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The Impossibility Of The Contrary: -It is impossible to be without knowledge of uniformity of nature. -Knowledge of uniformity of nature is impossible without God. -It is impossible that God does not exist. -God exists. The Uniformity Of Nature: The principle that the future will resemble the past, in that when sufficiently similar situations recur, similar effects follow. Nature is uniform means nature is constant in respect of its laws. So how do you know/on what basis do you (note Q isn't: on what basis don't you something) believe that your reply will reach me? That you or your surroundings won't turn to dust the next nanosecond? On what basis do you justify operating upon the belief that nature will be uniform? -inb4s: -But SCIENCE! DEMONSTRABLE! REPEATABLE! Yes, all those depends upon the UON which you can't account for. -Nature isn't uniform. The laws of nature has never changed. Miracles suspends or adds, not change. -Define knowledge. Justified true belief. -I don't know/I don't have the belief that nature will be uniform. Is a self-refuting statement. So it's impossible. -I wouldn't be replying if I didn't. Irrelevant thesis. -Prove the impossibility of the second premise. It's proven by the non-existence of a contrary possibility to justify operating upon said belief. Same way a possibility to undo the past does not exist, so it's impossible to undo the past. -I know nature will be uniform on the basis that nature has been uniform. Circular logic, missing the point of the Q. -Assuming what you're trying to prove in the premise. Y. X is a necessary precondition for Y. X. -The obligation to justify my belief which I operated upon isn't necessary. (Prejudicial reasoning, hypocrisy.) Then my watch is evidence of (X) so it's still impossible that said (X) isn't true. (Discussions, debates rendered unnecessary.) -So it's impossible that God does not exist/God exists because? Precisely because there has to be a "because", a justification to begin with which the self-defeating Q lacks. The only thing an atheist needs to hear is the fact that they already know God exists as demonstrated above. So what's the point if they already know so? To shut their mouth, Romans 1:20, now verbally too, admission that he exists. And yes it's Biblical, Colossians 1:17. Also shout-out to: The Burden Of Opinion. Like playing along with a child's play pretend, any further like giving evidence as the evidentialist does on the matter of God only serves to feed & strengthen their delusion. The evidential apologist even dishonors God by elevating these children to the position of judge with God being the one on trial. Laughable, of course it naturally results in gavel pummeling enthusiasts. Now what the based apologist does is, confiscate it. Why call it based apology? It reveals the baselessness of the opposition all the more as demonstrated above.
@@gavinmyatt5589 you can literally solve it in 2 ways: 1. Stop being racist (as a country) 2. Reduce poverty and defund police and increase social services. (go economically left as a country) As a bonus, number 2 also reduces or eliminates a lot of other problems
I went to church as a kid. I never met any bad kids either. Of course that might be because everybody has been told to be on their best behavior and had the promise of snacks as soon as church ended.
Have we not considered that he never met any bad children because no one would speak to him? Kids can tell who the asshole is and have no shame in shunning them.
"The least wise places in America... are called Universities. That is where all the ridiculous ideas come from" Ahh! now I see why it is called Prager UNIVERSITY.
It is pretty funny the arguments a lot of apologists are using. "Science is a religion so we can't trust it (or a variation of that)" or "universities are where communists are made/wisdom can't be found there" while having Prager University.
@@josiahferrell5022 You can only gain wisdom over time, so it actually checks out. To accumulate wisdom, you must age. But aging does not automatically accrue wisdom.
@@Llortnerof But it isn't true that you gain wisdom over time. You actually gain it from the things you learn, not the time spent. If that were the case, it would be refuting to the other half of the phrase.
@@FloppyDucks By Dennis own admission, he was a terrible student and was unable to be accepted in any University. So he spends most of his time trying to demerit Universities and often says how Universities creates fools. All the while calling his channel and business Prager University. So it is pretty obvious that he is salty that he never got into University, and all of this is a way for him to cope with that reality.
