T. Belman. As an example, when the left fights for transgenders, it couldn’t care less about them. What they are really doing is attacking the Judeo-Christian values. Just like the USSR did and China does, they strive to eliminate religion because it is a crimp on their power,
BY DENNIS PRAGER, PJ MEDIA MAR 30, 2021
Conservatives often speak of Judeo-Christian values and how the current civil war in the United States and the rest of the West is essentially a battle between those values and the left, which rejects Judeo-Christian values. They are right.But they rarely explain what Judeo-Christian values are. Yet, without an explanation, mentioning Judeo-Christian values is useless.
So, let me do that now.
First, a word about the term. Some Jews and Christians find the term confusing, if not objectionable, since Judaism and Christianity have different theologies. But no one speaks of Judeo-Christian heology, only of Judeo-Christian values.
Judeo-Christian values are essentially another term for biblical values. Judaism and Christianity are both based on the Old Testament — its God, its Ten Commandments, its admonition to love one’s neighbor as oneself, to love God, to lead a holy life, etc. Christians also believe in the New Testament, but only an opponent of Christianity would argue that the New Testament negates the values of the Old.
Here they are:
1. Objective moral standards come from God. As I have written and spoken about in a PragerU video and elsewhere, if there is no God who declares murder wrong, murder can be subjectively wrong but not objectively wrong. So, while there can certainly be nonbelievers who hold murder, stealing and other actions wrong, without God, those are opinions, not moral facts. Without the God of the Bible, there are no moral facts.
2. God judges our behavior, and we are therefore accountable to God for our behavior. Outside of a religious worldview, there is no higher being to whom we are morally accountable.
3. Just as morality derives from God, so do rights. All men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” declares the Declaration of Independence.
4. The human being is uniquely precious. While the Bible repeatedly forbids cruel behavior to animals (cutting or tearing off the limb of a living animal to eat it as a means of preserving the rest of the animal, not allowing an animal a day of rest, not allowing an animal to eat while working in the field), only human beings are created in God’s image.
5. The world is based on a divine order, meaning divinely ordained distinctions. Among these divine distinctions are: God and man, man and woman, human and animal, good and evil, and nature and God.
6. Human beings are not basically good. Therefore, the most important moral endeavor is making good people. Religious Jews and Christians understand that the greatest battle in life is with one’s nature. For the opponents of Judeo-Christian values, the greatest moral battle is not with one’s nature; it is with society (specifically, American society).
7. Precisely because we are not basically good, we must not trust our hearts to lead us to proper behavior. The road to hell is paved with good hearts. Feelings make us human, but they cannot direct our lives. This alone divides the Bible-based from those on the left.
8. All human beings are created in God’s image. Therefore, race is of no significance. We all emanate from Adam and Eve, whose race is never mentioned. That many religious people held racist views only testifies to the almost infinite ability of people to distort what is good.
9. Fear God, not man. Fear of God is a foundation of morality. In the Book of Exodus, Egyptian midwives were ordered by the Pharaoh to kill all newborn Hebrew boys. They disobeyed the divine king of Egypt. Why? Because “the midwives feared God.” In America today, more people fear the print, electronic and social media than fear God.
10. Human beings have free will. In the secular world, there is no free will because all human behavior is attributed to genes and environment. Only a religious worldview, which posits the existence of a divine soul — something independent of genes and environment — allows for free will.
11. Liberty. America was founded on the belief that God wants us to be free. On the Liberty Bell is inscribed just one thing (aside from the name of the company that manufactured the bell). It is a verse from the Bible: “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.” The current assaults on personal liberty — unprecedented in American history — emanate from those who reject the Bible as their moral guide (including more than a few Jews and Christians who have joined the assault, having been indoctrinated with anti-religious views in high school and college).
When Judeo-Christian principles are abandoned, evil eventually ensues. One doesn’t have to be a believer to acknowledge this. Many secular conservatives recognize that the end of religion in the West leads to moral chaos — which is exactly what we are witnessing today and exactly what we witnessed in Europe last century. When Christianity died in Europe, we got communism, fascism and Nazism. What will we get in America if Christianity and Judeo-Christian values die?
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is “The Rational Bible,” a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, “No Safe Spaces,” was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Rather than “Brahma,” it’s probably more useful to speak of “The Impersonal Brahaman”. This takes things away from the Godhead having emotional trends like anger, etc.
