If There Is No God

The book originates from a 1992 weekend event held outside Omaha, Nebraska, in which Dennis Prager spoke to 74 Midwestern teenagers about God, values, and feelings. The event was organized and recorded by Joel Alperson, a longtime collaborator who later helped Prager finish the manuscript. In the preface, Prager notes that a portion of the book was dictated and edited from his hospital bed after a November 2024 fall left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. The preface frames the book's central concern as the battle between values and feelings.

Prager opens by describing his lifelong preoccupation with why people do evil. Growing up three years after the Holocaust, he recounts being consumed by the question of how Germany, the most cultured nation in Europe, orchestrated the murder of 6 million Jews. He extends the problem to communist atrocities, violent crime in America, and humanitarian crises. He rejects the common tendency to label evildoers as "sick," arguing that the sheer number of participants in mass atrocities makes psychological illness an inadequate explanation, and he suggests that goodness, not evil, may be the statistically abnormal condition.

From this foundation, Prager introduces his central thesis: Values must override feelings, and good and evil are not matters of personal opinion. He asks the audience whether good and evil are subjective, and about half raise their hands. He confronts them with the consequence: If morality is merely opinion, one can only say "In my opinion, what Hitler did was evil," never that it was objectively evil. Most retract their position.

The book's central pedagogical device is the "dog vs. stranger" scenario. Prager asks whom the audience would save first if their dog and a stranger were both drowning. Roughly one-third votes for the dog, one-third for the stranger, and one-third is unsure. Those who vote for the dog cite emotional attachment; those who vote for the stranger cite the greater value of human life. Prager argues that the point of values is to override feelings: One may love one's dog more, but the biblical teaching that human beings are created in God's image makes human life sacred in a way animal life is not. He identifies the displacement of values by feelings as the great moral tragedy of the age.

Prager defines feelings as the impulse to do what one wants and values as the obligation to do what one must. He responds to audience objections that values are merely feelings by arguing that collapsing the distinction renders the concept of values meaningless. He illustrates with speed-limit signs: Society does not post "Speed Limit: Whatever You Feel" because feelings are unreliable guides. For values to stand above the individual, he argues, they must come from something above the individual: God.

A second scenario reinforces the argument. Two equally wealthy men hear about a woman whose daughter needs cancer surgery. One cries and gives a dollar; the other, following the biblical law of charity, gives 50 dollars. Prager reports that poor students in Los Angeles unanimously vote for the 50-dollar man, illustrating the principle that doing good matters more than feeling good.

Prager further illustrates the primacy of behavior. He describes a radio caller who supported his elderly, sick mother financially but sometimes wished she would die; Prager tells the caller he is a beautiful son because behavior is what matters. He also recounts an incident in which a five-year-old pushed Prager's own three-year-old son down in a park; the child's mother responded by hugging her son and asking what was bothering him rather than correcting his behavior, illustrating how modern parenting can prioritize feelings over moral instruction.

The argument turns to the necessity of God for objective morality. Prager contends that if values are merely what society dictates, then murdering Jews in Nazi Germany was a "good value" by that society's standards. He cites the Declaration of Independence: People have unalienable rights only if those rights come from the Creator. He claims Western civilization was produced by people who believed in the Bible, crediting Judeo-Christian values with abolishing slavery, establishing women's rights, and creating democracy. He acknowledges that some Bible-believers defended slavery but argues that abuse does not invalidate the system.

On faith and reason, Prager contends that belief in God is primarily rational. He contrasts the French Revolution, whose symbol was the guillotine, with the American Revolution, whose symbol was the Liberty Bell, arguing that reason without God has failed to produce moral societies. He offers a thought experiment: A German who risked his life to hide Jews during the Holocaust acted less "reasonably" than one who did nothing, demonstrating that reason alone does not necessarily lead to moral action.

Prager addresses the insufficiency of parental values alone. He points to the "Greatest Generation," the World War II-era cohort, who gave their children material prosperity but often failed to transmit religious values. Bible-based ethics separated from their religious roots, he argues, appear to survive for a generation or two but eventually wither. He urges even nonbelievers to live as if God exists, clarifying that his mission is to demonstrate "the necessity of God to morality" (50).

Throughout the sessions, Prager fields audience objections. Asked whether he would save Adolf Hitler or serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer from drowning, he states he would not, grounding his reasoning in biblical justice rather than personal feeling. On "eye for an eye," he contends the law established equal value for all lives and limited retribution to the individual offender. He clarifies that the Sixth Commandment properly translates as "Do not murder," not "Do not kill," a mistranslation dating to the late 14th century.

Prager presents the argument that people are not basically good as the third pillar of his thesis. Humans are a mixture of kindness and selfishness, and the belief in innate goodness discourages the key to becoming good: fighting one's nature. He argues that babies are innocent but not good, citing the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible: "The will of man's heart is evil from his youth" (142). Goodness must be developed like a musical skill and requires active moral effort, not merely the absence of wrongdoing. He uses European bystanders during the Holocaust as an example: Their passivity was not goodness.

On secularism's moral record, Prager argues that the 20th century, the most secular in history, was also the bloodiest, with Nazism and Communism together responsible for approximately 150 million non-combatant deaths.

Prager addresses several contemporary issues. On homosexuality, he affirms the biblical ideal of heterosexual marriage while noting personal compassion, including serving as godparent to the sons of a gay couple. He argues that the same-sex marriage claim that "gender doesn't matter" evolved into "gender doesn't exist." On Israel, he defends the nation's moral conduct, arguing the Gaza war would not have occurred without the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, the terrorist organization governing Gaza. On slavery in the Torah, he argues its laws minimized suffering rather than endorsed the institution. He introduces a concession through Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn: When Huck chose not to turn in Jim, the runaway slave, despite being raised to regard enslaved people as property, Prager affirms the choice, stating he prefers moral feelings over bad values and framing this as the exception that proves the rule.

The book presents specific Torah laws as practical tools: the obligation to give 10 percent of one's income to charity (tzedakah, derived from the Hebrew word for justice); the prohibition in the Talmud, the central text of Jewish rabbinic law, against asking a merchant the price of an item one has no intention of buying; and the prohibition against lashon ha-ra ("evil tongue"), or speaking ill of others. Prager discusses the Sabbath (Shabbat) as a ritual demonstration of belief in God as Creator, describing how abstaining from technology one day per week creates space for family connection. He also contends that marriage and parenthood are the primary vehicles for personal maturation.

Prager concludes by distilling his argument into three ideas. First, biblical values must override feelings when the two conflict. Second, God is necessary for values to be objective; without God, all moral claims reduce to personal opinion. Third, human beings are not inherently good, and the belief in innate goodness has produced catastrophic results. He urges the audience to spread these ideas, comparing the task to the biblical story of Jonah, who fled God's command to deliver a moral message to the city of Nineveh.