Episode 2: Consequences of Secularism, Part II | Master's Program | PragerU

If people were not brainwashed into thinking religion is awful and is for dummies, religion would be the first thing every single pro-human anti-depression group would advocate. Hi there and welcome back or welcome to I'm Dennis Prager and this is part two of what I consider The most important subject of our time, the consequences of secularism. What has happened with the death of the god of the western world, the god of the Bible specifically, and the death of Christianity and of Judeo-Christian values? Next, consequence of secularism. The death of communal life. You may not have thought of that one, but I have a very simple way of illustrating this. What secular groups get together on a weekly basis? Name me one. I'll give you I'll give you a moment to think about it. Cuz religious people do. I get together with my community every Sabbath. Both my friends on Friday night for my Shabbat Sabbath meal. Saturday afternoon I go to synagogue. I am communally based even during the lockdowns during co every Friday night from week number three I was with about a dozen friends every single Friday night from my Shabbat Sabbath dinner while people were locked in their homes depressed and alone I was with a community but now let's drop lockdowns just in regular life so I have community at least every single week. So do Christians who go to church. They have a community every single week. Give me a secular equivalent of a weekly meeting with people 52 times a year. I cannot think of one. There used to be people would be members of Rotary clubs, Lions clubs, Kowanas clubs, but these things too are fading in our secularized era. Where is the community? People need communities. The the existence of non-governmental communal organizations was the great strength that Alexis Dtoqueville, the most brilliant observer of American life in the early 19th century, observed. All these non-governmental organizations in America, the places where Americans got together with other Americans, even that is a calamity of the secular age in which we live. People do need people, but secular people think that because they don't need God, it won't have any impact on how much they relate to people. But here's an irony. A healthy God-based life is a much more humanbased life. a life with other humans. Every single poll, all secular organizations, Gallup, Pew Research, universities, it's as close to unanimous as polling can get. Actively religious people are happier than secular people. So, of course, the secular have an answer. Well, they have this crutch called God, and that that makes them happier. I love when when God is called a crutch. Let's say a person has a skiing accident, breaks his ankle, breaks her ankle, needs a crutch. So, it's obvious the person needs a crutch because they have a broken ankle. What if we have a broken temperament, a broken conscience? Maybe we need the co so-called crutch called God. That's right. We need a religion. We need a religious community. We need the meaning. We need all of these things to be happy. And religion gives them all. And secularism gives none of them. That's a big problem. Big problem. Happiness is is an incredibly important part of life. So let me give you some data from the National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine. Data suggests that adherence to religious beliefs is associated with lower rates of suicide. Would you say that that's significant? A number of factors have been hypothesized to explain this association, including enhanced social support, less substance abuse, and lower rates of psychopathology. That's all that's all religion gives you. Let's review that. Enhanced social support, less substance abuse, and lower rates of psychopathology. That's pretty pretty powerful. By the way, this doesn't mean that religion is true. That's right. You can have your beliefs on on what religion is true or any religion is true. I understand that. This is not a talk about how true religion is. It is about the consequences of the death of religion and they are completely and totally neistic and destructive to the individual and to society. greater rates of psychopathology, greater substance abuse and and more suicide. Ah, but who needs it? A 2016 study published by JAMAMA Psychiatry, JAMAMA is the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that American women who attended a religious service at least once a week were five times less likely to commit suicide. This was study of 90,000 women over 14 years. five times less likely to commit suicide. By the way, I wouldn't care if you decided to go to church or synagogue just because you if somebody said, "Why are you going to church?" He said, "Cuz I'm five times less likely to commit suicide. Be fine with me." Or, "I'm much less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol." What's wrong? It's fine with me. I don't think you need a road to Damascus and and you discover God and that's why you go to church. go to church or synagogue. Maybe then you'll discover God or study the Bible, which is my favorite way. Whatever it might be, the benefits are staggering and the negative consequences are also staggering of the death of all of this. Here's another one. Decades of research indicate that a higher level of religious involvement is associated with a reduced likelihood of abusing alcohol or drugs. Here's more. This is the New York Times 2018. Black men who attended religious services are 76% more likely to attain at least middle class status than those who did not. Wow. 76% more likely to rise socioeconomically, which generally is associated with some increase in happiness. That's that's enormous. If people were not brainwashed into thinking religion is awful and is for dummies, religion would be the first thing every single pro-human anti-depression group would advocate. It is the single best answer. It's not the only answer. It's the single best answer. I got more. National Survey on Drug Use and Health, NSDU. Adults and teens who considered religion to be very important and who attended religious services weekly or more were far less likely to drink or use illicit drugs. Individuals who, in addition to receiving treatment, attended spiritually based support programs such as the 12step programs, Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, were more likely to maintain sobriety. H how much proof do you need? If after listening to these reasons, you still think it's it's a great idea to lead a secular life, there has to be a reason. It can't