Who Decides What Is Good and What Is Evil? Book Review: 'If There Is No God'

In 1992, author, commentator, and Prager U founder Dennis Prager talked to, listened to, and answered the questions of 74 students at an Omaha college. These were big life questions: the nature of man; feelings vs. values, and why people should turn to God as the source of values. Prager was Charlie Kirk, 30 years before Charlie.

Today, Prager dedicates his newest book, If There Is No God… The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil, to the memory of Charlie, “a great man, a great American, and a great friend.” It will publish on Feb. 24.

Fortunately for us, Prager’s friend Joel Alperson taped the four 1992 sessions. Prager reviewed the questions and found them ageless; the questions the students posed back then are the same concerns people have today. This book is a compilation of all the questions that the students asked him in those sessions. Prager didn’t change anything except to add some more recent references in some answers (such as the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion of Israel). He wrote and edited this book by dictating from his bed; his fall in November 2024 left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. Prager credited Alperson with making the book possible.

Who Would You Save?

Prager starts his conversation by posing a simple thought experiment to his audience: Your beloved dog and a stranger are both drowning. Who do you try to save first? His audience then (as do audiences now) splits into three: one-third would save the dog, one-third the stranger, and one-third didn’t know. He then spends the weekend talking about what drives that decision: feelings? Or values? And where do those values come from?

Prager’s purpose is to share his belief in God, specifically the God of the Bible, as the source of objective truth: “If there is no God, good and evil are merely opinions.” Throughout the back and forth with the students, he gives respectful but clear, reasoned responses that stand on his beliefs. Today’s young reader can easily imagine Charlie Kirk in these dialogues.

Rather than rely on feelings, which can change with peer pressure, a toothache, or the weather, Prager wants us to use our reason to understand that Judeo-Christian values are the key. Prager leaves the students, and us, with three takeaways.

One, values trump feelings. This may sound elementary to a reader steeped in Christian or Jewish belief, but remember, Prager was talking with college-age students, who didn’t all share his belief and who were still learning to think critically. His ability to give clear and, more importantly, interesting reasons for why he holds the values he does captivated his young audience then – and will captivate readers today.

Two, Prager wants us to know that God is necessary for values to be objective. Without God, who is higher than we are, our values are nothing but opinions and whatever makes us feel good. As Prager put it, slaveholders thought slavery was good.

Third, and the hardest for a generation focused on self-esteem to swallow, is that man is not inherently good. Prager said, “The belief that man is good became widespread in Western society at exactly the same time that Western society became secular.” Look how well that turned out.

Like any group of young students, some pushed back. Some thought religion was boring, or that the problem with the world was too much religion. Anyone looking at the excesses of Islamist extremism in the world might agree. Prager wants us to consider the opposite: What if the problem in Western society is too much secularism? “I know the word religion scares many of you. But the word that should scare you is secular, not religious,” he said. It was secular belief systems – Communism, Nazism – that made the 20^th century the bloodiest on record.

Nuggets of Wisdom

The questions Prager answers range from “Why Do People Hurt Other People?” to “How Can I Follow the Bible If It Opposes Same-Sex Marriage?” to “What Does It Mean To Have a Relationship To God?” You can read this book in two days, yet it is one you’ll want to go back to time and time again. I gained insights into why God gave the 600+ Torah laws that I’d never thought of before. There are many nuggets of wisdom in this book that you must sit with to absorb and meditate on the meaning.

Prager makes sure every answer is clear and entertaining. As he said, “In my view, the first rule of all communication – podcasts, radio shows, or anything else – is ‘be interesting.’ … It sounds trivial, but it is enormous.”

Dennis Prager never has to worry about that.

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