The public. And they will air in the near future on booktv on cspan2. Host joining us onset is radio talkshow host and author of seven books Dennis Prager. His most recent book is called the 10 commandments still the best moral code. Dennis prager, what is on your mind . Guest very good opening question and i will answer you completely honestly, what is on my mind . It is not totally germane but quite germane to the 10 commandments, what i believe is the undoing of the American Revolution and the decline of my beloved country, the greatest experiment in liberty and decency in Human History. I do believe that a big part of the reason is the radical secularization of our society. Host where did that come from . How did it come about . It came about, its origins emanate from europe. After world war i and even somewhat before but especially after world war i europe decided that everything it believed in was nonsense because of the massacres of world war i, the atrocious loss of life for no apparently good reason. That is a very important point. Everybody understands world war ii was morally necessary. Not everyone believes world war i was. They certainly didnt believe it afterwards, despite the versailles treaty, blaming germany and so on, nevertheless there was a feeling everything we believed in lettuce awry so we will drop religion and drop national identity, we will just become secular citizens of the world. America took its phds from european universities starting in the late 19th century before world war i but nevertheless continuing and i think that is where it develops, where if you are intelligent you go back to darwin and marx, but the operative element was if you are bright you are not religious. At a university in the western world, not just the United States if you believe god created heaven and earth, that god is the source of thou shalt not murder, not just reason, you are considered a dummy and that foolishness, that truly is foolish because the deepest people i have ever met have overwhelmingly had a god centered understanding of the world, that is now taken as a given, that if you believe Something Like that you are intellectually suspect so that is what has happened. Host when you hear somebody say i am spiritual but not religious how do you know to ask me such good questions. I have done hours of radio just on that subject. It is with all respect to people who say it, it is meaningless. It means i contemplate my navel in a sophisticated manner. That is the code word. It doesnt mean anything. What does it mean . If you have no religion what do you have . Spirituality . What does spirituality mean . That you believe flowers are beautiful . You believe animals are loving . What does it mean . It doesnt mean anything. To the individual making it means something but without religion, without a code religion gives you a code. Religion gives you a set of beliefs. I dont care if you reject them but at least you have to grapple with them. Is real, the Founding Group of the Old Testament means struggle with god. I take that seriously as a believer. I do struggle with god. When i see all the suffering in this world, the unjust suffering, just thinking for a moment, forgetting the obvious of your neighbor had pancreatic cancer at 32, a whole country called north korea which is a human concentration camp, the way people live there, the 100 million of world war ii, these things bother me. I understand struggling with god as a believer but i want the atheist to understand you have to struggle with god too. It is not enough. I was invited to the great credit, the American Atheist, the biggest American Atheist group, they invited me to their annual convention which was to their credit and to debate their head on gods existence. At one point i looked at the audience who were completely by the way decent to me and i cant complain at all. They were just fine. I said to them would you raise your hand if you have ever seen a child born or listened to mozarts symphony or seen a van gogh painting or seen a sunset and said it is hard to believe that just happened on its own, maybe there is a god. Not one hand went up. That i looked at them and said if i were to ask any religious audience have you ever seen a deformed baby and doubted god, raise your hand, everyone would have raised their hands. We believers struggle more than you atheist do and you think you are the questioning one. We are the questioning ones. The earp clan where did this book the 10 commandments come from . Guest exactly what the subtitle says. It is still the best moral code . This changed Human History and in the briefest book i wrote following the longest book i ever wrote which i have the honor of being on your show then, this is a transcription of the 11 lectures, the 10 commandments plus one introductory lecture on trageruniversity. Com, we got 11, 12 million views and it continues to be widely viewed or all over the world and i have taught this my whole life from the hebrew, this is the distillation of every idea i had in teaching this for 40 years. It is a very important book to me. It is simple. If everybody lived by the 10 commandments you would not need one army, one missile, one policeman, you would not have to put locks on your doors. This is all humans need to. It is amazing. Host we will put the phone numbers up because this is your chance to talk with radio talkshow host and other Dennis Prager. 