Dennis Prager's Attack On Secularism Is Christian Nationalist Smear Campaign

We look into a video series featuring conservative commentator Dennis Prager titled "The Consequences of Secularism." We take a critical look at Prager's claims, which often rely on misleading language and emotional rhetoric, aiming to push his agenda against secularism - which he doesn't define. Throughout the episode, we dissect the implications of his discourse and what they reveal about the broader cultural conversation around religion and secularism.

Prager's perspective paints a dire picture of a society that he believes is collapsing due to a decline in religious adherence. He presents himself as a defender of Judeo-Christian values, arguing that the absence of belief leads to societal chaos. I examine his repetitive assertions and the logical inconsistencies they often entail, beginning with his opening gambit, which claims that if society becomes too secular, it will inevitably collapse. He doesn't see the irony of making that same claim since the 1970s

We need to call out the selection of studies he presents, especially when they align with his ideological perspective while he dismisses findings that contradict his agenda. For instance, while Prager cites research linking religious involvement with lower suicide rates, we point out studies that highlight the mental health benefits of secular support systems particularly for trans kids that Prager and his PragerU regularly dismiss.

We also explore Prager's tendency to conflate individual beliefs with broader social policies. His claims about movements like "defund the police" are particularly scrutinized, revealing his tendency to misrepresent nuanced discussions within progressive circles. Defunding police, often tied to calls for social justice reform, is framed by Prager as a sign of moral decay, while I argue that this viewpoint ignores the legitimate motivations behind advocacy for community-centered safety approaches.

Full show notes and links used

Chapters

• 1:00 Introduction to Dennis Prager and the video
• 5:40 Random Stipulations Made
• 8:44 Secularism will believe anything absurd
• 15:11 Look at MY studies not those studies
• 28:09 Men Give Birth?
• 30:32 Men and Women Are The Same?

Transcript

[0:05] Conservative political commentator Dennis Prager hosted a video called The Consequences of Secularism that used vague language, misinformation, and think tank talking

[0:15] points to smear anyone who disagrees with him. He definitely isn't a student of Jesus. This is Secular Left, with Doug Berger, an independent, religion-free, progressive viewpoint on topics of the day.

[1:00] 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 but.

[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. Hi, welcome to the Master's program. I'm Dennis Prager. This is part one of what I call the consequences of secularism, or to be precise, the terrible consequences of secularism. So I'm sure you've all heard that some people are religious extremists. Have you ever heard of secular extremists or secular extremism? No. And you know why? Because the general modern belief is you can be too religious, but you can't be too secular. It's like being too rich or too happy or too healthy. You can't be too secular. But it's not true. If society gets too secular, it ends. That's right, it ends. It is the end of the civilization as we have known it. It is a catastrophe.

[6:46] So that's an interesting clip. That's the opening for his video. In that, he makes some stipulations. He's talking about Judeo-Christian religion. He's telling you he's not trying to tell you what's true and what's not true. But does it not seem odd to make an argument against secularism By not promoting religion as being true? I mean, why would one believe in religion.

[7:24] If it isn't true or you're not arguing that it is true. See, he's doing a rhetorical thing. You know, he's trying to, basically, he's trying to make this argument generic to apply to any religious person. But he has a particular agenda, a particular religion. Judaism is part of that. Christianity is part of that. He talks about the Holy Bible. He doesn't talk about any other religion. In later clips, we'll hear him talk about that he's only talking about religion in the West. He's not talking about Buddhism. He's not talking about Taoism, Shintoism, or anything like that. And so...

[8:11] It's kind of odd that he is making these stipulations at the beginning, and then he does the no true Scotsman thing when he says, well, if you're an honest atheist, you'll agree with me. And he's not giving this atheist anything to agree with right now. The fact that he set up these stipulations, these things that he's going to talk about, and he doesn't want to seem like he's pushing his religion, even though throughout the rest of this video, he's pushing his religion. When people stop believing in God, and we're talking about the God of the West, the God of the Hebrew and Bible and the New Testament, when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing. They believe in anything. That is one of the great truths of our time. They believe in anything.

[9:09] Have you noticed how much chaos is out there today? Like defund the police? Religious people, you don't identify the idea of defund the police. An idea that only increases human suffering. If you're a big fan of rape and murder and theft, you should be an advocate of defunding the police. I can't think of a stupider idea. I can, in fact, think of many ideas that are as stupid or, if you will, as absurd. But that's a big one. And this is all a function of the secular world in which we live. We become stupid as we depart from the wisdom bases of the West, which are located in that book that people laugh at called the Bible. All right. So in that bit, we start getting into now the meat of his talk. It's about 10, 12 minutes in to the first video. And he finally gets into talking about the consequences of secularism using this quote by G.K. Chesterton.

