Answering Challenges To Bechira - Rabbi Mordechai Becker

what's it on upstairs okay that's right yes i know i'm looking at it i want to see if the positioning of the person um yes yes yes we're both very moderate no zoom anymore oh congratulations you smile please uh up tell me this is true [Music] received you don't start um one time everyone said that but at the moment it will all be too long okay you know what we can dive in after this year all right yeah yes okay this all right is oh cheers scheduled this is is thank you so uh so okay january yes uh um oh yeah [Music] okay hey cheers hello come on of the 26th year of the flatbush summershield program of irregular torah special opportunity especially manda was starting the second quadrant centennial of shiurim in the summer program which are part of the community mainstay of the summer season people looking forward to it all year and with broken bomb to everyone who came in person and all the men and all the women that i just notion all the people joining through the phone system and watching through the streaming directory of the big extracurricular mr mrs razer steinmetz of weiss paint for sponsoring tonight's share ashika mitsus to have the great sponsoring your share call ignore terror at [Music] mordechai 718-851-8651 senior lecturer and gateway seminars on answering challenges to bahiris my cover at the corner by beckham tonight's joshua okay thank you and uh did a great job on the bass mattress looks very nice okay um in virginia uh over a few year period um there was something like 37 young dolphins that were found washed up on the beaches after necropsies were performed on the dolphins they found evidence of severe blunt force trauma these baby dolphins based on the evidence multiple rib fractures lacerations soft tissue concussions etc it was clear that they had been killed by adult dolphins male dolphins were killing these young dolphins the reason is the conjecture is that they wanted to make sure that the mothers would uh not be nursing them hence enter back into fertility and they'll be able to mate so horrific behavior there was no condemnation of the dolphins by the united nations probably because they weren't israeli there was no condemnation by any one world health organization etc for this uh abuse of these children why not the answer is very simple because as cute and adorable as dolphins are they're animals they have no moral decision-making ability they have no way to distinguish between right and wrong they do not have bachira and consequently without just self-determination without free will and without a sense of morality they cannot be condemned for doing terrible stuff that if humans would do it they'd be thrown in prison for years now human beings have we have free will we know this well first of all i think very simply we know this from our own experience it's very powerful we all know that we have struggled with various decisions whether it's pressing the snooze button on the alarm whether it's keeping your mouth shut at appropriate times whatever it is we have struggled with moral decisions not only have we struggled with the decision but we sometimes struggle with the reasons for the decision am i doing this for the right reason should i vote for him because i went to college with him even though his policies are terrible or should i not or should i whatever in other words we experience free will and the torah tells us hashem said that adam humanity has become like hashem to know good and evil the rambam immorah understands this as the basis of free will interesting the origin of free will of samson rafael hirsch points out is from the idea of kadmus haboire kadmu sabori mean the eternity of hashem that hashem in an act of uncoerced uninfluenced free will had his rots on was to create the world and he endowed us humanity with that same capacity of that rotson hoshi that free will to do that which we choose and this by the way is weinberg understood that is where free will appears in the yugioh munna because you look through the yugi malik rim free will is not there so rabiaq of weinberg maintained that it is there in the assad of kadmus haboire because there the ram mom tells us that koresboro is kodem he is eternal nothing preceded him nothing coerced him nothing influences him there is nothing outside of him before him etc and consequently his rots on completely unbound and completely free and we being creative at selene also have been given that capacity for free will and of course the torah in many places hashem hashem says i ask you to say obviously if he requests this of us that must be within our power to be able to do it right all of the greatest and most elevated attributes assay are given as a mitzvah's assay and he goes on to say that when you do a mitzvah there is a specific there's a mitzvous assay to do the mitzvah as an act of bahira meaning to choose to do the mitzvah when you choose like in other words no just do the mitzvah because that's an autopilot but to do the mitzvah because i choose through the mitzvah as an act of bakira and of course the gemara says in marcus in the way that a person wants to go he is allowed to go and the gamora in bracha summer says very famously hakol everything is in the hands of hashem except for the fear of hashem and the rambam in a very interesting letter there are three letters of the rambam to a gert zedek of vadhya and in one of the letters he addresses the issue that avajah raises which is that is there free will in whom you marry or has it been preordained and he was familiar with the gemara insighter at the very beginning our boy yom lift me and sirius vlad vasquel yod says must call youtube that 40 days before formation of the child a voice from heaven proclaims bus ploy needle plony et cetera