide.
We've left abortion a long time ago.
Now we're into defending infanticide on rational grounds.
It suffers.
We suffer, it suffers, and it is rational.
He's absolutely correct rationally.
Then there is another problem with the godless world of values, and that is human sanctity.
It's the longest ongoing question I have posed in my public life.
When I started lecturing in my mid-20s, I started asking high school students, these people are now adults with their own families.
And I would ask, so would you save your dog or a stranger first if both were drowning?
I've asked this for 30 years.
Always the same results.
One-third vote for the dog, one-third for the stranger, one-third doesn't know.
And why?
Why do two-thirds say that they would not save a human before their dog?
I love my dog.
I don't love the stranger.
And they're right.
With all respect, with a couple of exceptions here, people I've known from before, I don't know almost any of you.
And I do love my dogs more than I love you.
But I have good news.
If you swim in the Prager pool, and all three dogs are drowning at the same time, and so are you, I'll save you first.
It's a...
I hope you're applauding the story, not me.
I mean, it's a bad day when you get applauded for saving people before your dogs, but maybe we have reached a bad day.
Anyway, why would I save you, whom I don't love, before my dogs that I love?
Because I don't follow love.
Tell that at a secular school.
Oh, you should see the faces.
They're not breathing.
When I come in and say I don't follow love, it would be as if somebody came into your school and say, I don't follow Christ.
Or more dramatically, you're used to hearing that, actually.
You're more used to hearing, I don't follow Christ than secularists are, I don't follow love.
Love is God.
They don't, you don't, I, speaker comes in, doesn't follow love.
I don't.
If I followed love, I would save my dogs before you.
In fact, if I followed love, my God, I would save my sand collection before you.
Right?
Hey, I'd save my lunch before you.
I love my lunch more than you.
I mean, what is love?
What are we talking about?
It's not a value system love.
It's not.
There are Christians who fall into that trap too, making love God.
If love is God, what do you need God for?
Just follow love.
God is infinitely higher than love.
I would save you because you are created in God's image.
Human life is sacred and dog life isn't.
Period.
End of issue.
And that's all I need to know.
Otherwise, I have no argument.
None.
In fact, for the ZPG folks, the zero population growth folks, it's probably more moral to save the dog.
Another dead human.
Excellent.
This inability to distinguish between the value of a human and the value of a dog has been a catastrophe and an inevitable consequence of the death of God and secularism.
PETA, the people for the ethical treatment of animals, has a new campaign called Holocaust on Your Plate.
Yep.
And it's clear.
There's no difference between barbecue chickens in America and cremated Jews in the Holocaust.
None.
You are a mass murdering Nazi for having chicken.
And they believe that.
They believe that.
By the way, when I, twice I had on the head of people for the ethical treatment of animals, I asked her, how far down does the equivalence go?
For example, cockroach.
I think she said that cockroach is included.
But I then asked her, I asked her a question that I don't recall anybody ever asking the PETA folks.
Are you pro-choice or anti-abortion?
And she said she doesn't take a position.
I said, so you feel that cockroaches are more valuable than human fetuses?
I don't take a position.
There's a reason for you.
Okay, another thing that God does.
Belief in God keeps you from fads.
It keeps you from the false idols of the day.
It gives you courage.
You have a lot more courage if you believe in God.
Let's be honest.
You know, I'm going to say something that I pray I'm never tested, and I may fail if I'm tested.
But I'm sure a lot of you have thought, what if you were kidnapped in Iraq and the video camera were stuck in front of you?
What would you do and say, I think about that?
I don't know.
Maybe I'm odd in that.
I do think about that.
I would hope that unless I were tortured, in which case I would say anything.
I know that now.
But don't bother.
Don't bother.
Just tell me what you want me to say.
But if the issue were to plead for my life in that way, you know, an Italian died saying, watch how an Italian dies.
I mentioned that.
It was very powerful, what he said, and he's a hero, and it's Italy, and he should be.
But I believe that, I believe that a lot of people with a strong sense of God would have some more peace in being able to say, I will not grovel before you.
And if this is my fate, this is my fate, or what have you, though none of us wants to die, obviously.
Of course, God doesn't give you more courage because you think he'll save you.
That's a celestial butler.
That's not God as I understand God.
I don't believe that God protects me from cancer or getting hit by drunk drivers.
He might.
I don't say he doesn't.
But that's not, I don't use God.
