Timeless Wisdom - High Holiday Services - Why Are People Alienated from Religion?

Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Hear thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs. And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com. So why do— why is there such a war and alienation from religion in our society? From Judaism and Christianity. I'd like to offer you the essence of the war comes from the deepest parts of the human being not to want to be commanded on how to live. I think that that is why there is such a desire to the point where you even have Just as I meet with you now, in the state of Massachusetts, there is a lawsuit to drop the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. One has to be honest. There is a war against God and religion, certainly anywhere in the public sphere. It's done in the name of separation of church and state. I don't want to get into that because it would take a seminar on it or 5 minutes. Course that we have on that at Prager University on the internet, on the YouTube. But I just, it's clear, people don't want, people fear and don't want religion, and there's got to be a reason. And I am convinced that the battle is ultimately, the battle today is, am I guided by my feelings, or am I guided by something that is higher than myself? In a nutshell, I am convinced that that's what the battle is about, and feelings have become the most important thing. How do you feel about it? Let me give you example after example about the substitution of feelings for standards, for values, certainly for commandments. We have substituted how do you feel about it for "Is it right?" Listen to this from David Brooks in the New York Times. He wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of moral vocabulary among most American young people. It's very important, that word. A lack of moral vocabulary. Here are excerpts from Brooks' summary of a study of Americans aged 18 to 23. Led by the, quote, eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith, unquote. Quote, when asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young Americans either could not answer the question, or they described problems that are not moral at all. In other words, the very notion of a moral dilemma is alien to two-thirds, according to this eminent sociologist, and I think he's right. The very notion of a moral dilemma— what do you— you know what a moral dilemma— what is a moral dilemma? Am I right? Did I do right? Is it right? Is it right is a moral dilemma. Is it right is not a question in the vocabulary of most young Americans. The default most thinking didn't enter the picture even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school, or cheating on a partner. Even then, moral dilemma didn't enter the picture. The default position which most of them came back to again and again is that, quote, "Moral choices are just a matter of individual taste." How I feel about it. There is no moral dilemma if how I feel is the only arbiter of what I should do. Correct? How do you feel about it? As one put it, quote, "I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn't speak on behalf of anyone else as to what's right or wrong." Let me give you two examples from my own work with young people. But it's so many years of young people, these are now old people, the young people that I'm talking about, plus young people. So I would ask, this is very, you know, I've talked about this for 35 years. Would you save your dog or a stranger if both were drowning? Most, two-thirds wouldn't save the stranger because they love their dog, they don't love the stranger. But here is the interesting thing. I don't often mention this. I asked the 1/3 of kids— by kids I mean 18 years old— I asked the 1/3 of kids who do vote for the stranger, I asked them, "Are the ones who voted for the dog wrong?" In all of my life, no one said, "Yes, they're wrong." They were taught to be tolerant, open, non-judgmental. I would save the stranger. I think you should save a person before the dog, even if you love your dog. But hey, they think that they should save the dog. Who am I to say who's right? I never met— so even what I consider the good guys will not say that they're right, because there is no right and wrong. I personally would save the stranger, they personally would save the dog, who am I to condemn them? Well, forget condemn, I didn't even ask them to condemn them. All I said was, would you say they're wrong? And they couldn't say that they were wrong. The inability to judge somebody wrong is the example. I'll leave you with that perfect example of of where everything comes down to taste. They did this in Florida. I'll never forget, the New York Times had a front-page article on values clarification. Notice the word clarification, not values instruction. Values clarification in Florida high schools. So what does that mean? There is no value, there are no values, there are only clarifying— there's only clarification of your values. So they asked, if you found a girl's purse in the hallway with money in it, would you seek to find the owner? Some said yes, some said no, but again they asked the ones who said I would try to find it, are the kids who say that they wouldn't try to find the girl wrong? Nope. And here's the killer. The quote facilitator Notice, not instructor. The facilitator did not say that they should. The facilitator was only there in the Florida high schools to clarify your values, not to say that anything is right or wrong. That's why religion is hated in the final analysis today, because religion has the audacity to say there is a right and there is a wrong, and even worse, that God is ultimately behind the one who says that. We live in the age of feelings. The self-esteem movement is a perfect example. How do I feel about myself? So here's the news, folks: the people who have the highest self-esteem are usually the worst people. Violent murderers, violent criminals in prisons have very high self-esteem. The self-esteem movement has been a moral failure in the first resort. You know, giving kids awards for no achievement has been a disaster. By the way, I have to tell you, this may be controversial and I certainly don't hope to be, but sometimes I am inadvertently. But I will tell you, when I meet a kid who has high self-esteem, I don't feel good. Because why would a kid have high self-esteem? I don't think a kid should walk around lacerating himself, "I'm a piece of junk, I'm worthless." There's a big difference between worthless and high self-esteem. But you have to earn it. Anyway, that's a big deal. In his memoirs, "The Commandant of Auschwitz," Okay, you think, you think he was bad? Guy supervised the torture and murder of 1.5 million people, every one of whom was innocent, many of whom were children, many of whom were grandparents. In his memoirs, he wrote, readers would never understand this, but I'm tired of giving away all your rental profits to a property manager.

