Bro you're promoting a low-key scam (relevant criticisms were mentioned here). I know they pay well but it makes your viewers who are aware of how problematic they are trust you less. I hope you reconsider doing business with them.
Please stop using these guys as a sponsor. It's a scam. As someone who is so concerned with the truth and debunking false information, I'm really surprised you would support such a shady company.
This video makes me think of Bertrand Russell quotes... -Intellectual effort - we can realize the benefit or harm. Moral effort - we can try to do better -A life that embraces natural impulse is far more likely to be an enjoyable one, than going against. -A love of the primitive and a hankering after a more instinctive and passionate way of life than that sanctioned by current morals. -How our manner of life, knowledge and institutions undergone profound changes.. our instincts for good and evil remain pretty much where they were when our ancestors brains grew to our present size. -The Catholic Church was derived from three sources.. It’s sacred history was Jewish, it’s theology was Greek and it’s government and canon law were at least indirectly Roman. The Reformation rejected the Roman elements, softened the Greek and greatly strengthened the Judaic elements [edit: Just got to the end of the video and I see there's a Russell quote.. Nice!]
@Conon the Binarian Except capital punishment kills innocent people. The system is not infallible. Are you okay with the government killing *innocent* people who literally did not commit the crime they are being executed for? Look up "posthumous pardons" Posthumous meaning "after death" I don't know about you, but I don't think the government should have the power to kill innocent people
@Conon the Binarian here's the thing tho. The legal system will claim there's no reasonable doubt to someone's guilt but end up punishing the innocent. We might as well just get rid of it.
@@OracleLibby you’re right. Guys like Prager think in terms of their idea of social utility…they don’t really believe in the intrinsic worth as human beings. Their actions betray them.
the more you get to know the religious the more you recognise they are dangerous hypocrites, thankfully even in the USA the population is becoming less and less religious
"If god doesn't say love your neighbor as yourself, it doesn't mean a damn thing." What a sick, disgusting, perverse view of the world. And he dares to question the basis of our morality?
That's the part that always scares me a little about these "be good because god is always watching" type people. That they are good BECAUSE they believe god is watching them implies that they would see no reason at all to be a nice person, if there wasn't a higher power watching them. We have a word for people who don't really feel empathy but pretend to only when it suits their needs and furthers their goal. Psychopath.
I saw on a channel here once, a guy saying without fear of God, he would kill his neighbours. It was a guest during a discussion. They are all Christian fundamentalists. These people are everywhere. And they think they should be in charge.
I love how dennis says society ends when it gets too secular but he never once mentions what the "end of society" even means or would look like. He also never gives an example of a society that ended because of this so thats fun as well.
@@sorenjensen3863 Rome ended long after it became a Christian theocracy, whereas the most secular countries in the modern world are the most stable and the most prosperous. He has no examples.
People who claim that without a god people wouldn't be civil with each other frighten me. If one needs an almighty, all powerful god to threaten them into being a good person, they're NOT a good person. And that ranges from "violent" to "I'm just nice to you because I want to get brownie points with my god".
Ancient, fallible men asserting that "God said it," is not the same as "God said it." Dennis needs to demonstrate that he understands the difference, but fundamentalists genuinely don't.
Yeah, this is entirely accurate in my experience. The people in my fundamentalist family and friends just get stuck on not being able to question God because he's so far above us. The idea that there are humans writing those words that they claim are from God and I am questioning whether they actually are infallible representatives of God just doesn't compute. And since it took me an embarrassingly long time to be able to understand that what I was trying to vocalize was doubt of the accuracy of human's ideas of God and not doubt in an infallible God, it's hard to blame them. Indoctrination is a very effective process.
You know, I have seen a lot of atheists say that if God wrote in the sky, or what have you, they would think that it is aliens and what have you. So many atheists don't care if there is evidence.
