[Avodah] Free Will vs. Physics

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 08:07:09PM -0400, Cantor Wolberg wrote:
: We're talking semantics. A newborn baby has no more free will than the  
: man in the moon. And to say it decides whether to cry or not
: is incorrect. A newborn operates on instinct. True a baby is not a  
: machine, but its responses are reflexive. Obviously, there comes a
: time when it has free will, but not for a while. 

I personally would adopt REED's model: Having bechirah chafshi means
that there is a nequdas habechirah at which decisions involve conscious
thought, but anything well beyond that region may well be decided
reflexively.

For one person, the battlefront might be not pocketing a small item
when the store owner is busy elsewhere. For many people, that thought
would never cross their minds, so there was no conscious decision to
be made. For some of them the battle might be cutting corners in their
business bookkeeping. For others the thought of "should I - shouldn't I"
may be in other areas.


Inyana deyoma: A person is judged by how he did in each decision, how
he has moved that battlefront. Where the battlefront actually is also
involves nature and nurture, not only in where the nequdah started,
but the nature of the terraine -- in which directions it moves more
rapidly. For these he cannot take credit or blame. Ba'asher hu sham --
what he is at the time of judgment vs what material Hashem gave him to
work with.

Therefore, I submit that teshuvah isn't about getting from point A to
point B, but rather changing one's course toward B. Trying to change in
a short period, even a 40 day period, simply is too rapid. Pesach to
Shavuos is even longer, the changes we underwent unique in history, and
it was still incapable of preventing the slide back to the eigel.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Never must we think that the Jewish element
micha at aishdas.org        in us could exist without the human element
http://www.aishdas.org   or vice versa.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                     - Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch