There is a war taking place in the West. It is not only a war concerning immigration, race, or economic policy. It is a war over who decides what is good and what is evil.
Luigi Mangione murdered a healthcare executive, and yet a 2024 YouGov poll found that a remarkable 23% of those surveyed viewed Mangione favorably. A Buckley Institute survey reported in 2017 that 30% of students believe that physical violence can be justified to prevent someone from using hate speech or making racially charged comments.
A 2025 survey by the Cato Institute revealed that 40% of Americans aged 18 to 29 agree that “violence against the rich can be justified” — compared to 29% for those aged 30 to 44, and less than 15% among people 45 and up.
For decades, I have asked dog owners in my audiences whether they would first save their drowning dog or a drowning stranger. Almost without exception, only one-third said they would save the stranger, and one-third was uncertain.
Undoubtedly, those of previous generations would not only have voted to save the stranger, most would have found the question ridiculous.
As the West becomes increasingly secular, it replaces Biblical values with feelings.
The result has been an endless series of morally foolish positions. These include the assertion that men can give birth. That compassion should replace justice in the courtroom. That killing human beings under any circumstances is wrong. That, to protect the environment, people should consider not having children. That thieves stealing up to $950 worth of goods should be given the equivalent of a parking ticket, assuming they are even pursued. And that people who enter a country illegally should be given almost all the rights of those who live in that country legally.
Putting aside the question of whether God exists or whether the Bible is divinely inspired, there is abundant evidence that a society divorced from God and the Bible will ultimately descend into chaos.
The wise Founders of our country knew this, and it makes sense. Math without the laws of mathematics produces incoherence. Two plus two can equal any result one prefers. Where there is no objective standard, there are an infinite number of equally plausible results.
So it is with morality.
Without moral absolutes, morality can be anything one wants, or anything a society chooses. For example, without God and the Bible telling us that man is made in God’s image, what is the argument for sustaining the lives of those in their last year of life — usually the most medically expensive year of their lives? Why not provide those in palliative care with medications that would allow them to die painlessly, while the many billions of dollars saved could fund research to cure life-threatening diseases? What is the secular argument for prolonging the lives of those close to death? There is none.
The only reason we still preserve those lives is that we still employ Judeo-Christian values. When those values are dropped, so too will end the effort to preserve life in end-of-life situations, just as the conviction for saving a stranger before the dog one loves has been dropped by many Americans.
Judeo-Christian values provide societal guardrails against feelings-based “morality.” Because man is made in God’s image, no economic benefit could be great enough to morally justify terminating a patient’s life. Because the book of Genesis goes out of its way to assert about humans something it never says about animals — “male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27), no matter how much compassion we might feel, we cannot pretend a man is a woman or a woman is a man.
And because there is a Biblical commandment against stealing, compassion cannot justify making theft anything but a serious crime.
The question is not whether one believes in God or in the divine authorship of the Bible. It’s how much moral chaos will ensue when a society abandons Judeo-Christian values.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio host heard on nearly 400 stations, founder of PragerU, and a New York Times bestselling author of nine books. His new book, “IF THERE IS NO GOD: The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil,” is available now.
