Posted on 05/10/2023 5:50:03 AM PDT by Heartlander
There are four primary reasons fewer and fewer people in America and the West take God, the Bible, or religion seriously.
1) The belief that science disproves religion.
2) The belief that reason and feelings supplant God and the Bible as the only necessary vehicles to morality.
3) The “progressive” ideologies of at least 100 years that seek to replace religion.
4) The failure of religious people to convince the next generation to be religious.
As I have dealt with the first three reasons on many occasions, I will only note that it should be obvious to any rational person that the first three reasons are . . . irrational.
First, scientific discoveries increasingly argue for a God-Creator, not against one. The odds against life, let alone intellectual life, are so staggering that atheist scientists are now positing the nonsensical, let alone non-provable, idea of a “multiverse.”
Second, our post-Judeo-Christian world has produced the most irrational era in modern Western history. A society nearly all of whose intellectual elite believes that men give birth; that sex is not binary; that children should decide whether they are a boy, a girl, or “neither”; that less police means less crime; that to aspire to be colorblind is racist, which proves the thesis (attributed to G.K. Chesterton) that when men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.
Which brings us to the third reason for the demise of religion: secular progressive ideologies have replaced religious ideologies. Marxism, socialism, feminism, and environmentalism—these are secular religions, and they have caused the moral and intellectual chaos of the modern age.
Let us now address the failure of the religious world to preserve itself.
One reason is that most religious people—Jews, Catholics, and Protestants—didn’t think they had to make the case for their religion. They assumed that their children would carry on their religious traditions. They thought, “We go to church/synagogue every week, so will our children. We believe in God and the Bible, so will our children.”
They were obviously wrong. But even if they understood the need to make the case for their religion, most religious Jews and Christians didn’t know how to do so.
That brings us to the issue of making the case for God, the Bible, and religion.
My preferred three ways of doing so are:
1) Make reason-based arguments.
2) Concentrate on explaining the necessity of God rather than talking about belief in God.
3) Provide an emotionally moving religious environment.
I know these methods work because that is what I have done all of my adult life. I believe that I have brought more people to belief in God, to taking the Bible seriously, to Jews embracing Judaism, and to others embracing Christianity than perhaps any other living Jew or Christian. I do not say this to brag. I say this to give my credentials for the arguments I am offering here.
For generations, the nonreligious and anti-religious—the people who have come to dominate our schools and universities, the news media, the entertainment media and the social media—have argued that if one is rational, one cannot take religion seriously.
And most religious individuals and institutions have implicitly agreed. By not providing rational arguments for God, the Bible, and religion (all three are necessary), they conceded the secular world’s argument that reason argues for secularism. That is why I have titled my Bible commentary The Rational Bible. I offer reason-based—not faith-based—arguments and explanations for the moral greatness and the incomparable wisdom of the Bible, specifically the subject of my commentaries, the first five books of the Bible (the Torah), the foundation of both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. It is not coincidental that the founders of the greatest country ever created—America—engraved a verse from Leviticus on the Liberty Bell and cited Deuteronomy more than any other book, secular or religious.
In addition, I have rarely made the argument for God’s existence. I have almost exclusively argued for the necessity of God (the God of the Bible, not just God). The reason is that even when people come to believe there is a God, this belief often has no moral or religious significance. Most people who say they believe in God do not believe in the Bible or even in the God of the Bible. They believe that there is Something Out There, but this Something is rarely the morality-teaching, morally demanding, and morally judging God of the Bible.
I have also shown people why, on purely rational grounds, without the God of the Bible, there is no objective good and evil, since without the biblical God, “good” and “evil” are purely subjective personal or societal opinions. And I have shown that without the God of the Bible, our lives and all human life have no ultimate significance, that our lives have no more ultimate meaning than some rock on some planet.
I ask most religious and conservative people I meet if they have children. And if they do, how many of them share their religious and/or social values? In general, about a third of their children do. The pain in parents whose children have rejected their religion and/or social values is profound. The one consolation I can offer them is that if they have grandchildren, they can try to influence them. But they can only do so if they talk to them about God and the Bible in a rationally compelling way. Combined with the special love grandchildren often have for their grandparents, this can work.
