Monthly Archives: August 2015

Adam and Eve in the Garden II

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“On what level is the Garden of Eden tale to be understood? Did the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) determine the course of untold billions? Was my destiny chartered by one one or two primitives?”
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-Questions posed by David Birnbaum in “Summa  Metaphysica 1” page 90
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A Brief commentary on David Birnbaum’s “Theory of Potentialism”
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The question of “On what level is the Garden of Eden tale to be understood” summarizes a major fault line that exists today in American society.
.
The far right of both Christianity and Judaism would answer this question with great confidence and a certain smugness: “We (in contrast to the unbelievers in our midst) understand it (this tale and the whole Bible) AS it is written.”
.
In contrast, the “unbelievers” symbolized by the secular left in today’s political terms, would, because they are on the defensive, respond with a somewhat longer answer:
.
“The story of the Garden of Eden, the entire bible, and god him/herself (to be politically correct) are all fairy tales that no longer need to be or should be read or thought about, much less venerated….because if one begins to take the bible seriously on any level (including as philosophy or literature much less, god forbid, as a religious or spiritual guide) one risks the very serious possibility of sliding down the proverbial slippery slope where pure fanaticism, intolerance, and dangerous behavior toward others awaits.”
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For most people, mainly concerned with day to day life of surviving and prospering within a rapidly changing and at times disorienting world, philosophic arguments over the bible outlined above is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
.
Proof of this is the continued decline of church and synagogue attendance by all ages but most pronounced by the young. The exception to this rule is in the most fundamental religious groups who feel increasing isolated and therefore all that more determined to preserve their religious points of view.
.
For more liberal churches and synagogues swept up in our culture’s scientifically correct understanding of evolution, and  based on the new god known as Random Selection with no context, it is very hard for these religious leaders to present any kind of acceptable religious philosophy other than “Be nice; Be kind; Be considerate, and Be tolerant”…which while is important and valuable advice is not a sufficiently enough deep philosophy to bring people coming back to the pews or to convince them to contribute to or publicly identify with any particular religion.
.
And as the gap between left and right grows, the opportunity to find common meeting places decreases with unfortunate consequences for America.
.
But even though “religious” people think they have ALL the answers, and more secular people think that because the universe unfolds ONLY through random selection, as is well known in the halls of academia, there, therefore, are NO answers;  it is still nonetheless true that all human beings continue to ask and struggle with the questions of
.
“Why is there evil in the world?” and the even deeper question of “What is our life all about?”
.
With regard to the first question as to “Why is there evil?” the answers are not so hard to come by.
.
Freud has taught us that all human beings, from Adam and Eve going forward, have an Id, Ego and Superego. And that when young innocent children are traumatized, brutalized, abused and neglected that their later ability to contain the selfishness, wish for revenge, rage, lust, disregard for others may know no boundaries; and the resulting weakness of their ego’s and superegos to regulate, contain and transform the raw and now traumatized energy of their Ids can sometimes result in massive acts of self destructive and destructive behavior that can cause great pain and suffering in ever growing concentric circles.
.
With regard to natural evil..the pain and suffering caused by nature being nature…with shifts in weather patterns causing floods or droughts, not to mention the earth shaking due to the violent movement of fault lines that criss cross the world; and thereby making a huge proportion of human beings vulnerable to massive acts of natural destruction …which we can try to remedy with good building codes, but which are not sufficient to protect against the instant damage that major earthquakes have  and will continue to inflict on both minor and major population centers.
.
Given Freud, and our understanding of how nature works one does not need fancy or complicated philosophical or religious theories to account for man made and natural disasters.
.
But one does need a good philosophical theory  to even begin to discuss, much less wrap our arms around the harder question of “What exactly is the meaning of our lives?”
.
