If There Is No God, Murder Isn’t Wrong | 5 Minute Video
If there is no God, murder isn’t wrong. You may think it’s wrong, but how do you know it’s wrong? As Dennis Prager explains, without God, all morality is mere opinion.
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Script:
Do you believe that good and evil exist?
The answer to this question separates Judeo-Christian values from secular values.
Let me offer the clearest possible example: murder.
Is murder wrong? Is it evil? Nearly everyone would answer yes. But now I’ll pose a much harder question: How do you know?
I am sure that you think that murder is wrong. But how do you know?
If I asked you how you know that that the earth is round, you would show me photographs from outer space, or offer me measurable data. But what photographs could you show, what measurements could you provide, that prove that murder or rape or theft is wrong?
The fact is…you can’t. There are scientific facts, but without God there are no moral facts.
In a secular world, there can only be opinions about morality. They may be personal opinions or society’s opinion. But only opinions. Every atheist philosopher I have read or debated on this subject has acknowledged that if there is no God, there is no objective morality.
Judeo-Christian values are predicated on the existence of a God of morality. In other words, only if there is a God who says murder is wrong, is murder wrong. Otherwise, all morality is opinion.
The entire Western world – what we call Western Civilization – is based on this understanding.
Now, let me make two things clear.
First, this doesn’t mean that if you don’t believe in God, you can’t be a good person. There are plenty of kind and moral individuals who don’t believe in God and Judeo-Christian values. But the existence of these good people has nothing – nothing – to do with the question of whether good and evil really exist if there is no God.
Second, there have been plenty of people who believed in God who were not good people; indeed, more than a few have been evil – and have even committed evil in God’s name. The existence of God doesn’t ensure people will do good. I wish it did. The existence of God only ensures that good and evil objectively exist and are not merely opinions.
Without God, we therefore end up with what is known as moral relativism – meaning that morality is not absolute, but only relative to the individual or to the society. Without God, the words “good” and “evil” are just another way of saying “I like” and “I don’t like.” If there is no God, the statement “Murder is evil” is the same as the statement “I don’t like murder.”
Now, many will argue that you don’t need moral absolutes; people won’t murder because they don’t want to be murdered. But that argument is just wishful thinking. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao didn’t want to be murdered, but that hardly stopped them from murdering about a hundred million people.
It is not a coincidence that the rejection of Judeo-Christian values in the Western world – by Nazism and Communism – led to the murder of all these innocent people.
It is also not a coincidence that the first societies in the world to abolish slavery – an institution that existed in every known society in human history – were Western societies rooted in Judeo-Christian values. And so were the first societies to affirm universal human rights; to emancipate women; and to proclaim the value of liberty.
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So Prager is against all war, then. Great!
Good and Evil are not entities. They don't "exist" except as notions. Same with Prager's god. None of that means that we as humans can't have behavioral standards and innate evolved psychologies that define and assess particular actions as good or evil… very much similar to Prager creating his own god and assessing him as good.
Jesus Christ this argument is stupid, you don’t need a book to tell that murder is wrong, you just need basic human emotions.
but god has murdered people in the bible
Wrong. You can respect life without believeing in God. It doesn't take much brain to see that a violent world is not livable. THe atheist's God is Life. To put it in a Spinozian form : God is LIfe. ANd there there is no big difference between believers and atheists. Atheists are really agnosticists. God's existence is not an interesting subject. We just don't want to use it to explain anything, not even the mystery of Creation. It's really about how you live your life. We agnosticists simply don't like anyone tell us what we have to believe or follow. Refusing God is actually refusing to listen someone speaking in the name of God.
This is false in so many ways. I have no idea where to start.
The death of Judeo- Christian is mainly caused by charlatans using God to enriched themselves. Kinda like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Liberty University hard stance on everyday living while living a sinful life. Or the Hillsongs church. Or the Church of the Holy Roman Empire that wasn’t secular and created a theocracy which brought about other denominations that revolted against the Catholic Church and its many abuse throughout history.
all you did with this video is make me think you might be a psychopath who needs a god to tell him what's right and what is wrong.
"Oh we don't need God to know that murder is wrong" and then they be talking about abortion
I feel like there should be laws against fraudulently disguising yourself as an academic authority.
There is no “university” here, and this is not “education”.
This is simple propaganda.
Yes… but Prager conflates the epistemological ("How do we know?") question with the more substantial ontological ("How?") question.
I believe in God
That’s enough for me
🥃🔥
Peace 🕊️
Who's going to tell this guy that secular morality is a thing, and preceeds his cult by a couple centuries? That fact alone should expose how wrong he is. Did he really doesn't know? I think he knows, and he's just telling lies. Because remember: telling lies isn't wrong if you do it for jesus. As many other immoral things aren't immoral if god commands them. So shut up.
Murder is defined as the unlawful killing of another person. If it isn't wrong it isn't murder. God doesn't say murder is wrong, the dictionary does.