I remember falling into a prageru hole around 2015 when I was alone and going through some pretty tough time. It’s was easy, digestible and affirmed my feelings. I was able to claw myself out. Videos like these would have saved me a lot of time. Thanks you.
Yep. Family sent and promoted Prager U videos to me while I was in college between 2008-2012. They were so worried about me being brainwashed at my 'liberal University'. And those videos seemed legit. I thought they were just as credible as what i was being taught. Then i grew up. Ask it took was one creator going through a prager u video and pointing out the blatant lies, with actual evidence while pointing out their lack of evidence and credible sources. Then it was easy to see how all their content is the same: bold claims made with absolute confidence without any evidence or justification beyond, 'my faith says so.'even when they quote statistics, there's usually no source cited, or the source is another Prager U video, or a clearly biased article. And when i say biased, I don't mean, 'it clearly agrees with them and disagrees with me,' I mean the actually methodology used would discredit the results, which I understand before my university taught me how to peer review research and determine if it's valid or not, including for papers that came to conclusions I agreed with, or were supported by other papers, but they were flawed. It's haunt an actual understanding of how statistics, psychology, etc, works. Knowledge of those things gives us the wisdom to know we can't just take the word of others, but rather do our own research. Or to put it simply, my university and experience taught me to fact check everything! And Prager doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Conveniently left out by Prager et al. is that insane technological advances also happened. It wasn't pure ideology or the lack thereof that allowed those to occur.
@@wet-read yeah it's insane that he believes god creating a global flood killing all life on earth minus the 5 (?) Humans and the impossibly large number of animals is morally justified because god wanted it but it isn't ok when humans (not Christians) kill a relatively small number of people in comparison.
What, ALL of them?! And we're supposed to believe that it's some kind of coincidence??? Do your own research people, we're through the looking glass here...
24:23 "...We can only imagine how bad Dennis' true nature is if the outcome of a lifelong fight to be good has resulted in the small-minded, bigoted man we see today". A sterling example of wisdom, Stephen. Bravo!
Considering his views on marital r4pe and how he said the only thing keeping him from murd3r and r4pe is that the Bible tells him not to do those things... Yeah, he's pretty much a psycho barely contained by religious indoctrination.
@@user-oh5gz4ue6r he wants to use his judgement, yes. Like any normal person, he’d like to hear your reason for questioning whether bigotry is bad, and then judge whether you made a good point or a bad one. So by all means, state your case.
I’d say it’s more honestly dis-intellectual than intellectually dishonest. He doesn’t know enough different philosophers to cite as authorities that bolster his argument the way you’ll see professional apologists do with enlightenment thinkers.
DP has been described by _Mister Deity_ as having a tendency to skim the first few chapters of books, and then claim to have read them cover to cover. He likes _owning_ lots of books, but not reading them.
I think Dennis is just profoundly confused after a lifetime of brainwashing. He's been bathing in this conservative, evangelical bath for so long, he doesn't even know what clean water looks like.
@@confusu later though, verses Tomatothy 3: 2-8 state 2 “And the lack of color in the salad was displeasing to the guests. 3 Jesus stepped forward with a tomato and showed the redness. 3 Guests were taken aback stating, ‘Lord, this is Ambrosia, a fruit salad.’ 4 Jesus held the tomato aloft and proclaimed it was indeed a fruit. 5 The botanist agreed. 6 Jesus added the tomato to the Ambrosia salad. 7 The salad immediately brightened with the redness of the tomato. 8 The salad tasted terrible.”
Intelligence is knowing that a Tomato is a Fruit. Wisdom is knowing to never put it in a fruit salad. Charisma is finding a way to market a tomato-based fruit salad. (Salsa?) The argument between the Wizard, the Cleric, and the Bard.
You hit the nail on the head. The more exposure to different views, religions, and cultures, the more varied you become in outlook, and that makes people like Dennis upset.
Right. The more experience you get with other people the more you’re able to understand. In other words, the more wisdom you have. And Dennis hates nothing more than actual wisdom because it shows how shallow his views of biblical wisdom are.
@@shriggs55 Right exactly, "God" was nowhere to be seen. All the worst dictators of the 20th century did not believe in God, Lenin especially thought he was a god.
@@charlesjenkins7130 Maybe that's what he's doing when he takes those pauses after (charitably) making his point And yes that episode was exactly where my mind went
"If older people can't give wisdom to younger people then they have lost the biggest reason for getting old." Is that so? I was unaware I needed a reason for getting old. In fact, not that I know I don't have one, I'd happily stop aging 🤔
You could also interpret Dennis' quote a little differently. If "the biggest reason for getting old" was something like cellular senescence, then we should make sure to make ourselves incapable of giving young people wisdom so are cells would stop senescing.
Its so funny that besides the fact that saying this is just weird (Whats the probolem with getting old for your own sake?) it just completely - 100% contradicts his own whole narrative.
Loved the Tim Minchin shoutout! "I know the good book's good because the good book says it's good. I know the good knows it's good because a really good book would" What a fucking lyrical genius.
I stand in awe of your ability to listen and watch Dennis Prager and anything Prager U or Prager Foundation related. I wish I had your patience and fortitude
This whole thing brought to mind a couple lines from one of my favorite singers; "and I never have a damn about the story's end, or even how it all began. And the one word that I seek is one that I can tell myself." More and more as I've gotten older and learned psychology, philosophy, epistemology, and behavior sciences, I've come to find comfort in my ability to make enough sense of the world that I'm not left in the dark often. It occurs to me that religion never gave me that comfort, nor did it give me usable answers. Then, on all counts, religion didn't make me wise. It left me blind.
"on all counts, religion didn't make me wise. It left me blind." If you read some of the verses in the bible, qur'an, etc, you can see how they're doing this in a manipulative way. It's only blind people who will believe their crap, so they seek to not only keep people blind, but to try to convince them that the intelligent, wise, knowledgeable people of the world are really the blind ones and that god thinks that they are the truly wise. For example, there's the verse saying how the wise of the world are foolish in the eyes of god.
I think it's down to the hyper individualism we live in where you have individual that is a "genius" that should be lifted above the rest of society. This is called a meritocracy which is actually a bad thing. Cause it boils down every skill to one skill called "merit" and that someone with more "merit" is inherently better than someone with less "merit". Rather than many people having many different skills and beliefs and that to have a great society we need to work together to combine those skills and rely on the skills of others to compensate for the skills we don't have. Being "self-sufficient" is a bad thing, you want to rely on others and other rely on you.
For most people, someone is wise if they act mature or give good advice or they're hard to fool. For Dennis, someone is wise if they agree with him on religion.
@@abigailslade3824 There's the argument that we shouldn't judge people in the past by our standards, but that's only correct up until a certain point. As even many other animals have exhibited _empathy,_ there's no excuse for humans at any point in our history believing that slavery, rape, child marriage, skinning people alive, boiling people alive, genocide, etc, were acceptable in any way. Furthermore, there have always been people who have had thoughts that were far ahead of their time (even though those thoughts shouldn't have been).
Wisdom comes from experience, not by reading old books. Part of your experience will be reading old books, but without mapping those ideas onto reality you're no more wise than ChatGPT
Definitely agree. You can know all the theory of a field but if you haven't applied it then you don't have wisdom. Theory by itself can still be useful though. Religious theory can't.
Can't really talk about wisdom while totally ignoring critical thinking skills which is Dennis Prager's ultimate goal: getting rid of critical thinking skills.
"Let's acknowledge that if you didn't have any life experience, you're probably a fool." Yes, Dennis! That's exactly how it works! No one thinks about how wise they were as a teenager!
2:00 Just in, the man was one google scholar search away from finding out that "wisdom", in fact, is still used, and discussed upon. ONE search. Took me about 30 seconds. Come on, Dennis, you aren't even trying.
Your well-founded explanations and the occasional Tim Minchin turned over a dull and tired evening, thank you. You publish awesome videos, practically I've been surviving on them this week so far. I'm very grateful for the mental sustenance.