You don't have to. Over 800,000 landlords use TurboTenant to find and manage tenants. Keep your 10% and sign up for free at turbotenant.com. Still managing your rental business like a side hustle? Stop risking your cash flow. Over 800,000 landlords use TurboTenant to streamline their rental operations for free. From finding tenants you trust to collecting rent on time, we've got you covered at turbotenant.com.

To have a heart, and I was not a wicked man. How could the commandant of Auschwitz not think he was a wicked man? It's a very important question to ask. How could that be? Well, I'll tell you the immediate answer is because people don't assess themselves by their behavior, they assess themselves by their heart. I have a good heart. Yeah, I supervised a million and a half people gassed, tortured, and so on, starved, but I didn't mean badly. We don't judge ourselves by our behavior. We judge ourselves by our motives. Or the man who kidnapped the 3 girls/women and what he did to them over the course of, what was it, 10 years? And he said in the court, "I am not a monster. In fact, I am an addict." And in other words, feel sorry for me. Feel sorry for me. It's the examples of how feelings are now the dominant force in society. I will never forget this. This was a great moment in my education. I was speaking at a synagogue in my mid-20s in New Jersey. And this was the first time the following happened. A woman got up after my speech and she said, I'm offended by what you said about— I don't remember at all what it was about, but I remember my reaction inside and what I expressed. I was honestly stunned because, I mean, folks, I so try not to offend people. I banned Monica Lewinsky jokes from my radio show because I wouldn't humiliate her. I didn't even humiliate Bill Clinton. Clinton during a time when there was open season on humiliating him. Because Jewish law bans public humiliation. So I didn't understand, and I said to her, "Why are you offended?" And then she said why, and then I said, "Well, wait a minute. You disagree. That I understand, but I don't understand why you're offended." And over the course of time, I've come to realize It's no longer I disagree, it's I'm offended. My feelings were hurt. Your feelings shouldn't be hurt if we differ. That's just another example. Or of course, my favorite, which I never tire of telling, and some here have heard on a number of occasions, but this changed my life in 4th grade when in yeshiva Rabbi Fostag announced He says, "Boys, it's time to daven mincha," to recite the afternoon prayers. And I walked over very, very respectfully and said, "Rabbi, I'm not in the mood to daven mincha." And it was really, it was a life-changing moment. Rabbi Fostek, who was from Eastern Europe but knew English but had never heard the words mood and daven, in the same sentence. It was a new moment, clearly, for him. And he thought, and he stroked his beard, and he thought, and then he goes— I was known in the Jewish classes by my Hebrew name, Shmuel, and he goes, "Shmuel Prager is not in the mood to daven mincha." So what? And you don't know, it was probably the best thing I learned in yeshiva, was that moment in 4th grade. That my mood and my feelings didn't matter! They were only important to me, not to God, not to Rabbi Feistag, not to making a minion, nothing! Of course you couldn't make a minion in 4th grade, but You get the point. It was just, it was so revelatory. You mean my mood doesn't matter? By the way, I just want to tell you, I believe in this so deeply, and this will undoubtedly seem to you to come out of left field, or politically right field, but nevertheless, I will tell you, I wrote, thanks to Rabbi Fostag, about, I guess, 40 years later, I wrote a column, you can see it on the internet, titled, "When a Woman Is Not in the Mood." And thanks to Rabbi Frostag, I realized the answer should be, "So what?" The men are just ecstatic right now, and a number of women want their money back. I fully appreciate that fact. But I'm telling you, Judaism, by the way, totally agrees with me. By the way, so does Christianity. You know, Paul's famous statement of, "To the man, your body is not yours but your wife's, and to the wife, your body is not yours but your husband's." And in Judaism, Judaism actually has listing in the Talmud of sexual frequency in marriage. Because Judaism regards marriage as a contract, not as a feeling. You're in love, that's great. You're not in love, it's very sad, but that's your problem. Our problem is to get you to fulfill your duties. Among the duties of a spouse are sexual duties. And so, this is all, this goes, you know, by the way, when I wrote this column, and you have no idea how I couched the language, I'm only talking about where your husband is loving and kind and a good man, and, you know, we totally understand there will be times you just don't feel well and so on. Nevertheless, if we always wait for the mood, it may take a while. Because men and women are generally