@@matthewnitz8367 And trying to get that in their heads usually ends with "God gave them the words" and/or whatever reasoning as to why it's infallible. Doesn't matter to them who or how or why. God did it because the book says He did it, therefore it's correct I'm a Christian myself but I fully understand that if it's true at its core, it's still flawed people passing it down. At the very least one can't say there are zero discrepancies at all. Heck, even if you ignore the original writers, the fact that there's so many denominations and versions of the Bible is all you need to know to see just how easily we can get off track
This is especially true since the Bible is wrong about everything all the time. When it's right about something, it's only by accident! So whence the confidence that, if God exists, it is right about him?
I love Dennis Prager! Whenever I feel sad or down on myself, I can always go "yeah, but it could be SO much worse - I could be Dennis Prager!" And then I feel better.
The problem is, he things he is actually a wise and intelligent man, and that all those “leftist, secular, atheists scientist who hijacked all major institutions in the west” are the dumb and lost ones.
"ONLY human beings are precious, but not precocious enough to warrant higher taxes or a bottom-up restructuring of society to give them healthcare or housing they couldn't afford."
To be fair he actually said he doesn't have an axe to grind on topic x, but on topic y. Yes, you can make fun of the awkward presentation and it hurts like hell to defend anything the idiot drools out, but he clearly wasn't saying he didn't have an axe to grind at all, he was merely being dishonest about the nature of the axe.
Just a couple pages away from "smarmy", a picture of William Lane Craig, and the quote "I don't think you understand my argument, obviously you haven't read my read my previous work".
@@88mphDrBrown This is basically an unwitting parody of the appeal to authority fallacy..."I base my arguments on a superior authority...and that authority is myself!"
@@Llortnerof I always picture in my mind the moment that nuclear decay started in all of the universe after a dude on a floating rock ate a magic fruit.
If Prager is good at anything it's speaking in an extremely dramatic tone. I'm confident this man could make guiltily eating a cookie sound like the end of society. In fact I'm eagerly awaiting the Prager ChatGPT bot to make this happen
Exactly! He has a very very good speaking tone, it's well modulated and sounds authoritative. I also think he sounds smug and enjoys talking down to people especially anyone with a liberal bent
I totally understand where you’re coming from but I disagree. Even in my younger teen years where I thought I was more conservative leaning, I couldn’t watch this guy. His tone is condescending and self-righteous. He’s just extremely full of himself and think he understands everything about everything. It was actually one of the things that made me question my beliefs that were mostly from my family and the place I grew up: if Dennis Prager is one of the main figure heads in the conservative movement and all these other people are on his side than maybe I’m on the wrong side of history. So thanks Dennis Prager! For making me realize that my head was in the complete opposite place of where it should be.
I'm always astounded by Dennis's willingness to sacrifice his humanity on the altar of his Bible. Suggesting that if the bible doesn't say it, then it's worthless in relation to human decency to each other... How about caring for your neighbours because it's a nice thing to do that increases wellbeing? Or even the pragmatic approach of if you help out someone now, then it's more likely that they will help you out later on when you need a hand with something. There are reasons to care about your fellows even without a book telling you to do so, and if Dennis can't see that, then he's the one without morals here, not us.
I don’t know who said it first but it has been observed that good people don’t need religion. It’s bad people who need the threat of hell to behave well. If belief in god is the only thing that prevents people like Prager from getting off in killing and raping sprees, I pray god ;) they stay religious.
As has been pointed out for a long time by people much smarter than me, if your only reason for doing "the right thing" is fear of punishment from grumpy grampa gawd, then you really aren't moral. Those of us who try to do "the right thing" simply because it's the right thing have the high ground here.
Well, I suspect Prager gets around that by saying Jesus said do unto others as you would have them do unto you and since Prager would say Jesus is God he can say, "There, God said it!"
As to the exact thumbnail question, I think it might take some supernatural intervention for me to love him. But I still want to treat fellow humans better than he does.
Human life isn't "infinitely precious", we just assign it ultimate value arbitrarily, but that's fairly modern. Within the last few centuries you could lose your life for taking objects of value from someone else.
Not to forget the "....must be put to death" (for ridiculous & petty reasons) in the bible, the eradication of the pagan religions, inquisition, crusades, dark ages, witch burning, modern pedo cases... All this just doesnt paint the picture that christians care about life. They just virtue signal and lie.