202 is the area code, 7488200. East and central time zone 7488201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. We are at the Los Angeles Times festival of books on the campus of the university of southern california. Our guest, Dennis Prager. Where did Dennis PragerUniversity Get its start . Are you a jewish scholar . Guest it is pompous to say i am a scholar but i did teach jewish history and religion at Brooklyn College at the beginning of my career. I have written two books on judaism, and 200 articles. I got an award from the jewishamerican press association for my columns on jewish matters, and the first 5 books of the bible in the hebrew better than english and i taught it much of my life. I certainly use the work of scholars, and this is very important. I believe the whole book, this five books, it is the greatest book ever written. Certainly the 10 commandments is for humanity. Of course it was given to the jews as it were, but it is for humanity. If everybody lived by it as i said that is all you would need. The rest is commentary. We started because we are very worried about what is happening where there is more indoctrination than education. I love the mind, i love books, you are my favorite show. My wife is here, i told you this before. I am not sure you believe me. It is the only tv i watch, booktv. I am crazy about booktv. My wife introduced me to it. I love books. In high school i started reading and collecting books. I had 7000 books, i am crazy about books. I love the life of the mind but the university is shattering it because it is not the life of the mind, it is the life of dogma, of ideology. So we have gotten some of the greatest thinkers on earth to give 5minute courses on the most important subjects in the world, from economics to sociology to history, and last year we had 70 million views. It is an unbelievable number. In the englishspeaking world there is very little that has more views or video content. The 10 commandments is one of them. That alone had 12 million views. This is the product, this book. We hope we got a letter, i will tell you one more thing, we got a letter from a graduate that i just graduated at stanford a couple years ago, i want you to know i learned more at stanford university. We got this from bill bennetts son. He went to princeton, he said i learned more there than at princeton. That is our intent. You get something you dont get at university, wisdom. Host we are in the middle of a president ial campaign, how to the 10 commandments fit into a president ial campaign . Guest it is how you believe the United States was structured. I believe, i went over this with you in my last book, the best hope about america. I believe there is an american trinity just as there is a Christian Trinity. The american trinity is found, i didnt make it up. It is on every coin. In god we trust, liberty. America stands on those three. If you remove one of the other two cannot stand. Liberty is dependent upon the other two, the other two are dependent upon liberty, god is essential, every founder, every founder said that. Without god this country will not endure. They all said it, this notion that they were all deists, i hate to say this, like a dirty word to me because i so rarely use it but it is a lie. They werent deists. Deists means someone who believes god created the world and became disinterested in it. Benjamin franklin who admittedly was not an orthodox christian. He did not believe in the Christian Trinity but he did believe in the god of the bible and he believed in a judging god. That is what the secular world hates. I am convinced at its core people dont want to be judged and the hebrew bible and the 10 commandments introduced the idea that you and i and everybody here and everyone alive is going to be judged on their moral behavior. That is big. People dont like that. That is why the word judgmental is a dirty word. Host people want to hear your radio show . I am on every city, the vast majority, big cities. You could hear it on the internet, there is an apps you can hear me on. I get calls from brazil, i got a call from his pakistan once. Look up on google the peter slen the Dennis Prager show. And on syndicated radio. Host what is the main topic you talked about the last two or three weeks . Guest it is inevitable there is a lot about what is happening with regard to the republican side, my show, everybodys show is unique, more unique than others, i dont only talk about politics. I broadcast 15 hours a week, 3 hours a day, 9 to 12, question time, and our of those 15 a week is male female relations, and the most honest talk about men and women in the media today. An hour on happiness. And it is a moral obligation, and emotional state. And when people understand that, it is lifechanging. One is on male or female and one is the ultimate issues. And the great issues of life. Three of my hours are not on politics. Obviously given to donald trump, there has been a lot to talk about that. Host you wrote on townhall, you could support donald trump. Guest that was a preface to a big attack on me. I think he is awful but i would vote for him if he were the nominee because i believe, unfortunately, i never judge intentions, but i believe what the left has done to the country in undoing e pluribus unum, in god we trust and liberty has to be stopped. And i am doing everything i can to have anyone else be nominated, but if he is nominated, we have no choice. Host who is your favorite . Guest i said at the beginning and i stand by this that i thought marco rubio would have been the most effective of the republican candidates. I am sorry to see what happens. At the same time if ted cruz could be appointed, because nobody has obstacles to winning, he can win incidentally. More belief of that as time goes on, ted cruz, i have a lot of admiration, he means what he says. He will be portrayed as a right wing kook whereas Bernie Sanders is not a left wing kook. For a man to believe in socialism when the only thing that has ever lifted humanity out of poverty has been capitalism, that is not considered kooky, there is nothing ted cruz says that comes close to the kookiness of Bernie Sanders. It is lunacy. The only thing that has lifted humans from poverty has been capitalism and the man is for socialism. As orwell said it is too stupid only an intellectual could believe it. Host you and Bernie Sanders, both jewish, both new yorkers. That is about it. Even on the both jewish, he is jewish