Does God Play Dice?

Moderator Karl Skorecki’s opening remarks.

Prof. Ciechanover’s opening remarks. 

Rabbi Sacks: Yeah, since Professor Ciechanover gave a general introduction, let me just respond to that. First of all, to begin at the end, v'tishkon b'tocha, the word Shechina and the word shachen are related. Shachen is your next-door neighbour.

Hashem is close. If you're Jewish, Hashem is close. And we say, Avinu Malkeinu, Hashem may be a King, but he's also our Father.

And this reminded me of that wonderful thing in the 1980s. They had these big billboards in New York saying, ‘You have a friend in the Chase Manhattan Bank.’ And an Israeli wrote underneath, ‘But in Bank Leumi, you have mishpacha.’

So, you know, in Judaism… everyone has God as a friend, but in Judaism, that's mishpacha, you know, Avinu Malkeinu, and he is our shachen. Just as it were to add a footnote to what you were saying, Einstein famously said, “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” 

And I think the most important thing we need to know on both sides is a sense of humility. When religious people claim to know about what is and what isn't scientifically true, then we are really back in the Dark Ages. And likewise, when we get scientists, some of the very angry atheists who believe that God is an old man with a long white beard and his name is Charles Darwin. So when you get scientists pronouncing on religion, that's also not great.

So it is a partnership. I believe, in principle in Judaism, there can be no contradiction between science and religion, because the God of Creation is the God of Revelation. That is the fundamental statement.

So what is true about Creation must be consistent with what is true about Revelation. We have different names for God of Creation and God of Revelation. God of Creation, we call Elokim.

God of Revelation, we call Hashem. And at the climax of the holiest day of the year on Yom Kippur, at Neila, we say seven times, “Hashem, Hu HaElokim.” So we are emphasising that partnership between the two very fundamentally.

Why do we need both? 

Because as the great Scottish 18th-century philosopher, David Hume, said, “You cannot infer an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.” Science tells us what is and how it came to be. Religion tells us what ought to be. And you can't derive one from the other. 

And that is why I think they become terribly important to be in constant conversation with one another, open conversation. And where I think Judaism is a little different from some of the other faiths is that many other faiths are religions of acceptance. Judaism is a religion of protest. It is Avraham who says, “HaShofet kol haAretz lo ya’aseh mishpat.” It is Moshe Rabbeinu who says, “Lama harayota laAm hazeh.”

So, we do not take the poverty and disease and all the other thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, we don't take them as written into the fabric of the universe. We believe that it is our role to eliminate, as far as we can, disease, poverty, and all the rest. And therefore, you know, very often religious people object to scientific interventions.

They call it playing God. Whereas we say, ‘No, God wants us to be his shutafim b'ma’aseh bereishit,’ His partner. And therefore, I think Judaism has always had and always should have a very open attitude to science.

We coined a bracha for seeing a non-Jewish scientist - “Asher natan meiChochmato l’basar v’dam,” which I always recite on meeting a Nobel Prize winner. So I hope that, I hope you were, I was yotzei with that bracha, Professor Ciechanover.

And of course, but when you're talking about genetic intervention - to deal with the specifics - you know that famous legendary Yiddish translation of Shakespeare, which had on the front page, “fartaytsht un farbesert,” translated and improved, you know. So, so I always think some kinds of genetic intervention or some theoretical possibilities are like that. You know, don't try and improve on Shakespeare. Don't try and improve on Nature, on HaKadosh Baruch Hu. That's one of the points Ramban makes very strongly in his commentary to the Torah. 

But there is a fundamental distinction that we have to make between therapeutic and eugenic interventions. To use genetic interventions to cure hereditary disease. This is not just permitted, it is a mitzvah. It is God's work.

And, but to do it for eugenic reasons, I think is very, very questionable. Let me explain why it's questionable. 

Number one, it will immediately introduce a major distinction between people who can afford it and people who can't.

And the very fact that we say of each of us that we are, b'Tzelem u'dmut Elokim, we are each in the image of God, gives us all equal dignity. But if you can buy your way to have super-intelligent children, I think that would introduce a kind of ontological inequality that would be very dangerous. 

Number two, any germline intervention, by definition, will have consequences for all future generations.

And you have to think 10 times before you do what no life form has ever done before, which is intervene in its own evolution. And I think that's highly problematic. 

And the other thing is, are we sure we know enough? You know, was it Donald Rumsfeld who talked about the difference between known unknowns and unknown unknowns? 

