Rabbi Guy Matalon - The Kuzari - Part 9

okay we started talking about a definition of nature and the koozari the king says that although i don't really have a good chat it doesn't say the exact word but what's shot explanation a good understanding right explanation of what this concept is she says i don't have a good understanding of what it is but the scientists the philosophers they do so i'll simply divert to them so the rabbi says but in this situation they're not any different than us that is what are they using in order to find out the definition they're using their reason so my reason and their reason is actually you know same so he says the philosopher which is aristotle says that really nature is the cause that moves or causes a being to stay addressed not accidentally but rather essentially accidental movement is if i push this what would happen to the cup accidentally would fall essential means that it has the principle of motion in itself if you leave the cup here and there's no outside force reacting on it will it ever move no why not because it doesn't have a principle of motion right it is only when i when something exerts force on it then it will move it'll move accidentally not essentially you for example can move essentially yes you can move accidentally right if i push you accidentally you will move but you could also move essentially by making a decision i'm leaving so the nature is the principle of motion in existence the question is what is motion what do you think motion is motion motion what's motion this some sort of movement movement okay movement in what sense any type of movement any type of movement so there is one type of movement is called locomotion what does locomotion move means no it means moving from one point to another that's one there's another type of motion that says motion really is a issue of change any change is a type of motion why when you eat right you process the foods and you grow that is motion what's the motion how do you grow certain age you grow this way a certain age you grow that way right depending on what it is but the point is that there is movement there's motion that ultimately is going to explain to us is moving from two states what is the natural state of matter the natural state of matter is to be that is to say what do i mean by to be to be potential and then it moves from potentiality to actuality like an acorn right what's an acorn an actual in actuality an acorn is an acorn but in potential potentially what is that acorn a tree how does it go from potentially being a tree and actually becoming a tree that requires motion that is called nature moving from one state to another okay that is what the the book uh the rabbi is going to explain is nature versus nature like a wrong expression why no the question is to what extent nature affects your behavior and to what extent nurture affects your behavior it's about percentages or quality and quantity it seems like nature in that sense is describing like your natural instincts to do something yes but there could also be there's accidental motion so your environmental may be accidental or they're essential depending if you're in a very bad environment so movement isn't it's not necessarily physical correct it's it's also state moving from potential to actual like learning torah like if you start learning torah and you get learning more you're making motion to have the potential to understand and you're making motion to go correct correct with me aaron okay let's keep going so the rabbi says really if you want to understand the explanation what nature is is the difference between what is caused accidentally and what is caused by nature this is not really what is nature what nature is so then the king says i see from these sort of questions that we're dealing with that the language that we use to describe god you applies these names to god applies the the concept of nature to god when we say that really nature is active that you know if you ever watch those uh animal shows national geographic it says and nature takes its course or you know according to nature mother nature takes care of her young where you know we see the beauty of nature what is that what are you talking about what is nature so what the king is realizing is that we apply all sorts of characteristics to nature where we should probably apply all those characteristics to god yes we say that nature is smart or wise or caring right or nature has its own sort of you hear all these type of that's what he's saying he says yeah you have to understand that the elements and the sun and the moons and the stars do certain actions some of them through warmth some of them through cold they make things hot or cold or they make a damp or they dry things all sorts of things but we don't attribute wisdom to what the sun does right when it's a warm beautiful day outside you say boy the sun is so generous do you say that yes it's a beautiful day yeah but what does that mean does it mean that that the sun and do you attribute that beauty to the sun and say sun really cares about us and provides us a wonderful day no you said the sun in its infinite wisdom or its finite wisdom has shone to feed all the plant or look at the beautiful moon right that the moon cares about his people and made the tide rise do we attribute those type of actions to the moon no so that's his whole point that we this is really what avraham was talking about the rambam in avodah zarah in uh tries to explain how do people who believed in god who knew the existence of god fell into the trap of worshipping idols how do you get from there is a god we know that he created the world to believing in idols so the rambam explains in a matter of several steps step one they said god created all these entities the sun and the moon and because they do such a wonderful job and they carry out what god wants they are his servants so far so good is that a bad thing to say did we get in trouble yet when we get in trouble they say since they are his servants and they are closer to him than us we should pay homage to them we should respect them which is the beginning of a mistake and then once you pay homage to them what happens you start praying to them the rambam says everybody knew that there is a god nobody in the time of abraham said there is no god nobody runs the show he said no no god created the world but he gave us these natural forces and those forces are the ones that we should pay attention to and that was the beginning of the end that's what the rabbi says to to the king