Refuting Dennis Prager’s Consequences of Secularism Video

[0:01] This is Glass City Humanist, a show about humanism, humanist values, by a humanist. Here is your host, Douglas Berger. We examine the claims made in a two-part video by conservative political commentator Dennis Prager. The video, titled The Consequences of Secularism, includes Prager’s vague and misleading claims about secularism, which he even fails to define. He includes not only philosophical claims, but also political claims that don’t hold up to closer scrutiny in order to bolster his religious beliefs. Glass City Humanist is an outreach project of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, building community through compassion and reason for a better tomorrow.

[0:59] Dennis Prager is a conservative political commentator and social critic. He is Jewish, but he supports many views held on the Christian right. He got his start complaining about secularism and narcissism and believes that the Holy Bible is the linchpin of society and we should all be religious. He attended Brooklyn College and majored in anthropology and history and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1970. He became a fellow at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and attended there from 1970 to 1972, He became known as a radio host for religious-focused talk shows on stations in the Los Angeles area He has given speeches and written books advocating his take on society and religion, In April of 2020, Prager called the COVID-19 lockdowns the greatest mistake in the history of humanity. His views were criticized in the New York Times. In a 2020 video called Follow the Science is a Lie, Prager touted Sweden’s response to COVID-19 and said Sweden is the proof that lockdowns are useless. A fact check in December 2020 found Prager’s claim false, as Sweden had higher rates of COVID infection and mortality than other Scandinavian countries.

[2:25] In a November 2021 Newsmax interview, Prager argued that irrational fears about people not vaccinating against COVID-19 had wrongly made them the pariahs of America as I have not seen in my lifetime. More than gay men and intravenous drug users during the AIDS crisis, who he inaccurately said had not been ostracized. Those of us who lived during those times when that was going on, we know he was wrong when he said that. The Independent called his comments alarming revisionism. In the interview, Prager also called concerns about climate change idiotic and irrational. In 2009, he started PragerU. It isn’t a real school, but produces video clips and other material about conservative political topics. PragerU’s videos have contained misleading or factually incorrect information on slavery and racism in the United States, immigration, and the history of fascism. PragerU has been further accused of promoting racism, sexism, and anti-LGBT politics.

[3:35] PragerU is used as supplemental education material in the public schools in eight states, including Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma.

[3:46] And in 2024, Prager was paralyzed from the neck down due to a fall, and he’s still trying to recover from it. But PragerU still chugs along.

[3:57] Recently, I came across a video series produced by The Daily Wire, which is an American conservative media company founded in 2015 by political commentator Ben Shapiro and film director Jeremy Boring. So it is not an objective media effort. It’s the home of the transphobic Matt Walsh of the What is a Woman fame. Google that if you’re not familiar with him. The series that I saw was starring Dennis Prager and was titled Master’s Program with Dennis Prager. And it claims in the opening title that it is an educational series. It says it has 10 episodes, but I was really only concerned about two episodes that I saw that were titled The Consequences of Secularism. And it had a part one and a part two. So I was concerned because I consider myself secular.

[4:55] This is Prager’s bread and butter to complain that society is screwed unless we get right with God and he’s been saying this since the late at least the late 70s so you would think in 50 years time that since the 70s that something would have happened either way, society hasn’t collapsed although in this video he still makes that claim and religion or God has not died as Prager claims.

[5:23] At the heart of these two videos are his personal views, and what I intend to do in this episode is play some of the clips and comment on them so you can see where he’s coming from so people don’t think that I’m taking him out of context.

[5:41] So, on with the show.

[5:45] Diversity is our greatest strength. How often have you heard that? So here’s a beauty for you. If diversity is our greatest strength, why did the New York Times recently publish a piece that said the happiest countries in the world are Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland? They led the 2018 ranking of the World Happiness Report, which is a joke, the World Happiness Report. It cracks me up. Anyway, fine. So you can’t hold both. You can’t say that Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland are the happiest countries in the world and then tell me that diversity is our greatest strength. Because there’s no diversity in those four countries and they’re the happiest in the world. Virtually everybody is the same color. Virtually everyone’s the same race. Virtually everyone is the same religion whether they believe in it or not. The same stock, the same language. They’re as undiverse as you can get in the Western world, those four countries, and they’re the happiest. I’m not against diversity at all. Diversity can be a great strength if people share the same values. E pluribus unum, one of the mottos of America, out of many one. Oh, if we all buy basic moral values emanating from Judeo-Christian values and is reflected in the Constitution of the United States, for example, I think diversity can be a tremendous strain.