I once had a conversation with a well-known Darwinian atheist, Richard Dawkins. And I said, “‘Richard, you're a Darwinist, right? When the human genome was first decoded, people were surprised to find that only 2% of DNA coded for protein, and they called the other 98% junk DNA.” 

He said, “Right.”

And I said, “Am I right in thinking that just a couple of years…” It was just a week after they'd announced that 450 experiments in universities throughout the world, and they discovered that actually the 98% of junk DNA isn't junk at all. And it's essential. 

And he said, “Yes, yes, yes, absolutely.” 

And I said, “Richard, don't you think that 98% of religion is junk?”

He said, “Yes.”

I said, “Might you not be wrong about that as well?”

Sensibly, he didn't answer. 

But if you think about the fact that 20 years ago, we were talking about genetic determinism. And now, I think anyone speaking about this subject would say, well, what about epigenetics? What about gene expression and so on? So these are the unknown unknowns, the things we discover that we didn't know we didn't know.

And I think if you're going to actually intervene in evolution - something, as I say, never been done before - it's certainly in the case of genetically modified crops, we agree, that's a great blessing to humankind, not a great threat. But to intervene in our own human nature, I think you have to think many, many times. So therapeutic, yes, eugenic, no.

Moderator: Thank you. Rabbi Sacks. 

Prof. Ciechanover: The border.

Rabbi Sacks: The border is fuzzy, that's the problem. And you're absolutely right. I don't know that anyone's quite been able to determine that, and that's the problem, that's the challenge.

Moderator: Rabbi Sacks, can you delve a little more deeply into the specific point raised by Professor Ciechanover about religious leadership as opposed to secular moral leadership, or what is the specific role in that regard when most people in the world have a faith or are religious, on various polls and so forth? What is special about that? 

Rabbi Sacks: Well, first of all, I think, let's just be a little provocative here. Richard Dawkins invented the word meme, which is a cultural equivalent of a gene. And, you know, like a song that goes, or a YouTube video that goes viral, you know, it's like a gene that spreads itself in a population.

And religion is the world's most successful meme. Judaism has been around twice as long as Christianity, three times as long as Islam, and still, you know, we who identify with it, can still say after an unparalleled history of suffering, “Am Yisrael Chai!” We're still here, we're still young. So I think if you wanted scientific evidence that certain forms of codes of behaviour lead to human flourishing, I don't think you could be better than that.

But I do feel that there's one other factor here, which is if you believe in God, or you believe in, you know, or Einstein and Spinoza's God, even, you have a certain humility. And the great danger in science today is, we'll do it because we can, not we'll do it because we should. 

And religion is the voice of should.

And of course, it can be challenged. I don't think that any religion has a monopoly on wisdom. And I think secular humanists have added hugely to our moral vocabulary.

But I do think religion here should give us a sense of humility and pause to think what we're doing before we do it. 

Moderator: Thank you. Rabbi Sacks, you mentioned, and I mentioned my introductory remarks, free will and determinism, whether it be genetic determinism, quantum predeterminism. I wonder what scientists think. Aaron, you, about what is a scientist's view of to what extent we have free will or are programmed to act in certain ways? What responsibility does a person have, or carry, who has a genetic predisposition to a certain behaviour, which is not acceptable to society? What is the, what is your view as a scientist of that? And then maybe Rabbi Sacks can then add. 

Prof. Ciechanover: Coming back to the question that just was posed by Rabbi Sacks, what we should do and what we should not do in science, and we should be very careful about it. Of course, in our society, we have different checks and balances. Mostly… I always say that democracy is… may not be the ideal system, but at least the optimal system. Because we are doing in the laboratory what we are funded for doing. And in order to get funding, you have to write a proposal. So some other pairs of eyes look at the proposal and approve, I'm not talking about doing things under the table or in an immoral way.

And then you have students and you educate your students for morality and you encourage them to think independently, and so on. So you're not alone in this field to decide for yourself, okay, let's clone our new breed of Nazis that will walk out of the cellar one day and will do whatever they have to do. We are not… but I think that nevertheless, the question for scientists is awfully sensitive.

It can be put under the word ‘academic freedom’ and not in the sense of the discussion with the politicians, what we can say or what we cannot say, but rather what we should do, because we should be very careful not to cross the border that by saying, ‘No, we cannot do it,’ we are not blocking progress of science. So it's a very sensitive border. I can bring you something which is kind of floating extremely strongly in our eyes.