[10:19] But Chesterton's name rings a bell because he was an English author, philosopher, Christian apologist, poet, journalist, and magazine editor, and literary and art critic. He created the Priest Detective Father Brown that has a series on PBS, if people watch that. And he also has his writings have been adopted by the Catholic Church to start academies, classical academies based on the Chesterton School system. I think they just use his name. I don't think he actually invented it. But I was wondering why that name sounded familiar to me when I saw it. So Prager uses a quote from this guy saying that people that don't believe in God don't believe nothing. They believe anything.

[11:15] And as a secular person, a secular humanist, I can tell you that that is not true. I don't believe anything. You know, I have critical thinking skills. I have skepticism. I depend on evidence. I might have some personal ideas, personal feelings about things. But I don't try to persuade people with that personal stuff. You know, I usually try to make sure I prove things and use evidence and, you know, so I don't believe anything. And unfortunately, that's what he talks about on this one.

[12:00] And then he talks about defunding the police. It's obvious that he doesn't know what defund the police means, or he does know and he's misleading you using the classical conservative political version of it. But defund the police never meant get rid of the police, even though there was some people on the left that that's what it meant. In general, when people were using that term, they were talking about redirecting funding from the police into other areas that were non-police that would still make people safe, like mental health therapies, safe places for people to go when they were in trouble, sending social workers out instead of SWAT teams. That was what defund the police was. And unfortunately, the conservatives latched on to that that that chant and turned it around and made it a slur. And that's what he's talking about when he says, if you believe in raping and killing and stealing, you want to defund the police. Well, people aren't that way. In general, people aren't that way. A majority of people, probably 99% of people, when they come to an intersection where the traffic light is out.

[13:22] And the normal procedure when a traffic light is out is you treat it as a four-way stop, a majority of people will do that. You'll still have one or two people that will not do that, and they'll blow through the intersection.

[13:40] You know, generally people follow rules that are established that are rational, whether they're based in the Bible or not. And the thing about it is, you know, unless God comes down from the heaven or an angel comes down from the heaven and smites somebody, how do we know that they're held accountable after death?

[14:07] The only way that they're held accountable On this earth and this time Is through the criminal justice Or the civil justice system And that's man-made And it's operated by people Not the Bible, Basically then In the next part of his video He starts talking about What he calls absurd thinking Or ridiculous thinking that comes from not believing in God.

[14:49] For more information on the topics in this episode and the links used, visit secularleft.us.

[15:09] 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 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.

[16:10] 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. 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.

[16:49] That's all religion gives you. Let's review that. Enhanced social support, less substance abuse, and lower rates of psychopathology.

[17:01] 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.

[17:54] 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 a 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.

[19:15] 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 as for dummies, religion would be the first thing every single pro-human.

[19:49] 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.

[21:12] 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.

[21:29] 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.

[21:51] 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.

[22:25] 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.

[23:28] 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.

[24:28] 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.

[25:22] 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.

[25:48] 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.

[26:53] 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. 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.

[27:35] But sure, people are happier when they're religious Sure they are, For more information on the topics in this episode and the links used, visit secularleft.us.

[28:09] They believe in anything. So here are a few. Men give birth. Men don't give birth. If men give birth, why do we only know this now? Why didn't all the scientists of history know that? Did we just discover that men give birth?

[28:27] How did they miss it for all of these centuries how did every single great doctor and biologist of the past miss it is not remarkable we've now discovered that men give birth it's an absurdity do trans men give birth fine so then say trans men don't say men be honest but that's a very different story when you say trans men give birth than if you say men give birth men do not give birth, period. And so in this clip, one of his absurd ideas that he says that you believe in anything is that men give birth. Well, he's wrong already. And he misleads his viewers who's ever viewing this. And I'm sure he's thinking that people are going to come to his PragerU or whatever and get more information. And so he knows his audience. And so he's using code words and buzzwords and dog whistles like men give birth. That is an anti-trans slogan. That's transphobia because people in the know, people that support trans people's rights know that when you're talking about being pregnant and giving birth, you say people give birth. People get pregnant. it.

[29:47] That's being inclusive. You don't say trans men give birth. You say people give birth. That way, you don't have to make that distinction. You don't have to label somebody that way.

[30:01] You're being more inclusive. And he's not trying to be inclusive. Okay? He's not being, you know, and he doesn't agree with it. That's fine. He cannot agree. You know, that's fine if he doesn't agree with it, but he's not telling the truth. He's not being honest. You know, the fact that he's not using the terminology that's commonly used is a tell. And so that's just one of the absurd things that he talks about. Well, he considers absurd.

[30:33] There's another distinction that's being obliterated in the post-Christian world, the post-Judeo-Christian world, male-female.

