A recent survey found a dramatic decline in the number of young Americans who consider being religious and having kids as “very important” priorities.

During a conversation about that poll this morning on FOX & Friends, Trump-worshiping Pastor Robert Jeffress blamed the decline on “secularists” who push the idea that we can be good without God.

… you know, every civilization is only one generation away from barbarianism. If we fail to pass our faith and values onto our children and children’s children, it leads to a moral unraveling of society, and that’s what we see happening right now. You know, about 60 years ago, secularists started telling us that, as a nation, we could be good without God. And so we tried to pass along values without the undergirding spiritual foundation for that, and it’s been a complete wreck. You know, somebody said socialism works until you run out of other people’s money. Well, secularism works until you run out of other people’s faith, and, as a nation, we can’t live on the faith of three generations ago. We have to embrace faith and pass it on to our children.

60 years ago, secular people starting messing everything up!

Jeffress may long to go back to a time before the Civil Rights Act was passed, LGBTQ people had to be closeted for their own safety, and gender equality wasn’t even on the radar, but I’ll go out on a limb here and argue we’re better off because we didn’t let conservative Christians impose all their bizarre backwards values on the rest of society.

His message is that if secularism seems appealing now, it’s only because religion is still ever-present in the background. But that has no bearing in reality. As we’ve said far too many times on this site, the least religious nations in the world are among the happiest, least violent places on Earth. They didn’t have some whitewashed Christian past to fall back on.

Not that Jeffress was called out on any of this by the hosts. Instead, he kept spewing his Christian bullshit. Like this explanation for why parents were unable to tell their kids why shooting up a school is bad.

… The problem is, even in families that are intact, they tell their children, “Well, you need to do this and do that. You know, it’s wrong to shoot other people in school.” And somebody says, “Well, why is it wrong?” And the parent doesn’t have any real good answer. Who says what’s right and wrong? You have to have that spiritual foundation. The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and I think, as a nation, that’s where we’re missing it.

Apparently, to Jeffress, the only way to stop kids from shooting their classmates is to constantly tell them God will be angry if they do. That’s it. Spiritual bribery is the only option. No mention of the Golden Rule. No explanation of empathy. No talk of how killing others doesn’t solve your problems. (Certainly no mention of guns.)

You have to worry about Christians like Jeffress. The rest of us manage to be good citizens and good people — at least we try — without falling back on a religious crutch. But, holy crap, if Jeffress and the people in his congregation realized God didn’t exist, you get the feeling they’d go on a violent rampage.

Jeffress needs God because he’d be a monster without one. (Well, more of one, anyway. It’s not like he’s a voice of reason with God.) But at least he admits all that.

It’s too bad the hosts are so bad at their jobs, that they’ll never challenge him for spreading these pernicious stereotypes about people he doesn’t know and has no desire to understand.

Update: I should’ve mentioned that there’s an ad for Ark Encounter in the bottom right of the video. They advertise heavily on FOX News. Why not? They already know the audience loves hearing lies.

