Dennis Prager Show - Timeless Wisdom: Ultimate Issues Hour - Spiritual vs Religious
Aired: 2026-03-19
Duration: 37:47


=== Organized Religion vs Spirituality (09:30) ===

[00:00:00]  Your dog and a stranger are drowning.
[00:00:02]  You can only save one.
[00:00:04]  Who do you choose?
[00:00:04]  Dennis Prager says your answer reveals everything about how you define right and wrong.
[00:00:09]  In his new book, If There Is No God, Prager exposes the danger of emotion-based morality and why, without objective truth, society descends into chaos.
[00:00:19]  This isn't a religious book, it's a rational case for moral clarity in a confused age.
[00:00:25]  If there is no God from Dennis Prager, order now at PragerStore.com.
[00:00:30]  Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
[00:00:34]  Here are thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
[00:00:38]  And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com. For the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
[00:00:53]  How are you doing, everybody?
[00:00:56]  This is the hour each week devoted to some great issue of life on the Dennis Prager show.
[00:01:02]  The issue today is the magnificently large difference between being spiritual and being religious.
[00:01:16]  Whenever somebody tells me, well, I'm not in any religion, you know, I don't believe in any organized religion, but I'm a very spiritual person.
[00:01:25]  I'm sure that the person is sincere and may very well be a wonderful person.
[00:01:31]  That's a given.
[00:01:34]  But it's a meaningless statement to me.
[00:01:38]  Meaningless.
[00:01:39]  And by and large, by and large, there are exceptions.
[00:01:43]  I think it is really more or less a narcissistic cop-out from the demands of being in a religion.
[00:01:54]  I'm spiritual.
[00:01:55]  I'm not, you know, I don't care about organized religion, but I'm a very spiritual person.
[00:02:00]  Means that I do what I want when I want, the way I want, I feel God, and have a nice day.
[00:02:09]  Now, if you're one of those who regards yourself as spiritual and not in an organized religion, not religious, and they are obviously not the same, that doesn't mean that religious people should not be spiritual.
[00:02:22]  They should.
[00:02:24]  But I'm arguing that spirituality without religion is highly suspect.
[00:02:32]  1-8 Prager 776.
[00:02:35]  If you're one of those who is spiritual but not religious, give me a call and explain yourself to me.
[00:02:42]  You know I will treat you with great respect.
[00:02:46]  1-8 Prager 776-1-8PRA-GER 776.
[00:02:53]  By and large, to me, when I hear that statement, I am spiritual, but I am not religious or I'm not active in any organized religion, I don't even know what they're talking about.
[00:03:06]  What does that mean?
[00:03:07]  That you see God in trees?
[00:03:11]  I'm not being mocking at all, at all, but I want to know what does it mean.
[00:03:17]  If you are spiritual without any religion, what is your code book, moral code book?
[00:03:26]  To whom are you accountable for your behavior toward fellow human beings?
[00:03:35]  Where do you get your moral values from if you're spiritual, but you are not involved in any religion?
[00:03:43]  Where do all these things come from?
[00:03:47]  So it's a challenge to you, and you may persuade me that it's a good route, but I don't think it is.
[00:03:57]  And so let's begin here with Jose, Jose in Sacramento, California.
[00:04:03]  Thank you for calling, Jose Dennis Prager.
[00:04:05]  Hi, how are you doing, Dennis?
[00:04:06]  Well, thank you.
[00:04:08]  Yeah, I was a Christian and I studied the Bible.
[00:04:14]  But to different congregations that I've been in, I was a Catholic before.
[00:04:19]  Just too many problems in the churches, so now I just kind of practice by myself.
[00:04:24]  Well, wait, wait, wait.
[00:04:25]  I'm sorry.
[00:04:25]  Practice what by yourself?
[00:04:27]  Just, you know, being a good Christian, or not really a Christian, not based off of the religious part of it, because that's where things get confusing.
[00:04:35]  Just establishing a relationship with God himself.
[00:04:39]  Okay, now the God that you have established a relationship with is to be found where.
[00:04:45]  If I wanted to also establish a relationship with this God, where would I look to learn about this God?
[00:04:55]  The Bible.
[00:04:56]  Well, but the Bible has come to us through religious people.
[00:05:01]  It came to us through the apostles who wrote the scriptures, and then it was taken by the Catholics, the Romans, and then they took some books, perverted some other things.
[00:05:12]  I believe women have a right to be out there preaching the gospel as well.
[00:05:16]  I believe a lot of different things.
[00:05:19]  And that's all based on convictions and just things that God has shown me.
[00:05:27]  He gives me a lot of people.
[00:05:29]  How do you know that God has shown you anything?
[00:05:35]  I'm not saying he hasn't, but how do you know that?
[00:05:38]  The way I know is because one time I went to a non-denominational Christian church in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor.
[00:05:45]  And that was the first time I've ever been to anything like that.
[00:05:47]  I used to be Catholic, like I said.
[00:05:50]  And I had raised my hand to get saved.
[00:05:55]  And I didn't know what I was getting into.
[00:05:57]  But then I got, you know, they prayed over me, and all of a sudden I started speaking in tongues.
[00:06:03]  And it was just like I knew that the words that were coming out of my mouth were straight from my inner life.
[00:06:09]  Yeah, but you're not even part of one of those churches anymore.
[00:06:13]  It's really now.
[00:06:14]  Why would I be wrong in saying that your religion is Hoseaism?
[00:06:21]  Because it's not.
[00:06:23]  I established a relationship with God.
[00:06:25]  Yeah, but nobody is monitoring that relationship.
[00:06:30]  It's just what you think it is.
[00:06:33]  There's no community.
[00:06:34]  There's no text.
[00:06:35]  There's nothing.
[00:06:36]  I fellowship with different people, but I do not put myself in any congregation or anything or any church or any establishment because of the people.
[00:06:47]  There's so much conflict within.
[00:06:50]  I don't know.
[00:06:51]  All right, so hear me out, Jose, and thank you for your honesty and openness.
[00:06:56]  Jose, in my opinion, has taken the easy way out.
[00:06:59]  Every one of us involved in an organized religion knows the religion's limitations.
[00:07:05]  It's filled with human beings, so immediately there is going to be conflict and politics in every church and in every synagogue.
[00:07:11]  That is inevitable.
[00:07:13]  Because we are human beings, that is inevitable.
[00:07:16]  The pastor will be flawed, the priest will be flawed, the rabbi will be flawed.
[00:07:21]  That is another part of it.
[00:07:24]  But at least you have before you a community of people that can monitor one another that you have to work off.
[00:07:34]  It's like saying, I want to be alone.
[00:07:37]  I don't want a family because every family has conflict.
[00:07:40]  Every family has conflict.
[00:07:42]  So why have a family?
[00:07:43]  If the issue is there is conflict, hypocrisy, conflict, all these other things, then don't have a family.
[00:07:51]  I'm arguing here for organized religion as opposed to just spirituality.
[00:08:01]  Without a mediating group to monitor your quote-unquote relationship with God, how do you know that it isn't just a relationship with yourself?
[00:08:14]  And you've just thrown in the word God.
[00:08:15]  Now, I'm not saying you know it, even if you have a community.
[00:08:18]  A community could be deluded too.
[00:08:20]  I acknowledge that.
[00:08:22]  There's no perfect answer.
[00:08:26]  Also, my other reaction to what Jose said was he has taken the texts of organized religion and then thrown away the religion.
[00:08:36]  These texts didn't come to us through disembodied or non-organized religion people.
[00:08:46]  The Old Testament came from the Jews.
[00:08:48]  The New Testament came from the followers of Jesus, Paul, the apostles.
[00:08:55]  These people were all in an organized group.
[00:08:57]  Jews were Jews, and the followers of Christ were Christians.
[00:09:03]  And many of them were Jews.
[00:09:04]  And most of them, in fact, most of them were Jews.
[00:09:07]  But whatever they were, they were in an organized community.
[00:09:09]  They didn't call themselves spiritual without a community.
[00:09:13]  So you've taken the text of organized religions.
[00:09:16]  You've taken the God of organized religions and decided that you don't need the religions that gave you that God.
[00:09:22]  But then why do you accept that God?
[00:09:24]  You accept the God of an organized religion, but the organized religion is now all of a sudden it's wrong.