[30:50] It's almost unbelievable. I grew up with it. I was told in college there's no difference between male and female nature, that we're basically the same. That was what set me off. One of the things that set me off in my thinking that I'm living in the world of nonsense here at Columbia, where I went to graduate school. There's no basic differences between male and female. Now we don't even have male and female not only no differences there is no such thing as male and female it's completely subjective there's no objective male and female you are what you think you are even when you're five years old it's a this is a true breakdown that has occurred inside the secular world there's no male and female and yet in Genesis says God created the human being male and female he created them, that's a distinction it's not only biological it's divine, it is part of the divine order in life we are living in the age of chaos because it has dropped the idea of a divine order.

[32:12] So there's no more a difference between male and female girls were told by the feminists when i was in college oh hey you could have sex just like the guys do, they love just like guys can love sex without commitment without emotional bonding anonymous so can you but it doesn't turn out that way for the vast majority of women, that's not exactly a deeply satisfying thing at all. In fact, it's a cause of depression in many young women. But hey, if women are like men, then that's their nature, to have sex without commitment. It's also male nature to have sex with commitment. I'm not saying not. But it's not generally female nature. Interesting that Dennis Prager, a man, would want to tell us what nature females had, female nature, that it was divinely.

[33:27] He talks about the two genders, male and female, being divine. But other than that, he just complains about feminism and how it's making women unhappy. Now, does that sound familiar? That is what Charlie Kirk used to talk about at his little Turning Point USA conference. And in fact, Riley Gaines, remember Riley Gaines, the fifth place winner in that swimming meet? And she turned it into a conservative grift. And that's what she said at the latest conference, was that feminism made women depressed. Now, why would that be?

[34:15] You know, why would people like Prager and Riley Gaines think that female empowerment would make women feel depressed? It makes you think, doesn't it? Well, it's because they don't believe. Well, Riley might, but, you know, she's got to play that game. She's got to get those checks coming. But I'm sure with the intelligence that Dennis Prager supposedly has, he knows that when you talk about that there's no difference between men and women, we're talking about rights, civil rights. Women have always been, up until recently, treated as second-class citizens in this country. Um, it wasn't until the mid seventies when they were allowed to have a credit card and open a checking account by themselves. I had a relative tell me one time that they went into a car dealership in like 1965 and wanted to, they had money, they had cash to pay for a Mustang and the car dealer said, well, have your husband come in and purchase it.

[35:40] You know, it's not feminism, it's not women's liberation that makes women feel depressed. It's people like Dennis Prager that make women feel depressed, that try to take away their rights, like their right to decide whether or not they're going to be pregnant, equal pay. Whether or not that they're going to be treated the same way as men in law.

[36:12] That is the real issue. Of course, then he brings in the transphobia. And it was interesting that in the clip, he has a couple of clips of, I'm assuming they were trans women. Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? But I'm sure that that's probably the dog whistle that he was using.

[36:37] And then he's talking about how men want to sleep with other people. And why would women want to do that? That's that treating women like put them on a pedestal and protect them and things like that. That's what religious men like to do, even though they control them and don't let them do whatever it is that they want to do. Take away their rights. They can't work. They aren't allowed to work in the home. That's what Erica Kirk was talking about at the recent Turning Point USA rally, was that women should be at home raising babies. You know, they shouldn't be working. But the other thing, too.

[37:25] Dennis Prager, I need to tell you about Dennis Prager. Dennis Prager's been married three times. And the Bible gives two clear grounds for divorce. Sexual immorality, which is Matthew 5, 32, 19, 9, and abandonment by an unbeliever, 1 Corinthians 7, 15, or 1 Corinthians, if you're Donald Trump. Even in these two instances, though, divorce is not required or even encouraged. The most that can be said is that sexual immorality and abandonment are grounds and allowance for divorce. Confession, forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration are always the first steps Divorce should only be viewed as a last resort.

[38:15] And that's the thing about people like Dennis Prager is they want to do away with no-fault divorce in this country. They want to make it harder for women to get divorced. They want to make it impossible for a woman to get out of a bad marriage. Because they want to go back to the biblical view that you can only get a divorce for sexual immorality or abandonment by an unbeliever.

[38:46] So which one was Prager when he got divorced two other times? Was it due to sexual immorality? Or was he abandoned by an unbeliever? Hmm. Makes you think, doesn't it? But yeah, so they go on and on, and they talk about the lack of a difference between men and women. And to tell you the truth, Nobody actually does that. What they talk about when they talk about that men and women are the same is they should be treated the same with the same respect and do it that way. Same respect and have the laws and the civil rights and everything, equal pay, the whole nine yards. Everything that men get, women should have equally.

[39:38] That is something that needs to happen. And unfortunately, Dennis doesn't talk about that.

[39:56] And he is solely responsible for the content. Our theme music is Dank and Nasty, composed using the Amplify Studio. For more information on the topics in this episode and the links used, visit secularleft.us. If you want to support the show, share it with your friends or visit our merch store at secularleft.us.shop. See you next time.