And it comes to a scientist that is very much doubtful - or not doubtful, that is very much in discussion these days - Jim Watson. Jim Watson is the father of the double helix. In my opinion, probably one, I don't know, I cannot enumerate it, number one or number two, one of the most important discoveries ever made. The double helix of the DNA, which has in it the secrets of who we are, the replication of information, the transmission of information, trans-generationally, and so on and so forth.

And he is very blunt, and I met him several times, we had discussions about it, about Judaism, about why Jews have more Nobel Prizes than others. It's slided to all kinds of extremely sensitive issues. And he bluntly said, in the open, that certain races are inferior to others, without mentioning it. Of course, it raised huge havoc, and he was fired from his position, and so on and so forth. 

So think about the question, should we study the issue of intelligence in different ethnic groups? Just the question. It's a very interesting scientific question, extremely interesting scientific question.

Why people are different in their intelligence. Forget about even ethnic groups. Should we study it or not study it? Because it can lead to improvement of intelligence, of performance.

You know, the implications, the positive implications are huge, are tremendous. But nevertheless, at the same time, it can destroy our society. It can lead to such a shake-up, and riots, and bitterness in the society.

So this is type of a question that scientists cannot answer themselves. 

On one hand, I'm curious, the next day, tomorrow, to go to my lab and to understand what's going on, what is the variety, where the variety is coming from. But on the other hand, I'm aware to the risk.

And this is just one question. I can sit with you here forever, and bring up and up additional questions that it's really, they are extremely sensitive - society-wise, religious-wise, nation-wise, any-wise. And we should really discuss it among ourselves, and with leaders.

Scientists are not the ones to give the answer. Actually, it will be dangerous if we give the scientists to answer this type of questions. And therefore, the issue of what to study and what not to study, what should be done and what shouldn't be done, where are the borders between therapeutic and eugenic? This is exactly type of a question, because you may argue that intelligence, when it's lower below certain border, becomes therapeutic.

So the border is not defined. There is a huge twilight zone between these two. It's easy to say therapeutics and eugenics, but both of us, I'm sure, agree that the twilight zone in between the two is more vague than we can even imagine.

So that's why, again, we need such a discussion and a dialogue in our society, which has direct implication to our progress as society, what we can study and what we cannot study. I'm not talking about developing, and the same is coming to studying new strains of influenza virus that can be harmful and can spread out of the window. 

And it just came to the discussion just a year ago with Ron Fouchier, the Dutch scientist that published a new sequence of a new HN5 virus that is more violent than others. And people thought that other parties can abuse it in order to develop modern, novel, aggressive biological warfare agent, and so on and so forth. 

And it's coming nonstop. And these questions, unfortunately Karl, are not discussed in our society.

Moderator: Well, we have an opportunity here. It sounds like what, you know... 

Prof. Ciechanover: I wanted just to kind of give you an example of what is the severity, what are the heavy weight of these problems that were just raised in this borderline between eugenic and therapeutic.

Moderator: It sounds like the discussion with the great James Watson. Of course, Rosalind Franklin did the experiment upon which, you'll remember that, upon which James Watson inferred with Crick the double helix. You have to always remember that, as I think Brenda Maddox wrote in her book from England. There's a lack of humility, I guess, in what Rabbi Sacks was saying and what James Watson said. That's what he sounds like, the flaw. So I'd like Rabbi Sacks to respond and perhaps speak more specifically about free will and… 

Rabbi Sacks: The idea that you judge people by their IQ alone is a damaging idea. And it's an example of how well-intentioned science can sometimes be very short-sighted. And we sometimes need to realise that everyone has a kisharon, a role to fulfil, that everyone is special. And we should never rank people by these very narrow criteria.

But to come now to the specifics, I hate to disappoint you on this one, but everyone gets that sentence wrong. “Hakol tzafui, u'reshut netuna,” is taken not least, by Rambam himself, to mean everything is foreseen, seen in advance, and yet freedom of choice is given. But it was the late Professor Ephraim Orbach who pointed out that in Mishnaic Hebrew - and this is a Mishna, from Rabbi Akiva in Pirkei Avot, in Mishnaic Hebrew - tzafui does not mean foreseen. It means seen. In other words, you can do what you like, u'reshut netuna, but God is watching you. He is, you're on CCTV, right? Hashem is following you very closely.