The funny thing is that we derive the meaning of value and preciousness out of our experience of pleasure and pain. By definition a human life must be maximally precious because that’s where the word comes from.
@@rasin9391 I will go with "maximally". To say "infinite" just gives people extreme expectations, like that railroad corporations and government regulations will make sure that everything is done to keep trains carrying toxic chemicals from derailing and threatening the lives of thousands of people. If life was "infinitely precious", no president would cancel safety regulations.
and this is why i love this channel. the time when i can honestly say i knew more of...well...everything...was, of all things, when i actively tackled idiots on facebook and youtube with active discussion and links to my sources. i learned so much at that time just searching for sources and verifying their information and i kinda miss having the time and patience to keep doing so. this channel scratches that itch very very well and for that you have my thanks!
I really have my wife of 45 years fooled, she thinks I love her. I am going to tell my wife I want a divorce because I realized that after listening to Prager, I haven’t loved her for the last 23 years since I became an atheist. I’m just being facetious. I love her just as much and more as when we got married in 1977.
I appreciate the effort you have put in the resource, editing and script of this video. It is pleasing to the eyes and ears. Thank you for the good quality work.
Dennis Prager is the modern example of the Wild West snake oil swindler. He's the guy that makes the promotion selling the snake oil and the hair loss tonic lotion all together in the same bottle.
I think a big reason why he's against the welfare state is because it makes large parts of religion redundant. The fanatical conservatives are actually just that: Conservatists. They are trying to conserve the power and importance of religion by sabotaging anything that might threaten it.
“It's a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.” ― Aldous Huxley
I always get an accurate measure of a person's character by observing how kindly and graciously they treat the folks whom they don't HAVE to show respect. If someone purposely shits on a waiter or waitress, just because they can, avoid them. They are dark inside. Prager is a smug prick. Everyone who doesn't swallow his line of crap is contemptible in his little piggy eyes.
Does anyone else recognize the extreme irony in suggesting that secularism has no regard for humanity, and then making statements like, "If God doesn't say 'love your neighbor as yourself', it doesn't mean a damn thing'? I take that as a threat. "If God doesn't say... then we won't love our neighbors".
Perhaps God will indeed speak to Dennis Prager at some point. Most likely he would say..."Stop talking about me like this Dennis...you're making me look bad!"
All of those genocides in the Old Testament certainly left ME with the impression that the "Judeo-Christian God" values every human infinitely. I don't know how anyone could have ever doubted it.
The Spanish Inquisition was a genocide. You don't have to kill people to commit genocide. A genocide just means trying to cleans an area of an ethnic, racial, cultural, or religious group. Though few people were killed by the inquisition, it's goal was to kick the Muslims and Jews from Spain or convert them to Catholicism. It was a cultural genocide. Prager also talked about the Crusades in that part, and one of them, the Cathar Crusade, was used by the inventor of a word as an example of genocide.
@@ZephLodwick exactly. the cruzades were a religiously motivated mission to rid europe of "heathens" and several cultures, ethnic groups and religions were massacred based on just that. that is EXACTLY what a genocide is..
I follow a lot of ridiculous channels with shouting and yelling and exposing stupidity. Watching your videos is a nice respite from the rest of the worlds craziness.
dennis is at least getting close to one fact 'if there is no interventionist creator of the universe, then morality can't be objective' there isn't and it isnt
Although their imaginary zombie "savior" supposedly admonished them to "Judge not, lest ye be judged!" smug self-righteousness and judging others are the most popular hobbies among Christians.
Just from the gut: no. I'd pull him out of traffic, just like anyone else. I sure as heck wouldn't trust him, or offer him a microphone...but as a flesh-n-blood hoomin, he gets the basic tier of love
Even if a god says to love your neighbour as yourself it doesn't mean a damn thing. You should love your neighbour as THEY want to be loved. There are some people who treat themsleves terribly and their concept of love is abusive. I don't want them to love me as they want to be loved.
if everyone obeyed _my_ rules, then life would be equally great. but i guess dennis wants to live by his rules, so, we'll have to see who can raise a bigger army.
Unfortunately when it comes to raising an army, that's actually something religion does very well. Not only do they keep women barefoot and pregnant ro bump up their numbers, but nothing we try to replace it with produces more social cohesion than that good ol' religion mixed with nationalism.
@@blondequijote Perhaps not yet. I have an opinion that the only reason religious nationalism produces a "somewhat stable" society that is "unified" is because it is incredibly ingrained and easy to pass down. Making society say, not based around religion or nationalism is difficult, it requires religious + nationalist parents to stop raising their kids to be religious nationalists. There is also a final opinion I have that perhaps the "social cohesion" you see with them is more of a false cohesion. Take, for example, Nazis. Perhaps "secular" but the basis of their society was still very heavily religious, traditional, and nationalist. They even had a state church thing (a "reichschurch" or something, idk). With the Nazis, the problem with them though was that they rely on some kind of threat to keep going. I ask you, with modern christian nationalists (as an example), what would happen if they got rid of every lgbt person, every non-christian, and every gosh darn marxist-socialist-leninist-feminist-environmentalist? What would happen to their social cohesion when they do all of that with the promise that "once it is done that it will be better," and things turn out to not be better? Their only choices are: say there are more out there and start cannibalizing themselves, split off the "Christian nationalists" into the true Christian nationalists and the false ones (and blame them), or they find some new threat that hasnt been mentioned. Its short term stability, a reaction to something else. Its bloody and violent but doomed to fail.
@kaidensmith770 good counterpoint about cohesion. Maybe religion and nationalism aren't "good" at cohesion so much as they emphasize it. I personally enjoy a society with more room for individualism but I ran into this same problem when I was Libertarian - individualistic, free-thinking types don't unite behind a common cause even if it's one they agree with because they're mostly off doing their own thing. Ofc that's a general observation, but compared to religions and ideologies they have to fight against, ppl who want freedom from whatever just don't get as many joiners to their movements as collectivists of any sort will.
@@Loregamorl That's as true as it can get and societal challenges will be there till there is a human society of any kind, and if we adopt this "Us vs Them" ideology in it's pure form, it will ultimately lead to human race being completely wiped ou, because this ideology always needs a scapegoat and ultimately, each and every one of us will be a scapegoat for some reason or other and this will go on untill no one's left.
@@blondequijote What you describe can be considered as fear mongering. And naturally, our reptile brain is more keenly wired to the things we fear, than our better, more rational judgement.
I’ve been reviewing Samuel Beckett’s play Endgame. There’s a lot of dog imagery in this play. Prager’s bible quote is in there too, but again with dog imagery. Hamm says the following in the middle of a soliloquy, ‘Use your head, can’t you, use your head, you’re on earth, there’s no cure for that! Get out of here and love one another! Lick your neighbor as yourself!’ A bit earlier in the play, Hamm says, ‘Let us pray to God.’ Hamm, Clov, and Nagg pray. Hamm asks, ‘Well?’ Clov responds enigmatically, ‘What a hope! And you?’ Hamm answers, ‘Sweet damn all!’ And Nagg finally says, ‘Nothing doing!’ Hamm shouts, ‘The bastard! He doesn’t exist!’ He doesn’t exist. This is the beginning and the ending of my response to all religions.
Thou shalt make no graven images, but one of my hobbies is carving animals. Thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy. And which Sabbath would that be, Saturday or Sunday? And will I be arrested for picking up sticks on the Sabbath? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property. And if I think the neighbors wife is hot, will I be arrested for thinking? Thou shalt have no other Gods before me. So does that mean I can worship Freya in a secondary position? Yeah, I can see how obeying the Ten Commandments would make life so much better.
I wonder how much education Dennis has. My brief foray into university and the study of Ethics and Morals, 4 years, showed me that proper scholarly work is a huge undertaking. Check out University libraries full of books and journals and papers, most of which never see the light of day except for university researchers and people doing Master's and PhD's. Dennis thesis strikes me as equivalent to a first years initial attempts at university level thinking. Maybe with a touch of refinement to second year level. But to think of his thinking compared to people like John Searle, Peter Singer, Bertram Russell and many many other great thinkers is laughable. It is always the same with these religious types. Certainty in their grand sounding but inherently simplistic notions that on actual analysis crumble like a biscuit under an 18 wheeler.