et cetera very famous gamora every vort uh at a vort quotes it probably anyway so um of course the gomorrah there actually does narrow it down as if a gruesomeness of shiny would but whatever right taisus already addresses that but the fact is the the rambam in that letter says that it's impossible that it is preordained whom you will marry why he says because that comes under yirus hashem there are people that it's oscar to marry there are occasions where it's a mitzvah to marry someone there are reasons that it's appropriate to marry someone there are reasons that it's inappropriate to marry someone which means the choice of marriage is clearly a choice of a moral choice you're ashamed which means it can't be hakobi desha maim it must be and so um the that's how he answers uh that's how he answers and indeed there is evidence for this in the gemara in my cotton as we know we're in the three weeks now no weddings are allowed what about engagements the answer is yes why why are you allowed to get engaged now shema lest someone else precedes him how is that even how is that even the issue if it was pre-ordained 40 days before your the fetus was formed what and not only that the rambam also quotes the torah tells us that a person who he betrothed a woman or asisha right well either it's ordained or it's not and so the rambam says clearly not ordained it is a matter of our free will and also secondly we would also say that not only is free will we see it in the torah and the vehicular receipt and the gemara but also it's not just a choice of what to do from the rambam and other places it sounds like it's also a choice of who you are in other words you actually create yourself by your choices the rambam i mean his language is very interesting he says the following resource he says something his words are very countered he he was careful he writes here if he wanted to turn himself to the side of good he could have stopped there harish imran salah satsuma but he doesn't he doesn't he adds two words here the lihiyoi sadik and to become at sadiq and then he adds is imrat salah he doesn't just conclude if he wanted to turn to the way of evil harassing he adds valius russia in fact this is a russian russian it's actually a positive really the posix says ayla told us is bothered by the fact that the torah says ayla told the snack these are the children of noah then instead of telling me who his children are the torah goes on a tangent and tells me tell me how you derose up then the next possuk it tells me his children so rashi gives two answers in the second answer russia says the the shot is ikar told us him might say him the primary offspring of atsadek are his acts of sikhs so really how should you and and how should you read the passage told us you know who the children of noah were well number one was noah no he created himself and he turned himself into a sadiq and the maharal in the guraria there he explains why is that so why is ikar why is your own sikhus your maisim why are they a greater offspring than your children so the marael says very simply because when it comes to children there are three partners the mother there's a father and a cottage boracal so no one can ever say mine completely with their child but when it comes to your actions since i called you is totally yours it's the only thing really which is really yours and in that sense ayla told us noah noah is as the guru arya understands it now why were we given bahira what's the purpose of it so the ramhal very beginning of derek hashem discusses this at length when he talks about the furious and he says the following that the idea of the whole bria all of creation is hashem being perfectly good not needing anything hashem desires to give what is the ultimate gift the ultimate greatest good is hashem himself now obviously logically impossible for hashem to make us hashem make that's ridiculous but what is possible what is the greatest good available to the nivra to the creature is a relationship with the perfect goodness of our codus boracle but in order to have a relationship as i'm sure you know you need compatibility you need similarity that is what relationship is closeness doesn't mean how many meters you are away from hashem that's all that makes no sense what it means is how similar you are to a codosparkle how close is your relationship tychottis boroku the relationship requires similarity and now we find something which he says which sounds like a paradox but it is not which is this if i could would make us like hakoresborohu from the beginning of the bria he would already make us as close as possible for a nivra to be to the boire we would be unlike the borough if he would make us like him we would be unlike him that i know that sounds self-contradictory it sounds like a paradox but think about it you see that chorus bohu hakoresh borg who because someone else made him no of course not there is nothing but hakoresh broke an odd milvador which means that goddess ball who is the ultimate independent self-actualizing self-determining in fact the only completely independent self-actualizing self-determining being so for the human being to be similar daimler labyrinth simultaneous have a relationship requires that we be as independent as possible as self-actualizing as possible as self-determining as possible obviously we cannot be one hundred percent because we are at the end of the day never him we are created creatures but on the other hand to the extent that it is possible hakodusbo who made it possible for us and so therefore he endowed us with the capacity to actually create ourselves he gave us the ability which is what free will is about as he puts it he says he says um leo in order for the goodness that quran wants to bestow upon us to be complete and perfect