Dennis Prager is Wrong About The 10 Commandments

one two three four five six seven II no no ten commandments good morning everybody my name is Alex and since I began making videos on YouTube one of the most requested channels that I've had to respond to is Prager University now you've probably already come across their videos before you might recognize the format they generally make political videos with a whole host of guest speakers they've had people like ayaan Hirsi Ali ben shapiro they do also sometimes like to delve into the philosophy of religion and this video is kind of a merger of the two because we're talking about the 10 commandments and their application to society and we're lucky enough to have Dennis Prager himself presenting the video now he seems to have a few misunderstandings here that I thought it would be interesting to try and rectify so well I'll let you take it away mr. Prager no document in world history so changed the world for the better as did the ten commandments which set which set as the Ten Commandments I mean as it happens there are no less than three versions of the Ten Commandments administered to Moses in the Old Testament only one of which is actually referred to as the Ten Commandments and only two of which are written on two stone tablets now funnily enough as it happened the most popular version of the Ten Commandments the version detailed in Exodus 20 and in fact a version being presented here is neither refer to as the Ten Commandments nor is it written on stone tablets in the Bible in fact the version that is called the Ten Commandments and written on two stone tablets is wildly different from more familiar version and contains things like keeping the feast of unleavened bread 43 Ali has a fantastic video on this I'll leave a link in the description recommend that you all watch it but it's worth noting that the Ten Commandments that dennis prager are talking about and not actually the real Ten Commandments at least not according to to this guy Western civilization the civilization that developed universal human rights created women's equality ended slavery created parliamentary democracy among other unique achievements would not have developed without them ok firstly nobody invented women's equality women have always been equal it's just taken us a bit of time to realize but slavery you're really going to bring up slavery not only does the Bible not outlaw and not condemn slavery it actively condones it going as far as to give you instructions as to how to keep your slave now I know many people argue that slavery back then and biblical times was more like a kind of work contract as we'd recognize it today but ask me this imagine that you got a new job and one day your employer comes over to you and you've either done something wrong or maybe you've done everything right and he's just in a bad mood and he decides to beat you up is that okay because according to the Bible it is the Bible says that you can beat your slaves mercilessly as long as they don't die it's only if they die that you need to be punished for it but as long as they get up after a few days it's all good it's all very well and good saying that the Bible was used by people to abolish slavery but it was also used just as legitimately to defend it so we're not off to a great start here as you will see when each of the Ten Commandments is explained these Commandments are as relevant today as when they were given over 3,000 years ago in fact they're so relevant that the Ten Commandments are all that is necessary to make a good world a world free of tyranny and cruelty well except for the fact that they don't seem to mention slavery rape Peter you get a picture imagine for a moment a world in which there was no murder or theft in such a world there would be no need for armies or police or weapons men and women and children could walk anywhere at any time of day or night without any fear of being killed or robbed imagine further a world in which no one coveted what belonged to their neighbor yes this is a good one the only-- of the ten commandments it doesn't just tell you what you can't do it tells you what you can't want you're not allowed to think in this way God knows what you're thinking and can punish you for it this is as Hitchens said totalitarianism defined but also without the coveting of what other people have there would be no incentive to go out and get it if you didn't want money then what's the point in starting a business if you on a family then what's the point in socializing if you don't want the success that you see in others if you don't cover it to be at their level then you will never have any reason to try to get there this also to divert for just a moment seems to completely undermine the idea of capitalism which relies on the desire to obtain more wealth more Goods more success and if there's one channel on YouTube which defends capitalism to no end its Prager University the world in which children honor their mother and father and the family unit thrived but of course no mention of parents having to respect their children in return so God presumably doesn't care all that much about child abuse and domestic violence of this kind no no as long as children always respect their parents and if they don't well then you should kill them a world in which people obey the injunction not to lie what like how god asks Moses to lie to the Pharaoh of Egypt a few chapters prior the recipe for a good world is all there in these ten sublime Commandments funny how as of yet you haven't mentioned the rest of the Ten Commandments namely thou shalt have no other gods before me thou shalt not make graven images thou shalt not take the name of thy Lord in vain perhaps because they have absolutely nothing to do with morality perhaps because they're entirely pointless perhaps because they're so extremely often broken by members of your face but there is a catch oh let me guess is it that they were written by man and not by God and therefore we should take them all with a grain of salt because they may have been written specifically for the Israelites who wrote the Bible and can't be applied to today's modern society the Ten Commandments are predicated on the belief that they were given by an authority higher than any man any king or any government oh yeah that was my second choice yeah that's why the sentence preceding the Ten Commandments asserts the following God spoke all these words and we know why we should listen to this God character don't we because it says so in the commandments and you