Fireside Chat Ep. 304 — Is God Alone Sufficient? | Fireside Chat

Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here, Fireside Chat number 304. That's a lot. Mr. Tubbs, our new English Bulldog, has not yet made himself part of the Fireside Chat. You can perhaps hear the pitter-patter of his feet in the background. As many of you know, I have spent a good chunk of my life, in fact probably the single biggest aspect of my work, is making the case for the necessity of God for morality and meaning. Pretty big stuff in life, morality and meaning. I think I have brought more people to religion, whether Judaism or Christianity or Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and I would say more than perhaps any living person, at least in the United States. I should qualify that. I can't speak for outside of the United States. I'm proud of that. I'm happy about that. So, having said that, I also want to make clear something I have not addressed. A lot of religious people have made religion difficult for a lot of good non-religious people, or even once religious people, to take seriously. And I'll tell you one of the things. I'm not talking about religious people who act bad. That's obvious. They do incredible damage to religion. People who seem religious, but who are cruel, mean, or even worse, just, you know, abuse people physically, sexually, verbally, etc. So, I'm not talking about that. That's the obvious. I'm talking about people who, good-natured people, religious people, who, however, in my opinion, present religion in a way that doesn't comport with reality. It's almost like a fantasy, and people think that they're not living in the real world. And by the way, a lot of religious people, or some religious people, I shouldn't say a lot, may be proud of the fact that they don't live in the real world. But having said all of that, I'm going to give you an example. A criticism of me, which I'm so used to, believe me, it is a non-issue. I'm not going to be playing parts of this criticism or critique of me, because it's me. I'm going to do it because it makes my point. So, let me explain what the background is. I have in my commentary, my Bible commentary, The Rational Bible, called The Rational Bible, because I use reason to explain the Bible, which is why it is very effective with a lot of people, including non-believers. I explain in the book of Genesis, God says about Adam, it is not good for man to be alone. It is the first comment that God makes about the human being. It's a very amazing statement. And a Christian pastor, I never knew who he was, but I knew he was a Christian pastor. I didn't know his name. I looked it up. I couldn't find it. But I never take credit for an idea if it's not mine. So, I write in my Genesis commentary on that verse, and whenever I have spoken about this, which is often, I got this idea from a Christian pastor. And the Christian pastor said, isn't it interesting? God said it's not good for man to be alone. But Adam was with God. So, what was God saying? God was saying, even though, Adam, you have a relationship with me, God, that is not enough. You need a human being to relate to. And I have always found that to be very powerful. I think God, in his infinite wisdom and mercy and love of human beings, understood we need human beings. God is, of course, necessary, but not sufficient. Oxygen is necessary, but not sufficient. We need nitrogen, and we need carbon dioxide, and a whole host of other things. To say something is not sufficient is not to degrade it. It's like food is necessary, but not sufficient. We need more in life. Is that a degradation of food? So, a pastor who has a following on the internet, this was sent to me. It didn't even come up, oddly enough, in the Google search on my name, Google alerts. I get to see what the latest attack on me is, usually from the left, but sometimes from the right. This pastor, a man by the name of Todd Friel, and I have absolutely no antagonism against him. He has perfect right to take issue with me on any subject. It's a non-issue. But I want to analyze some of his comments, because this is an example to me of religion not living in the real world. Okay, so I'm stopping here, only to remind you that the rest is at PragerU.com, and I explain every week why we don't trust social media, we don't trust the big tech companies, that they won't one day decide, no more fireside chat on social media or on big tech sites. Unfortunately, we have to do this. But this is to encourage you to be each week watching at PragerU.com, and getting the PragerU app is the easiest way to do it, however you do it. So please proceed now and watch the rest. I promise you it's worth it at PragerU.com.