I have courage because I believe that there is a God and I know what God wants me to do.
That's what gives me courage.
It does every day that I broadcast.
I will say what I believe is true irrespective of where the chips will fall.
And it is very much my religiosity that gives me the strength to do that.
So that's the courage.
It's not the courage of, gee, nothing will happen to me.
Of course, bad things happen to religious people.
Of course, to deeply believing people.
Of course, that's true.
But you have a sense that this is not all there is.
You have a sense that there is a good God who governs the universe, though you suffer at that time.
Whereas the secular person can't have that.
In any event, what belief in God allows you to do is step back and not worship the gods of your day.
The fact that the whole secular society says X is good, you're still not going to say X is good.
You are going to march to the beat of a higher drummer.
That's what God enables you to do.
So that society doesn't dictate your understanding of right and wrong.
God does.
That's huge.
It is huge, as you probably know in your own lives.
And that's the challenge to give over to our children who are so powerfully affected by television and by other parts of our secular society.
I believe that that is a major difference.
And my intent is not in any way to be political.
Believing in God and Morality 00:07:51
I give you my word.
I never bring politics into talks that are not political.
I don't like when the left does that.
I don't like if they do that more, I believe, than they're right, and I certainly don't want to do it.
But what I'm about to say is not meant to say why I like this candidate more than the other.
It is to illustrate why they think differently.
President Bush is prepared to go it alone as America.
His opponent and his opponents, his tens of millions of opponents, are not.
For them, it is very bad that America is not loved more in the world.
And I am convinced that the more you walk with God, the less it's important whether the world loves you.
Okay?
Now, many will say, uh-oh, that's scary.
The president thinks he walks with God.
We are doomed.
And that's the way they feel.
But we can agree, though, that the one who does believe he walks or tries to walk with God in his life is less concerned with are we loved than are we right?
It's a huge difference.
To me, it's all the difference in the world.
As a member of the most hated people in history, the Jews, I certainly know that hated doesn't mean wrong.
I end by speaking about the other side of the coin for a moment.
And that is the issue of it is possible to believe in God and not be a good person.
And that happens.
And we have to be careful.
How do you ensure that God and goodness do go together?
Now, I don't have a perfect answer.
But one way is to make sure that you believe God does want you to be good.
Belief in God isn't magical.
I believe in God, and the next day I wake up, and all of a sudden I'm good.
I mean, look, let's be honest.
Let's think within just the Christian faith.
You have the National Council of Churches, and you have evangelicals, just within Protestantism.
You don't even have to leave Protestant Christianity.
They agree on one thing: God and Christ.
And that's it.
That's it.
That's what they both share: belief in God the Father and the Trinity.
Beyond that, nothing.
Every value in the world they do not share.
On sexual matters, on pacifism matters, on war and peace matters, on good and evil.
You name it.
How could that be?
How could that be?
So, and by the way, I don't have a terrific answer.
Why person A, who believes in God, person B believes in the same God, and they turn out with entirely different value systems.
It's a problem.
It is a problem.
I have theories, but I'm not, I have to work that out because part of me, I'll tell you what part of me believes.
I think this might give you, this is recent thinking on my part.
It's not enough to believe in God and not enough for a Christian to believe in the Trinity.
You also have to believe in the divinity of the text.
I think that that is a huge dividing line on questions of where your faith will lead you in moral questions.
It's true in my religion.
It is true in Christianity.
So one of the first things, and this is very recent, my realization of this.
Take, for example, the terribly vexing question of same-sex marriage.
I mean, if you're not sensitive to the moral humanitarian impulse that many people feel, then you're not sensitive.
I mean, there is real love there.
There are very often very fine people there.
I understand it.
These people are not demonized in my eyes at all.
But putting that aside for a moment, the difference between religious, forget the secular, religious people on the same-sex marriage question will overwhelmingly ride on the question of the divinity of the text.
Jews who believe in the divinity of the Torah will be against same-sex marriage overwhelmingly.
Jews who do not will be for it overwhelmingly.
Christians who believe in the divinity of the Bible will be overwhelmingly likely to be against same-sex marriage.
And those who believe it's a man-made document overwhelmingly will be for same-sex marriage.
So it's interesting.
It's the best answer I could come up with now about how even faith in God is insufficient.
I have to know what God wants.
So you believe in God, I believe, but do we believe that God wants the same things?
And if we don't, then it's irrelevant that we believe in the same God.
We really don't.
It's like I believe in, you know, we're siblings.
I believe in mom and you believe in mom.
But you think mom wants you to rob banks and I think mom wants me to return the phone honestly to Verizon.
Do we have the same mom?
Yes, biologically, but not morally.
Not in any way that it matters.
We might as well have totally different moms.
We believe she wants different things that matter.
So I think the divinity of the text has to follow of a text, of some text.
If every word of the Bible is written by people, then every word of the Bible can be changed by people.
It's as simple as that.
Then you're the Bible, and the Bible isn't.
You are now a divine scribe.
You have written your own Bible.
They call us arrogant.
It always cracks me up.
That's pretty arrogant, I gotta say, that you are the source of your own religious values.
So in a nutshell, these are the arguments.
Without God and without this biblical text, much of which we share, I don't know how a good girl, good world can be formed.
And we live this example in the great battle for America's soul today, which is why this Jew is at this Christian Academy this evening.
Thank you very, very much. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again.
Want to Send Your Kids? 00:02:53
That took a long time, so maybe we won't have Q. What do you want to do?
It's your call.
You run the school.
Would you like time for a few questions and answers?
Okay.
Before that, I want to tell you, I volunteer to do the following.
I asked to do this.
This one thing we Jews can teach you guys: fundraising.
We do it shamelessly.
It is a non-issue.
We embarrass people at Jewish events to give money.
So, Rosenbaum, how much this year?
You know, that sort of thing.
That's the truth.
That's absolutely it.
And nobody gets embarrassed because they all fork up.
If you've got to support a place like this, you just have to.
This is what's going to save America.
And, you know, whether you have kids there or you don't have kids there.
And I'm sure you're stuck like we are at our Jewish school.
I'm sure you have some kids who don't pay.
Is that true?
We have a lot of tuition assistants.
A lot of tuition assistance, exactly.
And so what are you going to do?
You say to these parents, sorry, we just don't have, which you have to do sometimes.
We don't have the money.
So, you know, you have to regard every kid as your kid.
Even if you don't have kids, your kids are grown up.
So I really do.
I ask you to really reach in because if we don't support the best institutions, nobody will.
It's really, and this is a beautiful place.
I'd like to visit it one day.
It'd be a real joy for me.
So, okay, now anybody who has a question, comment, or brief alternate speech, just raise your hand.
By the way, is there anybody here who has not heard my radio show?
Why are you here?
Really, why are you here?
Did somebody bring you?
You, yeah.
I want to send you.
Oh, you want to send me.
So you came for the school, and you got me as a bonus.
Okay.
So are you going to send your kids to the school now?
We rehearsed that Wednesday, actually.
All right, anybody have any question or comment?
This is a phenomenon of audiences.
Mecha and Fringe Groups 00:06:28
I could write an essay, a long essay, on the psychology of audiences.
In the beginning, no one raises their hand, and then there were three, then nine, then 27, and so on.
Yes, sir.
You mentioned the cross issue earlier.
And I had sat with Daniel Rabbi Lapton a few weeks ago, and we had talked about a fringe group that writes and blames Jews for the problems of Mexicans and Latinos in Los Angeles, and actually in the southwestern United States, and how they're going to take the southwest, blah, blah, blah.
And he asked me to write to, I have a relationship with Wendy Gruen, who writes articles, and he asked me to ask her to write an article.
And she says, oh, that's not important.
They're a fringe group.
So were the Nazis in 1933.
Is it La Raza?
La Raza, yeah, La Voice, La Mecha, and all that.
Well, they're not fringe groups at all.
They have, and Mecha, and so on.
Here is someone speaking about in the Hispanic community that there are anti-Semitic statements from radical left-wing groups that are not marginal.
That is absolutely right.
Now, what are they blaming the Jews for?
The removal of the cross?
One of the great things about being a Jew, I must tell you, is you're responsible for everything.
I wake up every day and find out what I'm responsible for that day.
It's amazing, amazing what 001% of the world is responsible for.
But it is, it's phenomenal.
Do you know that there are people who say that the war in Iraq is because of Jews?
And there are also people who say that the opposition to the war in Iraq is led by Jews.
So which is it exactly?
Are the Jews responsible for opposition to the war or going to war?
They're responsible for both.
First of all, aside from how silly it is, you realize what it says about Gentiles?
You're nothings.
You're zilches.