be that you have rationally concluded that there must be some emotional anger or hostility to religion or that you've been successfully brainwashed into believing that you are above religion. You don't need it. You do and society certainly does. The data are overwhelming. Happiness is a big deal. The death of wisdom. Wisdom is everything. The vast majority of American students, doesn't matter what university, certainly high school or elementary school, don't use the word wisdom. It's not used by the faculty. Knowledge. Oh, they talk a lot about knowledge and of course now about equity and fighting racism and so on, but not wisdom. Wisdom was the essence of why universities were founded. And the biggest source of wisdom, the biggest, this was universally acknowledged in the western world was the Bible. So I do a radio show. I have for 40 years. So I asked on a number of occasions. I devoted an hour to the subject, if you don't get your wisdom from the Bible, where do you get your wisdom from? And it was fascinating. The overwhelming majority of people answered from life experience. Now, that is what we call an unwise answer to the question of where did you get your wisdom? First of all, if the overwhelming majority of your wisdom comes from life experience, let's at least acknowledge that if you didn't have a lot of life experience, you're probably a fool, which is the opposite of being wise. You're probably somewhat of a dummy in terms of what life means. That's what wisdom is. What is life about? How do you lead a good life? What is the meaning? And so on. So, why would we give the vote to 18y olds if most people think you get wise solely by getting older? Why would we want to give the unwise a vote? Why did we lower it from 21 to 18 decades ago? Maybe the voting age should be 30. So, here is something most people have not thought of. You can actually learn wisdom without getting older. That's right. I did. I went to a religious Jewish school called the yeshiva. Half the day was religious subjects, half the day secular subjects. And the religious subjects were rooted in the Bible. And Christian kids get a very similar thing in in traditional Christian schools, Catholic schools, Protestant schools, whatever it might be. You can learn wisdom. I learned wisdom at the age of 10. I didn't have any life experience, but I had some wisdom. Not to my credit. I learned it. You can learn wisdom like you can learn to play the piano, but but not in secular schools. There is no wisdom taught. Secular schools are the repositories of non-wisdom. The least wise places in America are the most secular places. They're called universities. That's where all the ridiculous ideas come from. because these are thoroughly secularized people who make up their own ideas about life. You can learn wisdom. I'll give you I'll give you so just a few examples of stuff that I learned when I was about 8 years old. So here's an example. There's a very famous apherism in Hebrew and it is from the Talmud, the second holiest work in Judaism after the Bible. Aahu Hagibore. Who is the strong man? Hakovves, the man who conquers his own urge. I learned that at 8, that the the strongest I could be is to conquer my own appetites and urges and instincts. So, I learned a very big deal that kids in religious schools learn and kids in secular schools virtually never learn. And here it goes. I learned that the biggest problem in Dennis Prager's life is Dennis Prager. That has served me very well in life. I knew I had to fight my own nature to be a good person. In secular school, you know who you taught to fight? Society, not yourself. And that's why they produce so many foolish people. If you don't understand that you have to fight yourself, you're not going to be a very developed human being. You have to fight your laziness. You have to fight your selfishness. You have to fight your narcissism. It's endless. Related to that, here's another wisdom teaching that you get in a religious Christian or Jewish school that you don't get in secular school. Don't follow your heart. religious Jewish and Christian kids who are Bible-based, they are repeatedly told how deceptive, deceitful the heart is. Secular life, follow your heart. I can't think of a worse piece of advice if you want to be a developed and good person. Follow your heart. Holy crow, what a stupid piece of advice. But that's what you learn in secular school. In religious school, you learn don't follow your heart. Follow what is good and wise and right. Very rarely stuff that comes from your heart. No Bible, pretty much no wisdom. That's the way it works. Now, there were foolish religious people of course and some wise individual secular people. But the society and its institutions, Bible free is wisdom free. more non-wisdom of our secular age support for communism who was overwhelmingly overwhelmingly if not exclusively among secular people. Not all secular people supported communism but virtually everybody who supported communism was secular. The greatest mass movement of murder in history was a secular movement supported by secular intellectuals, wisdom human beings. These are just a few of the examples. The postJoChristian world has abolished the human animal distinction. The Judeo-Christian belief is that humans are created in God's image. We are infinitely precious. We are more precious than animals. That is the Judeo-Christian belief. It's not the postJo-Christian belief. We're not more precious than animals. I realized this very, very early on in my life. I was sitting next to a woman on a plane. I was in my 20s. This was a life-changing little discussion. The woman was having a vegetarian meal. And so, I decided to talk to her while having my meal. And I said, "Are you a vegetarian?" Of course. And she might have just preferred it. I didn't know if she was. She is. She was a vegetarian. And I said, "So, and why are you a vegetarian?" She said, "Because I don't think we have any right to kill animals for food." A view, by the way, that I have some respect for, even though I'm not a vegetarian. But then she continued, she said, "After all, who are we humans to say we are superior or more valuable than animals?" Who are we to say we're more valuable than animals? That that blew my mind. It was one of those epiphany moments in my life, but not yet. The epiphany really came now. When she said that, I said, "I'm sorry. I I I respect and understand why you don't think we should kill animals for food, but do you really believe that we aren't more valuable than animals? After all, I I if a human and and a dog were were drowning, which would you save first?" I thought it was a rhetorical question. Silence. And then I said, "I'm I'm sorry. Did Did you hear my question?" And then she said the revelatory response, "I'm thinking." And I thought, "She's thinking. She's thinking about whether she would save a dog or a human first." And that set me off into asking, and I've asked this probably a hundred times in a hundred schools since then. I'd ask high school kids, if you have a dog or a cat and you love your dog or cat and your cat or dog were drowning and you noticed you're walking by the seashore and you noticed that there was a human being you didn't know, a stranger also drowning 100 ft away or 50 ft away, which would you try to save first? I know you'd like to say both. Which would you try to say first? In every instance in 40 years, I've gotten the exact same responses. One-third say the dog, one-third the stranger, and one-third doesn't know. Twothirds of people, including now adults, these are these were high school kids from 40 years ago. Now they're middle-aged and older. Twothirds would not save a person. before the dog. Why? I love my dog. I don't love the stranger. That's it. That's where they follow their heart. Told you about following your heart. By the way, I love my dogs more than I love strangers, too. But I would save a stranger first because human beings are created in God's image and they are more valuable than animals. That I admit that's a Judeo-Christian value. That's correct. That's why you need values. Because if our heart only told us the right thing to do, we wouldn't need values, would we? We just follow our heart. It's what people do today. So even if you think you should save your dog because you love your dog first, you would at least have to admit my point. This is a postChristian, postJude Christian belief that you save your dog before a stranger. I'll give you another example of the breakdown of the human animal distinction. PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, biggest animal rights group in America, raises many millions of dollars a year. There is a program they have for years called Holocaust on Your Plate. Look it up. And they contend that the barbecuing of chickens in America is the moral equivalent of the cremating of Jews in the Holocaust. The equivalent. There's no difference between cremating people that you've murdered and barbecuing chickens. I had the head of the group on Ingred Nukeer >> and uh she said there's no difference between a human and a chicken. >> No, not at all. I asked a simple question. Do you believe that we were morally right in fighting the Nazis? >> Of course. >> Okay, fine. Because they were mass murderers. If there is no difference between killing chickens and killing Jews in World War II, why shouldn't we kill farmers? >> Send us what you're trying. >> Why? No. No. Answer my question. Why shouldn't we kill farmers? >> This is all postbiblical, postJude Christian thinking. The consequences of secularism are awful. It is moral and intellectual chaos. There's another distinction that's being obliterated in the post-Christian world, the postjristian world. Male, female. It's almost unbelievable. I grew up with it. I was told in college there's no difference between male and female nature that we're basically the same. That was that was what set me off. One of the things that set me off in my thinking that I'm I'm living in the world of nonsense here at Colombia where I went to graduate school. There's no no basic differences between male and female. Now we don't even have male and female. Not only no differences, there is no such thing as male and female. It's completely subjective. There's no objective male and female. You are what you think you are even when you're 5 years old. It's a if this is a true breakdown that has occurred inside the secular world. There's no male and female. And yet in Genesis it says God created the human being male and female he created them. That's a distinction. It's not only biological, it's divine. It is part of the divine order in life. We are living in the age of chaos because it has dropped the idea of a divine order. So there's no more a difference between male and female. Girls were told by the feminists when I was in college, "Oh, hey, you could have sex just like the guys do. They love just like guys can love sex without commitment, without emotional bonding, anonymous. So can you." But it doesn't turn out that way. For the vast majority of women, that's not exactly a uh a deeply satisfying thing at all. In fact, it's it's a cause of of depression in many young women. But hey, if women are like men, then that's their nature to have sex without commitment. It's also male nature to have sex with commitment. I'm not saying not, but it's not generally female nature. There is no secular solution to evil. I want a God who says be good. You know the famous line from the Bible, love your neighbor as yourself. That's not the line. The line is love your neighbor as yourself. I am God. If God doesn't say love your neighbor as yourself, it doesn't mean a damn thing. It's just a sweet suggestion. That's the best hope for the very complex project of making a good world. It's very hard to make people good. It's very hard to make a good world. Western civilization has done the best at it with all its flaws and it was rooted in the book that says love your neighbor as yourself. I am God. Or as I put it another way, if you really want to defund the police, I've got a method. Have everybody live by the Ten Commandments. Then you can defund the police. big consequences, awful consequences of the death of God and the Bible as the basis of Western civilization. I don't know if the West will survive their demise. I really don't. But I know that there's a chance only if people come to understand the price we have paid for their disappearance. It's why I've written my rational Bible series. I'm not trying to sell you a book. Nobody writes commentaries on Deuteronomy for the money. But I know how brilliant those books are. You may not believe in God. You may be completely irreligious. It has nothing to do with anything I have said. All you need to be is intellectually honest and care about humanity in order to worry about what the death of God, the Bible, and Judeo-Christian values mean. That's the thing. This has not been an argument for you to believe in God. I might make that another time. It's only an argument for you to understand what happens when he's no longer around in people's consciousness. Thanks. Where are you? Heat. Heat.