[7:07] But not if it’s used to divide people as it now is, and we don’t share a common value system any longer. Next time you hear about the happiest countries, you say, hmm, they don’t strike me as very diverse. Yeah, that was probably the silliest argument he’s made so far. And I thought that the complaining about the all-black dorm was one, but where he targets Scandinavia, Finland, and the Scandinavian countries being the happiest places and claiming it’s, well, there are, he doesn’t say it exactly, but what he’s claiming is they’re all white, blonde people and there’s no diversity. There is diversity in Scandinavia. There is some, some diversity. There’s, they’re taking in people. People are immigrating to Scandinavian countries from Africa and from Eastern Europe. And so they are getting that way. There is some racism in Sweden in particular. They have a skinhead movement that’s anti-immigrant. But there is some diversity. But the thing is, what he’s talking about happiest is they’re not happiest because of diversity.

[8:28] Those Scandinavian countries are normally at the top of the happiness list because they have a very good social safety net. They don’t have to pay for hospitals. They don’t have to pay for child care. They get plenty of vacations. They get paid a good wage. They get they get charged. You know, all the rich people get charged a fair tax that pays for it. You know, they have public transportation, good public transportation everywhere around the country.

[9:02] They don’t have a want for food. You know, some of those, I think it’s Sweden, has a basic income that everybody gets. If you don’t have a job, you get a basic income. You get a housing. They make sure you have housing and health care. That’s why they’re so happy. They’re not so happy because they have black people or they have Indians or they have Eastern Europeans. ends, that’s not what makes them happy. And that’s not why people move there. People move there because of the social safety net. Diversity is one of the strongest things that we had going for us in the United States. And he says, well, it could be good if we all have the same values. Well, we pretty much do all have the same values.

[9:55] You know, we want to help people. We don’t want people to hurt. Most people don’t want people to hurt. You know, the only differences that we have are politics and political viewpoints, how we want to have that accomplished. You know, some people like Dennis Prager, they believe that the government should not get involved in the market. We should have a free market. And he says that that will bring prosperity. Well, there’s other people on the other side where they say the free market would not bring prosperity. You know, the United States is the richest country, relatively richest country in the world. We shouldn’t have any homeless people. We shouldn’t have people trying to decide whether or not to pay a bill or go to the doctor. We should have Medicare for all. We should have single payer insurance like Scandinavian countries.

[10:56] But we don’t. And that’s why a lot of people are unhappy in the United States. It’s because of financial pressures, racial pressures, discrimination pressures. All those pressures make for unhappiness. And Dennis Prager and his buddies at the Daily Wire and other politically conservative groups are at the forefront of making sure that as many people are as unhappy as they can make you.

[11:27] Human worth is dependent, ironically, on the existence of a God creator of us. Otherwise, we are nothing in terms of meaning and in terms of specialness. We’re not so special. We think we’re special, but we’re deluding ourselves. But that specialness came from being created in God’s image. And, you know, following on from a previous clip about the same topic, I’ve got to agree with him on this, is we are not special. Now, where I disagree with him is the fact that your worth is dependent on God. That is not correct. That is not true. If it were true, would we be having debates about trans people today?

[12:21] And here’s the thing. This is what I want to explain. If, for example, we accept that we are all created in God’s image, that we are perfect in God’s image, and we’re all special and our worth depends on God. Let’s say that we were all created in God’s image. Then why are some religious people treating trans people so poorly? If we accept for the sake of argument right now that all of us were created in the image of God, every one of us, every single one of us was created in the image of God.

[13:13] Yet, there’s quite a few Christians and religious people who claim that trans people are abominations, that they go against God. How do they know that? There’s nothing in the Bible about it. There’s nothing in the religious literature about trans people. So if there’s nothing, there’s no biblical law against it or anything like that, then they have no right to harass and demean and try to take the rights away. Especially because if they’re creating God’s image, then their basic worth and dignity depends on God. And if they have basic worth and dignity, that’s even more, more so that they cannot be an abomination. That the people that are going against trans people and trying to take away their rights and lock them in a closet, out of sight, out of mind, they are going against God.

[14:25] Because they are attacking God’s creatures, somebody, people that were created in God’s image. You know, just like God created a gazelle, God created a human, God created a trans man, God created a trans woman. Right? If you’re an honest Christian, you have to agree with that.