I'll debate you any time! Here are some objective facts. The laws of nature clearly don't change much over space and time. The laws of nature made me conscious. Since they made me conscious, I can assume other humans are conscious. Since we're all conscious and we all agree pain and sadness are "bad," we can define "evil" as "causing pain or sadness" and "good" as "causing happiness or prosperity." If you want to be happy, and make others happy, and live in a good world, and if you want to avoid retaliation from people you have wronged, you should do good acts, not evil ones. And since we're discussing facts, not opinions, what objective facts can you show that prove that god exists?
I think a better way to put it is "what incentive is there to not murder if religion didn't exist?" Or anything that involves being immoral at all.
Ye gods, what a dumb video.
His appeal to the subjective existence of God as a source of objective morality would be a funny self-contradiction if he wasn't dead serious.
The facts that stop murder, etc. in a rational society are that for all men to live peacefully in a society are that their individual existence must be revered. They must lead lives in calm productivity, keeping the products they enable for themselves &/or for trade, without being coerced or defrauded by anyone nor coercing or defrauding anyone else. Liberty in a society of Men requires that s/he be free to use his natural, biological faculty of reason freely to interact with others by mutual consent. Politicians who infringe on citizens' life or liberty violate the COTUS as the Founders designed it.
Prager's popular argument fails badly but religionist and atheist do not seem able to think more profoundly.
imma drop a bomb rq: the being you refer to as the "all powerful god" is some random authority figure who existed 2000 years ago and invented christianity.
If there is no god, murder isn’t bad. Ur right, Yes, true. And Max Stirner would say: That’s good.
Did morality originate from ancient Judaism? If not, What about Adam & Eve? What were they guided by?
that‘s why we have laws fot it, smart ass. u "god" doe not matter but laws is.
so if there is no god, "you" people dont even konw killing poeple are wrong? It's not God you need, it's brains.
The popular comments here are more interesting than the video. The response to Pragers' elementary discussion on the dichotomy between the subjective and objective arouses such an invective filled backlash, that it's hard not to conclude the reactive arguments are founded more on a power threat to personal moral autonomy/self valuation, than on the truth of Pragers' assertions.
"I cannot see how to refute the arguments for the subjectivity of ethical values, but I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don't like it." – Bertrand Russell
I'm sure there were and are those that beg to differ:
God of the Bible commanded the Israelites to “destroy all the inhabitants of the land” of Canaan (Joshua 9:24). They were to conquer, kill, and cast out the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites (Exodus 23:23; Deuteronomy 7:1-2; Joshua 3:10).
Apparently, having given the above 400 years to repent, he gave instruction to the Jews to expel them. If they did not flee then to kill them.
Now, this notion of 400 years being too much for god and he lost his patience, this is to put human emotions and sense of time onto an omnipotent and omniscient deity. After-all, he's (correct pronoun?) been around for ever, at least for 4.5 billion years, probably before that (according to religious "experts"). 400 years is just one tick of god's clock.
Why does he (its that pronoun again) need simple human beings to do god's bidding? Surely it could have sent down fire and brimstone, hurl burning meteors onto the people below, subject the lands to lightning strikes and huge damaging storms, floods etc, no! He gets humans to eradicate another group of humans.
Sounds like straightforward colonisation and murder to me.
If god used the above methods of mass extinction, I might have sympathy with the god delusion. After all, it would show its power and authority. god does not.
It is straightforward case of one group of humans justifying the expulsion and murder of another group of humans, something we're genetically programmed to do, and therefore, unable to avoid.
I like how everybody is misquoting him by saying "This means that christians are only good because they have a god!", I know you all want to feel smart with a 'gotcha' moment on the christians but you all did watch after 1:48, right? He literally says that atheists can be good and that christians can be bad. Stop acting so intelligent, think a little, and finish a video before you comment
If morality is objective then you don't need God for it. Because it would be wrong regalress of what god says. However, if Morality is based on what God stands for, then it is subjective and open to change given his mood.
It's amazing how people in the comments are arguing against the video without actually arguing against the video
Idk, it's just god's opinion too. Sure you might believe it holds authority over other opinions, but then that's just YOUR opinion, and mine is different.
The definition of murder is literally immoral killing. It’s literally in the definition.
I saw a video of a crow helping another animal cross the street. This crow had no knowledge of god yet it still decided to be a nice being.
In other words. This video is full of it
If God is the source of all morality, the story of Abraham willingly ready to sacrifice his son, Isaac, makes sense. God orders Abraham to sacrifice his son. So, murder is right at that instant, then God changes his mind and orders Abraham to stop. Murder is now wrong.
The proper religious believer will act like Abraham and do whatever God tells him to do.
But we react very badly to this story. We are outraged at God’s caprice, cruelty, willfulness. Why? Because we do have a deep sense of what it is to be a moral person and to act morally. God and Abraham did not pass our smell test.
This means a religiously grounded founding of morality is naturally going to be morally relative and subject to the deity’s whims. There will be no human foundation to morality, and hence, this is the key insight, morality will mean NOTHING to humans. Just do it, and don’t bother to ask anything about it. Obey God. Without question.
That’s it. That’s the key virtue for humans under this system. Morality really has nothing to do with it.
Most of you have missed the point. This video is for two kinds of people: curious philosophers and amoral people who legitimately need a reason to do and be good
Fun fact: hitler was Christian and the entire party believed God was on their side. Even the churches backed them