=== The Danger of Emotion-Based Morality (14:31) ===

[00:09:31]  All right, let's go to some more challenges here.
[00:09:33]  Atlanta, Georgia, Chris.
[00:09:34]  Hello, Chris Dennis Prager.
[00:09:36]  Hey, Dennis.
[00:09:37]  Ever since I was a kid, I've always been against organized religion.
[00:09:42]  On a gut level, I just knew it couldn't be right.
[00:09:46]  And however, I did believe there was a God, a higher power, if you will.
[00:09:54]  And the way I really became spiritual is I've been listening to people being interviewed who've had near-death experiences and reading about them.
[00:10:02]  And almost all of them say the same story.
[00:10:04]  They go to a loving light and they have this panoramic life review.
[00:10:11]  And in an instant, they relive their entire lives, but in the shoes of the people they interacted with.
[00:10:18]  So the guy that had, you know, they cut off in traffic, they felt his anger and his frustration as a result of your action.
[00:10:28]  The person, you know, you left a helping hand to when he needed to help, you felt that good feeling.
[00:10:33]  All right, hold on.
[00:10:34]  We'll be back in a moment.
[00:10:35]  Ultimate Issues Hour, Dennis Prager Show.
[00:10:38]  This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
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[00:11:05]  It's financial and spiritual support when you need it most.
[00:11:09]  Join CHM today by visiting chministries.org/slash wellness.
[00:11:15]  That's chministries.org slash wellness.
[00:11:23]  Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
[00:11:28]  We have a code here on the board when Eva takes your calls.
[00:11:32]  If you disagree, the letter D comes up.
[00:11:36]  And right now, we have six lines at any given time that can be called.
[00:11:42]  Line one says D. Line two says D.
[00:11:46]  So does line three.
[00:11:48]  Line four says D. Line five says D, and so does line six, which is good because I want to speak to you folks who disagree with me in general, and certainly on this issue.
[00:12:02]  This is the ultimate issues hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
[00:12:06]  Every week at this time, some great issue, and this one is spirituality versus religion.
[00:12:12]  I read and I meet people all the time who claim to be, and I trust them.
[00:12:19]  When I use the word claim, it is not disparaging.
[00:12:23]  Who say that they are spiritual but not religious, or spiritual but not involved in a religion?
[00:12:29]  I am extremely suspicious of that claim because spirituality without religious community, without religious guidelines, without religious texts can too easily be, hey, I do what I think.
[00:12:50]  I do what I feel.
[00:12:53]  And we go back to Atlanta, Georgia, and Chris.
[00:12:56]  So, Chris, that's my fear that it's almost like saying I'm very mathematical, but I don't have any math that I subscribe to.
[00:13:10]  You with me?
[00:13:12]  Not really.
[00:13:12]  I subscribe to a way of life, if you will, I guess.
[00:13:16]  And where does that come from?
[00:13:18]  Where does that come from?
[00:13:21]  Well, the life review I talked about and feeling what you put out and what you cause other people to feel has definitely reshaped my life.
[00:13:30]  The next time, you know, I go to cut someone off in traffic or the next time I get mad at somebody and want to get back at them.
[00:13:37]  Yeah, well, that's wonderful, and I say that with all sincerity.
[00:13:40]  But let me ask you some of the hard questions.
[00:13:42]  What does that tell you about war?
[00:13:48]  What is your spirituality, what is its guideline on war?
[00:13:54]  It tells me that you need a strong justification to inflict pain on other people.
[00:14:03]  Okay, and where did you get that?
[00:14:05]  You got that from where?
[00:14:08]  Well, I mean, I don't know if necessarily you can apply it to every, you know, have an application for every part of life.
[00:14:16]  See, I happen to agree with you.
[00:14:17]  You do need a strong moral justification for a war.
[00:14:20]  I happen to agree with you, but I got that from a value system.
[00:14:25]  I didn't get that just from my innards knowing that I'm in spiritual touch with the universe.
[00:14:32]  I think that you don't give credit to the value system that gave you these values.
[00:14:38]  But Dennis, you brought up war with all due respect.
[00:14:40]  I mean, I assume you support this Iraq war, and I don't think that it was justified at all.
[00:14:47]  So your system has led you astray, in my opinion.
[00:14:50]  Well, your system has led you astray, in my opinion.
[00:14:52]  So tell me, what was the last war your system would have justified?
[00:15:00]  I think you should only go to war if someone's barreling down your borders.
[00:15:07]  So in other words, so if somebody is committing genocide in his society against his own people, we should not go to war.
[00:15:15]  Well, I mean, what does Christianity or Judaism say?
[00:15:20]  Wait, answer me.
[00:15:21]  I know what they say.
[00:15:22]  I'll tell you exactly what they say.
[00:15:24]  Do not stand by the bloodshed of your neighbor.
[00:15:26]  It's a major dictum that is in the Bible.
[00:15:30]  So that if there is genocide in another civilization, in another society, and I have the means to stop it, then of course I should use it.
[00:15:42]  So that's why I was afraid of the narcissism of spirituality.
[00:15:46]  Unless they're about to attack me, I don't make any war.
[00:15:51]  No war.
[00:15:53]  So if Paul Pott is exterminating a third of his people, if Hitler is exterminating the Jews, if Stalin is exterminating the Ukrainians, we just stay spiritual.
[00:16:06]  We don't bug these people.
[00:16:09]  That's my worry.
[00:16:11]  All right, I'm glad you called, though, Chris.
[00:16:12]  I appreciate it.
[00:16:13]  I'm sure you reflect a lot of people's views.
[00:16:16]  And we'll go to Dallas, Dallas, Texas.
[00:16:20]  Joe, hello, Joe, Dennis Prager.
[00:16:22]  Dennis, how you doing?
[00:16:23]  Well, thank you.
[00:16:25]  Good.
[00:16:26]  One line I took away from a great man in actually Alcoholics Anonymous.
[00:16:31]  It was, religion is for people who don't want to go to hell, and spirituality is for people who've been to hell and don't want to go back.
[00:16:38]  And that's proven especially true in my life.
[00:16:40]  I grew up in an extremely religious home.
[00:16:44]  My grandmother was an ordained minister.
[00:16:47]  And religion in my youth was basically guiding people, including myself, towards a first-hand relationship with God.
[00:16:58]  And I believe that's true.
[00:17:00]  Most people, in my experience, go to church.
[00:17:02]  They have no spiritual connection.
[00:17:04]  They just go because that's the way they were raised.
[00:17:07]  This is the way they see the way they see their family getting.
[00:17:12]  How do you know that they don't have a spiritual connection?
[00:17:14]  Who are you to judge?
[00:17:15]  I can speak from just personal experience, me and some of my people.
[00:17:19]  And what does spiritual connection mean?
[00:17:21]  A spiritual connection is an actual, it's where church quits being about going and the ceremony and the ritual and starts being about an actual relationship and an interpersonal sense between you and God.
[00:17:36]  What does that mean?
[00:17:37]  How do you know if the guy next to you at church has one or not?
[00:17:41]  A conversation, ask.
[00:17:43]  Some people say, well, I don't get anything out of going to church.
[00:17:46]  Even people who are, you know, they're there weekly.
[00:17:49]  So wait, so I don't understand.
[00:17:51]  You see, you have a very harsh judgment of your fellow human being based, which your spirituality doesn't speak well for your spirituality, Joe.
[00:18:00]  Sure.
[00:18:01]  Sure.
[00:18:01]  I mean, you know, you know that the average guy next to you at church doesn't have a relationship with God, is therefore, I don't know.
[00:18:08]  So why is he there?
[00:18:10]  Because he wants to show off?
[00:18:13]  No, he's sitting there striving for that personal relationship with God.
[00:18:17]  And he may have a personal relationship, but not.
[00:18:20]  Maybe he wants a personal relationship with other people who are fellow believers.
[00:18:25]  Sure.
[00:18:25]  And he knows that the church can do a lot more good for poor people, let's say, than individual spiritual people do.
[00:18:34]  Sure, absolutely.
[00:18:35]  And that's fine.
[00:18:35]  I think that being a religious, easy to do without spirituality.
[00:18:42]  It's easy just to go through the motivation.
[00:18:44]  Oh, I think it's far easier to be spiritual without religion than to be religious without spirituality.
[00:18:51]  Really?
[00:18:51]  Yeah, of course.
[00:18:52]  It means nothing.
[00:18:53]  It's effortless.
[00:18:54]  Hey, hello, I'm spiritual.
[00:18:55]  I feel God.
[00:18:56]  Don't bother me with having any obligations to a community or to a text or to a code.
[00:19:02]  I think that comes down to the individual person.
[00:19:05]  I grew up in a Christian faith.
[00:19:07]  I still consider myself to be Christian.
[00:19:09]  But for basically the last 20 years of my life, I don't consider myself to have been spiritual or a spiritual Christian because it was just going through the motions.
[00:19:18]  It wasn't a ritual.
[00:19:18]  It was everything.
[00:19:19]  Well, you know, even the motions thing.
[00:19:21]  I happen to like motions.
[00:19:22]  I'm a pro-motion man.
[00:19:24]  Okay?
[00:19:25]  I go through the motions on the highway of driving safely.
[00:19:28]  My heart isn't in it.
[00:19:29]  I rather speed.
[00:19:30]  We'll be back in a moment.
[00:19:32]  This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
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[00:20:06]  That's chministries.org slash wellness.
[00:20:14]  Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
[00:20:20]  You're listening to the Dennis Prager show.
[00:20:22]  This is the ultimate issues hour, the hour devoted to some great issue of life.
[00:20:27]  And I am challenging those of you, and there are many, many, many, many, both in my listening audience and in the society generally, who say that they are spiritual but not religious.
[00:20:38]  And there is an important distinction, and it's an honest one.
[00:20:42]  Dennis or whomever you're talking to, I am a very spiritual person, but I'm not involved in any religion.
[00:20:51]  I am personally suspicious of that because religion provides you with a community, with a text, with a way of objectively, at least by communal standards, assessing your behavior.
[00:21:06]  It forces you to be responsible for the continuity of a value system.
[00:21:12]  Whereas spirituality is, this is how I feel about God, or I feel about nature, or I feel about what will happen to me after I die.
[00:21:22]  And that's it.
[00:21:24]  It's extremely, and even among good people, it doesn't mean that they're not good.
[00:21:30]  There are very fine, look, there are fine atheists.
[00:21:33]  I'm not talking about your goodness, but it is rather self-centered by definition.
[00:21:40]  It is me and God, me and the spirits, me and nature, whatever it is your definition of spirituality is.
[00:21:49]  All righty, and let's go to some more of your calls.
[00:21:53]  Everybody still disagrees, and that's good.
[00:21:55]  I have no problem with that.
[00:21:57]  But maybe we'll get one person who agrees.
[00:22:00]  Just maybe, maybe, maybe it's okay.
[00:22:04]  All righty, and let's go to Kent in Hercules, California.
[00:22:10]  Good morning.
[00:22:11]  Hi, Kent.
[00:22:12]  Hey there.
[00:22:13]  Yeah, being spiritual to me is having a desire to find and join with the divine and the sacred, whereas being religious is following the traditional recipe.
[00:22:21]  And a person who is religious but not spiritual is someone who goes to church, does the rituals, but has no real internal effort to seek the sacred, and they're completely uninspiring.
[00:22:30]  Whereas a person who follows a religion and makes a sincere internal effort is both religious and spiritual, and they are inspired.
[00:22:36]  These people are genuinely inspiring to be around.
[00:22:39]  And people do choose religions according to their feelings.
[00:22:42]  So they are also based on feelings and have a certain level of suspectness there, too.
[00:22:47]  And there's a saying.
[00:22:49]  Yeah, there is a certain level of that.
[00:22:50]  I agree with you.
[00:22:51]  There's no perfect answer to my question, but you have invalidated, those of you who are spiritual and not religious, have invalidated all of the standards by which a community can judge what is right and what is wrong.
[00:23:07]  I would say no because I would call myself among that, but I don't invalidate.
[00:23:12]  In fact, I look at religions for clues because these religions are based upon people in history who have had experience, who have been touched by the divine, or so it seems.
[00:23:22]  See, when you say the divine, is it the divine that I understand or is it the divine that Kent has invented?
[00:23:31]  The divine that these people describe, they describe it as divine, something sacred.
[00:23:36]  Wait, which people?
[00:23:37]  The people in the Bible?
[00:23:38]  Well, those plus, like some people out of the East, some Buddhists, some Hindus.
[00:23:44]  No, no, no, Buddhists don't speak about the divine.
[00:23:47]  Well, they don't.
[00:23:48]  They don't.
[00:23:49]  They don't.
[00:23:50]  Okay, that's my term.
[00:23:51]  Okay, they're pointing to something great.
[00:23:52]  Okay.
[00:23:53]  Well, so then I don't know what.
[00:23:55]  Well, did this is where do I, how do, other than Kent, how does Dennis know the divine that Kent knows?
[00:24:01]  Well, I don't, I don't know.

=== Defining the Divine Within Institutions (02:29) ===

[00:24:03]  These people, they.
[00:24:04]  Then how do I know it isn't Kent worshiping Kent?
[00:24:07]  Oh, you don't.
[00:24:09]  Okay, well, you're an honest man.
[00:24:11]  Yeah, that's right.
[00:24:12]  And I think that, but at least now you know why I'm suspicious of it.
[00:24:18]  The divine.
[00:24:19]  What is the divine that Kent is talking about?
[00:24:22]  It is the divine that Kent is talking about.
[00:24:25]  End of issue.
[00:24:27]  It's certainly not shareable.
[00:24:29]  You can't share it.
[00:24:31]  One thing about religion is I can share the divine with you.
[00:24:36]  Kent's divine is Kent's divine.
[00:24:39]  And again, folks, I'm not assessing you as people.
[00:24:42]  God knows.
[00:24:43]  There are a lot of crappy people inside of organized religion, a lot of lovely people outside of it.
[00:24:49]  But I'm telling you why I'm suspicious of the term.
[00:24:52]  That's all.
[00:24:52]  Doesn't mean you're a bad person.
[00:24:54]  I'm not making anything even suggesting that.
[00:24:58]  All right, 1-8 Prager 776.
[00:25:02]  I like this one.
[00:25:03]  Since no religion is perfect, I prefer to create my own.
[00:25:07]  That's awesome.
[00:25:09]  You know what?
[00:25:09]  I love your honesty, folks.
[00:25:12]  Even if the point is a little silly, I still love honesty.
[00:25:17]  We'll be back with that and other points.
[00:25:19]  Disagreeing with me on Ultimate Issues Hour.
[00:25:22]  This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
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=== Why Religions Are Human Works (10:27) ===

[00:26:32]  Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
[00:26:37]  The ultimate issues are on the Dennis Prager show, and the ultimate issue today is religion versus spirituality.
[00:26:43]  Not that religious people can't be spiritual, but those who are spiritual without religion, I think what you've done is I think you've taken from an institution, decided the institution does not have to exist any longer.
[00:27:02]  And it would be, for example, I guess it's not a perfect analogy, but it would be as if one were to attend a university with all its flaws, and you know, I think they're very flawed.
[00:27:12]  All of our, nearly all of our places of learning are flawed, and to say, but from now on, there will be no more formal education.
[00:27:25]  I will decide what is to be learned, if anything, and I will not perpetuate any institutions of learning.
[00:27:39]  Religion, unless it's a bad religion, religion is a flawed but necessary institution for the conveyance of values, of religious and moral values.
[00:27:54]  Without it, how do you convey it to the next generation?
[00:27:58]  This is how daddy feels spiritual.
[00:28:00]  This is how mommy feels spiritual.
[00:28:05]  So, with all their flaws, that's why I'm arguing for religious life.
[00:28:12]  Let's go to Earl in Minneapolis.
[00:28:14]  Hello, Earl of Minneapolis, Dennis Prager.
[00:28:17]  Hi.
[00:28:17]  Hi, Dennis.
[00:28:18]  You know, I actually agree with your basic premise, but I'm curious about one thing.
[00:28:24]  I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I recall hearing you say that you classify yourself as observant, but as not accepting rabbinic Judaism.
[00:28:33]  Well, I accept Rabbinic Judaism.
[00:28:34]  I don't accept that it can't be changed.
