BOOK REVIEW: ‘If There Is No God … : The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil’

OPINION:

In December 1998, Dennis Prager wrote a book titled “Happiness Is a Serious Problem: A Human Nature Repair Manual.” Nearly 26 years later, in November 2024, Mr. Prager suffered a catastrophic accident that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down.

Yet as Mr. Prager revealed in his recent op-ed for The Wall Street Journal: “Tested as they were, none of my views on happiness changed.”

So regardless of his tragic circumstances, Mr. Prager — a nationally syndicated talk show host, founder of PragerU and bestselling author of nine books — continues his eminent upbeat advice and deep insight into life’s most fundamental challenges in his latest book, “If There Is No God … : The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil.”

His book is based on four extended sessions “held over a weekend outside of Omaha, Nebraska, for young people throughout the Midwest.” The book presents exceptionally challenging questions from audience members, with the remarkably pensive answers from Mr. Prager.

This Q&A style makes for immersive reading, as if you are in the room witnessing the exchanges, sitting in on a lengthy, but highly engaging forum.

Challenging questions include some that Mr. Prager poses himself, such as, “Are good and evil a matter of personal opinion?” and the key question underscoring the book, “Is your dog’s life worth more than a stranger’s?” For example, would you save your beloved animal before a stranger, if they were both drowning?

Posited responses include “It is more important to do good than to feel good” and “Thinking more highly of our feelings than good values will result in behavior that hurts people.” Still, it is necessary “to have God as the basis of those good values.”

The subtitle of the book, “The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil,” is addressed largely through the assertion that morality is determined only by objective, reason-based values, not subjective feelings based on faith in a person’s own ethical decision-making.

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One individual could believe that stealing and murder are wrong, while another could believe that stealing and murder are OK.

So “If There Is No God …,” then there is no objective morality because each person’s own assessment of good and evil is founded on faith in themselves to make proper determinations. A counterargument is that, rather than personal capricious faith, the ultimate reasonable faith is faith in God and the values he established (for example, in the Ten Commandments).

According to Mr. Prager: “Both God and morality are faith assertions. But there is a huge difference between them. While both are assertions of faith, the objective existence of morality is dependent on the existence of God. Only if there is a God who declares that good and evil exist do good and evil really exist. Without God all morality is opinion.” In other words, objective morality “is dependent upon an objective reality. An objective reality is dependent upon God’s existence.”

Of course, some would say there is no such thing as objective, absolute truth, such as the necessity of God’s existence. This thinking, though, would require absolute knowledge, because that is how it would be known that there is no such thing as absolute truth.

In addition to presenting the reasonableness of God’s existence, Mr. Prager’s life’s mission is “to persuade people to adopt Bible-based values.” These values are the ones that have endured and produced exceptional societal results with the enactment of Judeo-Christian standards that ended slavery and human sacrifices, for instance.

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Regardless of the positive societal results of adhering to Judeo-Christian principles, Mr. Prager laments that “we are raising a generation in America to rely on feelings rather than values.”

Fortunately, Mr. Prager’s offering of “If There Is No God” is a strong recommendation to the next generation, and the rest of us, to rely on solid God-given values, not feelings, to make a positive impact on a world in dire straits.

Anthony J. Sadar is a certified consulting meteorologist and adjunct associate professor of science at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. He is a co-author of “Environmental Risk Communication: Principles and Practices for Industry” (CRC Press).

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If There Is No God … : The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil

Dennis Prager

Broadside Books, $32.99, 256 pages