know why we should listen to the Commandments don't need because they were spoken by God or something you see if the Ten Commandments as great as they are were given by any human authority then any person could say who was this man Moses who was this king or queen who is this government to tell me how I should behave and I'm sorry but who is your God if he does exist and death create me then that doesn't automatically give his whim precedence over my life if I created a society of people it's not moral of me to torture or mistreat them just because I created them if God wants to tell me how to behave then you better have a damn good reason to doing circle and saying oh well it's because I'm God isn't good enough remember when you were a kid you used to ask your parents for something and they say no and you say well why and they say oh because I said so that's what your God seems to be doing and it's not very helpful okay so why is God indispensable to the Ten Commandments because to put it as directly as possible if it is in God who declares murder wrong murder isn't wrong well you're half right mr. Prager namely that murder isn't wrong not objectively anyway oh I know shocker I've actually just had a conversation with Frank Turek about this so if you're interested in hearing why I think this check out my last video if you missed it I don't wanna go to the same subject matter more than necessary yes this strikes many people today as incomprehensible even absurd many of you were thinking is this guy saying you can't be a good person if you don't believe in God let me respond as clearly as possible I am NOT saying that of course there are good people who don't believe in God just as there are bad people who do and many of you are also thinking I believe murder is wrong I don't need God to tell me now that response is only half true I have no doubt that if you're an atheist and you say that you believe murder is wrong you believe murder is wrong but forgive me you do need God to tell you we all need God to tell us you see even if you figured out murder is wrong on your own without God and the Ten Commandments how do you know it's wrong the same way that you know that chocolate tastes better than tar because it's a subjective opinion that you all it just so happens to be shared pretty much universally among everybody else to the extent that it may as well be objective but just because every single other person on the planet pretty much with a few exceptional exceptions would agree that chocolate tastes better than tar doesn't make it an objective fact in fact if you think about it trying to objectively measure tastes doesn't make any sense whatsoever and I'm sorry to say that the same thing applies to morality first you prove that objective morality actually exists then we can talk about where it comes from the fact is you can't because without God right and wrong are just personal beliefs personal opinions I think shoplifting is okay you don't unless there is a God all morality is just opinion and belief yeah yeah you've pretty much got it there another problem with the view that you don't need God to believe that murder is wrong is a lot of people haven't shared your view yeah like God when he decides that murder is okay although of course this only happens in the very exceptional circumstances of retaliation for heinous crimes such as loving the wrong person or getting the wrong kind of hacker and you don't have to go back very far in history to prove this in the twentieth century millions of people in communist societies and under Nazism killed about 100 million people and that doesn't count a single soldier killed in war what relevance does this have in the slightest yeah okay I'm not comfortable with the idea that Stalin's regime was only subjectively wrong but just because we're uncomfortable with something doesn't mean that it's not true this is what I don't understand about the moral argument when it's presented in this form people say well there has to be a God because it's not then then these people did nothing objectively wrong well yeah sorry no they didn't we have to be adults about this and of course it goes without saying but just in case somebody tries to quote me out of context I personally condemn Stalin never thought I'd have to say that on camera but as do presumably you as Dennis Prager as does every single person that I have ever Mette but that doesn't make it objective so don't get too confident about people's ability to figure out right from wrong without a higher authority yes it's much better for somebody to base their morality upon a higher being such as the God of the Christian Bible for example now who can I think of as Nixon Adolphe Hitler that bloody Godwin's Laurie but also who's to say that your God is the correct higher power I'm pretty sure that Salman Abadi was just conforming to the wishes of his own higher power when he blew himself up at an ariana grande concert the only difference is that his God is different to yours and the only way that you can say that one God is better than another is through some kind of subjective analysis of the morality that they command and this is the main point of the video which effectively ends here that we need the Ten Commandments to have congruence with the existence of objective morality which we know exists because of the Ten Commandments it's almost impressively circular subtly dangerous and very easily dismissable once you give it a moment's thought but anyway I have been Alex J O'Connor as always got some pretty exciting things coming up including a thrilling transatlantic adventure if you want to stay tuned with that then head over to my social media which you can find here I want to thank you as always for watching if you want to see a much better breakdown with the Ten Commandment than I could ever hope to provide then I'll leave a link to a Christopher Hitchens video in the description which I'm sure you've already seen anyway but in the meantime thanks for watching don't forget to subscribe and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: CosmicSkeptic

Views: 393,851

Rating: 4.6813369 out of 5

Keywords: Alex O'Connor, cosmic, skeptic, cosmicskeptic, Prager, prageru, prager university, dennis prager, ten commandments, 10 commandments, Bible, Christianity, God, Atheism, Atheist, religion, debate, Exodus, slavery, Moses, Judaism, Law of Moses, philosophy, morality, objective morality, subjective, moral, ethics

Id: _6vL32Mwhcs

Length: 12min 54sec (774 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2017