[00:28:38]  That's the only difference between me and Orthodoxy.
[00:28:42]  But isn't that something that Rabbinic Judaism itself would have to tell you?
[00:28:46]  No.
[00:28:47]  Rabbinic Judaism, the Rabbinic Judaism was never founded not to change.
[00:28:52]  It's fossilized because of a whole host of sociological and psychological and human frailty reasons.
[00:29:00]  But it was never meant to be static.
[00:29:04]  As one great Jewish thinker put it, he said, his fellow Orthodox Jews, and he was Orthodox, who was it?
[00:29:12]  He was a great thinker, became Karaites of the oral law.
[00:29:17]  In other words, they did to the oral law what Karaites did to the written law, which said it can't develop any further.
[00:29:23]  Anyway, the only reason I'm not going on with that, Earl, is because it's going to be a little esoteric for most of the audience, but I would love to continue the dialogue.
[00:29:30]  It's one of my favorite subjects in the world.
[00:29:33]  Thank you.
[00:29:34]  And anyway, I call myself religious, and I am.
[00:29:39]  But acknowledge for the sake of the Orthodox that I'm not Orthodox because I don't want anybody to pin any bad things they think of me on the Orthodox 1-8 Prager 776, and let's go to Cleveland and Janet.
[00:29:54]  Hello, Janet, Dennis Prager.
[00:29:56]  Hi, Dennis.
[00:29:56]  How are you?
[00:29:57]  I'm well, thank you.
[00:29:58]  Good.
[00:30:00]  This is a little bit off, I think.
[00:30:02]  I agree with your premise also.
[00:30:04]  My problem is I belong to a church that doesn't exist anymore, and that's the old Catholic Church, pre-Vatican II.
[00:30:12]  And I just, over the years, they seem to have changed so many things.
[00:30:17]  And I'm what you call a fallen away Catholic, or what the church calls a fallen away.
[00:30:22]  Yeah, but I mean, the things that were changed, for example, the Tridentine Mass, is that what you're referring to?
[00:30:30]  Well, that's one thing, yeah.
[00:30:31]  Well, all right, but there are, you can have, you can find churches that, in fact, still have the Latin Mass.
[00:30:38]  Well, where I live, I don't know of one.
[00:30:43]  Yeah, but it probably is.
[00:30:44]  Okay, but then you should not fall Away.
[00:30:47]  That's my point.
[00:30:47]  Those of you who have problems within your religion, but who claim to be truthful to it, you're not alone.
[00:30:57]  And you gather with others who feel like you make and you make a new one.
[00:31:00]  By the way, I have no problem with variations on a theme within a given religion.
[00:31:05]  That's how religions have begun anyway.
[00:31:07]  They've all been spawned by a prior affirmation of something.
[00:31:12]  It's the do-it-yourself spirituality that I'm speaking about here.
[00:31:17]  I'm not asking everybody to be Orthodox, capital O or small O in their religion, but I am asking people to understand that without religion, all of your spiritual values and certainly the moral values that religion brought to you and which you tend to embrace have no vehicle to be carried to the next generation.
[00:31:38]  Okay, let's go to Lakewood, Colorado Joe.
[00:31:40]  Joe, Dennis Prager, hi.
[00:31:42]  Hi, Dennis.
[00:31:43]  This actually might be a hybrid agree-disagree kind of call as I think about your conversations with other people.
[00:31:53]  The scriptures are the word of God.
[00:31:56]  Religions are the work of man.
[00:31:58]  And as far as I'm concerned, Dennis.
[00:32:00]  Yeah, but it is religion that gave us the scriptures.
[00:32:04]  And I go to church.
[00:32:05]  I am a Christian.
[00:32:05]  I attend a Christian church, but I changed my church in a heartbeat.
[00:32:09]  I think that Christianity, Catholicism, and Judaism have all perverted God's word to the point of who has God's word pure scriptures.
[00:32:22]  Yeah, but scripture as understood by Joe.
[00:32:26]  Look, I do tabernacle with other people, but let me give you an example.
[00:32:31]  No, but if you I'm sure do you know 20 other people who think exactly about the scriptures as you do?
[00:32:39]  I can only find them on the internet, Dennis, and I don't consider that.