It is to reflect on this question that David Birnbaum in his book “God and Evil Summa Metaphysica 1” postulates his theory of “Potentialism”…a theory that gives space for a religiously oriented person to accept evolution and randomness within evolution as part of a larger context going back to what ignited the big bang in the first place; and space for more secular inclined individuals to begin to understand that the recognition of evolution within the context of “Potentialism” provides the context which allows for continued intellectual, emotional and spiritual contemplation of a major philosophical question that our scientific theories cannot by definition answer.
.
In this light, Adam and Eve were not two primitive who on a whim or by poor judgement or ignorance or by seduction by a snake, or the malicious advice of Satan gave up for themselves and for all future generations the comforts and security of the Garden of Eden.
.
And if one adopts a more nuanced view of Adam and Eve one might indeed begin to see them as the first conscious philosophers and religious leaders in recorded human history.
.
And within this philosophical framework there is the understanding that Life was/is/and will continue to be about Potential expressing itself through opposites, balance, and the continued expression of potentiality in every aspect of the Universe.
.
Adam and Eve’s great realization was that if they accepted the opportunity to continue to live in the static but comfortable womb of the mythical Garden of Eden it would be to opt to return Life (their own particular lives as well as the full Potential of the Life Force of which they felt  themselves to be an integrable part) to the static moment before the big bang…before Potentiality first expressed itself; and before they as individuals had a chance to connect their potentiality (small p) to the larger Potentiality (large P) that created the Universe and against all statistical odds brought Life and later human consciousness into being.
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Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com
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Choices

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Under the heading “Evil and Necessity”, David Birnbaum in his 1998 book “Summa Metaphysica” 1 asserts:
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“With the creation of potential for good, which is required for man to be able to reach his spiritual potential, potential for evil indirectly, but nevertheless inexorably, came into existence as a consequence.” (page 94)
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And some 2800 years ago the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah, reflecting on his mystical connection with the Divine, reports that God had communicated to him the following message related to the issue of good and evil:
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“I form the light and create darkness;
I make peace, and create evil;
I am the Lord,
Who has made ALL THESE THINGS” (emphasis added)
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-Isaiah 45.5
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Between these two dates an academic question emerged that ignored the complex and nuanced “primal organic forest” of interconnectedness as portrayed by both quotes, above, and used an ultra-sophistacated line of argument based on an assumption/assertion made up out of full cloth, as it were, and to be found nowhere in Scripture.
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The question is as follows:
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“IF the definition of God is HE who is ever present, all knowing and all powerful, then how can there be evil in the world without immediately diminishing one of the three attributes whereby God is defined?”
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And, (in contrast to the historic and prophetic voice of Isaiah) IF one accepts the view of God (as all powerful, ever present and all good), and given the recognition of Evil in the world, then it makes no sense to respect, admire, venerate much less pray to such an incomplete and flawed deity. In which case:
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Score one for secular man; zero for the man of religion; God Gone; Game over.
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But as stated above, the interconnectedness of Good and Evil…as interwoven possibilities to be activated or not by the free will of human beings…a set of conditions created by God… there then is indeed room in our complex world for theology to be a part of our philosophic understanding of our world and of our place in it.
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All three Abrahamic faiths..and all world religions… teach us that IF we open our hearts we will experience  love and compassion towards ourselves, our fellow human beings, and all of creation; and we will work in harmony with others, respect the fragility of our eco system, and we will focus our individual and collective energy to maximizing our creative potential in every area of peaceful human endeavor.
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And we are taught that IF we don’t open our hearts to love and compassion what will almost automatically flow into the vacuum are feelings and convictions of anger, rage, lust and envy which collectively lead us to foul our own nests (mother earth) and our relationships with all those around us.
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The glory and strength of being human is our Potential to be able to chose to tip the scales toward peace and harmony. But with this Potential for humans to chose  the good, as Birnbaum describes above,  came the Potential for humans to chose the opposite.
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And again, we have Isaiah’s testimony that God created and sustains both options, and two separate but linked paths for humans to follow.
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Evil then is NOT something that God allows to happen because of inattention, or lack of interest, or of a sadistic part of his divine personality, or because of incompetency, or lack of power. Evil exists in the world because it was God’s will to give human being the dignity and autonomy to live their lives according to their own will/desire/and understanding taking all things into consideration..which is the exact thing that makes us fully human.
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In Freudian terms, the choice is between giving into the selfish cravings of our ID…something  we all possess..and the more refined and civilized prompting of our ego and superego.
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Hard choices, yes, but not impossible ones. To blame God for our failings both  individually and as families, communities and nations, and for our poor choices is a cop out.
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And if we ask: “If God made us this way with the Potential for good and evil, why didn’t He at least give us an owner’s manual and a set of easily read and remembered instructions which would be valid throughout the ages?”
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And the answer is that through the prophet Micah, we have a set of  instructions that are short, easily understood and universal in nature”
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“He has told you, O man, what is good,
And what the Lord requires of you:
Only to do justice
And to love goodness,
And to walk modestly with your God”
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-Micah 6.8
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Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com

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Theory of Potentialism

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“On what level is the Garden of Eden tale to be understood? Did the first man and woman (Adam and Eve) determine the course of untold billions? Was my destiny chartered by one one or two primitives?”
.
Questions posed by David Birnbaum in “Summa  Metaphysica 1” page 90
,
A Brief commentary on David Birnbaum’s “Theory of Potentialism”
.
The question of “On what level is the Garden of Eden tale to be understood” summarizes a major fault line that exists today in American society.
.
The far right of both Christianity and Judaism would answer this question with great confidence and a certain smugness: “We (in contrast to the unbelievers in our midst) understand it (this tale and the whole Bible) AS it is written.”
.
In contrast, the “unbelievers” symbolized by the secular left in today’s political terms, would, because they are on the defensive, respond with a somewhat longer answer:
.

“The story of the Garden of Eden, the entire bible, and god him/herself (to be politically correct) are all fairy tales that no longer need to be or should be read or thought about, much less venerated….because if one begins to take the bible seriously on any level (including as philosophy or literature much less, god forbid, as a religious or spiritual guide) one risks the very serious possibility of sliding down the proverbial slippery slope where pure fanaticism, intolerance, and dangerous behavior toward others awaits.”
.
For most people, mainly concerned with day to day life of surviving and prospering within a rapidly changing and at times disorienting world, philosophic arguments over the bible outlined above is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
.
Proof of this is the continued decline of church and synagogue attendance by all ages but most pronounced by the young. The exception to this rule is in the most fundamental religious groups who feel increasing isolated and therefore all that more determined to preserve their religious points of view.
.
For more liberal churches and synagogues swept up in our culture’s scientifically correct understanding of evolution, and  based on the new god known as Random Selection with no context, it is very hard for these religious leaders to present any kind of acceptable religious philosophy other than “Be nice; Be kind; Be considerate, and Be tolerant”…which while is important and valuable advice is not a sufficiently enough deep philosophy to bring people coming back to the pews or to convince them to contribute to or publicly identify with any particular religion.
.
And as the gap between left and right grows, the opportunity to find common meeting places decreases with unfortunate consequences for America.
.
But even though “religious” people think they have ALL the answers, and more secular people think that because the universe unfolds ONLY through random selection, as is well known in the halls of academia, there, therefore, are NO answers;  it is still nonetheless true that all human beings continue to ask and struggle with the questions of
.
“Why is there evil in the world?” and the even deeper question of “What is our life all about?”
.
With regard to the first question as to “Why is there evil?” the answers are not so hard to come by.
.
Freud has taught us that all human beings, from Adam and Eve going forward, have an Id, Ego and Superego. And that when young innocent children are traumatized, brutalized, abused and neglected that their later ability to contain the selfishness, wish for revenge, rage, lust, disregard for others may know no boundaries; and the resulting weakness of their ego’s and superegos to regulate, contain and transform the raw and now traumatized energy of their Ids can sometimes result in massive acts of self destructive and destructive behavior that can cause great pain and suffering in ever growing concentric circles.