So this whole foreknowledge and free will question comes from the outside into Judaism. It comes from essentially Aristotelian science. For the Greeks, if you are the Supreme Being, you are beyond change and beyond time. Whereas for Jews, God lives within time. So this is a Greek mistranslation that entered Judaism when in the Middle Ages, people started doing Neo-Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophy. I think we've got enough resources to do our own philosophy, frankly.

But here it is. Number… we now know all sorts of stuff that illustrate human free will that we didn't know 50 years ago. Number one, the extreme plasticity of the brain. We can actually, by acting differently, reconfigure the architecture of the brain, which is what the Sefer HaChinuch means when he says, “Acharei haPeulot, nimshechot haLevavot.” Because in levavot here, he means the mind. He doesn't mean just the emotions. 

Number two, we learned very clearly from another Jewish Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman, that there's two systems in the brain, “Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow.”

Thinking fast comes from the limbic system or the amygdala, it's either the reptile brain or the chimpanzee brain. And then you have the prefrontal cortex, the thinking slow. And that, I think, is what Rambam meant when he said, “Tsarich adam le… sam deiotav tamid.” In other words, always pause before reacting. Otherwise, you really will lose your free will. 

You know, it's said that whenever the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Lubavitcher Rebbe, got angry, he would take out half a dozen books of Jewish Law to work out, is it permitted to be angry on an occasion like that? And after he'd taken all those books, how could he be angry anymore? So if you pause, you will actually exercise your freedom.

My view of chukim, of para aduma, for instance, or shatnez, or kilayim, is actually a means of bypassing the neofrontal cortex and actually directly impacting on reactions that you're not conscious of having. You know, para aduma and the fact that the meit, the dead person, is Avot HaTuma, the paradigm of impurity, is Judaism's defence mechanism against the worship of death.

The Egyptians believed it's in death that you join the gods. Christians very often believe that the afterlife is the most important thing, as did Muslims. And we said, no, “Uvacharta baChaim.” God wants us to be religious down here on earth.

So, just like we don't know where Moses was buried, so that we couldn't make a cult of a dead leader, so God is saying, in Parashat Chukat, if you've been in contact with death, that doesn't make you holy, that makes you tamay, and you have to purify yourself from it. 

And that operates at a deeper level of the brain, because that can be done behaviourally. And of course, finally, the Rambam does define in Chapter Five of Hilchot Teshuva, our belief in free will as one of the principles of Jewish faith.

As Isaac Bashevis Singer famously said, “We've got to be free, we have no choice.” So Jews really believe in free will. And that means that I think sometimes scientists don't fully realise what we will lose if we lose the belief in free will.

I did a television programme with Colin Blakemore, who's the Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford. He is a hard determinist. He believes we have no choice at all.

I said, “Colin, if that is so, then why on earth should we have laws, courts, and punishments? Because if we weren't free to choose, then we can't be guilty and we shouldn't be punished.” The Rambam says this, if we have no free will, why do we have laws, “HaShofet kol haAretz lo ya’aseh mishpat.” He actually writes this. I said, “Colin, if you really believe what you're telling me you believe, then society ought to perform neurosurgery on criminals instead of sending them to prison.”

He said to me, “Well, I can see in a totalitarian state they might want to do that.”

If you don't believe we have freedom, why should we want a free society?And I don't think people realise just how dangerous it is to deny free will. We now know the neuroscience of what it takes to pause and so on.

So I think the Jewish insistence on free will here is actually necessary for the future of humanity. 

Moderator: Thank you. Rabbi Sacks, Professor Ciechanover and you, and I spoke a little bit in advance about some, you mentioned the word danger. Rabbi mentioned the word danger. Disenlightenment, a trend in society away from enlightenment, and what I would like to ask both of you, what the scientific and religious leadership world should do to bring us back? And then we have a few minutes - if there's time - we might allow the audience, because this is a golden opportunity, to ask a question or two, if there's time. So the danger, is it real? Is there a real perception that something is going on which we should be somewhat wary of in society, a darkening, a disenlightenment? And if so, I hope not, but if so, what can you, Rabbi Sacks, you, Professor Ciechanover, do here with the Technion and your universities and institutions of Jewish scholarly learning? What should we do? 

Rabbi Sacks: Well, first of all, I think religious leaders really have to seriously learn from scientists. We have to have the humility to know that there's that vast ocean of truth that we as religious leaders don't understand. And we need that lesson in humility. I think we need very open conversations in which we speak and we listen.