ethnically, i am jewish religiously and being jewish doesnt mean anything to him and i dont hold that against him. You are not obligated in my opinion to affirm what you were born into, not at all, it is america, a free country, but i do affirm judaism very deeply whereas for him it is a nonissue and that is fine. That doesnt affect me one way or the other. I would say his views disturbed me tremendously but not the fact, a famous leftwing jewish historian called even nonjewish jews, that is not an insult. There is a book called the nonjewish jew, he is describing himself. It is not an insult but that is what he is. I am a jewish jew, he is a nonjewish jew, we dont have host gaye caller and i could make a huge list. Host gaye, before we let you go, before we let you go, here are the Ten Commandments very quickly, and which of these do you think you live by . I am the lord, your god, you will have no other gods before me, do not take the lords name in vain, remember the sabbath, remember the sabbath. Honor your mother and father, no adultery, do not bear false witness. And do not covet. I amm not familiar with them. I went to sunday school as a child. Wise a childish and simplistic to think if the world lived by these it would be a good place . It is reasonable to live by these themes written in the bronze age. We know so much now. Host it is irrelevant whether itwh was written, beethoven we still listen. It is totally irrelevant. The content. Will let Dennis Prager answer. Guest either they are valid or not valid. The fact barrel does not make them invalid any more than if something is new it is invalid. I want to know what is problematic, he do not covet, do not lie, why is that bad because it is old. Host the first point was a religious minority is making her live under these. The secular majorities making her live under do not murder or bear false witness, do not steal, those have been accepted. I dont want the government to enforce all of these. I dont want you to be arrested if you commit adultery but i want people to live by it and i think they would like to live by too. What is irrelevant . You named nathem. What would you like . Host gate is gone and we will go to michael in illinois. You are on booktv with arthur Dennis Prager. Of the 15 how are you doing . I am a firsttime collar, longtime listener. I would like to run three things past Dennis Prager and take my hands off the phone. When you read something you are taking away history, the bible was written but there was a lot of religion before that. What do you think about america having food shows where they eat the biggest hamburger and what is the cross between consumerism and free thought . Did you take down those notes . Host what is the difference between consumerism and i missed guest we missed that one. Religions before, guest they are onlyic applicable to the tribe. No religion for example prior to the hebrew bible said you should love the fallen. It is one of the most ubiquitous statements in the first five books of the bible, love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of egypt. The idea that you love the foreigner and all people were created in gods image are brandnew ideas. Of course there was religion prior. This is the first book in history to ban child sacrifice, to ban human sacrifice. People dont understand the spectacular revolution wrought by this book. They dont. There is a tremendous ignorance, willful ignorance. That is a good example, human sacrifice. It was accepted universally. Along comes this book that says it is an abomination in gods eyes to sacrifice human beings. Host he went on to talk about consumerism and food shows. He is talking about society in general. Host i dont have a problem with consumerism. The American Consumer support the world economy. Of american started living only on what they need and nottth wh they would like, the unemployed around the world would starve to death. Thank god for the American Consumer. He makes the world go round. I willot add another thing. Obviously i am not a big fan of ostentatious umconsumption. I am not. I am against it. Nevertheless, i think people should know i studied good and evil my whole life. Lenin who was the father of evil of the 20th century, he created the terror state that then later was adopted by hitler and stalin, obviously following hitler. Ni lenin was an aesthetic. Lenin was the last he was not a consumerist. He didnt buy much. He denied himself pleasure. I am scaredre of people general, not all, a Catholic Priest takes a vow of poverty, i respect that tremendously but when people say i dont want anything, i am a little worried. I want my children to want to make a home and take care of a family and have a picnic fence and two dogs. What is marked by the left i dont mock. I think it is a beautiful aspiration to wanto to make a beautiful home for yourself, your spouse and your children. Host next call from Dennis Prager, jim in connecticut, go ahead. Caller thanks for having me on. I appreciate the opportunity. This is a topic that fascinates me. After listening to Dennis Prager i have a bunch of other questions but i will stick with the when i originally called about and that is reframing the question you asked, can you be spiritual but not religious. My question is can you believe in god but not be religious . Because frankly the gods that i see, especially the abraham x religions, our cartoons. They are anthropomorphic. Some an inevitable god is a pointless god but god is ineffable by definition. Infinite, he is not mortal, he or she or it is not limited but we have turned god into this cartoon. We can see how that has unfortunately that is why people who think, who Dennis Prager doesnt appreciate, liberals, reject that cartoon is god, that anthropomorphic gogod, that god that justifies very unchristian politics of consume consume consume because it is good. I could go on and on. I will stop, because Dennis Prager has some in