We go to war and we oppose the war.
And you do whatever we say.
It's so bizarre.
It is so bizarre.
Cracks me up.
Anyway, yes, of course it has to be dealt with.
But I mean, nobody would deal with it better than someone who's Latino himself.
But it is, I mean, it is beyond preposterous.
Is Gloria Molina Jewish?
You know, she voted on the board.
She's Latino.
She's a machista.
She's a machista.
But she vote.
Wait.
So the Mecha movement says Jews getting rid of the cross, though a machista voted was the decisive vote to remove it.
Folks, when you want to hate, reason is not important.
Forget God.
Even reason is not important.
What are you going to do?
Look, it's the ongoing battle.
Anybody else?
Yes, please.
What did you do with Verizon?
Well, actually, it's funny because on the show, I delayed telling what I did.
I know.
Oh, you had to go to work.
You shouldn't have gone to work.
On this show, I delayed for two segments what I actually did.
So what I did do is, okay, I told the truth.
By the way, I told the truth not only because God wants me to tell the truth.
I told the truth for psychological reasons.
It's gotten to the point where if I lie, I don't like me.
And I just like to like me.
So it's pretty much, it was selfish, really.
You know, God played its secondary role.
It was pure selfishness.
I like to respect me.
I really, I'm serious.
It's when you get, you know, there's a phenomenal, there's a great Hebrew phrase from the Talmud, the great Jewish work after the Bible.
One sin drags along another, and one good deed drags along another good deed.
And that is so true.
When you start doing good, more good gets done.
When you start doing bad, more bad gets done.
So I just, you know, for whatever reason, I prefer to sleep well at night and lose money than gain money and not sleep well at night.
So I actually, a purely secular reason aside from God, which always plays a role.
So I told them the truth, but I will, I actually had a good thing happen.
But my listeners, I tell you, this is really, I mean, it's both a credit to me and frightening.
I mean, there are listeners who really do walk around with what would Dennis do as they're as they're thinking.
And I am very, I'm very touched by it, but I'm not that good.
You know, I'm good, but I'm, you know, I'm also flawed.
Anyway, so what happened was, I told the truth on the air.
This is what happened.
I went to, it was in Minneapolis, and I went to Verizon, and I said, hey, guys, I don't want to tell you it broke because the truth is I dropped it down the toilet.
The guy laughed a little bit.
He said, you know, you're the 800th person to drop a phone in the talk.
Apparently, this is a common phenomenon.
I did not know that.
I thought I was, you know, one of six.
All men, incidentally, no woman has ever.
At any rate, so I told them what happened, and so they said, Let me look up your account and see if you have it insured.
And I said, They said, Well, you don't have it insured, but as it happens, California has not yet been offering insurance.
So we'll just take the $50 deductible, and here's a new phone.
Isn't that sweet of them?
Of course, it's Minnesota.
Minnesota nice, as they call themselves.
Anyway, I got letters saying, Dennis, that was disgusting.
Now you robbed the insurance company.
There's no end.
There is no end, I can also.
And anybody else?
Yes, please.
Fighting Back Against Secularism 00:08:06
Dennis, I'd like to ask you, since the separation of church and state has come about, it's opened the door for the religion of secularism to come in and take over.
What do you foresee as Christians being able to, in a sense, fight back or stand up for our what this country believes in?
Well, yeah, you have to fight back, but it's not just you.
That's why when I did the fight for the cross at the Board of Supervisors, and we had, what do we have?
Does anybody remember the number I announced?
2,000.
2,000.
You know, I got 2,000 people there on a day's notice during work hours downtown LA where nobody knows how to get to.
And I'm kidding.
Only I don't know how to get it.
Not a lot of people don't.
But no, that was, and truly, there were atheists, Buddhists.
And I said, please, non-Christians, you've got to show up.
This is not your battle.
This is an American battle.
You must understand that.
You must take this out of your mind that you're fighting for Christianity.
That's true.
But you're fighting for America because Christianity has been the basis of this wonderful society.
That's why I'm fighting for it and I'm Jewish.
Because if you fail, we fail.
So you have to fight.
But you're fighting for America.
You're also fighting for truth.
Christians founded L.A. County.
Not Buddhists, not Jews, not Hindus, not astrologers.
No.
But Christians.
That's why it's called Los Angeles.
The angels.
Hey?
Whose angels?
Catholics' angels.