Dennis commits non-sequiturs so frequently it honestly reminds me of a child's thinking. It reminds me of Piaget's stages of child development, how kids claim things but cannot provide explanations that logically follow. The way he forms claims about God and morality and science and secularism etc, and presents conclusions that simply dont follow from the premises. Neither realizes how much work is left to get to the conclusion. Example: a child in this stage may claim: 'No superhero could ever be stronger than Spiderman because he beats doctor octopus.' at best this concludes Spiderman is strong, the conclusion presented does not follow. At minimum more premises need to be provided. Similarly Dennis uses these types of non-sequiturs and childlike thinking non stop: - If there is no god who stays stealing is not wrong, then stealing is not wrong - We are created in gods image, that means every person is of infinite preciousness - If god doesn't say love your neighbour, it doesn't mean a damn thing - If the commandments came from a god, we cannot question them Any child or idiot likewise can make these types of stupid claims: - Without batman, objective morality doesnt exist and nothing is wrong - If we dont follow Zenu, socialism is inevitable - Without fairies, love cannot exist etc.
@@BigFatWedge actually, specifically capitalism. Capitalism calls all the shots and is the main driving battery force for wars; whether it be a theocracy or secular society. Propaganda Prager uses religion as the vehicle of gaining support of his right wing ideology, and when the paid off government practices things like invading other countries.
Hey, hang on! I did that Spanish Inquisition gag in the last video’s comments. The way the gag works is surprise…and pre-existing knowledge of the gag, the two, TWO ways the gag works is surprise, surprise and knowledge of the pre-existing gag and how it can be reformatted to any situation. I’ll come in again.
Yesterday I watched a video in which a christian claimed that a god that allows (or causes) cancer in children isn’t evil. If god does it it must be for a reason we are unable to understand, and since they think that everything that god does is good, the only thing we can conclude is that such christians believe that cancer in children is good. Talk about christians valuing life.
Part of the problem is that people think God and nature should be the same thing and pre-secular people intuitively understood this to not be the case. The world wasn't intended as a replacement of Eden, it was a conditioning experience so that mankind could perfect the skills to achieve a higher plane of existence. But God's Plan has been replaced by the naturalistic process of darwinistic evolution so that we've lost this awareness and no longer think of it anymore.......
Denise would be the first against the wall as a he bares false witness. So he'll be fine with stoning for wearing a mixed fabric and he thinks slavery is good enough for her
Gord alflighty, I love the comment section.😊 Short and crazy comments like yours says it all ….❤ Have good weekend and don’t forget to burn your neighbor’s house …
I just came into say the vid above this one on my feed is titled The Hanging of Robert Prager by The History Guy. . A logarithmicly inspired moment of humor.
Mr PragerU. Your argument is completely shot by me, who is an Australian. Latest figures show that we now have only 43% christians so they are not the majority. Guess what? Australia has around five times lower crime rate than the highly religious US. You can go into our suburbs and find most houses with mum and dad and the kids, enjoying family life, having barbecues with their neighbours, and not running around robbing, raping, or killing each other. We love our families, friends, and neighbours, including a vast amount of multicultural people. Our morals come from the desire to get along well with our fellow human beings. So it’s back to the drawing board for you.
And on that note Ricky, I've got to go and help my elderly neighbour who just had cataract surgery by mowing his lawns. Just because it is the right thing to do. Cheers mate - from Gympie Queensland 👍
@@GlasgowCelticBhoy 👏👏That’s it mate. That turkey is just like all the rest, they have no idea that normal people don’t need their stupid book which is full of the most “immoral” teachings ever written.
Fellow Melbournian here. Dennis would freak out at how much better Australia had become as it had become more secular. At its height of christianism, Australia was riddled with unbridled racism, brutal sexism and anti LGBTQ and, as we have discovered in the Royal Commission into instituonalised child abuse, ritualistic rape of kids and paedophilia in christian institutions with intricate systems designed to defend and protect paedophiles...in the name of christianism. This high religiosity was killing our society.
