If There Is No God: The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil by Dennis Prager - 3

AUDIENCE MEMBER: We’ll all go home today on the buses and talk about what you said. Then, three days from now, a lot of people are going to forget what you said. Can you give us three things we should think about to help us remember what we’ve learned here?

DENNIS PRAGER: Great point. I know that what you said is a fact, but I don’t believe it’s true for everything I’ve said. Some of those things will be implanted and just stay there and not germinate for a while. That’s often what happens. Believe me, having reached adulthood, I can tell you how often people say, “You know, I remember when I was a kid hearing . . . ,” and it is very common that an idea that didn’t mean much at the time can mean a great deal later.

DENNIS PRAGER: That’s why I talk in terms of ideas—so you’ll remember them. For instance, feelings versus values. Whether you agree with me or not, let that idea stay with you throughout your life. “I feel like doing X , but biblical values tell me otherwise.” That will happen to you all the time. You feel X , or Y , or Z , but again, biblical values say no. It is a daily issue. You want to cheat on a test to get into a better college, but once more, biblical values say cheating is wrong. “I feel like doing this, but the value is that.” We are all filled with feelings that our values prevent us from carrying out.

So that’s number one, feelings vs. values.

Number two: God is necessary for these values to be objective. Because if there is no God, then stealing is wrong only because of personal opinion. If there is no God, what is your argument to Hitler, who said that killing Jews was good? Or to slave owners when they said enslaving blacks was fine? It is all personal opinion. Without God, ethics are nothing more than personal views.

Number three, man is not inherently good. The belief that man is good became widespread in Western society at exactly the same time Western society became secular. It was not a coincidence. People understood that they did not believe in God, so they had to believe in man. These two ideas—that there is no God and that people are basically good—render making a better world virtually impossible. The results have been catastrophic. As I told you, the most secular century in history—the twentieth century—was the bloodiest century in history. About a hundred million people were slaughtered by secular, and often anti-religious, regimes. Hundreds of millions were deprived of basic human rights. Hundreds of millions were impoverished by people who dropped the biblical belief that people are not basically good. People were convinced that whatever they did was basically good.

Now, take these ideas and spread them to the world. This is the only way to prevent mass evil and individual evil from manifesting itself. Throughout the last century people have thought that the way to prevent evil is economic or psychotherapeutic. The first is expressed through the foolish notion that “poverty causes crime.” The second is expressed by the notion that evil is a form of mental sickness, so much so that when terrible evil occurs, the adjective most people use is “sick.”

The only way to prevent most evil is by people holding good values and, as we have seen, is possible only if those values emanate from the Creator.

You’re going to encounter discomfort as you present these ideas in small groups and large. You’ll have opportunities at school board meetings, at cocktail parties, and at the town hall meetings of your elected representatives. You’ll encounter resistance and ridicule from strangers and even from many of your friends. Only your belief in the efficacy of these ideas will allow you to overcome your concerns and even fears, to do what you know is right. The stakes are too high for you to remain silent. That’s why, concerning such fears, if you read one book of the Bible, it should be a book most of you have never heard of: the book of Jonah. God tells Jonah to go to the king of Nineveh and tell him that God commands him and the inhabitants of Nineveh to repent of their sins. Jonah decides to flee rather than embark on this divine mission, as if it is possible to flee God. A large percentage of Jews and Christians—let alone adherents to other faiths and those who adhere to no faith—are modern-day Jonahs. They have fled this divine mission.

Wars are fought with bullets and bombs, but they begin with ideas, for better and for worse. These ideas are your ideological bullets and bombs, but unlike actual bullets and bombs, they not only do not kill people, they are likely to save hundreds of millions. You must spread them to create the world you and your children will want to live in. This is your challenge and responsibility. It is my deepest hope that you will fight for them. I believe each one of you is capable of doing this if you summon the strength to do so. I pray that you will do so.