I mean, you know, if it was called Los Mesus, then the Jews founded it.
Yes, please.
Dennis, we recently made the decision to send both of our kids to this school, and it seemed like during that process, circumstance tried to throw up roadblock after roadblock, whether it was social or emotional.
And I'm wondering, before the data, I thought it was almost like the forces of evil were waking it up as we took a step closer to God.
I wondered on your thought on that.
Well, you've got to tell me what happened exactly.
We just kept hurdling over them until we just finally made the decision.
What, to send your kids to this school?
But give me an example of something that would happen that you'd want me to comment on.
When you were talking to somebody about it in a secular society, they would just vigorously defend their decisions and almost single you out as making an odd decision in the face of what else was going on.
Oh, yeah.
So, all right, so therefore, it sounds perfectly right.
So, you will get that opposition.
I described that in the talk.
You will get secular friends or others' opposition to your sending your kids to a religious school.
That is correct.
But you have a great answer.
You have a lot of great answers.
In fact, I taped this.
And this would be, you should give this tape to anybody you want to explain why you support or send your kids to such a school.
And they will have precious few arguments.
A, the arguments are good, and B, it was given by a non-Christian.
So they don't have a lot to stand on when they go, well, of course, a Christian will say, well, he happens to be a religious Jew, but what the hell?
So you need to be fortified, and you could just say, you know, that, listen, and it was said in your film, or one of you, either you said it, or Jeff, the teacher, said it, or the film said it.
One of the three.
Not giving child God when they grow up.
I go actually beyond what was said.
I don't remember the end of your sentence, but it's a loss or something.
I think it's child abuse.
I really do.
I think you could always reject God later.
But to deprive, deliberately deprive a child of God is just, I think it's wrong.
By the way, there are a lot of atheists and agnostics and irreligious people who give their kids God when they grow up.
Just like there are people who have no love of music who give their kids classical music lessons.
You know it's good for the child, though you yourself don't happen to get into it.
That's a perfectly legitimate thing to do.
There are people who don't know Beethoven from the Beach Boys, but they will give their kids classical piano lessons.
Not because they love Beethoven, but because they know Beethoven's good for you.
So it's not even bad if you're not religious.
It's not hypocritical, the favorite word of those who don't think clearly.
It's not hypocritical for a non-religious parent to send their kid to a religious school.
Not in the least.
Any more than a non-musical parent will send their kids to a music school.
Okay, let me take one more.
Yes, please.
Sorry, yeah.
Speaking of consistency, Mr. Prayer, I listen to you almost religiously.
Thank you.
And I know that you have taken a number of shows to talk about character issues, the question of smoking versus cheating and things along those lines.
But recently, you said in one of your Friday shows, and someone could ask you anything, that you felt that abstinence education in public schools was perhaps a waste of time and unrealistic.
Not me.
Oh, no, I never said that.
it's okay.
If I say... I would like clarification about abstinence.
Oh, I am totally for abstinence education.
My view on handing out condoms in high schools was brilliantly refuted, not by me, but by a speaker I heard who's well known, but I forgot his name.
He was not that well-known.
But really, I heard.
And by the way, the reason I'm saying this is because, you see, it shows you the place of religion.
In Judaism, it is extremely important never to cite an idea of another as if it's your own.
It's considered stealing.
So that's the reason I'm telling you it's not mine, but I don't know whose it is, so I'm partially stealing because I didn't tell you who the owner is.
Anyway, he made a great point at a talk that I heard.
He said, for those who say that giving out condoms does not encourage sexual activity, what would you think of a wife who, as her husband left on a business trip, went over to him as he left and said, honey, here are some condoms.
Now, I'm not encouraging you to have sex, please understand that.
But if you do, I want it to be safe.
Your laughter answers the question.
So now let me understand.
If we say it to an adult who is more likely to have self-control, a married adult is more likely to exercise sexual self-control than an unmarried teenager.
So if we give out condoms to adults and we assume that it will increase the likelihood of sex, how much more so with kids?
So I don't know how you heard it, but it's inevitable that things will be misheard.
It's even conceivable I misspoke, but on that I don't have any ambivalence.
So I don't know exactly how it came across.
But I'm glad you had me clarify it because you'll sleep better tonight.
I'm sure.
I do have an idea.
I'm glad I said it was the last question.
Thank you.
God bless you.
Thank you for coming.
Thank you.
This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Export Selection