Dennis Prager wrote an article called What Are Judeo-Christian Values, and it is the content of one of his Prager-U videos, and it may have been released a couple of years back, but the date for this one is 3/4/2023.
I have a transcript of his video from which I shall quote some and then comment on.
It is one of his finest.
Prager: The term Judeo-Christian values” is frequently used. I am one who uses it. I do so for the same reason the late great British prime minister Margaret Thatcher did: ‘The truths of the Judaic-Christian tradition,’ she said, are infinitely precious, not only, as I believe, because they are true, but also because they provide the moral impulse which alone can lead to the peace, in the true meaning of the word, for which we all long . . . There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.’
My comment: We need a one-world, over-arching culture which can be blended with all satellite cultures for local peoples around the world. I would propose that that overarching culture be rooted in Judeo-Christian values with a Mavellonialist overlay. That would give people a connection to God so they live for something greater than themselves, and it could lead to us creating and upholding a higher civilization.
Prager: Mrs. Thatcher was a believing Christian. I am a believing Jew. While we have some religious beliefs in common, we have different theologies. But we have the same core values. And in societal terms, moral values are more important than theologies.
My comment: People with vying theologies, but that worship benevolent deities, need to coexist peacefully and tolerantly, and work to share the Mavellonialist/Judeo-Christian values to build mutual agreement and cultural compatibility upon.
Prager: That is why traditionally religious Protestants, Catholics, Mormons and Jews are aligned on almost every important social issue.
Here are ten of those values.
No. 1: There is one God That God is the God introduced to the world by the Hebrew Bible—the source of one universal morality.
My response: I am not a monotheist, but a polytheist. The Hebrew God Yahweh or Cod the Father for Christians is the Father and Husband of the Divine Couple that I worship. The Father is married to the Mother, and we all worship good deities, so we must agree to disagree about our competing theologies, without going to war over our differences, for that promotes Satan’s power on earth. As an epistemological moderate, I assume there is one universal morality, or something close to it, but it is knowable but not certainty, and that its source is the Supreme Beings, the Creators of the universe.
Prager:
No. 2. The Hebrew Bible (the only Bible Jesus knew and which he frequently cited) introduced the most revolutionary moral idea in history: that there are objective moral truths just as there are mathematical and scientific truths. Without God as the source of moral standards, there is no moral truth; only moral opinions.
My response: with my sense of probable certainty being feasible for the human mind, the standard of objective moral truth originating from God and given to humans in the Ten Commandments as a guiding gift is acceptable to me.
Prager:
No. 3. Because there are moral truths, good and evil are the same for all people.
My response: I agree.
Prager:
No. 4. God—not man, not government, not popular opinion, not a democratic vote—is the source of our rights. All men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” declares the American Declaration of Independence/
My response: God is the source of our rights, our natural rights.
Prager:
No. 5. The human being is “created in the image of God.” Therefore, each human life is precious. Therefore race is on no significance, since we are all created in God’s image, and God has no race.
My response: Since we are created in God’s image and we are made as men and women, to procreate, it seems to me that God the Father and God the Mother are married, and have thousands of children, directly or by adoption. This is not to go against LGBTQ minorities, but they are minorities, not the main story. They should be who they are, and do what they do, but it should be done quietly and routinely without fuss, taking pride in their group affiliations.
Each human life is precious, and we are all created equal in God’s eye that way—we all have an equal chance to get to heaven. Race, or group affiliations of any kind, though personally interesting and informative, are of not general emphasis or of much significance, but the individual self, of each person, and its potential to be realized by self-actualizing is of primary importance and emphasis by the Divine Couple and their Good Spirits.
Prager:
No. 6. 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, nature and God, and the holy and the profane.
My response: I agree. My controversial moderate ontology would insist that God, man, human, God and the holy are a bit superior, better and more humane while man, woman, animal, nature and the profane are a bit inferior, worse, and less humane, but any element on either side of these dual beings, forces are actualities, when sentient, free-willed humans seek to self-realize and do better, any difference in quality ordinarily can be surmounted.
