Dennis Prager is Wrong About The 10 Commandments

Post Reply New Topic

Hi all.

I don' think that Dennis Prager represents all theists, or even most theists. I'm just making this thread because I hate this sort of religious insanity. I'm so glad that Cosmic Skeptic responded to this.



Cosmic Skeptic makes several very good points in his video, but I can think of some other points that he didn't make.

- Prager seems to think that Hitler was an atheist. Godwin's Law aside, Hitler wasn't an atheist. He belonged to a fringe, anti-Semitic branch of Christianity.
- Prager is also ignoring all of the atrocities that have been carried out by Christian governments. For example, he is forgetting the colonization of the Americas ... and most of the Middle Ages. I doubt that the Soviets killed more people than every Christian dictator in history combined.
- Prager is also ignoring the fact that Honduras, which has the highest murder rate in the world, is a Christian-majority country.
- Prager is ignoring the high standard of living in Scandinavia, which is very liberal and not very religious overall.
- Prager seems to think that the number of people who naturally enjoy murder is greater than the number of people who naturally oppose it. I believe that most people are naturally opposed to murder. Some people lack that instinct (psychopathy) but they can easily be overpowered by the majority of people who think that murder is wrong. That's how democracy is supposed to work.
- I, frankly, see no evidence that a psychopath has ever been repelled by the fear of eternal Hellfire.
- Prager seem to believe that there was never a formal system of morality prior to the Ten Commandments. He, apparently, has never heard of the Code of Hammurabi.
- Prager forgets that some people who would normally be against murder are often driven to murder by harsh socio-economic circumstances. Of course, extreme right-wingers usually ignore this.
- Prager claims that the world only needs the Ten Commandments. The Bible doesn't even teach this. The Bible has plenty of other laws beyond the Ten Commandments. For example, Biblical homophobia isn't in the Ten Commandments, though it exists elsewhere in the Bible.

I totally understand why so many people agree with Prager. The statement "A higher divine law will prevent murder." sounds nice when you think about it, but rationality isn't just about the logic in your head. Rationality is also about facts and statistics drawn from the real world. This is important because empirical data tends to be more reliable than logic. Logic and hypothetical scenarios can be warped by your emotions, as they are all in your head. Facts and statistics tend to be more concreate and reliable.