Brahman is not “a god”.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
That’s a good synopsis, Sebastien…
But we must bear in mind that in order to really comprehend the import of what you describe, one must experience it. And it doesn’t require that you leave your original religion in order to do this. This comprehension can take time…
And to a lesser extent, Judaism:
Talmud-inspired learning craze sweeps South Korea
BY TIM ALPER JANUARY 14, 2019 3:04 PM
And today, Christianity is also a major force shaping South Korean culture.
Though in South Korea, traditional American values have had a positive countering effect of some of the hierarchical excesses of Confucianism where they strive to strike a harmonious balance.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Confucianism, which doesn’t even get into the supernatural, also had a big impact in making morality an individual imperative in East Asian cultures. Both have made inroads even where they have been rejected as the dominant ideology. Their lasting imprint remains, despite corrosive counter-influences, mostly recently Marxism.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
The author of the above article says that only fear of retribution from Hashem (I’m secular but I’m being polite) keeps people in line. But, you could say the same thing about HInduism or, more properly, Brahminism, but not Buddhism. Buddhism doesn’t deny the existence of higher orders of beings – what Buddha refers to as Gods, sound more like angelic beings in Judaism or saints in Christianity – but there is no creator because the universe – meaning everything everywhere – is an eternal process with no beginning and no end of not merely worlds, but universes or multiverses becoming born, growing old and dying, just as people do. He doesn’t deny the existence of gods but says that in order to become happy, individual people must free themselves from greed, hatred and illusion and undo their bad karma to move on and “unbind’ which he is unclear about though he says it is neither existing nor ceasing to exist. Basically, he says it can’t be expressed but it’s better and it’s an end to the samsara or the ceaseless suffering of being born, growing sick and old and dying which we have to do over and over through reincarnation. But, the upshot is that the universe is a SELF-ACTING MORAL MACHINE that operates mechanically rewarding virtue an punishing sin, as in HInduism, but in Hinduism, which is also monotheistic, despite the other gods which are like saints or forces in the mind, it’s overseen by Brahma.
In Buddhism, it’s a self-acting mechanism but the deterrent effect is the same.
@ keelie:
Not at that time. Buddhism broke away from Hinduism and was later reabsorbed back into it, changing it. I once took a class with Robert Thurman who talked about how Buddhism changed, for instance, the concept of the Dharma, from the original, battle, to the teaching. The equivalent of the ten commandments are the five training precepts for lay buddhists which are ” commitments to abstain from killing living beings, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxication, and to treat all sentient beings with loving kindness. The Buddha accepted pupils from all classes without distinction and allowed the first female religious order anywhere to be organized. Buddha outlawed polygamy and Buddhism later outlawed child marriage much earlier than any other religion. Hinduism had sutthi and the caste system among other horrors. The Hinduism of Ghandi mostly comes from Buddhism. The flag of India, the wheel of the dharma, was designed by the American transcendentalist and theosophist, colonel alcott, who revived buddhism in sri lanka in the 19th century. His civil disobedience comes from Thoreau, also a transcendentalists. The transcendentalists and theosophists were Buddhist revivalists. The poet, Emerson and Louisa May Alcott, a distant cousin, I believe, was also one of them. Buddhism was spread beyond India by Emperor Asoka, who sent out missionaries to Sri Lanka and beyond. It really spread to the rest of Asia at around the same time that the Talmud and and New Testament were being written in the 2nd century of the common era. I think the kind of ethical foundation we got from the ten commandments, Asia got from the five training precepts, at around the same time, but independently.
@ keelie:
The Hindu priestly class the Brahmins are called that because they descend from Brahma, ie the Hindu version of Abraham. In other words Abraham is the ancestor of Hindu priest who descend from the six sons he had with Keturah.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
And before Buddhism there was the Mother of Buddhism… what we call Hinduism, but which is more accurately named “The Vedic Religion”.
Like Buddhism, highly moral…
I have often speculated that Abraham was at one time influenced by the latter…
and Tibet.
Though that also applies to parts of South Asia where Buddhism first took root and where it remains the official religion such Nepal, where the Buddha was born, and nearby Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma). Especially Bhutan.
Well, that’s certainly true of our culture but Asian cultures have Buddhism – the Buddha taught from age 40 to 80 starting around the time of the rebuilding of the Temple after the Babylonian Captivity for time reference – to thank for that. Individually, Asian people are the most moral in the world and commit the fewest crimes. I don’t mean South Asian, I mean East Asian, as everybody used to when they said “Asian.”