.
With regard to natural evil..the pain and suffering caused by nature being nature…with shifts in weather patterns causing floods or droughts, not to mention the earth shaking due to the violent movement of fault lines that criss cross the world; and thereby making a huge proportion of human beings vulnerable to massive acts of natural destruction …which we can try to remedy with good building codes, but which are not sufficient to protect against the instant damage that major earthquakes have  and will continue to inflict on both minor and major population centers.
.
Given Freud, and our understanding of how nature works one does not need fancy or complicated philosophical or religious theories to account for man made and natural disasters.
.
But one does need a good philosophical theory  to even begin to discuss, much less wrap our arms around the harder question of “What exactly is the meaning of our lives?”
.
It is to reflect on this question that David Birnbaum in his book “God and Evil Summa Metaphysica 1” postulates his theory of “Potentialism”…a theory that gives space for a religiously oriented person to accept evolution and randomness within evolution as part of a larger context going back to what ignited the big bang in the first place; and space for more secular inclined individuals to begin to understand that the recognition of evolution within the context of “Potentialism” provides the context which allows for continued intellectual, emotional and spiritual contemplation of a major philosophical question that our scientific theories cannot by definition answer.
.
In this light, Adam and Eve were not two primitive who on a whim or by poor judgement or ignorance or by seduction by a snake, or the malicious advice of Satan gave up for themselves and for all future generations the comforts and security of the Garden of Eden.
.
And if one adopts a more nuanced view of Adam and Eve one might indeed begin to see them as the first conscious philosophers and religious leaders in recorded human history.
.
And within this philosophical framework there is the understanding that Life was/is/and will continue to be about Potential expressing itself through opposites, balance, and the continued expression of potentiality in every aspect of the Universe.
.
Adam and Eve’s great realization was that if they accepted the opportunity to continue to live in the static but comfortable womb of the mythical Garden of Eden it would be to opt to return Life (their own particular lives as well as the full Potential of the Life Force of which they felt  themselves to be an integrable part) to the static moment before the big bang…before Potentiality first expressed itself; and before they as individuals had a chance to connect their potentiality (small p) to the larger Potentiality (large P) that created the Universe and against all statistical odds brought Life and later human consciousness into being.
.
.
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A Brief Commentary on the Question of Good and Evil based on David Birnbaum’s “Summa Metaphysica 1″….A Modern Day Midrash
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“In the Beginning”–actually before “THE beginning” there was (no)thing. No life, no movement, no understanding, no gasses, no chunks of matter hurtling through the cosmos, no explosions, no heat, no cooling down and no light; and no human consciousness to appreciate what was, and what was about to happen.
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.What was before “the beginning” was Pure Potential which our scientists and many religious leaders today imagine that all that ever was, is, or will be was somehow or other contained in an unimaginably tiny microscopic speck of energy/matter…. self sufficient unto itself, quiet  but coiled like a very tight spring and waiting for some deep internal process inside itself to express its latent potentiality.
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And when that fateful moment arose for this latent Potential to rise into existence, it did so in and by an evolutionary process of what is now commonly referred to as the Big Bang.
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The big bang began and set in motion a process of evolution that is still going strong today…some 15,000,000,000 years later with the creation of uncountable galaxies, stars, planets, moons, meteors, black holes, space dust, and the very concepts of space and time; as well as our own planet earth teeming with life, and human beings in constant strife with nature and other human beings as human consciousness  struggles to understand its origins.
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And as scientists continue to map out theories of what happened in the seconds immediately following the big bang, the big unresolved and fundamental question that remains is “Whether this entire process was/is completely random? Or whether the Big  Bang was started, guided, and maintained by Potentiality unfolding through the active creative intelligence of a Life Force…that has as one of the arrows in its quiver, as it were, the condition of evolution through time within an overall framework?”
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In  historic Jewish tradition, the Life Force that activated the potential at the core of the big bang is named “God”, or in Hebrew, as one of its many names “Adon Olam”…the “Master of the Universe.”…with whom we as human beings have an ability at some minimal level to understand and to be in communication with.
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Over time this “communication” has been envisioned as having taken place in, through and by dreams, animal sacrifices, (and tragically also by human sacrifices), song, dance, mind altering drugs, and a wide range of religious and spiritual beliefs, doctrines, actions, celebrations and rituals.
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Jewish mystic belief as well as the Torah itself, takes us back to a time when God spoke to Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, and later in a more subdued form to the Hebrew Prophets.
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And from this “Speaking” Jewish mystics, philosophers and religious leaders have concluded that it was God’s need to speak, and to have someone else there who could understand and to be, in Martin Buber’s terminology a real “Thou” to God’s “I” that was the motivation for God to unleash the Potential…. the ignition of which produced the big bang and all that followed.
—————————————————————————————————————-
“The Garden of Eden tale, which is fittingly placed at the commencement of the biblical narrative, is a philosophically exquisite theodicy/philosophy wrapped in an image-ladden, but ultimately sophisticated, parable.”
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(“Summa  Metaphysica 1”, David Birnbaum, page 87)
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“Midrash Rabbah, Genisis 49, no. 20 portrays Abraham as expostulating with God: ‘If you want a world, you will not have justice; if it is justice you want, there will be no world. You are taking hold of the rope by both ends—you desire both a world and justice–but if you do not concede a little, the world cannot stand'”.
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(“Summa Metaphysica 1, David Birnbaum, pages 86-87)
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And God wished to have a “Thou” to relate to his “I” and in doing so he released the power of pure potential into the world through the evolutionary process of the big bang, and the first creatures that came into being were the angels.
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And how marvelous they were: Quick to Praise, attentive, perfect work ethic, never disagreeable, and so beautiful and graceful to watch in flight.
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But from God’s point of view, talking to the angels was like flipping a coin to decide whether He or satan would pay for beer; when there was only one coin, and that one coint was manufactured to always land head’s up; and God always got first call….a wonderful scenario if one wanted 100% security and never wanted to buy satan a beer (not a bad choice because a drunk satan was even more trouble than a sober one); but totally unsatisfactory if one wanted more than, in Martin Buber’s terms, an
“I- It” relationship with the world.
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And we know this because we are here and because God “wanted” a true “I Thou” relationship with at least some small part of His massive universe—a relationship not with dead matter, or with pre programmed angels, but with real live and dynamic creatures with minds of their own and thus quite capable to respond to God with a “Yes” as well as a “No”; or out of the complexity of their beings respond with a “Yes/No” or a “No/Yes”; or the dreaded “No/No”; or the highly desired and valued “Yes/Yes”.
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And here we come to the crux of the matter,
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God could not have a true “I Thou ” relationship with humankind IF he created them like the angels: beings who lived forever without suffering, violence, illness or natural or man made evil including death and the pre-recognition of death.
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In fairness to God, He tried his best to struggle with this conundrum, and with his deeply felt desire to protect his creation of mankind from suffering and pain, He at first pulled back from immediately establishing an “I’ “Thou” relationships with Adam and Eve, and placed them instead in the protection of the Garden of Eden as a kind of trial run to see where evolution and their own free will would take them.
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God wanted to see whether his newly created human beings would opt to be like the angels and live eternally in peace, tranquility and total comfort by eating the fruit of the Tree of Life, or whether they would on their own choose freedom over comfort; autonomy over dependence; adventure over inertia; mortality and an “I Thou” relationship with God, rather than immortality and an  “I It” relationship with God by being self willed, and rebellious and eating from the Tree of Knowledge.
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And God having just won by a coin flip another bet for free beer from Satan, sat back and waited to see how the drama he had constructed would conclude.
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And to His immense satisfaction, Adan and Eve were soon growing their own food outside the garden.