[00:32:43]  So, okay, so you know I don't mean this in any way insulting.
[00:32:48]  It's not my style, but isn't it a little arrogant to think you and a handful of other people on the internet know the scriptures better than anybody in Catholicism, Protestantism, or Judaism?
[00:32:58]  Well, you took a leap there.
[00:32:59]  I don't know scriptures as well as many people.
[00:33:01]  No, no, no, understand them.
[00:33:03]  But that's what you're claiming.
[00:33:05]  No, it's not.
[00:33:06]  You said you accept scripture, but not religion because all the religions have perverted it.
[00:33:11]  That means that Joe has a better grasp of the scriptures than all the Protestant churches, Catholic churches, and Jewish synagogues.
[00:33:24]  Joe, that's a pretty big dose of self-confidence.
[00:33:30]  Forgive me, I got to take a break.
[00:33:32]  We return.
[00:33:33]  Final segment of the Ultimate Issues Hour coming up.
[00:33:37]  All righty, everybody.
[00:33:38]  You're listening to the Dennis Prager show.
[00:33:41]  The Ultimate Issues Hour, the ultimate issue today has been my argument that being spiritual without religion is very suspect.
[00:33:50]  Religion is the thing you got most of your values from, and then you say, well, we can chuck it.
[00:33:57]  Don't eat it.
[00:33:58]  Don't need the community because it's flawed.
[00:34:00]  Whereas your spirituality is not flawed.
[00:34:06]  That's really something.
[00:34:09]  That's more than, I mean, I'm pretty self-confident, but boy, I would never make that claim.
[00:34:14]  Oh, boy.
[00:34:16]  My spirituality is perfect, but Judaism, Protestantism, Catholicism, all of the religions, they're flawed.
[00:34:25]  Dennis isn't.
[00:34:28]  I can't go that route, my friends.
[00:34:31]  Brett might, however.
[00:34:32]  Brett in Burbank, California.
[00:34:34]  Hi, Dennis Prager.
[00:34:35]  How are you doing, Dennis?
[00:34:36]  I'm well, thanks.
[00:34:38]  Well, I'm kind of a mutt in that mutt of religion in that I was brought up Methodist, went to a Catholic school, went to a Baptist school, yet I'm a geologist and firmly believe in evolution.
[00:34:51]  So what?
[00:34:52]  A lot of religious people believe in evolution.
[00:34:54]  They don't believe in evolution as unguided in any way by God or godless.
[00:35:01]  You see, but there's no, I don't see any problem.
[00:35:06]  I think there are problems with evolution that are scientifically based.
[00:35:12]  I don't deny it, but I think there are problems with it.
[00:35:15]  But you can be religious and believe that things evolved.
[00:35:20]  Right, I understand that.
[00:35:22]  But when I, you know, with all the churches I have gone to, the part I find difficult is finding one that actually will discuss evolution in the context in which when did man But why?
[00:35:36]  Why is that that's not the purpose of religion?
[00:35:38]  The purpose of religion isn't to teach geology.
[00:35:40]  You got that at college.
[00:35:42]  Purpose of religion is to teach you why there is a universe and how to live in it.
[00:35:47]  Yeah, but at what point you have to at some point correlate when, if you believe in evolution, you have to correlate at some point when did man fall since we've been around for 20, 30,000 years.
[00:36:00]  Why?
[00:36:01]  Why is the question when of significance?
[00:36:04]  I wish we had more time on this.
[00:36:05]  You're asking questions that are not the province of religion.
[00:36:10]  I've never discussed geology with a minister, priest, or rabbi.
[00:36:13]  That's not what I go to them for.
[00:36:16]  I don't talk geology with my podiatrist.
[00:36:20]  I don't talk podiatry with my endocrinologist.
[00:36:25]  You talk to religious experts about the meaning of life.
[00:36:31]  Why is there suffering?
[00:36:34]  What does God want from us?
[00:36:36]  What is the meaning of life?
[00:36:38]  Geology does not give you any of those answers, nor does spirituality.
[00:36:44]  Religions do.

=== Questions Beyond Religious Expertise (00:46) ===

[00:37:00]  This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
[00:37:04]  Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's rational Bibles.
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