built differently in this regard. And so in one of— I won't even say what website, but a very well-known website titled how to column. It's all up. Whatever's on the internet stays on the internet. Dennis Prager advocates marital rape. And why? What is— I even had a woman who wrote that on my show. Did you really believe I advocated marital rape? Yes, because you tried to manipulate her feelings. That was her argument. By writing this column, you are manipulating a woman's feelings. I think it was a little— that's the best I could get out of it in making it coherent. By the way, a guy on the same website wrote, "I can't stand anything Dennis Prager says politically, but this was over the top." He never wrote anything like that. I just want to say, to the credit of that website. But please understand, I violated the biggest taboo of the society. I said your feelings aren't as important as your behavior. There are demands that are appropriate to be made on every one of us independent of how we feel. I'm telling you, this is the greatest of Judaism's messages: behavior is everything. Feelings don't matter nearly. Feelings matter to you and your shrink. To the rest of the 7 billion people, your behavior matters. You know, look, I thought, you know, the whole theme of my happiness hour is that you have moral obligation to act happy, to cheer people up. Not to inflict your bad mood upon people. This is what we— did somebody say amen? Are you married? Is your husband here? You are not amening him. Okay, I was just curious. Usually when one spouse amens, it's a symbol or a sign of something. But anyway, you're right, it does deserve an amen. Here is what matters, okay? This is the theme of this talk. Number 1, how you behave is all that matters, not how you feel. Number 2, that behavior must be guided by values. And number 3, those values only ultimately must come from a transcendent source. In other words, something higher than you. I will repeat again: how you behave is all that matters, not how you feel. Number 2: that behavior must be guided by values. Number 3: those values must come from something higher than you. I have a tape, it's— you could get it through the Prager store— of a An interview I conducted with a Swedish woman, late 20s, very bright, on one of the ships where I took— I take cruises with my listeners. She was working on the ship. She was getting a PhD in Sweden. Of course, she was totally fluent in English.

Still managing your rental business like a side hustle? Stop risking your cash flow. Over 800,000 landlords use TurboTenant to streamline their rental operations for free, from finding tenants you trust to collecting rent on time, we've got you covered at TurboTenant.com. Still managing your rental business like a side hustle? Stop risking your cash flow. Over 800,000 landlords use TurboTenant to streamline their rental operations for free. From finding tenants you trust to collecting rent on time, we've got you covered at TurboTenant.com.

So I said, may I interview you? Because Swedes fascinate me. And they do, because Sweden has been the longest ongoing secular society in the history of the world. So I said, do you believe in religion? She said, of course not, you know, with a little chuckle. Do you believe in God? Of course not, with a little chuckle. So where do you get your notions of right and wrong from? My heart. It's on tape. I mean, the woman's getting a PhD. She's bright. Where else? If there's nothing higher than you to know what right right and wrong and what to do? Where do you get your values from? That is why, by the way, Judaism would say that there is idol worship involved, because if you don't worship God, you'll worship yourself. It's like that famous saying, "He's a self-made man and he worships his creator." It's that sort of thing. I mean, worship means you hold to be most important. If it isn't God, it's you. Or, I mean, obviously it could be a cause. It could be the nation could be higher than you. It doesn't have to be you, but it usually is. Now here is something that I never realized until just this past year. Everything is a value. Everything. Example. Remember, even if you don't remember it, if you're not old enough to remember the song, I know that an American TV series used this as its theme: Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. When I was a little boy, that was a famous song. Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage. Now, that would never be sung today except as a funny illustration of what people thought in 1950 America. It would be almost as irrelevant as a horse and carriage. I grew up thinking that love and marriage do go together like a horse and carriage. In other words, by the way, not just me, everybody in Western history, everybody in Jewish history, You just assumed in the vast, vast majority of cases you'd get married. In Judaism, it was so assumed that if you were a male— they didn't embarrass females— a male was humiliated in religious Jewish life if he didn't get married. You see this tallit? You're supposed to only wear it in Orthodox life if you're a married man. So you'd see some poor guy, you know, 30 years old without who's not wearing a tallit and shul, and you think the guy's a loser. Jewish life did not say, "Oh, we feel bad for you, put on a tallis anyway." It said, "You earn the tallis by committing to a woman." This is how all of society acted in its own way. It was just assumed. That's why bachelors don't get far in politics, with very, very few exceptions. There was always a belief that a married man was more trustworthy, that to be a man you got married, that, that made you a man. Not anymore. Today, marriage is now a feeling. So as, for example, uh, you ask somebody 30 years old, even women, So, are you married? No. Do you want to get married? Well, I'm not ready. Yeah, if the right person comes along. I want to first establish myself and get my third PhD. Whatever it might be. But in other words, it's just not important. And then I came to realize, because in Europe there are just marrying less and less. What I thought was a given is not. It's a value. And with the death of religion, you will inevitably have much less marriage, like in Europe. You are just having less marriage. Here's the ultimate: children is a value. Now you would think if anything was just human instinct, it's having children. And the And the truth is, it was, because the instinct to have sex is an instinct, and without birth control, you produce children, so people just had children, whether they liked it or not. But you realize now, especially in the age of birth control, children is completely a value. It's totally a choice. You either have the value that it's important to have children, or you do not. Everything is a value. Oh, you know, and here's the thing. This is because I ask them. I have a great blessing. I get to talk to so many people from so many parts of life. So, why don't you have children? Well, these are direct quotes from listeners. I'm not the mom type. A guy. I like my life the way it is. Another woman: I never really had a maternal instinct. Or the famous phrase: Come on, Dennis, only people who really want children should have them. It's very bad if people who don't want children have them. So now they've turned the value upside down. It's noble not to have children if you don't want them. So here is the Jewish answer. The Jewish answer is always behavioral. You don't have a maternal instinct? Oh really? Try this: give birth or adopt a child, put him in your arms, and then tell me you don't have a maternal instinct. You know how many women have called me up to say that? Oh, I didn't think I had a maternal instinct, then we adopted a kid, or then I had a— gave birth to a kid, and you know what, Dennis Prager, You're dead right. And the same with men. Men even more so. Most guys, especially today, oh, you know, don't yearn to be a father, which is sad for me because that was the thing I most wanted in my life. But it is a same thing. You have a paternal instinct when there is a child in your arms and you're its daddy. Then a paternal instinct comes out. It doesn't come out as you're watching an NFL Super Bowl. It comes out behaviorally. That's why Judaism is so behavioral. Do it, then you'll feel it. Right? Act happy, then you'll feel happy. Act religious, then you'll feel religious. Act kind, then you'll feel kind. Actions precede feelings. We have inverted religion. We now have feelings precede action. You don't feel like being a parent, you're not a parent. You don't feel like marrying, you don't get married. It was good when society pressured people to marry and pressured people to have children. It was good. Because it isn't as instinctive as people think. Selfishness is instinctive. Going to the movies is a bigger instinct than having having a child for many people. Everything is feelings. Even now, you would have thought this was pretty much a given, right? You would have thought getting married is a given, having children is a given. How about that man and woman are important? Even that is now a feeling. If you feel you're a man, you're a man. If you feel you're a woman, you're a woman. If you don't feel it, you're not. There is a movement to have birth certificates in the United States, and I predict, I predict it will pass. Birth certificates will list male, female, and to be determined. I predict it. It will happen within 10 years.

Still managing your rental business like a side hustle? Stop risking your cash flow. Over 800,000 landlords use TurboTenant to streamline their rental operations for free. From finding tenants you trust to collecting rent on time, we've got you covered at TurboTenant.com. Still managing your rental business like a side hustle? Stop risking your cash flow. Over 800,000 landlords use TurboTenant to streamline their rental operations for free. From finding tenants you trust to collecting rent on time, we've got you covered at TurboTenant.com.