I always said that good news and bad news about the Jewish people. The good news is we're among the best speakers in the world. The bad news is we're the worst listeners in the world. And sometimes listening is more important than speaking and that is why in the Siddur, you will see in the current Siddur, I've changed the translation of Shema Yisrael, from “Hear O Israel,” to “Listen O Israel.” I've actually deliberately changed it. 

So I really think that enlightenment values are under threat. Steven Pinker is a good friend. Do you know Steven Pinker, the Harvard neuroscientist? You saw he just brought out a book called “Enlightenment Now.” You don't write a book called Enlightenment Now, given that the enlightenment took place in the 18th century, if you're not worried about losing it. And I think we have a duty as Jews to stand up and show the world that we are not threatened by science. That we are enhanced by science.

And that together, you know - to quote Tennyson, “Come friends, it is not too late to build a newer world.” I really think that scientific possibilities opening up now with nanotechnology, with... Do you know, nowadays, artificial intelligence can do a retina scan and accurately diagnose up to 40 different kinds of illnesses that affect seeing. Artificial intelligence is going to allow us to diagnose illness, to personalise treatment.

These are incredibly life-enhancing things. We're not threatened by them. And we should show that we're really and truly open to science.

Christians feel very threatened by Darwinian science. I actually hold that Charles Darwin, without knowing it, you know, als iz bashert, as they say, we have free will, but God is still moving the pieces. I happen to believe that Charles Darwin stumbled on - or came across - one of the most profound religious ideas I've ever come across, which is God, the Creator, made Creation creative.

That is actually what Darwinism is telling us. And he's telling us because everyone in the 18th century thought God was a watchmaker. And it turns out God is more like a gardener than like an engineer. And I think we should be open to that because science can open our eyes to wonder. 

So I think if both sides have the humility and the openness to one another, we will see which technological advances enhance life and which, God forbid, threaten it. 

Moderator: Prof. Ciechanover, are you concerned about the so-called disenlightenment or enlightenment now? Are you a partner to that? And what are you doing about it? 

Prof. Ciechanover: One of the things that I'm doing about it is sitting here and just discussing the issue is important, very important.

You know, from time to time when I meet people and discuss these questions with, people are telling me, you know, I believe in God, but I don't believe in science. I said, that's wonderful. Science is not religious. Science is a system of testable hypotheses that you should go to the laboratory, to the computer, to see whether the hypothesis is correct or wrong. And then, if possible, use the implications of your data in order to benefit the lives of people. Develop drugs, develop communication devices, develop whatever you like in order to improve our lives. That's the role of science. 

Science is basically a technology, it's a system that we are using first and foremost initially to satisfy our curiosity, to understand the universe in which we are living, what's going on around us, and then, of course, to apply it to our own benefit. 

And the free will that comes with it is, of course, the result of education.

And what I'm a little bit concerned is, of course, about education. And since we are in the Technion and we are in the State of Israel, the State of Israel has its particular problems of education, where two populations are somehow - it's improving a little bit now - are somehow, from different reasons, out of the realm of education. One is, of course, the ultra-Orthodox Jews, where hundreds of thousands of people are denied what we call the limudei liba, mathematics, English, literature, knowing the world, preparing them.

And it's not exclusive at all from Jewish studies, at all. On the contrary, it's complementary. But they are excluded from it and they are not prepared to living in the modern world, to have a profession, to live decent life, to make decent salary, to educate their own kids. And on top of it, it threatens the very existence of this young, barely surviving Jewish State. 

And the others are the Arabs that are discriminated politically, but again, there are changes, I hope that for the good, but it's still not in the dimension that we want to see. But again, the free will to choose our way to make this discussion possible is all embedded in education. And the State of Israel has a problem in this, not only with this population, also with the secular one, but that can be solved. 

Then I think that part of the problem is, of course, the lack of enlightenment. You know, social network, superficiality. The dialogue these days become very superficial, very stormy, very alarming, very violent.

You are discriminated, you know, politically, if you say one word. I don't want to show you my mail, my email box. I'm a member of the International Board of the New Israel Fund. You know, I can enlighten you and enrich you with verbally rich terms that I get almost daily to my mailbox. The dialogue has become, we cannot talk anymore. We cannot converse. We don't listen to one another anymore. And I think that it's a worldwide phenomenon.  It is a worldwide phenomenon.

It's not unique to us. We are free, we are open, and it's coming. And then what to do about it? I'm, you know, I cannot offer solutions, but what I'm really worried about and concerned is the lack of the voice of the leadership.

The leadership seems to encourage it even, to foster it, to nurture it, to water it, to garden it, rather than coming as the voice of sanity and say, ‘Stop! We are destroying ourselves.’ We don't hear it in Israel, and we don't hear it in the world. And I'm afraid that we are endangering our own existence. I don't know if the physical one, but I think that the world is somehow moving in cycles. And unfortunately, a very destructive war is the initiative for the next development. 

Think about the world post-World War II, what happened to us. America started to flourish. The American science converted itself from - part of it because of the Jews that migrated from Europe to the United States - from phenomenological to mechanistic. Think about the flourishing, the space industry, the computers.

And now, it seems that we are not hungry anymore, and we are on the verge of another revolution. And maybe we need another natural disaster. I don't know. I'm not a historian, and history also doesn't tell us what are the rules. But it looks to me like we are moving in cycles. Some of them are constructive. Some of them are unfortunately destructive. 

Moderator: Rabbi Sacks, do you have an opportunity to converse with religious and educational leaders in the State of Israel, focussing specifically on the future of education and what Professor Ciechanover was speaking about, in Israel? And what is your outlook? 

Rabbi Sacks: Well, first of all, of course, I do. I've had conversations with ministers of education here, a series of them. But one of the reasons I wrote my book, “The Great Partnership,” is that it seemed to me that Israel is productive of this incredible richness of science. If you look from the universities toward the yeshivot, we have more Jews studying at yeshivot today and seminaries than probably at any time in history. A lot more than were in Mir and Ponovitch, probably more than were in Sura and Pumbedita.

So I said there is a rare form of cerebral lesion, in which the right and left hemispheres of the brain are both intact, but the corpus callosum that joins them is damaged. And the result is dysfunction of personality. I said the Jewish people is suffering that kind of cerebral lesion.

So I wanted to show that you can be really quite religious, that you can come as a Chief Rabbi. I deliberately published the book while I was still Chief Rabbi. And Chief Rabbi and Av Beit Din, don't forget.

And publish a book like “The Great Partnership,” which says we need both and tries to analyse it as deeply as they can. And I sent this to my own Rav, who is a Rosh Yeshiva here in Israel. And he said, well, you know, he said, “I think you should have this immediately translated into Ivrit,” which I did.

And I'm sure you can get it in paperback, “HaShutafut Hagdola” or whatever it's called. And so I wanted to show that you can be religious and you can be incredibly open to science. And the truth is that scientists seem to learn from this as well.

You know, I love Steven Pinker, who as a neuroscientist, he is one of America's great atheists. You know, we do great, Christopher Hitchens, you know, the late Christopher Hitchens, was a very angry atheist. Hashem has a sense of humour because Christopher Hitchens discovered shortly before he died that he was Jewish. I don't know if you know this, it's true. He said, ‘At first I was really upset. But then I thought, no, no, it's good.’ Jews make the best atheists, you know. 

Or as Sidney Morgenbesser once said, “I don't know why God is so angry with me just because I don't believe in Him.”

So, you know, I really believe that we as Jews, specifically as Jews, and it can only be done here in Medinat Yisrael because Jews in Chutz La'aretz can never form a society. We are not, you know, we're on the sidelines. We're a minority. We're a voice, but nothing more.

Whereas here in Israel, you know, Hashem is calling, kol dodi dofek, and saying, Ribbono shel Olam, I gave you this wonderful natural universe, and you claim to be worshipping Me, and you don't want to understand this intricacy? You don't want to know that in every, that you look up at the sky and you see a universe of 100 billion galaxies, each with 100 billion stars. You look within the human body and you find more than a trillion cells, each of which contains a double copy of the genome, each of which contains, what is it, 3.1 billion letters of genetic code. You're not even willing to realise that all life uses the same letters of the genetic code. All life is one, and if that's not Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad, I don't know what is. 

And all of this is so beautiful, and you are closing your eyes to the beauty of science. The Rambam rules, in Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah, Chapter Two, Halacha Two, that if you want to come to the love and fear of God, study science.

You will then realise how vast is the creative power of God, how small we are, and how extraordinary it is that nonetheless God, who is wider than the universe, still lives within the human heart. And that's what I want religious leaders to say. 

Science has religious dignity to it, and God did not give us a brain simply not to use. You know, He, “Na’aseh adam b'tzalmeinu kidmuteinu.” Says Rashi, kidmuteinu means lehavin u'lehaskil. God gave us a brain that we should use, and I think Jews are to be proud of being open to science, and I hope science will be open to us as well. Thank you.

Closing remarks