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And so we come to the question…as all of us who delve in philosophy must:
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“And how is it possible, therefore, for an all present, all powerful and all good God to allow his creatures to suffer pain, misfortune, illness, grief sadness depression and death? And how is it possible for this very same God to allow natural and man made evil to cause so much needless pain and suffering to so many people?
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And when we look at the issue of God and evil in this light, we come to realize that by necessity God had no choice.
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If God was to fulfill his desire to have an authentic “I Thou ” relationship with human beings and if mankind was to have an authentic “I Thou” relationship with God, as decided at the dawn of human history by Adam’s and Eve’s choice to eat from the Tree of Knowledge then natural and man made evil would hence forth, by definition, be part of the world in which we live.
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It is, of course, entirely possible that many of our fellow human beings would, if they had the choice, have voted for Adam and Eve to have stayed in the Garden, and for human history never to have gotten started and perhaps for the latent Potential that fueled the big bang to never have happened.
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But these choices have already been made, and as there is no turning back the clock, our task is to understand that the Potential in all of us; in the universe; and in our relationship with each other and with our Creator Is huge, Is still very much untapped and Is available to each and every one of us to do much good, and to bring much joy and enlightenment to a world very much in need of our activating the Potential for good that is in us and all around us.
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How we do this is clearly a much more valuable, and critically important question than the endless and totally non constructive academic debate in which we feel sorry for ourselves and fantasize having a God who would allow us to have both our freedom and autonomy when convenient and to have the Garden available to us when desired, and to be angry and dismissive to the point where we simply no longer see the Potential that created the world and continues to sustain it.
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Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com

The 36 “Tzadikim”

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Optimism about life, humankind, and the general state the world is in, is often in short supply when one looks around, reads the newspaper and contemplates whole areas of the world being driven back to the barbarism of the dark ages.
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And when one reflects on the “sanity” and “civilized” behavior of what modern civilization in our own day is capable of doing as evidenced by the horrors of the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia and Sudan one can see why an existential pessimism may indeed be warranted.
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And yet life is not all bleak. Here in America we have generation by generation freed ourselves not entirely, but in very significant ways from views and prejudices that in the not so long ago past led to very serious discrimination and suffering for women, people of color, people with disabilities, people incarcerated for long terms for relatively minor drug offenses, and people whose sexual orientation is towards people of their own sex.
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The fact that we currently have an Afro-American finishing up his SECOND term as President of the United States means that his first election was no fluke; and the fact that a very conservative oriented US Supreme Court has endorsed the concept of Gay Marriage as the law of the land speaks volumes as to how our society has evolved to become more inclusive.
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And yes, while it is true that black men are still gunned down unnecessarily by white police officers, it is also true that these acts are now unanimously condemned at all levels of government by both black and white elected officials. And this is a far cry from just 50 short years ago when lynching in the South was a relativly common experience and where senators from southern states were able for decades to prevent the US Senate from approving any kind of national anti lynching laws which basically left million of black American citizens living in the South unprotected from lynch mobs instigated by the KKK.
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Judaism as a culture and a religion has always, in spite of often cruel realities, offered up a nuanced optimistic view of the world which began with father Abraham heading out on a long and dangerous venture to a new land.
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Some 3800 years later the Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel, another Abraham (Abraham Isaac Kook) in his book “Orot Hakodesh” (Holy Lights) as quoted in David Birnbaum’s “Summa Metaphysica 1” (page 154) wrote as follows:
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“Light is steadily pitted against the dark, and light will increasingly overcome the dark. Nothing remains the same; everything blooms, everything ascends, everything  steadily increases in light and truth. The enlightened spirit does not become discouraged even when he discerns that the line of ascendence is circuitous, including both advance and decline, a forward movement but also fierce retreats, for even the retreats abound in the potential of future progress”
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But what happens when there is a “fierce retreat”and a functioning, beautiful, productive, and creative society is condemned to smoke in the ovens of Auschwitz and Treblinka.