Possibly 5. It's already begun if you sign up for Google Plus. That's pretty widespread, Google+. Check it out after the holiday, check it out. Gender: male, female, other. Sweden now has schools where there is no sex. Children are given a name that has no gender, and they made up a new name, and there's he, there's she, and then there's ze. Z is neuter. So they have no— they don't call the children boy or girl. They have them dress in each other's— in male and female clothing, because in Sweden these parents and these teachers don't want to impose gender identity on a child. This is what is happening in the United States. You may say it's wonderful, but all I'm telling you is what even Even that has been reduced to feeling. You feel you're a girl, you join the girls' basketball team. You're 6'6" and the girls are 5'9"? Doesn't matter. You feel you're a girl, you may join them. Now, are there legitimate transsexual cases? Of course there are. That's a separate issue. I'm not talking about that. There's a tiny, tiny, tiny sliver of people who psychologically seem to who have no connection to the genital predisposition, but it's exceedingly rare. Human worth is now feeling. Again, I feel for my dog, I don't feel for the stranger, I act on feeling. So I just want to repeat. One, how you behave is what matters, not how you feel. Two, that behavior has to be guided by something called values. And three, those values must emanate from something higher. And that is my case for what we call revelation. That's why I believe the Torah is from God. If Torah isn't from God, then we're back to feelings again. I don't agree with this part, I do agree with this one. This is how I feel. This is how I don't feel. So what comes from something higher than you? This is the question I think we should ask ourselves on a day like this. Is there anything higher than me that I have to obey even if my feelings are counter? And finally, I just want you to understand this is true for the atheist just as much as it is for the religious person. See, they act like only we religious people have faith. If you believe that killing children is wrong, that is as much a leap of faith as my belief that God said killing children is wrong. It is a faith statement, not an objective truth, that murder is wrong. It's faith. Let me quote to you one of the best-known atheist secular philosophers of the last century, Richard Rorty. Look it up, you'll see how well-known he is. R-O-R-T-Y. But he was intellectually honest. He wrote: For the secular liberal, quote, "There is no answer to the question," excuse me, "there is no answer to the question, why not be cruel? No non-circular theoretical backup for the belief that cruelty is horrible." What does that mean? He said all All we do is talk in circles. So why is cruelty wrong? Cruelty is wrong because cruelty is wrong. You don't want to have cruelty against you, so why is that wrong? Because cruelty is wrong. And it just goes in a circle. Either God thinks cruelty is wrong, or cruelty is not wrong! He was honest. I much prefer an honest atheist to a dishonest religious person. There are rabbis, priests, and ministers who will say you can have morality without God. I debated one of them in this city 25 years ago at the former University of Judaism. I won't say his name because that's not my policy. Well-known rabbi in this town who argued that you don't need God for morality. Here, so here you have a secular atheist acknowledging that there is no answer to the question, "Why not be cruel if you're atheist?" And a rabbi with a yarmulke on who was saying that you don't need God for morality. This is what has happened. Be honest. So my belief that God said, "Do not murder," is my faith, but the secularist who says murder is wrong, that's his faith. It's a statement the faith. So that's why I believe that we are in trouble when we knock out the idea of moral revelation from a God. And so I am proud to stand by this 3,000-year-old document. Are there difficulties in there? There are definite difficulties. I couldn't agree more. But as I said to Alan Dershowitz when we debated in New York And with this I conclude. Alan Dershowitz, the famous Harvard law professor, and I debated. He is a liberal, I is a conservative. And we debated what's better for Jews, liberalism or conservatism. And it was a terrific debate. And actually, I think you can hear it on the internet. And at one point I said, ladies and gentlemen, I said, I think, I think come to the crux of the issue. When Alan Dershowitz disagrees with the Torah, he says, "The Torah is wrong, I am right." When I disagree with the Torah, I say, "The Torah is right, and I am wrong." And Dershowitz then looked at the audience and said, "For the first time tonight, Dennis Prager and I agree." He agreed when he disagreed issues with the Torah, the Torah is wrong. When I— and I have issues with the Torah, how could you not? But every time I have had an issue with the Torah and studied and studied and studied and studied, I realized the Torah was right. The Torah says stone a rebellious son, right? That's a classic example of you take this document seriously. And then I realized, wait a minute, wait a minute, This was one of the great moral advances in human history. The Torah said that if you have a totally rebellious child, and not a child who says, "No, I'm not going to go to bed now," but a truly bad child, you take him to court. The court stones him. The first civilization in history to take the right to kill a child out of parents' hands was the Torah. It was brilliant what the Torah did. You can't touch him. But touch him maybe. You can't kill him. Only the court can. But we don't have a record of a court killing a rebellious child in all of Jewish history. So the Torah ingeniously kept parental authority but ended child killing. Okay? So what, because of my attitude, the non-Dershowitz attitude, I believe, come on, there's got to be a reason the Torah did this. It didn't believe in stoning children, and of course it doesn't. It took it out of parents' hands. To this day there are honor killings throughout the Middle East, correct? Torah banned this, as it were, 3,000 years ago. So, It's worth considering. And I want to leave you with that point number one: behavior is what matters. You teach that to your children, not how you feel. How you act, that's everything. This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager. Visit DennisPrager.com for thousands of hours of Dennis's lectures, courses, and classic radio programs, and to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles.