Bringing God Down to Earth
Bringing God Down to Earth
“The soft overcomes the hard
“The very order, disposition, beauty, change and motion of the world and of all visible things silently proclaims that it could only have been made by God”
– Augustine, “City of God”
“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate seized planet”
Stephen Hawking, as quoted by David Deutsch in the “Fabric of Society”.
“I do take life, mind and purpose seriously and I concede that the universe at least appears to be designed with a high level of ingenuity. It seems to me that there is a genuine scheme of things–the universe is about something”
– Paul Davies, “The Goldilocks Enigma”
And there it is: We begin with a historical, traditional/religious point of view (Augustine); we proceed to a very modern, very skeptical, and very nihilistic point of view where Hawking basically writes off biological life in general and human life in particular as a statistical abnormality in an otherwise random universe with no meaning; and we end with Paul Davies, like Hawking a noted physicists and writer, who tries from a secular perspective to build a bridge back to Augustine. But where Augustine defines this “something” as God, and while Hawking denies its existence, Davies asserts that while this “something” (which the universe is about) exists he leaves it undefined.
Paul Davies in his very readable book “the Goldilocks Connection” spends hundreds of pages taking his readers through the history, thought process, and intellectual dilemmas and baggage that each of these three philosophical positions have and what modern physicists know, think and feel about the science of cosmology.
The very traditional and orthodox position taken by Augustine about the existence of a God who created the heavens and earth AND who tracks our every thought, mood and action, keeps copious records, and assigns, based on these records, either eternal damnation or eternal bliss to individuals at the moment of their death does not resonate well with most thinking people today.
The rejection of this position comes easily to people who resent the basic unfairness of the threat of eternal damnation for people who lived before the birth of Jesus; or who lived far from the Middle East and never heard of him in their lifetimes; or who honor God within their own traditions. The rejection of the Church’s assertion that one needs to accept Jesus as one’s personal savior or to suffer eternal pain as a consequence is made even easier when one becomes aware of the corruption, greed, lust, lack of compassion and overall hypocrisy exhibited by so many Church leaders over many hundreds of years.
The life of Stephen Hawking, confined in recent years to a wheel chair being totally paralyzed by Lou Gehrig’s disease, but with a very active and creative mind that has made him a world famous physicists, teacher and writer makes him a model for all of us as to how to have a meaningful life on many levels despite crippling handicaps….and this is true whether or not we accept or do not accept his assertion as to the role human life and human consciousness plays in the world.
And Paul Davies, trying to bridge the philosophical gap between the world of religious orthodoxy and the understanding of modern physics, seeks to affirm the possibility of there being somewhere in the mix a benign, if not defined, intelligent life force that is Not the controlling and punishing God of Augustine, or the Goddess of Randomness that so many modern thinkers pay homage to in any discussion as to whether the universe in general or our individual lives in particular have any real meaning.
It is into this discussion that the noted author and philosopher, David Birnbaum, offers his very thoughtful definition for that “something” which Paul Davies left undefined.
For Birnbaum, that “something”, as outlined in his three books “Summa Metaphysica I, II and III”, is the concept of “Potentiality” which he defines as a creative impulse inside the Life Force that drives all change, all evolution (random and otherwise) and is responsible for the Big Bang and the resulting cycles on all levels of energy/matter with regard to birth, growth, decline, death and the continued transformation of energy/matter to ever increasing and higher levels of complexity and level of consciousness.
Paul Davies writes as follows in “The Goldilocks Enigma”
“The carbon atoms so essential for life were forged inside stars somewhere billions of years ago. As these stars entered into the final stages of their lives their nuclear material collapsed to a density of almost a billion tons per square centimeter causing a cataclysmic explosion that propelled carbon laden star dust across billions of miles of space some of which ended up through a process of long evolution into biological life on earth culminating in the creation of human consciousness”.
The beauty of Birnbaum’s philosophical view of Potentialism is that it allows for randomness to function within evolution within an intelligent design that made it possible against overwhelming statistical odds for star dust from dying stars to find their way to a moderate sized planet and to produce the “chemical scum” that made human life possible.
The fact that Birnbaum is able to accomplish this without mandating or insisting that the Potentialism at the heart of the concept of intelligent design is linked to or restricted by any specific system of religious beliefs makes it possible for modern individuals living deep within a culture of secularism to take a fresh look at the challenging and complex cosmological questions with which physicists such as Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies are struggling with not only within the academic walls of their profession and publicly in their books and public discourse; but also no doubt privately within their own souls as they like all thinking individuals ponder the meaning of life.
The fact that Birnbaum finds within the Jewish tradition a deep mystical and poetical understanding of the Universe that is now being mirrored more and more by the experimental and theoretical findings of modern day cosmologists is indeed a vibrant, valuable and most welcome connecting bridge for those of us who have one foot planted in the world of Jewish tradition and the other foot planted equally as firmly in the secular world.
Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com
“I form the light, and create darkness;
I make peace, and create evil;
I am the Lord,
Who has made all these things”
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– Isaiah, 45.5
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“Good and evil form a duality. Creating potential for good, by definition, creates the inverse potential for evil along with it…..God’s omnipotence or non-omnipotence is not the issue. It is rather a question of definition. By definition, good comes packaged with concomitant evil.”
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– David Birnbaum, “Summa Metaphysica I”, page 95.
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“The Tao doesn’t take sides;
It gives birth to both good and evil”
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– Lao-tzu, “Tao Te Ching” 5
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It is not as if there were a separate “god” for good and a separate “god” for evil battling it out as it were; just as there is not a separate “god” for the lions and another “god” for the zebras; and one “god” for winter cold and another for the heat of summer.
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What we learn from individuals who have thought deeply about these matters…and whose ideas stand up to both reason and intuition…is that there is but one God who created a universe of dualities with infinite possibilities and potentialities working themselves out in and through the laws of nature, the evolution of species, and the hearts and minds, ids egos and super egos of that part of God’s creation that was created in God’s image.
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As human beings living in groups we are very keenly aware that whatever the circumstances there are always….at least from our limited and at times biased perspectives…. both in relative and in absolute terms, winners and losers.
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And as human beings we are sometimes joyfully and sometimes painfully aware that we live in a world of constant flux and change. Potentiality may rest every once and a while and for short periods of time the status quo may seem immovable until it is not. The wheel of time does turn, and life, moves with its manifold complexity and seeming contradictions, moves with it.
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This fact of life was recognized by both Isaiah and Lao-tzu. And at the very center of the wheel… which Isaiah calls “God” and Lao-tzu calls “the Tao”…lies the duality of both Peace (stillness) and Potentiality (movement).
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Religion and spirituality, at its worst, becomes the “opium of the people” as well as rationalizations by the “winners” of society to flaunt their power over those they have defined as “losers”.
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At its best, religion and spirituality teaches us of the infinite complexity and potentiality of life. It teaches us that the world is in constant motion and that our task as human beings is to accept this reality, NOT with our potentiality for selfishness, envy, greed and stupidity; but with our potential for intelligence, compassion, acceptance, love, hard work, creativity and joy that is available to all of us created in the image of God.
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Michael Papo
mapapo44@gmail.com
www.PapoBlogSumma.com
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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.
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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.”
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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:
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“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
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“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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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
.
.
.
“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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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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