Dennis is really wise If you do as Dennis, define gullibility as wisdom, and wisdom as gullibility. The Ministry of Truth in 1984 by George Orwell comes to mind.
That's what it means nowadays, I guess. Critical thought is listening to know-nothing nutjobs on the internet, whereas listening to scientists, experts, and scholars is naïvete.
But it is not a surprise. Dennis, like a lot of people , has spent his years getting really good at being wrong. If you spend years honing skills, you get to be good at those skills.
Well obviously because you think youre right and he is wrong, doesnt necessarily make you right. Every single person on the planet thinks they are right.
@@gsp3428 Obviously, that's why people show how the other is wrong and how they themselves are right, otherwise you wouldn't be able to write a single comprehensive phrase since not a single person on the planet would have a coherent mutual symbolic language. Take for reference the section 4:10 through 5:18, It's a perfect example of showing the thought process of the other is wrong.
The Bible treats sorcery as though it's real.Also,witchcraft,necromancy,divination,numerology,demons,angels,sea monsters,dragons,cockatrices,fiery serpents,prophecy,etc.All unproven things.Wisdom?
Since Dennis is so confused about stats, maybe this helps: Strength is being able to crush a tomato. Dexterity is being able to dodge a tomato. Constitution is being able to eat a bad tomato. Intelligence is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad. Charisma is being able to sell a tomato based fruit salad.
As an old fart, I have a lot of wisdom about all manner of obsolete things. For example, I know how to change the "leathers" on the pump at the bottom of a windmill. I even know how to downshift a manual transmission that lacks synchronizers (a crash box) by double clutching.
Wisdom is literally just experience. Whenever i see people confusing knowledge and wisdom, i always reminded of "miasma theory of the disease" thing, where people thought air was "bad" and from that air they would get diseases, so they tried to avoid places with "bad air", which often were places with diseased people and it helped them to not get diseased... that's a wisdom in a sense, they learned through experience something and they apply that in their life, even though they were completely wrong about actual source of the disease. While knowledge would be more of a modern understanding of how viruses spread and ways to prevent that, it's a more "in-depth" understanding of a process or an event. To me they aren't the same thing, nor they are mutually exclusive, though often wisdom is more subjective and has personal value, like a dating advice for example, while knowledge is more objective and is universally useful.
Yeah. I also feel like wisdom is a word that kinda means something different to everybody. I basically never use the word because it is just really imprecise. If someone asks me a question about wisdom I would always have the need to ask what they mean by it. While that is the case with a lot of words, there is a lot less confusion to be had with a word like knowledge or experience.
@@smilloww2095 I probably wouldn't use it either, but i have a D&D campaign, and Wisdom is one of six major ability scores... so i have to use it. I do define Wisdom as "basically just practical experience" in my setting though. In game, Medicine is a skill based primarily on Wisdom and i see it as an "experience in first aid", while when it comes to surgery or more "modern methods" i use Intelligence instead of Wisdom, as at that point i think just practical experience wouldn't cut it, and you have to know a lot of stuff about biology and physiology.
I've viewed wisdom as ones ability to apply knowledge and experience to their lives and to learn from them. a Person can have plenty of knowledge and even experience but still routinely act a fool.
@@Nick_Vendel any “nutty professor,” stereotype. Or any nerd with bad social skills. Or any precocious child who doesn’t understand how to adult yet. Etc.
I was skimming comments and misread it. But the misread immediately prompted the mental image of Prager and Spawn in an epic battle to the ages... Prager is broken, bleeding on the ground before Spawn, being characteristically dramatically (though in his mind "dramatically" was replaced with "ostentatious and uncomfortable") Prager croaks out "I win", to which Spawn looks confused. Spawn: How so? Prager: Nobody said I couldn't arbitrarily change the win conditions at any point. I can never be beaten! I am invincible! Spawn: You're a loony Prager: Marxist! Sometimes I wonder how my brain works the way it does. And I'm usually pretty certain it's better to not know
If my grandfather taught me anything, it was that as a fool gets old, he is just an old fool. Contrary to what Dennis says, I have read the Bible, and I can't see that I gained any wisdom by doing so. I think most of the wisdom I have gained, I learned from my kid. I hope I may have returned the favor.
I too read the whole bible and I do think some wisdom was gained by doing so. The proverbial scales fell from my eyes and I realized that the emperor had no clothes. I don't know how much longer I would have lingered in church stuff had I not finally read it front to back.
@@FakingANerve So very true! As a wise man, one who loved Hitchens and disliked dennis said, 'reading the bible completely, is the greatest way to create atheists!' I'm paraphrasing, but that was Isaac Asimov!💖🥰✌
Reading the Bible taught me Christianity isn't based on the Bible. It also made me think if any of this was true mankind would unite to despose such a evil entity.
When I consume your content I feel a wonderful sense of calm. It's nice to hear from adults in this wacky world. Thank you SW for being the light on the hill, for your calm insight. Love from OZ bro.
"If you don't get your wisdom from the Bible, where do you get it from?" may be the dumbest question I have heard asked by an apologist. It doesn't even make sense unless you believe that every person is incapable of original thought. Perhaps Dennis is admitting this about himself?
Have been enjoying Prager's Master Class critique series. I mean Prager's smugness can be so frustrating at times but your astute analysis and rebuttal has been both edifying and humourous. Thank you.🖤
Realizing that the bible is mythology is the beginning of wisdom, and learning that the religions derived from it are on the same plane as every other religion is knowledge.
Saying a 12-year-old child is wiser than a 50-year-old philosophy professor completely lays bare Dennis' definition of wisdom: you are wise if you are Christian, unwise if you are not. It also lays bare who his target audience are: Christians who need affirmation they are better and more valuable than the out-group.
I love prageru videos because you don’t need a satirical RU-vidr to point out the stupidity of their claims. I say claims because they don’t actually provide any arguments 😂
@@hurdygurdyguy1it’s funny cuz there is literally a prayer U video where Dennis complains that opinions are being called opinions in schools, and he wants them taught as fact
9:15 "OR ELSE" in the given context, actual LOL. 27:10 "The child who is not embraced by the village, will burn it down to feel it's warmth" Incredibly true, never heard this before. Thanks! You are the best of your peers, you make me laugh. Thanks for putting so much effort into your content. It's great.
Most people in their life will reach an “I know pretty much everything about politics and philosophy” phase. Most people will have this when they’re teens or young adults but Dennis only entered that phase a couple years ago or to this day hasn’t left it yet.
Dennis is one of those elderly people who lack wisdom. It’s quite sad to see how he passed through life and let his opportunity to become wise pass him by.
@@JonS Don't dismiss the Dunning-Kruger Effect just yet. Sometimes the most confident person is the one too incompetent to recognize their own incompetence.
I remember something a teacher told me in senior year that's always stuck with me "You are mature beyond your years." And it sorta made me realize that what I valued more than "intellegence" was wisdom. The ability to listen and understand people and tha world around me. I've never forgotten it, and it's honestly guided me ever since
Thanks! NO, Thank YOU!!! I used to work at a West Coast satellite radio network years ago, and I would really cringe whenever trying to understand the answer to a question he was giving a caller!
So I've been into ancient epics recently. You know, Epic of Gilgamesh, Illiad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Beowulf and so on. I think Dennis should give some of these a read. Because if you do so, it's blatantly obvious that the Bible isn't the only way you cna get wisdom. These epics were written by authors who have never even heard of the Bible of Christianity/Judaism (well, except Beowulf). And yet there is a lot of wisdom in it. For example in Works and Days, Hesiodos says: "Invite your friend to a meal and don't care for your enemy, care the most for those who live near you, because then when a bad thing happens to you in your village, your neighbors will come even naked to help you", 342-345. (I don't have the book in English so this is just my very rough translation from Slovak 😅). From this, you can clearly see that the ancient Greeks had the wisdom to be kind to their neighbors, without ever reading the Bible. You know, love thy neighbor. And they figured that out all by themselves. In fact, this is where I believe morality actually comes from. In the beginning there wasn't god but a ton of people who just kept murdering each other in order to survive. Later on, some of these people found out that if they work together, they can survive better. They found out that certain actions make it so that they have a better chance of survival. And we call these actions "moral". They aren't necessarily "objectively a good thing to do", they are just actions that benefit society and so everyone in the society benefits from it. Morality is just a thing that got selected by nature, because if you're "moral", meaning that you do these actions, you have a better chance of survival. On the other hand if you are "immoral" and do things like stealing, murdering and raping, everyone will hate you, which significantly makes your life worse and lower the chance of your genetic material surviving. In a sense then, morality is a necessity. Humans have to be moral by definition, because the opposite results in having a worse life and the ultimate goal of all living things is to survive and live with the least amount of problems. So it's only natural that humans learnt to be "moral". So there's your wisdom. No God needed. PS: I love how universities, the place where students learn in order to be able to contribute to society, apperently teach people to "fight against" society. How does that make any sense? Dennis, just because some people in universities have opinions you disagree with, doesn't mean they are fighting against society. Also, not all universities teach the stuff he's clearly hinting at. Actually I'd say most don't. I study computer science and at my university we never study gender, sexuality, moral, religion, evolution or whatever. That's simply not what the school's focus is at all. It's just computers and programs man. How exactly was I taught to fight against society then? PPS: Also I love the irony of the man who has never studied on a university telling us how bad studying at a university is.
The explanation of morality evolving from cooperation is really quite obvious. Just not to the people who insist on the "objective morality" for which God is "needed". I think Marquis de Sade made a convincing case against a universal objective morality by comparing different societies (even though his knowledge about some of those at the time might have been a little limited) in the philosophical parts of "Justine et Juliette". I doubt Prager ever read it, or Kant for that matter or any other philosopher. Like Bill Maher put it in "Religulous" - "we don't need God to come up with stuff like, 'don't kill each other and don't take each other's stuff'." Edit: almost forgot - I really like some of the stuff in the old "Edda". Really similar to many of the proverbs in the Bible. And I learned that all the names of the Dwarves in "Hobbit" were actually taken from the Edda. Who knew? I didn't 😊.
@@MrSeedi76 Edda is next on my list! Can't wait to read that! And yeah, I already noticed Gandalf and the dwarves when I was skimming through it after I got it :D
I wish we could have 2 societies start with nothing. Society A has religion. Society B has science, schools, and universities. Let's see where they end up in 100 years.
Keep an eye on the Nordic countries, which are largely secular. Contrast their societal health (happiness, murder rates, health, infant mortality, stds, etc.) with that of the USA's which is highly religious. It's not exactly the setup you were suggesting, but very similar and it's already here! If you were being rhetorical, please disregard. Good health to you!
@@tulpas93 Hah, this example even rigged in favor of the USA: the country became a technological powerhouse thanks to the Cold War and is also the sole emitter of world reserve currency, the fact that the USA is unwilling to provide at least decent living to It's citizens while Nordic countries provide good living for the vast majority of Its citizens is very telling.
Depends if they're neighbours, it's very possible that the more backwarded society with religion will just conquer the secular one and impose religious fundamentalism on it. Stuff like that has happened in the past.
Did Dennis just say we need a reason to get old? That is incredibly odd, and the alternative to getting old implies something very dark. I imagine he meant something a bit different than what he literally said, but this is his video, and he has the option to review this content before posting it.
Prager makes my teeth ache. I wish he wouldn't talk about education because it is obvious he knows diddly about it. I don't know what exactly what he thinks wisdom is exactly, but it's not a thing we try to impart. At the base of all we (teachers) do is trying to teach our students how to learn. If you can get your students to enjoy learning then hopefully everything else falls into place given time. I don't know what Prager is on about when it comes to educational institutions.
