1 00:00:02,480 --> 00:00:09,540 Are you more valuable than a dog or a cat or, for that matter, a tree? 2 00:00:09,540 --> 00:00:16,920 One of the biggest differences between Judeo-Christian values and secular values concerns this very issue: 3 00:00:16,920 --> 00:00:19,740 the worth of the human being. 4 00:00:19,740 --> 00:00:26,380 According to the Judeo-Christian value system, human beings are infinitely valuable. 5 00:00:26,380 --> 00:00:31,360 On the other hand, secular humanism devalues the worth of humans. 6 00:00:31,360 --> 00:00:38,140 As ironic as it may sound, the God-based Judeo-Christian value system renders humans 7 00:00:38,140 --> 00:00:43,740 infinitely more valuable than any humanistic value system. 8 00:00:43,740 --> 00:00:49,460 The reason is simple: if there is no God, human beings are only material beings – 9 00:00:49,460 --> 00:00:54,680 and therefore not worth anything beyond the matter of which they are composed. 10 00:00:54,690 --> 00:00:59,010 But in the Judeo-Christian system human beings are created in “the image of God,” 11 00:00:59,010 --> 00:01:02,440 meaning that human life is sacred. 12 00:01:02,449 --> 00:01:07,470 In other words, we are either created in the image of carbon atoms – and therefore not 13 00:01:07,470 --> 00:01:12,450 worth much more than carbon – or we are created in the image of God 14 00:01:12,450 --> 00:01:15,550 and therefore infinitely valuable. 15 00:01:15,550 --> 00:01:22,170 Our secular, post-Judeo-Christian society has rendered human beings less significant 16 00:01:22,170 --> 00:01:24,580 than at any time in Western history. 17 00:01:24,580 --> 00:01:31,420 First, the secular denial that human beings are created in God’s image has led to humans 18 00:01:31,420 --> 00:01:35,520 increasingly being equated with animals. 19 00:01:35,520 --> 00:01:40,640 That's why over the course of 30 years of asking high school and college students 20 00:01:40,640 --> 00:01:45,520 if they would first try to save their dog or a stranger, two-thirds 21 00:01:45,520 --> 00:01:48,820 have always voted against the person. 22 00:01:48,820 --> 00:01:53,020 They either don’t know what they would do or they actually vote for the dog. 23 00:01:53,020 --> 00:01:56,340 Many adults now vote similarly. 24 00:01:56,360 --> 00:01:57,740 Why? 25 00:01:57,740 --> 00:01:59,700 There are two reasons. 26 00:01:59,700 --> 00:02:05,140 One is that with the denial of the authority of higher values such as religious teachings, 27 00:02:05,140 --> 00:02:11,320 people increasingly make moral decisions on the basis of how they feel. 28 00:02:11,320 --> 00:02:16,280 And since just about everybody feels more for their dog than for a stranger, 29 00:02:16,280 --> 00:02:19,380 many people simply choose the dog. 30 00:02:19,380 --> 00:02:24,480 The other reason is that, once you get rid of Judeo-Christian values, there is no reason 31 00:02:24,480 --> 00:02:28,740 for elevating human worth over that of an animal. 32 00:02:28,740 --> 00:02:34,540 That’s why people estranged from Judeo-Christian values (including many Jews and Christians) 33 00:02:34,540 --> 00:02:40,360 support programs such as “Holocaust on Your Plate.” 34 00:02:40,360 --> 00:02:45,920 “Holocaust on Your Plate” is a campaign developed by the animal-rights group 35 00:02:45,920 --> 00:02:52,960 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) that teaches that there is no difference 36 00:02:52,960 --> 00:02:59,580 between the barbecuing of chickens in America and the burning of Jews in the Holocaust. 37 00:02:59,580 --> 00:03:01,120 Why? 38 00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:04,800 Because a human and a chicken are of equal worth. 39 00:03:04,800 --> 00:03:10,900 So, too, in a notorious Tucson, Arizona case, a woman screamed to firefighters that her 40 00:03:10,900 --> 00:03:14,180 three “babies” were in the burning house. 41 00:03:14,180 --> 00:03:18,640 Thinking that the woman’s children were trapped inside, the firefighters risked their 42 00:03:18,650 --> 00:03:23,570 lives to save the woman’s three cats. 43 00:03:23,570 --> 00:03:29,220 If you think these two examples are either just theoretical (the dog-stranger question) 44 00:03:29,220 --> 00:03:37,280 or extreme (the Tucson mother of cats), here’s an issue that is neither theoretical nor extreme: 45 00:03:37,280 --> 00:03:43,800 More and more people believe, as PETA does, that even if it would lead to a cure for cancer 46 00:03:43,810 --> 00:03:48,390 or AIDS, it would be wrong to experiment on animals. 47 00:03:48,390 --> 00:03:53,050 In fact, many animal rights advocates believe that even to save a human life, 48 00:03:53,050 --> 00:03:57,790 it would be wrong to kill a pig to obtain a heart valve. 49 00:03:57,790 --> 00:04:01,770 The twentieth century showed vividly what happens to human worth 50 00:04:01,770 --> 00:04:04,590 when Judeo-Christian values are abandoned. 51 00:04:04,590 --> 00:04:10,680 Nazi Germany and the various Communist regimes all rejected Judeo-Christian values 52 00:04:10,680 --> 00:04:16,079 and ended up slaughtering the largest number of people in human history. 53 00:04:16,079 --> 00:04:22,139 For Nazism, Jews and members of other “non-Aryan” groups were declared worthless 54 00:04:22,140 --> 00:04:24,520 and murdered in the millions. 55 00:04:24,520 --> 00:04:29,420 For Communists, human worth was determined solely by Communist parties, 56 00:04:29,420 --> 00:04:32,820 which murdered tens of millions of people. 57 00:04:32,820 --> 00:04:42,140 Only by rejecting Judeo-Christian values could Nazis declare Jews, Slavs, and others “sub-human.” 58 00:04:42,140 --> 00:04:47,100 And only by rejecting Judeo-Christian values could Communist regimes 59 00:04:47,100 --> 00:04:51,000 slaughter those they called “class enemies.” 60 00:04:51,009 --> 00:04:55,169 Individual human life meant nothing. 61 00:04:55,169 --> 00:05:02,600 Meanwhile, human slavery was abolished only in the Judeo-Christian world. 62 00:05:02,600 --> 00:05:06,760 And, of course, for nearly all those who reject Judeo-Christian values, 63 00:05:06,760 --> 00:05:11,240 the human fetus is worthless if its mother deems it so. 64 00:05:11,240 --> 00:05:16,340 Finally, there is an increasingly vocal part of the environmentalist movement 65 00:05:16,340 --> 00:05:19,000 that also denigrates human worth. 66 00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:25,600 For these individuals, the human being is not infinitely precious; trees, and rivers, 67 00:05:25,600 --> 00:05:28,099 and mountains are. 68 00:05:28,099 --> 00:05:33,619 So, are you more valuable than a dog, or a cat, or a tree? 69 00:05:33,620 --> 00:05:37,460 That depends on your value system. 70 00:05:37,460 --> 00:05:39,820 I’m Dennis Prager.