[14:53] But that’s what I wanted to, that’s why I kind of played that clip is because he’s right in that we are not special. He’s wrong in that we were created in the image of God because we weren’t. And secular humanists do value humans. We respect everyone, treating every individual with respect, valuing their autonomy and unique qualities. We support human rights Advocating for universal human rights Life, liberty, security, equality As a direct result of inherent dignity, Everybody should be equal They should all enjoy their life, liberty And their property Because they are human Like it said in the Declaration of Independence minutes.

[15:45] In building society, we are working to create a just, compassionate, and democratic society using human reason and empirical knowledge, not dogma. It’s not what religion you believe. It’s whether or not you’re contributing to building a better society. And if you’re contributing to building a better society, then you are supporting the basic dignity and worth of humans. And why do we value humans without religion? Because it’s the right thing to do.

[16:28] There’s no biological or neuron reason to hate on people, to harass them, to fight them, to kill them, to murder them, or whatever, whatever you do. There’s nothing inherent in us that does that. You know, there might be some people that have issues that do bad things. But we all still have basic dignity and worth just because we’re human. We’re all the same. Whether you believe we are created in the image of God or not, you know, talk about objective morality. There’s objective morality for you. Humans deserve basic dignity and worth, no matter where they come from, no matter who they are, no matter who they love. And if you have a problem with that, maybe you’re on the wrong side of things. And you need to get right.

[17:35] The death of meaning. If there’s no God who created the human being and who cares about the human being, there’s no ultimate meaning to life.

[17:47] We’re all a coincidence. That’s all we are. We die, and for eternity, we’re in oblivion. We’re here for a tiny, tiny blink of an eye and then die. And it’s as if we didn’t exist. If there is no God, and I’m talking again about the God of the Bible, if there is no God who created us and who cares about us and who dispenses ultimate justice, there’s no meaning in life. And by the way, every secular philosopher that I know of has acknowledged this. They were honest. There’s no God. There’s no meaning. Of course not. There’s no ultimate meaning. You can make up a meaning. That’s called existentialism. Because you can’t look in the mirror in the morning and go, how you doing, meaningless one? You’ll go crazy. People have to make up a meaning. And some of them are beautiful. You’ll have meaning in your work. You’ll have meaning in being a mother or a father. You’ll have meaning in being a good neighbor. There are a whole host of beautiful things that can give you meaning. But ultimately, there’s no meaning you’re no different from from an ant do ants have ultimate meaning i don’t think so so here we go with the getting into some of the religious tropes that you can’t have meaning unless you believe in god and then he goes on and talks about how people create their own meaning, meaning from work meaning from family outside in your community.

[19:14] I agree with him, but he dismisses it. He says it’s not the same. It’s not the same. And he talks about existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophy emphasizing individual freedom, responsibility, and subjectivity, asserting that existence precedes essence. Meaning humans aren’t born with inherent purpose, but would create their own meaning through choices in an often absurd, meaningless universe.

[19:45] That’s the truth, Dennis Prager. That’s the truth. Meaning is what we give our lives. You know, if we want to sit on the couch and watch movies all day and we’re happy, that’s great. You know, if we want to go to church five times a week and we’re happy, so be it. But we are a life force on earth. We have a life cycle. We live and we die. And how we spend our time between our birth and our death is entirely up to us as individuals. That is the promise of humanism. We’re free. We’re individually free to make our own meaning and move our own way through this world.

[20:43] You know, we can have positive influence. We can have a negative influence, but it’s entirely up to us. There is no, you know, there’s no interceding by God or by religion. And you notice he also said Western Judeo religion. Like meaning only exists in the west you know what about buddhism and sintoism and and all those west all those religions in the east, you know they are saying the same thing that that meaning the religion gives them meaning, you know he’s just being um elitist is basically what he’s doing but again i what he talks about being the meaning in your job, finding meaning in your family. There’s many, many avenues of finding meaning. It doesn’t have to come from a holy book. It’s a possibility if that floats your boat, but it’s not required.

[21:49] Meaning doesn’t not, I better say this properly, meaning does not exist just because there’s no religion or you’re not religious. There is still meaning.

[22:13] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show.

[22:38] 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 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 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 an incredibly important part of life. So let me give you some data from the National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine.

[23:53] 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.

[24:18] That’s all religion gives you. Let’s review that. Enhanced social support, less substance abuse, and lower rates of psychopathology. That’s pretty powerful. By the way, this doesn’t mean that religion is true. That’s right. You can have your beliefs 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 nihilistic and destructive to the individual and to society. Greater rates of psychopathology, greater substance abuse, and more suicide. Ah, but who needs it? A 2016 study published by JAMA Psychiatry. JAMA 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 a study of 90,000 women over 14 years.

[25:23] 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? You said, because 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 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 the 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.

[26:43] 76% more likely to rise socioeconomically, which generally is associated with some increase in happiness. 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.

[27:18] 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, NSDUH. 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 12-step programs Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, were more likely to maintain sobriety. That was an interesting clip. It was interesting for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that he cited scientific studies. You know, he was holding it in his hand and they were flashing it on the screen. This study said this. This study said that. You know what study that he doesn’t appreciate or he doesn’t accept is a study, a recent study, that showed that gender-affirming care helps prevent suicides and mental depression in trans kids.

[28:41] Totally dismissed it. Like that happiness report that he talked about in Scandinavia that he laughed about. But when there’s a scientific study that proves his point, he shares it. That’s being a hypocrite. When you ignore scientific studies that don’t support your agenda and share the ones that do support your agenda, you’re being a hypocrite. And you’re going to say, well, Doug, you’re not sharing anything. Well, I have some studies.

[29:20] They had this Pew Research Center just released its Religious Landscape Survey recently. And the big takeaway from the one that they did, the recent one, showed that the shift away from Christianity had finally leveled off. After years of people ditching the Christian label and becoming some form of non-religious, that trend had basically come to a halt and even showed hints of reversing. But there is no religious revival in this country.

[29:54] They say that there are no signs of a religious revival in the country. At best, the key indicators of realisticity are stable for now. But long-term trends suggest that you’ll see a further drop in religiosity in the future. And Pew says, what is happening with religion among young adults today? Some media reports have suggested that there may be a religious revival taking place among young adults, especially young men in the U.S. But our recent polls, along with other high-quality surveys we have analyzed, saw no clear evidence that this kind of nationwide religious resurgence is underway. And so you’re probably asking yourself, well, why are people leaving organized religion? There was a research group, PRRI, looked into the question in early 2024, and it boiled down to logic, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, clergy, sex abuse scandals, and the toll it takes on mental health.

[30:57] PRRI found that 63% of nuns say they left their faith because they come to their senses and just stop believing all that nonsense. But there were other answers on the list as well. 47% of the unaffiliated cited anti-LGBTQ teachings. 41% said their families were just never that religious to begin with. 32% said it was bad for their mental health. 31% mentioned clergy sex abuse scandals. 20% said their churches had become too political. And the gap was wider depending on if you’re a Democrat or not. And along younger Americans, many more of them, 60%, cited anti-LGBTQ bigotry for leaving organized religion. And the thing is that they haven’t gone to anything else. They’ve become secular. They haven’t gone to another church.

[31:57] And when they talk about the clergy sex abuse, there was just an article this week that some insurance companies that insure the Archdiocese of New York say they’re not going to pay for covering up the sex abuse scandals. They’re not going to pay the insurance for when they pay the victims. So that’s going to have to come out of their coffers, their direct coffers, instead of insurance money. And then, of course, then we had just a year or two, might have been two or three years ago, where the Houston Chronicle newspaper had an expose on the Southern Baptist Convention where they had something like 300 leaders of that church were accused or arrested for child abuse, child sex abuse.

[32:51] You know and so this is real data you know he likes to dennis is talking about data trying to prove how great religion is and that you’re not going to take drugs and drink if you if you are religious and that’s fine if he wants to cite those studies that’s fine but then you’ve got to also consider the negative aspects of religion.

[33:16] And it’s causing a very pronounced problem with attendance. That’s why you have the blow up of LifeWise Academy in public schools, starting here in Ohio and going across the country. It’s funded by the big names and conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and Moms for Liberty and all those people. They’re funding this. They’re putting millions of dollars into this. LifeWise Academy is sitting on $35 million to inject religion into public schools. Why? Because they know, based on science, that if you reach a kid before he turns 14, he’s more than likely to become a churchgoer. They’re indoctrinating children. That’s why LifeWise wants to be part of the school day, because they are injecting religion into the school day to indoctrinate children, whether their parents want them to or not. And they’re indoctrinating them into the Southern Baptist Convention form of Christianity. I wonder what Dennis Prager would think about that. Well, he’s got his own curriculum, religious-based curriculum, that he sells through PragerU that’s picked up in some of the states recently.

