Mind vs. Brain

The most incredible 3 lb. lump of flesh in the world has to be the human brain. By way of analogy, the brain is equivalent to an orchestra made up of millions and millions of instruments and musicians, working together in perfect harmony to produce a symphony of breathing, walking, talking, smelling, touching, thinking. The human brain is composed of 100 billion neurons, and each neuron makes between 10 - 15,000 connections with other neurons, totaling 100 quadrillion synapses. A typical supercomputer weighs about a thousand times more than our brains, with a volume 10,000 times greater, and requires a million times more energy than the brain. Even so, it can't approach the capabilities of even a small child in the area of learning, vision, or hearing. The brain is able to make 10 to the 16th power operations per second!

To posit that this incredible piece of matter was formed by chance is a bit audacious to say the least. This would be like looking out your window one day and seeing billions of wires and cables flying through the air, positioning themselves as a gigantic telephone switching station that connects communication between America and Europe.

But let's on a very interesting phenomenon: Vision occurs when electromagnetic waves reach the retina in the back of the eye and are translated into electrical impulses that travel in the optic nerve to the visual cortex. The brain uses this information to construct a 3-dimensional color motion picture. But here comes the big question: Who is watching this movie? Is it the brain itself? But the brain is just an advanced computer that decodes neuron signals. Does a computer screen "share" the experience of the viewer? This aspect of the human self is called the mind. In Judaism, the belief is that "the mind" is the soul each of us possess. "The Neshama (soul) rests upon the brain" (Kabbalist Rafael Moses Luria). When you say "I think that this is right or wrong," that's your soul. The brain is just a robotic processor; the feelings of mercy and hope stem from something greater.

May we use the incredible brains we were given to think and study Torah and Divine wisdom, and utilize our minds eye to understand the depths and mysteries of God's world.

Shabbat Shalom!

-Rabbi Daniel

Walking Through Walls

Why can't I walk through a wall? This might seem like a silly question, but if, as Science has discovered, all matter is made up of primarily empty space (try 99.999999%), the question starts to make a lot more sense. Not only are the atoms themselves quite empty, but the space between two atoms are even more so! Imagine two butterflies are flying over Europe - one over the Big Ben in London and the other over the Kremlin in Moscow. That's about the corresponding space you've got between two atoms. One answer to this perplexing question comes from a likely place - Sports. Imagine 2 teams trying to play an organized baseball game on the same field. For the game to actually work according to the rules, there has to be one pitcher, one shortstop, one player at each position. Those are the rules. Except the teams here are divided into Leptons & Quarks, further broken down into 12 'players' each. So the real reason why a hand can't go through a stone table, is because there's a rule in place in the universe that says: When one pile of atoms (a person) tries to move into the realm of another pile (a wall), the two piles better match up on a quantum level - playing by the "same rules" - or they will stay apart; unless you have a huge surge of energy needed to promote the particles to another level. Wolfgang Pauli called this the exclusion principle.

What's amazing about all of this extends far beyond whether a person can walk through a wall (even though that's pretty cool). It's what keeps the universe interesting; if this rule didn't exist, everything would be the same! The fact that our universe is full of so much variety and individuality is only because of this. Pauli was amazed at the universe and "the unity of all being," as he called it. How did the universe "know" to have the right rules for creation. This general idea of how the universe in so many ways is perfectly suited for intelligent life, is called the anthropic principle. Who made these rules?

The holy Zohar writes: 'G-d looked into the Torah & created the world.' This exclusion principle, that causes two objects to remain apart with its own individuality, must therefore have a root in the Torah. Look at the very letters of Hebrew in the Torah. Unlike many other languages, there is no cursive allowed; two letters cannot be touching, otherwise the entire Torah scroll is invalid. If any letter is lacking its white space around it, the wholeness of the Torah is lost. This lesson can be applied to our lives as well: Every soul has its own unique, individual mission that no one else can accomplish. Diversity in society is vital. By denying the exclusivity of the parts, we damage the whole.

May we all recognize the Divine which dictates the "rules of the universe", and learn the importance of individuality helping the sum of parts, the mission of the entire Jewish people and world to bring redemption to the world, through each individual piece.

(Based on an essay by Tzvi Freeman)

Shabbat Shalom!

-Rabbi Daniel

The Age of the Universe

As Part II of our series on God and Science, we pick up where we left off last week. We explained the correlation between the Big Bang theory and the creation story from Genesis. But what happened after that? If Scientists today measure the age of the universe at 13.7 billion years old and the age of the world at 4.6 billion, while Torah measures it at 5,773 years old, how can we possibly bridge this tremendous gap? And how could the greatest of scientists and philosophers also believe in a Creator? To name a few: Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, Descartes, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, Kant, Pasteur. There are many ways suggested by scientists & intellectuals to resolve the apparent contradiction, but we will look at one.

We will not focus on the fact that the effort to extrapolate backward in time to measure the age of the universe is presumptuous and unsubstantiated, since we're assuming the conditions and rate of processes we observe today have been consistent in the past millions of years. At the first moments of existence, the conditions of extreme pressure and incredibly high temperatures incomparable to anything today make it very hard for us to assume the chemical, geological, physical and cosmological were the same. Add to that Einstein's general theory of relativity, that time is relative and depends on the speed of the system in which it is measured, it becomes even more difficult to extrapolate.

LET'S disregard all of that for now and work on the assumption that the world and universe are billions of years old. This does not have to contradict whatsoever with the biblical account. In the beginning of the book of Genesis, on day 6 of creation, Adam and Eve are placed in the Garden of Eden, asked to follow just one rule: Don't eat from that tree. But let's back up a second here. Adam is only a few hours old. How can he possibly be ready to understand this directive? He's like a baby! And how is there fruit on a tree in the first place? The trees and creation at large were created just days beforehand, no time for edible fruit to grow. We have no choice but to say that everything was created ready for use. If Adam sliced open the tree, he would find rings dating it way back.The Talmud teaches that even Adam himself was created "ready-made", with the body and intellectual and psychological abilities of a healthy 20 year old. Genesis describes 4 large rivers flowing in the garden. Taking into account the rate at which a river is carved out (a few centimeters a year), rivers are sometimes dated at millions of years old!

All of the phenomena observed today in the world and universe at large can be explained with this same principle, that they were created with an advanced physical age, even though its historical age is only the age implied in the Torah. Why God did it this way, can perhaps be answered by the fact that the world had to be ready for man's use immediately, to affect and uplift the physical, to live among oxygen providing trees and rivers to travel on.

Let us appreciate the world we live in, as Wilhelm Gottfried Leibniz (1640-1716) said: "We live in the best of all possible worlds. It must be the best possible because it was created by a perfect God." And as Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) said: "The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator." There is no contradiction.

Shabbat Shalom!

-Rabbi Daniel