it's okay to understand how nature works and to see the processes but please don't fall into the trap of attributing qualities such as wisdom and goodness and all these other things to natural entities because they are only reflecting what hashem that is the jewish view of nature right you see it's tucked in in the middle of lots of different things but here comes the cruiser and says do you really understand how nature works this is how it works yes nature does certain things there are processes going from potentiality to actuality all those things are happening but they're happening because they're a reflection of god's will question is this why we get people uh historically saying abraham wasn't the first like monotheistic uh believer who says that he wasn't i don't have a specific source okay what historians adam and eve did they believe in one god yes yes did noah believe in one god yeah so i'm saying this is how we get that reflection so there are some historians who said that there was like an egyptian king who like this is different it's not they were not monotheistic the egyptians were if you're going to argue about the this pharaoh then yes of course i'm not you know come on give me some credit here so atun was um uh he believed in monolithic what does monolithic means that he believed it's only we only worship one god although there are other gods he did not deny that there are any other god he said there are other gods but we only worship one but didn't you have to do it through him that's secondary but that's so that when the historians talk about the egyptian it's not monotheist freud argued freud wrote a book called moses and monotheism and that was his thesis that moses was an achenatum priest who ran away with a bunch of slaves and taught him the religion of ahinato but that's a separate discussion but here what we're trying to what we're learning is how we get to sort of this mistake he says we should not attribute wisdom to them because he says any conception thinking and measurement and also what is called that is to be able to produce the next generation anything that has a particular purpose an act that requires a purpose you have to attribute to a wise being that is capable of making estimation or calculations okay the sea rising right low tide high tide because of the moon does not mean that the moon is sitting there calculating the gravity that he has on the earth that it has on the earth and then the earth is kegeling its gravity and therefore they make sort of a no it is a natural process it's a process that is taking place the change is taking place and they're not planning on there was all sorts of theories about hoping look the reason that freud said it was because he tried he did not want he wanted to discredit judaism as much as possible because he was so hyped up he had a runny nose now the issue the issue no no the issue with freud remember was he is one he was a guy that what that invented a new theory and dealt with a lot of anti-semitism and wanted to distance himself from judaism and the way to really distance himself from judaism was as far as i'm concerned was to take this theory of ahinatun and moses to be an egyptian priest and make it up what is it based upon it based upon that nothing happened in the desert does he have an explanation of how did they fake a mass revelation no and historic historians who have actually looked at the evidence of this said completely this is ridiculous is there any physical evidence of moses no what would you like to find the red there is there is an egyptian hymn that seems to go with all of the plagues they also found tablets that could be the form of where this is found but there is uh um evidence something that the egyptians are talking about all the plagues one after the other they're not in the same order though what i don't remember the name that i don't remember so if you want to get mad at me for that that's fine no there's been some you can look up science there's some sciences everything about a year ago that they had um they they went like exploring let's stay on target because apparently someone's roommate won't come to class if i let conversations go in different directions so i want to even when the person isn't here i'm going to be you know stark about it and stay on track and keep moving so we're not too slow how's that that good way of moving on okay so he says whoever calls the process of preparing matter through heat or cooling as nature so it won't do any harm that is there are processes in nature where you have molecules right and you have they do they move rapidly or they slow down um there's all sorts of natural prices if you want to call that nature that's fine no no problem why because you are distancing you are not applying wisdom to that process if you are applying the term wisdom to this process then it would be a problem so he says right to say that a child is is formed uh not connected to the mother and the father we wouldn't agree correct because it requires some sort of a willing act by at least one of them if not both of them we certainly hope it's both of them but there are instances we could think of situations where only one of them was willing and the other one was anus right forced he says he says but remember their role is helping matter get formed who is the ultimate former of this baby nature what god exactly god is the one that is causing this yes did the man and the woman get together they got together are they producing the creating the material platform for a form to take place yes does that mean by the fact that them getting together you have an egg and a sperm coming together with that 100 prepare create a child the answer is absolutely not there is something else and he says the form comes from the wise creator he says and don't get confused with regard to this issue of how god is related to natural processes in this earth he says because this is the key the root of believing in god and the root of disbelieving in god that is nature and what is happening in nature could either be could serve as a source for your belief in god or it could also serve as your source for disbelieving god go either way which is very strange because this is what the king says to him how's that possible that the same thing can serve either as your core source for emunah believing in god but for somebody else the same thing serves as what as is core for disbelief i was asked to go see this movie that is presenting the beauty of nature and they and they wanted me like to uh write something to say