Symposium Great Neck 1

Interviewer: First I want to thank Jackie and Stan for hosting us this evening so we appreciate that. Thank you. This should be a most interesting evening. Aham Safer which is our book group, of course, is part of the Sally and Seymour Ocean Adult Education Program in Great Neck and the Great Neck Synagogue We are sorry that Sally could not join us this evening although her children are here, I guess three out of four are here and Sally, it appears to be unseemless with new insight and Seymour would have really enjoyed tonight’s program because he had a very fine intellect and his investigative mind would have added a great deal to this evening’s program. As many of you know, David Birnbaum published his first book, Summa Metaphysical One God and Evil in 1986. It is now brought to us his sixth edition and is required reading at a number of undergraduate programs throughout the country. The second part of his works, Summa Metaphysical 2, God is Good was just published and is the subject of tonight’s program. But for those of you who have not completed or read or if you read it 20 years ago, and have not remembered every line in it, I’m going to give you a few personal comments to review the basic postulant of God and Evil. So I’m going to start off my own concept by mentioning in 1667 when John Newton, probably the most education man in England in the 17th century wrote Paradise Lost, which is the story of course of Adam and Eve, the story of the serpent and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. He wrote in his foreword that Paradise Lost was an attempt to explain the ways of God to man. And as I began reading David’s book he said the exact same sentence and since I was writing a book on Milton, I said this is very, very interesting and very coincidental, so I really enjoyed reading David’s book. So let me give you an idea as to what I saw in it. Certainly David’s attempt is to present the unified approach to understand God and the universe that surrounds us as far as I can see. So as good scientists now, it is now necessary for us to hold all of this, open our minds because we may be coming in with a different paradigm and that giver requires you to look at something very objectively and either way put aside what you have from your past and appreciate any new data that comes in and then you can evaluate it based on that which you have accumulated over your lifetime and your present philosophy. The essential question is one of theodicy, how can man display the existence of people, in particular, for example, David is interested in the Holocaust when we say [inaudible 0:03:50.1] God is full of mercy, goodness, righteousness, certainly He’s undividing, certainly he should be able to control or eradicate or prevent evil from occurring in this world. So what David proposes is that all of life and creation is pure potential, just as a baby is born with a hundred percent potential energy, life is truly only energy and when energy is gone, that is the end of life. So all that God has created in this world is born therefore with potential. Now our speaker this evening will discuss this incredible potential energy in terms of his second book. Borrowing from Cavella [PH] and the concept of Tinsoe [PH] let us name a vessel that’s a hundred percent full of water, for example, in order to fit anything else into this vessel you’re going to have to remove some of the contents of that vessel. Some of that water will have to be removed. Well I thought I sit, we have some seats up front. I hate sitting in the front. Okay in therefore to put anything else into a vessel that’s a hundred percent full, you must remove something from that vessel, the more the water, the more the energy comes in, the more that you want to put into the vessel, the more you must remove from that vessel. So David proposes that until the moment of creation, the universe was completely saturated with God’s self, with God’s energy and any further energy that was created in this universe, if any of it was potential energy such as that baby we were discussing, it would have to be converted to that actual or kinetic energy, then God’s energy or God Himself so to speak, would have to allow for it by withdrawing. To add something to a hundred percent, something must be removed and God is one hundred percent, God must therefore remove Himself, so to speak. I think you’re supposed to say, cut me off at this point, correct? And this is what happened, as man’s role is to complete creation, man must convert potential energy into kinetic and to do that, God must withdraw. To David, Adam and Eve really had no choice; they were created just as we were with the cosmic law of actualization. Call it gene directive, however you want to speak about it, Adam and Eve could not live a life in a paradise where all was provided for them, not just man but all universe discovered by this same law of potential energy being created into, or converted into kinetic, to direct potential to actualize to the kinetic. So Adam and Eve governed by this universal law had no choice but to eat from the tree of knowledge and leave the garden. As we know it’s so beautifully describes it to complete creation and as they did, God had to recede to allow them to do that. Just as a child grows and a parent increasingly leaves their child on their own, so God must do the same. And these laws of the universe remain constant beyond the Nano level, on the ultramicroscopic level or on the macro level. David relates the concept of God’s receding to Hester ponet [PH], to God hiding his face. God hides to allow man to mature and to understand the responsibilities of life and when he does, we are on our own, be it good or be it evil. This concept is a very staunch existential flavor to it but where there is good there is evil and when God withdraws evil, including the Holocaust can occur. So the concept is certainly very intriguing and all inclusive, obviously I’ve simplified it, but let me give you an example of it affected me and let’s just take a look at last week’s [inaudible 0:08:31.4] to give you an idea. What happens last week; this of course is where we have the golden calf when Moses tells God that he wants to know Him and he says, now if I indeed found faith, Moses says, in your eyes, make your ways known to me that I may comprehend you. Well these are tough words from Moses telling God he wants to know Him better. Rashikemnitz [PH] Moses really wanted to know why the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper in this world. Indeed Moses asked the same question that Jobe asked that Milton asked and that David is asking. Here that using David’s concept is my interpretation. First, think how expansum it would be to learn the ways of Hashim [PH]. How many apples from the tree one would have to eat to understand so much? How much potential would be converted to kinetic [inaudible 0:09:28.9] I shall make all my goodness pass before you and I shall call out with the name Ashavee [PH] for you, but it comes with a cost for God to say this, it comes with a cost to us because from now on he says I shall favor when I choose to show favor and God says I shall mercy when I choose to. So God is telling Moses up front that sometimes he will answer his people and sometimes not. Sometimes He will be there and sometimes not. I’m waiting for David to interrupt me and tell me that’s not what he meant. When God calls out the name Hashim he is agreed to let Moses comprehend him. What would have to happen for that to occur? Exactly what happened, God said you will not be able to see my face, but you will see my back. So the question is why his back? What was God doing, was not God doing what David is suggesting? The only way to know God was for God to show his back that is for God to leave to allow Moses to convert his potential to the greatest of kinetic conversion, knowing God and immediately upon God’s receding was Hashanah. Hashim tells Moses carve for yourself two stone
tablets, no longer Hashim is no longer creating the tablets as he did the first time, now Hashim tells Moses carve it for yourself. Man now must take the responsibility. That is potential converting to kinetic and that is God showing us his back as he lets man take more control of his own destiny. So that’s the first book and how I saw it. Now tonight I am very pleased to have with us Danny Falio who wrote the introduction and a number of beautiful hallucinations of Summa Metaphysical 2. Dr. Camile received his BS in Biology at Stanford and is presently completing his combined MD and PhD program that’s part of NIH Fellow at Cole Spring Harvard. He’s doing research presently on oncology and metabolic biology, courses on oncology of cancer. He has his research activities have carried him from the Taciknaw in Israel, the Institute of Theoretical Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences to Stanford and finally to Cole Spring Harvard where he presently is. So without further a due, let us introduce Danny Falio who will tell us about the real tonight’s subject.