Dennis Prager, bestselling author, radio host, and founder of PragerU, told Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on Friday that “the left has substituted itself for God.” He went on to tell the SiriusXM Breitbart News Daily host that America’s growing secularization is a threat to the nation’s central values.
“It is not possible to build a great society on a secular foundation,” declared Prager. “America was built [on the Bible]. This was the text. Abraham Lincoln kept it on his nightstand, and he didn’t even go to church. Until the twentieth century, it was the one common piece of writing for all Americans, whether they were Christian or not. This was the centerpiece.”
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Prager added, “If the world lived by the Ten Commandments, you wouldn’t need locks on your doors. There would be no police force. The recipe for a good world is in the Bible. … The Ten Commandments is the central piece of the central part of the Bible. That’s the reason I began with Exodus.”
Genesis’s story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge foreshadowed the modern era’s moral crises, assessed Prager.
Prager explained, “When the serpent tempts Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge — after all, God had only asked them to do one thing: not eat from this tree — [he] says, ‘You’ll eat from that, and you’ll be like God. You’ll determine good and evil.’ It says, ‘Know good and evil,’ and that is correct. That is what the Hebrew says, but it really means ‘determine good and evil.'”
Prager went on to say, “That is exactly what has happened in the post-Judeo-Christian — specifically, post-Christian — West, that people have become gods. That’s exactly what it is. The left has substituted itself for God. We determine what is right and wrong.”
Prager warned of the limitless pursuit of power. “People want to determine good and evil. The idea that there is a God who told me not to steal and honor my parents is repugnant to these people. Who needs a god? I will tell me, and I will tell you, and I will tell you everything. I will tell you where to live. The ideal for the anti-religious crowd is to tell you — like God does — as much as possible in directing your life.”
Marlow said, “The left ultimately believes that God just agrees with them. That seems to be their viewpoint. ‘Whatever I believe, that must be God’s position.’ It is so unbelievably scary when you think of it that way.”
Prager concurred. “That is exactly right. … That is how they think.”
The Rational Bible: Genesis, the second and most recent book of Prager’s biblical commentary series, was published on Tuesday.
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Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.