that you see in this movie it proves the existence of god and i said you know there's no raya here there's no evidence here if you show this movie to me i will say i see the beauty in god's creation you bring an atheist you say of course evolution and nature at work that is it could go either way it all depends on what your preconceived notions are so the rabbi says let me explain to you why so he says this is something very very interesting concept that uh it's not the current scientific model but it's worth learning because i think it's an interesting idea so how do you go from an acorn to a tree that was our example how do you go from an acorn to a tree it gets in the dirt okay falls into the dirt yes there's an animal brings it to it area and sprouts at some point and it sprouts and becomes a sprout and it grows and from a sprout it gets to a seedling and a seedling goes to a young tree and a young tree too right until you get to a acorn to what what is a pine tree right a what a pine tree right oak effemo i don't know i'm not holding in mine it's fine so an acorn gets into an oak tree fine thank you very much appreciate it good does the form at the beginning the acorn has the material of an acorn in the form of an acorn how does it go from the form and material of an acorn to a form and material of it has a form doesn't it of an acorn what happens to that form that that form disappears and you have another form of a sap or of uh what did we say a sprout where does the form come from that's what he's saying oh so that was my seminar in nyu on how do we understand contemporary genetics with regard to the theory that the kuzari's talking about which is aristotle what does the dna have in it it has a certain code which is material it has the matter that will turn potentially into this but does it have the form actually there no the form is potential so then here comes the question that aristotle dealt with the question was can an entity pull itself from the brute straps and move himself up that is if i wanted let's say we have a monkey can the monkey now turn into a a silver bat we have a gorilla baby monkey baby gorilla and can it turn into a silver bag on its own can it say like i'm ready i'm going can an acorn become an oak tree by itself what is required of it time and environment that's it time environment water sun less environment everything has to be perfect for it to be able to know so all of that is environment all of it is environmental factors i would say by environmental factors it only affects the material in question not the form of the not the form of it the form according to the kuzeri and according to aristotle comes from without right it has the potentiality of becoming an and now let's say we go we have an acorn right and it can have it has potentially the form of an oak tree does it potentially have the form of a table no why is it depending on the dna what it could potentially be exactly it could potentially become that table but the question is where does that form come from does it come from within so if the form of the acorn is in there it is potential and here's what the kuzuri is saying that you need some sort of a form generator to send the form when the matter is ready to receive it that is to go from an acorn to what we call a sprout then it sends the sprout form the environmental factor is changing now it's ready to become a sapling then it gets what a sapling form then it goes into what's the next stage of sam after sapling tree and then it gets to a point so that when a person cuts the tree and takes it down and wants to make a canoe out of it right he brings that form he's going to change that piece of wood into whatever he wants changes it but the potentiality of form that piece of acorn could become almost anything as long as its material is ready to receive that form you're talking about genetics what are you doing this what something what i don't know something what something i'm just not i don't know something's not clicking me too okay this was a tree right yes where did that tree come from from an acorn started out as a little seed in that seed that potential seed had that seed which is an actual seed had the form of a seed right right it has a no form it doesn't it means his what what isha was saying sort of its genetic blueprint no blueprint what it could become okay if you start out a seed of a tomato plant you will never get a cucumber right why because i made it that way because that's the that's the form that it has and that's the genetic code that it has so we are talking about the form which is sort of what the thing is going to become in the future yeah right so when you started that as a zygote you were the form of a zygote potentially you were aaron yeah or hashem aaron now that form that you have now there are other forms that you're going to receive right the form of atomic but it's not every day you don't get a form every day because that is who you are so the form doesn't although it's potential in you what activates it what turns it on think of it as like electrical charge the electrical charge is there but it's off someone has to flip the switch to get it going and that that movement says the kusari is not done by the by the entity itself okay an acorn is not going to become a tree by itself so the forms we have didn't are it's not it wasn't ingrained into us you had potentially you had this shaped this way correct you you've had the potential to become who you are the fact that you became this way is because god had something to do with it that's his point forms are coming are coming to matter from the outside can i break from this like can i make a little tangent question so is there any in judaism is there any support of the parallel universe theory that there may be infinite possibilities of every universe infinite possibilities like the r square was all red like i don't know i'm not sure what i i don't know what an infinite possibilities mean like uh the reason is i'll tell you why i say that i'm making a duke because there's a concept in the rambam that says if something is possible it becomes actual and there are no infinite series that are actual so that's why i'm saying i don't think that that's going to make sense well okay take the infinite word out okay is there anything that supports the parallel universe theory i don't know every possible action i don't know if they're um 10 days from when he left um last not this that previous week the week before so he should be back soon okay let's stop and we'll continue tomorrow you