Prager:
No. 7. Man is not basically good. Christians speak of “original sin” in referring to man’s sinful nature; Jews cite God Himself in Genesis: “The will of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Genesis: 8:21. They are not identical beliefs, but they are both worlds apart from the naïve Enlightenment belief that man is basically good. And they came to the same conclusion: we need God-based rules to keep us from our natural inclination to do evil.
My response: I agree. Though we are born depraved, if our parents socialized us, and built up our conscience, and we at some point, of our ow free will, accept what our parents have offered us, then we internalize through self-control the rules from God and society, the rules that allow what is good in our hearts to become strong and habituated, a good will, and we become people of good character, though we still sin a little every day throughout our lives.
Prager:
No 8. Therefore, we must not follow our hearts. Both religious Jews and Christians are keenly aware of how morally dangerous it is to be led by our emotions. Those who reject Judeo-Christian values are far more likely to follow and promote the advice, “Follow your heart.”
My response: I agree that we should think more than we feel when we make moral decisions, but we should do both. Kierkegaard would have us follow our hearts, but that is dangerous as Prager notes.
It seems to me that reasoning is so important because the Divine Couple and the Good Spirits are intellectually powerful and creative, and this is why natural theology has a place in our worship of these major and minor divinities.
Prager:
No. 9. God gave us the Ten Commandments—the core of Judeo-Christian values. Therefore, to apply but one of the Ten Commandments to our morally confused secular age, you must “Honor your father and mother” even if they voted for someone you loathe—meaning, at the least, remain in contact with them and do not dare deprive them of the right to be in contact with their grandchildren.
My response: I agree. On his radio show, Prager points out that honoring one’s parents need not mean that one loves then—and I add to obey them when one is of legal age—but one should honor them and take their suggestions and advice seriously, while still making up one’s own mind.
Prager:
No 10. Human beings have free will. In the secular world, there is no free will because all human behavior is attributed to biology and environment. Only a religious worldview, because it posits the existence of a divine soul—something independent of biology and environment—allows for free will.
My response: I partially agree, we have some free will even by the age of 5, but primarily we are robots when we non-individuate, group-live and play groups games to gain popularity and rank within the social pecking order to which we belong or strive to be admitted to or stay within.
As each child accepts God into her life—whatever benevolent deity that she worships—she begins to bear her life burden—to self-realize, a living life-long activity of growing one’s talents and abilities in divine service to the Good Spirits, and the more one evolves and develops, the free one’s soul and will become. One could still and will choose to do evil, but one will have mostly the will to elect to do good and be good, freely chosen.
Prager: There is another important aspect to the term “Judeo-Christian.” The two religions need each other. Without the Old Testament, there is no New Testament. Virtually every Christian moral principle derives from the Hebrew Bible—not only the 10 Jude0-Christian values enumerated here, but such basic moral principles as “Love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18), “Love the Lord your God with all your heart (Deuteronomy 6:5), and “Love the stranger” (Deuteronomy 10:19)
My response: I agree.
Prager: At the same time, Judaism needs Christians. It was Christianity that carried the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible to the world. This was acknowledged by the greatest Jewish thinker after Moses, Maimonides.
My response: I agree.
Prager: Thus, while people speak of “Judeo-Christian” values, people do not speak of “Judeo-Muslim” values. As the noted Jewish scholar David Novak writes, “Maimonides rules that Jews may teach the Torah to Christians but not to Muslims because Christians believe Hebrew Scripture in toto to be the revealed word of God, whereas Muslims believe the primary text to be the Quran; for them, Hebrew Scripture, is a flawed revelation. Thus, Jews and Christians share a common revelation in a way that Jews share with no other religious community.”
My response: I agree. Muslims and Jews are not as close in their values as are Jews and Christians. All we can do is agree to coexist peacefully and agree to disagree.
Prager: The ultimate embodiment of Judeo-Christian values has been the United States of America. America’s Founders were Christians (some culturally, some doctrinally) who were rooted in the Hebrew Bible. America was founded not to be a replacement of Israel, but a “Second Israel.” Until recently, it was.
My response: I agree.
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