[34:43] So what I want you to do is I want you to go to the PragerU website and do a search on gender-affirming care and see what pops up. You’ll see them rejecting any actual science about the benefits of gender-affirming care.

[35:04] But sure, people are happier when they’re religious. Sure they are. West, the Christian faith has an uncommonly long tradition of opposition to slavery. St. Bethilda was a former slave herself who campaigned for the abolition of slavery in the 7th century. St. Anselm outlawed slavery in 1102, while Archbishop of Canterbury William Wilberforce and the Clapham sect spent all their energies and resources fighting to bring an end to the practice, inspired in this vision by their Christian faith. And again, I’m a Jew telling you this. I have no axe to grind here. My axe to grind is what is true. That’s my biggest axe, just as a general statement. My beliefs? You got to tell the truth. So people talk about all the bad Christianity did, but you never learn of all the good that Christianity did.

[35:59] What is the world in which human rights were enshrined, where women were elevated from second-class status? These developed in the West. The West was formed by Christianity, which was ultimately formed by the Jewish scriptures, known as the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. That’s why Margaret Thatcher said, the West is a Judeo-Christian civilization. You drop the Judeo-Christian roots, you drop the civilization. Slavery? Every society had slavery. Every. In Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, before it was Latin America, Mesoamerica, South America, everywhere, Native Americans, Blacks, everyone had slaves. Muslims had an immense number of slaves. So the question is not who had slaves, not what country or nation or civilization had slavery. What nation or civilization abolished slavery? And the answer was the Christian or Judeo-Christian one of the West. That’s what mature people will ask is the question. You don’t ask how is any group like everybody else. You ask how were they different.

[37:15] Now, the reason why I presented this clip is because he talks about, he brings out the old adage that who abolished slavery? It was Christians. Didn’t you know that? He always says Judeo-Christians because he feels slighted if he doesn’t mention Judaism. Yeah, the Christians, they got rid of it. The West got rid of it. No, it was the people that were in the Anglican religion in the UK got abolished it. It didn’t get abolished in the United States until after the Civil War.

[37:53] So there was like a 30-year gap between when it was abolished in England to when it was abolished in the United States. Yeah, the U.K. abolished slavery in 1833, and the U.S. Didn’t abolish it until 1864 with the passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution.

[38:15] And, of course, he also brought up the old trope, well, everybody had slaves. Yeah, most of the different civilizations around the world did have slaves I mean, history comes from that type of thing Where you had the lords and the feudals and the peons and things like that That doesn’t mean it’s good There was plenty of religious people that supported slavery, And here in the United States, religious groups were divided on slavery Back then The southern churches supported slavery While the northern ones opposed it, Most of the major abolitionists of the day Lived in the north.

[39:04] And then I have a quote here, it’s from a Civil War Battlefields website, which is odd. But this quote says, The division of the churches into northern and southern denominations sharpened the nation’s religious divide. In the 15 years before secession and civil war, southern Methodists and Baptists brought to maturity a pro-slavery theology that touted the morality of slaveholding, the superiority of slave society, and the racial inferiority of African Americans. At the same time, the perfectionism and millennianism of the northern churches provide a moral foundation for a variety of social reform movements, including anti-slavery. Though reading the same Bible and praying to the same God, America’s churches had by the 1850s become distinctly separate with very different views as to what God’s plan was for the future.

[40:07] And so we see that today with how the Southern churches and the Northern religious people operate. You have the Southern churches that don’t agree with it being inclusive. You have major black churches that vote Democratic. You have a division of the churches. But when it came to slavery back during the Civil War time period, the southern churches massaged, let’s put it that way, they massaged their theology to support slavery. Even though the Holy Bible is quite clear against it. One of the Ten Commandments, thou shall not steal, is about kidnapping.

[41:06] You know, don’t steal my slaves, I guess. I guess that’s what it means. But, yeah, that’s one thing that I find interesting about Christianity, especially evangelical Christianities, is they like to massage their theology to support whatever political or social viewpoint that they have. And Prager also does that, even though he’s not evangelical, he’s Jewish, but he still massages a lot of his views to fit a particular political agenda.

[41:45] For more information about the topics in this episode, including links used, please visit the episode page at glasscityhumanist.show. Glass City Humanist is hosted, written, and produced by Douglas Berger, and he’s solely responsible for the content.