Why
Societies Need God as Their Foundation
By Dennis Prager
We are constantly reminded about the destructive consequences of
religion -- intolerance, hatred, division, inquisitions, persecutions of
“heretics,” and holy wars. Though far from the whole of history, they
are, nevertheless true. There have been many awful consequences of
religion.
What one almost never hears described are the deleterious consequences
of secularism -- the terrible developments that have accompanied the breakdown
of traditional religion and belief in God. For every thousand students
who learn about the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials, maybe
two learn to associate Gulag, Auschwitz, The Cultural Revolution and the Cambodian
genocide with secular regimes and ideologies.
For
all the problems associated with belief in God, the death of God leads to far
more of them.
So,
while it is not possible to prove (or disprove) God’s existence, what is provable
is what happens when people stop believing in God.
2.
Without God, there is no objective meaning to life. We are all merely
random creations of natural selection whose existence has no more intrinsic
purpose or meaning than that of a pebble equally randomly produced.
3.
Life is ultimately a tragic fare if there is no God. We live, we suffer,
we die -- some horrifically, many prematurely -- and there is only oblivion
afterward.
4.
Human beings need instruction manuals. This is as true for acting morally
and wisely as it is for properly flying an airplane. One’s heart is often
no better a guide to what is right and wrong than it is to the right and wrong
way to fly an airplane. The post-religious secular world claims to need
no manual; that heart and reason are sufficient guides to leading a good life
and to making a good world.
5.
If there is no God, the kindest and most innocent victims of torture and murder
have no better a fate after death than do the most cruel torturers and mass
murderers. Only if there is a good God do Mother Teresa and Adolf Hitler
have different fates.
6.
With the death of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many Westerners believe
in little. That is why secular Western Europe has been unwilling and
therefore unable to confront evil, whether it was Communism during the Cold War
or Islamic totalitarians in its midst today.
7.
Without God, people in the West often become less, not more, rational. It
was largely the secular, not the religious, who believed in the utterly
irrational doctrine of Marxism. It was largely the secular, not the religious,
who believed that men’s and women’s natures are basically the same, that
perceived differences between the sexes are all socially induced.
Religious people in Judeo-Christian countries largely confine their irrational
beliefs to religious beliefs (theology), while the secular, without religion to
enable the non-rational to express itself, end up applying their irrational
beliefs to society, where such irrationalities do immense harm.
8.
If there is no God, the human being has no free will. He is a robot,
whose every action is dictated by genes and environment. Only if one
posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who
implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free
will.
9.
If there is no God, humans and “other” animals are of equal value. Only
if one posits that humans, not animals, are created in the image of God do
humans have any greater intrinsic sanctity than baboons. This explains
the movement among the secularized elite to equate humans and animals.
10.
Without God, there is little to inspire people to create inspiring art.
That is why contemporary art galleries and museums are filled with “art” that
celebrates the scatological, the ugly and the shocking. Compare this art
to Michelangelo’s art in the Sistine chapel. The latter elevates the
viewer -- because Michelangelo believed in something higher than himself and
higher than all men.
11.
Without God nothing is holy. This is definitional. Holiness
emanates from a belief in the holy. This explains, for example, the far
more widespread acceptance of public cursing in secular society than in
religious society. To the religious, there is holy speech and profane
speech. In much of secular society the very notion of profane speech is
mocked.
12.
Without God, humanist hubris is almost inevitable. If there is nothing
higher than man, no Supreme Being, man becomes the supreme being.
13.
Without God, there are no inalienable human rights. Evolution confers no
rights. Molecules confer no rights. Energy has no moral
concerns. That is why America’s Founders wrote in the Declaration of
Independence that we are endowed “by our Creator” with certain inalienable
rights. Rights depend upon a moral source, a rights giver.
14.
“Without God,” Dostoevsky famously wrote, “all is permitted.” There has
been plenty of evil committed by believers in God, but the widespread cruelties
and the sheer number of innocents murdered by secular regimes -- Nazi, Fascist
and Communist regimes -- dwarfs the evil done in the name of religion.
As
noted in the beginning, none of this proves, or even necessarily argues for,
God’s existence. It makes the case for the necessity, not the existence,
of God. “Which God?” the secularist will ask. The God of Israel,
the God of America’s founders, “the Holy God who is made holy by justice”
(Isaiah), the God of the Ten Commandments, the God who demands love of neighbor,
the God who endows all human beings with certain inalienable rights, the God
who is cited on the Liberty Bell because He is the Author of liberty.
That is the God being referred to here, without Whom we will be vanquished
by those who believe in less noble gods, both secular and divine.
Dennis Prager,
one of