If that doesn’t work, we have lost America and the West.
John Adams wrote that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He could have easily written “for a moral and reasoning” people. Or “for a moral and forward-thinking” people. But he didn’t. He knew the whole experiment rested on God. It still does.
For those who think they’re way to smart to believe in God..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ3hESj__M8
Bkmk
The argument for G-d is the Revelation at Sinai.
I don’t think that people “come to” God unless He draws them. And NO OTHER NATION than this one has had the kinds of access to Christian biblical teachings for a long long time.
As far as “religion” goes, that’s just another stumbling block probably...
There is enough information out there. Even Jesus was rejected in his own town. He moved on. Shake the dust off your sandals. All we need to do is be ready when the lost are ready.
Given that Prager is Jewish, I doubt he is thinking of born-again Christians.
5) Pounding people over the head, so to speak, with Biblical quotes;
6) Failure to convey Christ’s message with plain talk;
7) Incessant inter-faith battles;
8) Woke and gay issues supported by the Church;
9) Bussing illegals to every known city/town/village in the US.
Given that Prager is Jewish, I doubt he is thinking of born-again Christians.
I think you are correct. Here, Prager is mostly making a socio-political point, which I find to be ultimately deceptive.
People don't need "religion," Judeo-Christian or otherwise. People need Jesus. Full stop.
[[I don’t think that people “come to” God unless He draws them]]
Exactly. Si full man is incapable of accepting God apart from God getting through the man’s sinful nature and co pulling said man to seek forgiveness. The unsaved have scales over their eyes that blind them to christ. Only God can remove those scales so that the person can see their lost condition and want to seek forgiveness. Th3 unsaved man sees no need for salvation UNTIL God shows him his need for salvation.
That said, God works Mainly through his word, but also through reason to some. When and how he works is a mystery as the ho.y spirit listen where he will, not where we think he should (ie, he could work inside a heretic church, bringing the co gregants to a saving knowledge of God even though the preacher never preaches such sermons‐ a faithful congregant who found God for instance could start a Bible study where others come to God who never would have if they only had the teachings of the unsaved preacher and his godless sermons. We just don’t know where god and the spirit will work or when. There is no formula, only the decree to spread the word in one form or another and or to be faithful in whatever we do)
Meant to say that “The holy spirit listeth where it will”
How to Bring People to God and Religion
Have them live under democrat ruling for a few years.
Admittedly, I like Prager alot, and I feel he brings/adds value to many
relevant problematic conversations had today.
(OK... lets stone him for the Porn/ lust comments, I get that.)
But in reaching out to atheists, agnostics- non-believers.. etc.-
specifically those who vehemently reject Faith based life,
Prager knows that they have to be educated to overcome the incorrectly assumed secularist ideal of a Faith/Reason contradiction.
The Burning Bush can only come later...
once what Prager describes here is defeated.
For me I do not try to defend “religion” as if religion itself, no matter the religion, was an essential good. As a concept “religion” explains very little what someone actually believes, and being a Christian, to me, someone said to be very faithful to their religion does nothing to tell me or asure me they believe in God as we Christians know God.
Many of the key points are false:
“1) The belief that science disproves religion.”
THAT was never the problem. One of the real problems was and remains attmepts by science to disprove the existence of GOD, NOT merelt to disprove “religion” (as in all religions).
“3) The “progressive” ideologies of at least 100 years that seek to replace religion.” Again, the progressive ideologies have not sought to replace “religion”. They seek to nullify God.
“4) The failure of religious people to convince the next generation to be religious.” Again, false and tries to speak as if “all” “religious” peeple share a value and sets of values that all those not “relgious” do not share. That pretense denies the variety of beliefs among the “religious” and how that variety differentiates widely on what is viewed as “good” and more importanly on the very nature of God and what God expects of us.
“Incessant inter-faith battles”
It is hard to get more than a random three Freepers to agree on most theological points.
It is even crazier outside of FR world.
Everyone thinks that “their” faith is what everyone else should believe.
Worse—they think everyone else is blind for not “getting it”.
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