he wants the one who abs has that pleasure has that goodness to be the true owner of that small one who has acquired it intrinsically the lost yes lover a love bamikri not someone for whom that goodness is on him because or is within him by coincidence or by external forces and he says and to that degree nikraktus it is somewhat of a similarity to aquarius boroh to the degree that is indeed possible for the creature to have and he says and it's and he says that's why the human being and only the human has been given this ability and indeed we actually create ourselves as we see in the case of noah and exact self-creation and that ability and just by the way we also create worlds as we know requirement in talks about the idea of that where where the mishnah says in sanhedrin and you look in the regular translations they're all wrong they translate it as every jew has a portion in the world to come wrong it does not say but it says and velogena points out what it means is that a portion of everything we do goes towards the creation of our ulam harbour so not that bill oil and hubble would imply that there's some type of you know place or situation where i'm slotted into in the appropriate category he says that's not what it means that's not what it is it's but we're actually creating it so indeed we are like hackers creators but of course the ultimate thing that we create is ourselves that's the ultimate creation and as my good friend rabbi jeremy kagan in his book which is unbelievable amazing book the choice to be he phrases it very well he points it this way the creator cannot create ourself self cannot be given for then it is not self we must create it through our choices and then we can come from ourselves and stand as individuals before hashem able to relate to him as the other only then is a relationship relationship is two parties at least only in the act of creating from ourselves is our personal being on some level distinct from the creator allowing the possibility for there being someone for whom to give so therefore since it is about creating is of that is why the rambam for example tells us the absurd and the mishna in pirkei office where the mishnah says hakol safui varus nasuna everything is foreseen and free will is granted the world is judged in good the call of fire hamas everything is according to the abundant now it's interesting everything is according to the majority or the abundance of actions so the rambam says he notes it does not say hakola fi hamasa i mean wouldn't that be wouldn't that make sense if it would said everything is judged according to your actions but i understand that it doesn't say everything is judged according to reactions everything is judged according to roy hamasa and the rama explains in piracy missionaries he says the reason for that is he says if you have a choice of doing one act of good one act of good one moment give ten thousand dollars to to a legitimate sadaka or he says you could do ten acts of giving a thousand each time what would be best so the rambam says what would be best would be giving ten times one thousand you know why he says because when you give the ten thousand that's one act of bakira that will have an impact on you but if you do ten giving ten acts of giving that is ten acts of bihiro the coal and the entire being and the makeup of the human being lefi roy hamisha is according to abundance and this is a very famous safer in mitsura the issa of shverus where his son asks him why there are so many mitzvahs related to pesach i mean really zaikilim crops up all the time he says what do we need just give us one mitzvah remember the exodus so the safer says to his son he says you don't understand he says the person is affected by the actions and it's the actions that affect the inner person that's the ramaham says i call luffy of allah because that would imply one action and he says it's the abundance of actions so now we come to some of the challenges of free will or against free will much of this is based on of david gottlieb's works but um we have a number of challenges the first challenge and people have asked me this free will means i make my own decisions however the torah tells us thanks i don't think it doesn't look too stable okay all right okay i'm sure so it says this hashem tells us do this don't do that if you do this this will happen if you do that bad stuff so people will say so where's our free will so rebecca yoiner addresses this perky office he says this rat slimer don't don't worry about it it's fine that's fine hashem did not place into the hands of the human being the determination of what is good and what is bad he only gave us what does that mean the confusion of this question is people are confusing free will authority which we do not have with free will ability which we do have free will authority would imply that i get to choose what is good and what is evil and my choice determines what's good and what's evil that is not that we do not have what we have is free will ability hashem determines that which is good and that which is evil i have the ability to choose between those two and the evidence for that is i've heard that there are people who have chosen to do the wrong thing occasionally i don't know right i mean if you read the news you could probably hear that there are you know there are some people right so the fact is that people often do things and not only that people do things to damage themselves people do things to damage others people do things which are bad for their health so yeah we have free will ability even though right and wrong good and evil is already determined so that is challenge number one challenge number two how course they say created the world not only did he create the world he created everything in the world he created all space time matter he sustains everything he renews in his goodness every day continuously the deeds of creation that means continuously creating which means if i succeeded in slapping someone then it must have been the will of hashem how could i possibly have done this had hashem not given my hand existence and my muscles power and my brain electric current to look to to move the no right obviously it's the will of hashem so um how do we do this the rambam asks this question or says that people ask this question and he responds to it and he'll just shove her and the number says look in the same way that i could respond who created the world and willed that fire should rise upwards when it burns and that water should flow downwards when there's a possibility to go down he's he also created the world with a rule that the human being should have the power to choose and in the same way that he endowed all of these aspects of creation with certain powers he endowed the human being without power i think one can explain in the following analogy it's like a hierarchy of will meaning when you wants it there there are things we all want do we want all things equally or are there things which although i want a i will override a because i want b more i think we all understand for example i might want to sleep in but on the other hand i also want to more than i want to sleep in i want to get up for darkening right or it may be another guy i might want to sleep in more than i want to sleep in i want to make money and if i sleep all day i will not make money so therefore so i have a hierarchy of will or for example you know maybe i mean my youngest is now 20. so this doesn't happen anymore but the kid asks you can i have a cookie and you look at your watch you see it's five o'clock and you say obviously no it will ruin your appetite mommy has cooked dinner you could not have a cookie so you then leave the kitchen and you quickly take out your phone and you you engage the webcam in the kitchen and uh the kid reaches for the cookie jar and you announce on the public address system hands away from the cookie jar keep your hands where i can see them step away now i don't think that's very good parenting technique frankly and the truth is a normal her person doesn't do that i'm not obviously not normal but a normal person doesn't do that right now why because yes it's true i do not want him to have the cookie that is true but more than i don't want him to have the cookie i want him to have the ability to make independent decisions without my continuously you know remote controlling him with the webcam and the public address system and the tranquilizer darts in the kitchen that's why i don't do that right so therefore in the same way does i correspond who want you to have the cheeseburger no but more than he doesn't want you to have the cheeseburger he wants you to make decisions based on your own free will and your own moral decision-making and hence he does not control that so he chooses not to control that in order to give us that ability so for example you can imagine right you look at your calendar you see it's only 20 shoplifting days till hanukkah and you walk into the store and you look and you reach for something and yet 125 volts electric shock so what okay so you figure okay i'll go downscale i'll go to a store that probably is not going to have such advanced technology i've got i don't know dollar store amazing save or something like that right and then i go in i try to take something and i get another electric shock now obviously i will refrain from stealing why because i believe stealing is wrong because i want to be honest because i want to follow our code of spiral or because i don't like bipolar electro convulsive therapy right the answer is b so therefore i call this boho and indeed in a world in which there is that type of action reaction we would be nothing more than rats running around in a psychology lab in a skinner la skinner maze pressing levers no i shouldn't call them rats my wife told me to teach the psychology they asked me that non-human animal research participants is the politically correct term non-human animal research participants right who do get dissected afterwards so it's quite a little more than participation but nevertheless okay all right you know so um we're not going to split hairs with but but there is this idea correspond a meaningful life is a life in which there is fruit of a psychotic ball who withdraws hit that control okay challenge number three to the idea of bahira is a very famous one hashem knows the future that means before i act hashem knows what i will choose that means i don't have the possibility of doing anything else so i really don't have the choice so this is not really an answer but rav nachman of breslov says something interesting here abner bressler he says he says i'm not going to answer this question but i will tell you one thing he says if the intellect is not so great that it can understand the contradiction between hashem's knowledge and our free will we'll still have free will if my intellect was great enough to understand the contradiction i would no longer have free will type of an interesting perspective uh and i think what he means is that that sometimes when something is comprehended with such incredible clarity you're no longer free well where do we have an example of that the example of that is for example that the mesh is to say did not have the free will to be an atheist or an agnostic why the level it's not shy the level of clarity that he had of our korres borough's existence as baklaria hamaira the level hashem spoke to him i said it was like there's not what there's no way he became he says in that sense amalah who has no free will either by the way that's why malachim are called literally means holy animals hul is not the name of the yeshiva football team holy animals means that the malachim in the sense they don't have free will but they're kodesh in the sense that they're elevated and spiritual and indeed that type of clarity that that you had that moisture banana had removed from him free will and indeed there are those who explain that the gamora in shabbos that says kaffir alayam means the fear the the coercion that i people who exercised over claudia's role and harassing was a coercion of clarity in other words the he opened up reality to them to such a degree that they had no choice they had no choice it was almost like they felt that if we say no that's it reality is over if we say right that so that's coercion so that's one that's the revnachman of breslov's response to the question there's another interesting rubenh someone asked him that someone came to him and said someone asked me to prove to them free will trevor nachman said i can guarantee you one thing the person who asked you to prove free will the reason they doubt it is because they probably never made a free will decision in their entire life they're probably just going with the flow so they yeah it's like a free will i don't say yeah of course you never experienced free will because never tried but okay enough for the moment the another answer is given by the ramosha almost ninos quoted by the taisus yantov on office and that mishna that we quoted and he talks about the idea of time relative time meaning let's for example right there are insects that live for three days lives for a few days so obviously the perception of time of that insect had if they had brains and not just ganglia right would be quite different from that of a mammal that lives 70 80 90 years yep very different perception right obviously you know if you tell the insects i'll get back to you next week look at that's not that's not an option right right or it's half his life or you know that's twice his life no way a mammal for our perception of time or let's say you get a tortoise they're found taurus has lived 200 years so obviously its perception of time would be radically different than a 70 year old human which would be radically different than a three day or old three three day old insect close to death and let's say you had a tree with consciousness a la lord of the rings type thing right and the tree so there are trees that are 000 years old there's a tree in california 5 000 years old right so you imagine if that tree had a perception of time how radically different it would be than that of the insect so ramosa almost says according so all of those are nothing compared to the entire universe and all of the time from beginning to end is nothing from a course broker's perspective it's all in one moment he says psychotic so we who live within time he says experience past present future hakodis bohu sees it all in one shot very much like i think an analogy will be a hologram a hologram you see it's a picture but it's three dimensional there's depth there's height there's width so three dimensions imagine you had a hologram which was four dimensional also had time so you could see 20 years of someone's life in one shot would i be seeing what they're doing before they're doing it or when they're doing it it's all simultaneous that's what moisture the rambam gives an answer which the writer says is not an answer and a foreign whatever the rambam says when he asks this question what he really says is the following he says that he says we don't see and the righthood says he shouldn't have asked the question if he's not going to answer it but the rambam says something to the following effect he says look strictly speaking we can't describe hackers borrow we can't we can describe his actions we can describe our experiences of akras borohu we cannot describe a cottage borough who have got league gives an analogy he says let's say you spoke to someone uh 200 years ago you'd ask him what do you know about wood it's all wood wood comes from trees wood is flammable you know it's flexible so on great okay now you ask him why does it have those properties what why why does what what makes it different from copper glass marble aluminum what he would have no idea because he doesn't know something about he doesn't know molecular science he doesn't know anything about atoms nuclei electrons the four forces nothing i don't know much about them either right so so but he knows i know a little more than someone who lived 200 years ago about right so he wouldn't be able to explain so in the same way our you know we can ex we can sell you how we experience aquatosport we can tell you about what hashem does in the world but to actually describe god's work we can't do that so the ramaham says if you can't describe a goddess then when when you say hashem knows you don't mean you cannot mean he knows in the same way that i know because that would be incorrect all we can say is that my experience has been that hashem acts in such a way that he doesn't lack knowledge but of course my experience has also been that the world acts in such a way that we have free will fine it's not a contradiction in hashem because i'm not saying anything about hakodish borah as a hebrew poet once put it if i'd know him i'd be him you can't wrap your mind around a gorgeous ball who's infinite reality even to call him an infant reality is rock it's like aim sof is like it's almost like a negative description so that is how the rambam uh answers that question so we have ramoish almost and the rambam the next challenge number five is the challenge from modern neuroscience actually sorry before i get there is the is the challenge from psychology um sociology etc the claim here is that a person is a product of their environment culture socio-economic class home environment schooling personal experience of course nowadays uh there is the belief that race completely determines that it's like unbelievable right so people don't really there's a there's a there's a strong current in the world that says we are just products of where we came from right we grew up all we jews we all grew up with white privilege you know things like the holocaust and uh that type of white privilege you know right so so of course we're successful at it because we had all these privileges all right that was slightly sarcastic uh but anyway but we're proud of our environment so where is our free will so the rambam says i agree with you sociologists but i only agree partially and here he says is derek brioso it is the way of human nature to be influenced by his friends by his peer group influence and will act in the way of the people of his country he says normal but here it's crucial to distinguish between influence and cause it is true i would agree that you are an influent you are influenced heavily by your background socioeconomic geographical and so on and so forth does it cause everything look no no one disagrees that it's it's difficult for a person who grew up in a crime-ridden drug-ridden ghetto in newark new jersey to grow up to be someone who is great is it impossible have there been people who have broken out of the mould of their environment and become successful moral good individuals the answer is yes are there people who've grown up in the most wonderful societies the most wonderful families and have become evil sure so it's true socioeconomics and genetics and our environment in every way certainly has an influence on us and it's true statistics will show that some kid from an urban ghetto has less chance more likely to use drugs commit crimes than someone who grew up grows up in i don't know some estate in greenwich connecticut and went to a private school playing lacrosse every wednesday night right etc that's true right although that could drive someone to murder i could agree okay but either way right there is this idea that it will influence but it doesn't cause and unless they can show me that it causes right that this environment this certification this etc this person will do x y or z they don't have evidence so its influence yes cause no the next challenge is the idea the claim that science has shown that the brain is a physical chemical machine and like all machines it is therefore predictable and there have been some interesting studies done which have shown that they can actually detect certain uh certain um brain activity even before the person makes a decision that is the brain activity that is associated with decision making so that would seem to indicate that somehow even before you consciously made the decision the brain was something chemical something in the brain the neuro neurochemicals etc was are actually already activating something which means that your decision is a result of that so a the experiment is i think misunderstood it doesn't indicate the content of the decision is not found in the in the processes that precede the decision what the brain is doing is getting you ready for the decision so let me give you an example right i can show you a case where a person can have i can i can show you factors which brings the person all the way to the decision but the actual decision no example you decide it's a really hot day very hot day and you've had a rough morning at work you have a little break is i'm going for an ice cream now look there are many factors that i can point to that influence that right the fact that you may have been working on something which had an ice cream advertisement etc and the fact that it's a hot day and there's an ice cream store just opened up down the street and it is like it's halloween it's like an awesome heck show lots of yiddish in the heck right it's fantastic it said so so i gotta go for it right and you know so i can also tell you that you're not gonna get the coffee flavor why because your boss is a real pretentious guy and he's always very careful about his coffee it has made you detest anything to do with coffee so i know you're not going to get coffee i also know that because as a child you choked on a nut in the in the almond brittle ice cream you no longer ever have ice cream with any texture you only have ice cream which is just nice smooth stuff no chocolate chips no nuts no nothing none of that disturbance so now guess what amazing i can already tell you and i know which store you're going to go to i know you're going to get ice cream do i know if you're going to get vanilla or chocolate no right so yeah there's lots of stuff going on in your brain of outside influences and neurophysical uh and uh and chemical activities etc but that doesn't actually determine the content of the choice that just gets you ready and may narrow the choice down but what you actually ultimately choose that is up to that is up to you and i should point out there are some major neuroscientists roger penrose sir john eccles both by the way nobel prize winners one in physics and one in brain physiology who maintain that we have no evidence that the brain is indeed a determined physical chemical machine and there is a lot of actual in determination in the brain not just because we not just because we can't figure it out but because it's intrinsically undetermined there's a guy it's a great quote column british philosopher who's written a lot about consciousness one of the things he writes he says is this how can mere matter originate consciousness how did evolution convert the water of biological tissue into the wine of consciousness consciousness seems like a radical novelty in the universe not prefigured by the after effects of the big bang how did it contrive to spring into being from what preceded it he's pointing out something which of course our answer would be well i could will that we should have this spiritual idea this consciousness and consciousness there seems to be there's a lot of discussion about it but there's a fair amount of evidence that consciousness is a non-physical reality as a non-physical reality it doesn't necessarily follow the causes of or the rules of physical cause and effect you know you could do thought experiments here but you can imagine if you could upload everything in your brain to the cloud now they need to do this you're having some type of you know loyola a person has to have a brain operation let's say we develop the technology to do that upload all the info into the into the cloud right into a usb or whatever and then after the operation they download it back into you is it still you right so that means you who was you at that point was and in fact when i point to myself you could literally replace almost everything everything in the human being with uh with with uh some you know you could replace the heart you play there there are artificial lungs they're out of it right they're a whole range eventually we could probably replace the whole thing but but and and the brain too is very much like the hardware but the you really is the information in the brain which is like a non-physical entity in that sense consciousness is something which is beyond the uh general um mechanical so to speak cause and effect so that is challenge number five challenge number six when you think about it many of our decisions don't really involve free will struggle right think about it someone i'll give you an example i lived in israel so i used to do i was i was in the army i did reserve service so um so i'm i got off base right i'm off base i got they give you a they gave me a day to do sidorim that base doesn't mean sidorim it means to do stuff right bacon so i go to the atm i'm standing at the atm at a bank in israel i have an m16 automatic rifle with a you know magazine in my pocket i'm not referring to time on newsweek i'm referring to you know the the actual ammunition right and i'm standing at the atm and a guy cuts in front of me and he says how you think paul called them i was here before now i don't know in the united states right if you would see someone at an atm with an automatic weapon would you cut in front of them highly unlikely in israel this is like not not a big deal right standard thing right yeah he cuts in front of me now i will tell you it did not enter my mind to kill him i thought of perhaps jabbing him in the kidney with the barrel yeah that crossed my mind maybe breaking his clavicle with the butt of the rifle i don't know right you know in the end of the day all i said was based right right but the fact that i didn't have i didn't have to struggle with killing him was not because i had i exercised my free will it's because my parents alayama shalom brought me up as a relatively non-violent individual right who doesn't see violence and death and murder as the solution to problems you know so therefore it's not like i had a free will struggle about that i don't get any reward for the fact that guy's still alive i don't think so i get on the plane remember those yeah i remember that a long time used to go i get on the plane and they come over and they say you kosher food sir they always bring the kosher food first in order to exacerbate anti-semitism and so i say uh now at that point i don't have a struggle i don't say oh shall i say yeah no i mean the the non-kosher food looks just as bad as the kosher it's like you know right so i don't but i don't have a straw it's just automatically coach food thank you right so no struggle so where's my free will and by the way there are things we do which are wrong not normally obviously the rest of you right which are wrong which also we don't think of as being wrong because it's like above my you know i remember i used to teach it or somehow i had a guy came into my shira came her sister brought him in from the wall right he comes into my shell i'm talking about loss and horror and the guy starts laughing i said what's so funny man he says how could you regulate speech he says it's like telling people how many times per minute to breathe that's just like what could be more natural than talking about other people now does this guy have a free will struggle when he's about to say lost in horror no of course not now he does he's actually much firmer than me right but but but at that time did he have a struggle about it of course not he didn't even think it was wrong he thought it was as natural as breathing so there's no free will and if you think about a lot of the stuff that we do which is good we've done because we've been trained and educated and raised that way a lot of the stuff we do which is wrong cause we don't even realize there's something wrong about it so where's the free will so if destler discusses this from destler says something uses the analogy first world war in the first world war they had what's called trench warfare right there's basically two trenches down the middle of belgium right and on one side you've got the german troops and on the other side you've got the allies the british etc and the tr he says where is the war taking place between those two trenches if you go 100 miles behind the lines in england you go to london not much of a war going on yeah occasional zeppelin but otherwise not much of a war going on you go the other side to berlin not much of a war going on right where is the battle in those two trenches sir if destler says the following he says that this is in the territory behind the lines there's no struggle on either side she says this in human beings also our battle our free will is only in a specific point what he calls us there are a whole range of things which i've been educated or wrong violence and so on and so forth but there's you know in human interactions there's many subtle levels and maybe i'm struggling with the sarcastic comment or the smart comment which i can't resist like right that's where my struggle is and beyond that there might be other areas give you an analogy had a rebbe in uh yeshiva in israel initially rishma yahoo i remember the first uh i was the first bana's money i think it was i forgot which baines monument was anyways the first band is money i was and he was giving the last year before bana's money before vacation right and he comes in to share and he says i love bana's money and for us that was like himself it was like as he would have said i love lobster i was like what i was like shocked no we're all sitting there like and he says i love ben's money i can learn any massager i want he didn't have to learn the massage that he's teaching you it was after he wants he lies back now we're all sitting there thinking a lot tel aviv tavaria which he's got the best beaches probably oh yeah you know i said we're struggling with this and he's saying i love bana's money i can learn anything so what we call different nukuda sabahira you know right mainakura was like down there his nakura's up there right very very there and there's many different levels of that and it could be in one area of life is right up there in another area of life maybe right down there but that's where the struggle is and the more every time we make the right choice in the right direction we capture a little more territory for the allies a little more territory get closer and closer to berlin right every time we make a decision in the wrong direction the line the trenches edge down towards the gates of london towards the thames right and and the redestler says ultimately our goal is the following that you know what at the bottom of it is the choices between a person at the very bottom of nucleus he has got free will but what's he deciding between the lesser of two evils shall i beat this person up and steal or should i just threaten him and steal now if he only threatens him and steals that a good decision it's a less evil decision right i wouldn't say it's good it's less evil and that would be fantastic if the guy decides he's not going to beat the guy he's just going to steal gevaldine give oldie fantastic so but his decisions are all on the lesser of two evils a little higher up the scale we deciding between good and evil is this business thing ethic is this ethical is it honest is it not honest where what should i do what asked the robin shall i even ask to rob you know affect the sheila as trife i don't know if i should right i'm struggling good and evil on a higher level what's the co what's the choice it's between good and better than all right i'm not i never halawa he says we should be keep pushing the trenches to the point where we're never deciding to good and evil only between good and better than possibly someone on the lower level of the scale of free will will look at me and say this guy doesn't have free will he's a mitzvah robot right but the truth is and uncle moishi sorry it's the midas machine sorry yes right not the mitzvah robo okay all right sorry confusing the get the makoros mixed up here but anyway but there is an idea that and and of nachman again he says the purpose of bahira is so you get to a point where you have no baker meaning you keep pushing the trenches further and further and further and higher until to get to the point where you're not really like choosing between good and evil or the lesser of two evils or even good and better than you're intuitively and instinctively by your own actions have moved the point the makuta sabahira to that highest possible level okay so that is those are six challenges to bahira some of the reasons for bahira of why we have given it some of the machora subbahera etc but i would just tell you one thing end with what um what rav gottlieb always says he says you know bakira is like a public library right hashem in in in you know the western democracies at least it's true in a lot of countries but you know we we have free public libraries fantastic so but if you're illiterate it's not very helpful to you and if the public library is there and you're not just literate but you're also lazy so you couldn't be bothered going to library going out of book so what's the use the same is true of bakira bakhira is an ability that has been given to us we only are truly living when we're actually choosing because choosing it's the choice to be and by choosing i'm exercising my life when when i'm not exercising free will i'm just going with the flow and going with the flow is is not really truly living in the sense of the word it's not it's not when you are producing creating so we again free will is the ability for us to be creators to be like as a possible the human being is made a little less than hashem the covered the atrey who adorned with glory and honor the glory and honor of the human being is our ability to be the one creature who is self-determining self-creating and and and independent and that is through the exercise of our free will we choose life and when hallelujah when we choose life korres will also choose life for all of us and for all of club israel shame agency retirement is [Music] sponsoring tonight's share to have the great schools sponsor your share colleagues your tara 718-851-8651 or email ist at yeshivanet.com this new schedule this week is out on the tables hashem hope to have the schedule next week coming up in the next couple of days [Music] foreign