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Victor Frankl, the noted Viennese psychoanalyst, philosopher, author and Holocaust survivor as quoted by David Birnbaum, page 154 of Summa Metaphysica 1, relates to this very topic as follows:
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“But I prefer to live in a world in which man has the right to make choices, albeit wrong choices, rather than a world in which no choice at all is left to him.  In other words, I prefer a world in which, on the one hand, a phenomena such as Adolph Hitler may occur, and, on the other hand, phenomenon such as the many saints who have lived”
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No doubt many of us, including me, would greatly prefer, if given the choice, to give up a few saints in return for Adolph Hitler to have been one of the many millions of caualities of World Wart I.
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But this level of “choice” is not given to us.
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What is given to us is the old Jewish Tradition of the 36 hidden “Tzadikim”…(righteous people/saints) whose very existence keeps the universe as we know it from collapsing.
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I must admit that I do not know where when and how this story/myth came into being. And, in any event, It is not intuitive, at least for me, to think, feel, or believe that the fate of the universe as we know it depends on the number of “Tzadikim” NOT falling from 36 to 35…and that such a slight change in numbers could possible mean so much.
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And as I pondered this matter, valuable insight appeared, as if out of nowhere, in the editorial section of the NY Times in an article by the noted author and  Professor of Neurology at the NY University School of Medicine, Oliver Sacks.
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In an opinion piece entitled “My Periodic Table” published on 7/26/15, Sacks writes as follows and hereby indicates his scientific understanding that the line between existence and non existence is a very fine one…just as Jewish mystical belief, as indicated above, postulates that a reduction from 36 to 35 “Tzadikim” could have cataclysmic consequences:
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“In a recent issue of ‘Nature’, there was a thrilling article by the Nobel Prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek of a new way of calculating the slightly different masses of neutrons and protons. The new calculations confirms that neutrons are very slightly heavier than protons–the ratio of their masses being 939.56563 to 938.27231–a trivial difference, one might think, BUT IF IT WAS OTHERWISE THE UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT COULD NEVER HAVE DEVELOPED” (emphasis added)
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What we learn from this is that if the relation between neutrons and protons did not fall exactly in the place where the percentage difference between them in terms of the ratio of their masses was greater or less than .001376509 the universe as we know it to be with the reality of life here on earth and the potential for life in other places would in scientific terms not be possible.
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It would indeed seem…both scientifically, and from Jewish mystical tradition… that we live on an existential knife edge between being and non being..both in terms of the lives of each individual as well as the overall existence of the universe and that human consciousness…feelings, thoughts an actions, as symbolized by the 36 “Tzadikim” plays a very important role in keeping the precarious nature of our universe in a sustainable balance.
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One way to look at the concept of the “36 Tzadikim” is to view all of the Jewish people, and indeed all of the world’s population, to be divided into 36 groups..and in each group there is a constant battle between compassion and cruelty, love and hatred, greed and sharing..and the ongoing struggle to move forward to fulfill our Potential or to back away from this struggle.
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The good news is that we can and should be inspired, assured and reassured by the words quoted above of Rabbi Kook:
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‘Light is steadily pitted against the dark, and light will increasingly overcome the dark. Nothing remains the same; everything blooms, everything ascends, everything steadily increases in light and truth.  the enlightened spirit does not become discouraged even when he discerns that the line of ascendance is circuitous, including both advance and decline, a forward movement but also fierce retreats, for even retreats abound in the potentials of future progress”
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And so it was, so it is, and so it will be..and all together just like the mass of neutrons is slightly higher than the mass of protons…and thereby allowing our universe as we know it to exist…the ratio of the “Potential of future progress” that supports and sustains the 36 “Tzadikim” is, was and, according to Jewish tradition, will, thankfully, always be slightly higher than the “fierce retreats”..both internal and external that obstruct our forward progress.
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Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com
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