Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan - Torah & Science

People often ask me, "Rabbi, I would like to learn Torah, but what about science? I'm an intelligent person and I know that certain things in Torah are in conflict with science. Many people assume that science contradicts the Torah and that being a rabbi and a scientist is mutually exclusive. And what stops such people on their way to Judaism is their limited scientific knowledge and even more limited understanding of Torah. Being a rabbi for many years and with my background in science with a degree in physics from Drexel University, I have explored both Torah and science in depth. Now, I'm in a unique position to take you on a guided tour where we will examine how the universe began, was there a designed creation, what will happen at the end, and is a higher intelligent being still involved in our world. Find out how science, far from disproving Torah, is actually supporting its every claim. Welcome everyone. It is difficult to speak now. We've been thinking so much about what's going on. We're worried. What's going to be with us? What's going to be with our families? Very difficult to concentrate on anything else besides the virus. But, let's try to distract ourselves and um think about more pleasant things. And something that is useful, something that is important because a lot of our Torah commitment depends on this. How do we understand the Torah properly? How do we understand the relationship between the Torah and science. How do I understand our perspective? Is there a problem between what the Torah says and what the science is claiming? I myself, as Rabbi Rutman mentioned, did not grow up religious. Being from the former Soviet Union, in our schools they taught us, you can say they brainwashed us very well, that there is no God, that the religion is the opiate of the of the masses. And I was very shocked when one day a friend of mine, also Bukharian Jew, this was when I was in the second grade, he came to me and he said, "You know, Binyamin, I believe there is God." I said, "No, be quiet. You're not allowed to say such things. The teacher's going to hear and she's she's going to get us into trouble." "Because don't you see?" Oh, I showed him on the in the back. "Don't you see the it says Lenin is the God? You did don't you see it says Lenin was, Lenin is, Lenin will always be?" Let me mute everyone. Okay, everyone is muted. Let's continue. So, I told him, "You're probably crazy." And he said, "No, I'm not crazy. I'll tell you what happened. I was sick for a whole month. I was in the hospital and the doctors were not able to help me and I turned to God and I said, 'If you are there and you're listening, please heal me." And he said, "The next morning I became better and very soon I was released from the hospital." So, he said, "I believe there is God." Second grade in Russia, I didn't believe him. I said he must have been so sick that he became crazy. And I I stopped speaking to him about it. I said, "Let's not talk about it. It's going to get us into trouble." It took many, many more years until I was in college already that I allowed myself to start thinking about this. And unfortunately, most of us don't even have this opportunity to allow ourselves to start thinking. To allow our brain to even consider these ideas. Many people who are not religious and they hear about religion, they block out and they say, "No, no, it must be false because that's what I was taught by my parents. That's what I was taught by my school, my society." So, they put a block and they do not allow themselves to even think about these ideas. So, today we'll try to open our minds and to consider these ideas. We know that this discussion was something that the Jewish people had to deal with for thousands of years. Originally, the only argument there was is there one God or are there many gods? The the discussion was between the Jewish people, monotheistic religion, and all the idol worshipers who claim that there are many gods and that every force in the universe is run by another god, another deity. But then when the Greeks came about, the Greeks rejected the idea of idol worship because they said not only there are now no multiple gods, there is not even one God. And they claimed that there is no higher power at all. From then on the argument between the Juda- Judaism and all the other people became more philosophical, became more scientific. The Greeks introduced the the idea of philosophy and the idea that there is nothing in the world besides what the eye sees and besides what can be explained with the laws of of nature. And modern science argues mostly the same uh claims as the original Greeks. However, as we will see in this lecture slowly in the words of science itself they came closer and closer to Judaism. And let's let's let's see how that happened. We know that the Torah starts with three words, the three famous words, Bereshit bara Elohim. At the beginning God created or at the beginning of the creation of God. And if we analyze all the arguments that the the Greeks and the modern-day science present against Judaism, we will see that they concentrate against one of these words, either Bereshit at the beginning or bara, creation, and Elohim, God. One of the earliest arguments against Judaism was that the the Torah starts with the word "bereishit" at the beginning. The Greeks argued, "Do you see the universe? Did you ever notice any change? The sun is rising just like it used to rise for hundreds of years. All the rivers are flowing, the mountains are still there. Nothing is changing in the universe. So, they said, logically, it must be that the universe was always the way it is now. That the universe was eternal." And they said, "Logic dictates that Torah is false because we can see with our own senses, and our parents, and our grandparents, and as as far as we can look back in society, it was recorded that the sun and the moon and the all the planets and the stars always behave the same way. Must be the universe is eternal. Must be there was no beginning. And must be the Torah is false. Now, the Jewish people believed in the Torah. We received the Torah on Har Sinai, Mount Sinai, and we knew the Torah is true. However, how can you go against logic? It was very difficult. Not that it shook our faith, but it was very difficult to explain to a scientist, how can he not trust his eyes, and how can he realize that the universe had a beginning. Nowadays, we have it much easier. Why? Because the science itself admitted that the universe had a beginning. Until a century ago, this was not at all acceptable. Uh about uh until about a hundred years ago, if you would ask any scientist on the face of the earth, they would say the universe is eternal. Now, if you ask any scientist, what will they say? The universe had a beginning. How did that happen? We know that um with with the advancement of of um telescopes, radio um telescopes and and the development of um Einstein's theory of of relativity, the scientists realized that the galaxies and the whole universe is expanding. And therefore, they said, "If it's expanding now and everything is flying away from each other, what if we look back and we imagine what was originally?" So, they said, "If now everything is flying away, must be some years ago it was closer and some years ago it was even closer and some years ago it was even closer." And they concluded that there must have been a time when the entire universe was at one point. When the entire universe with all its mass and energy and space was at in in one singularity, one point. Now, they made experiments since then and they they realized that yes, that is true. That the universe we see nowadays is not how it always was. It's expanding, and that means that there is a starting point. I'm not going to go into all the details about what discoveries and all the mathematical formulas, how they know that the the the universe is expanding right now and that there was a beginning. That there was a a beginning to the universe. However, about 100 years it started the idea, and about 70 years ago that's when majority of the scientists finally accepted this idea that the universe had the a beginning. Now, this was very very shocking to to most scientists. After taking it as as granted that the universe is eternal and thinking that they never have to consider religion, all of a sudden the first word in the Torah became true. Bereshit, in the beginning, there was a beginning. Now, to save face, they said, "You know what? It's true that there was a beginning. Okay, we admit, but we were not so wrong. The beginning was so long ago that it's as if it was forever. The beginning was so long ago that it's as if it's eternity. Why? Because let us throw out a huge number that to us it's going to look like it's eternity. So, they came up with a big number. First it was a few million years, then they said billion years. Right now it's about 15 billion years, and they said this number is so huge that it saves us from embarrassment. But what what uh they're trying to trick us into be into thinking that 15 billion years is almost infinity. But if if I ask you mathematically, how how many times is 15 billion years smaller than infinity? It's not only one and a half times bigger or smaller than infinity. In fact, 15 billion years is infinitely times smaller than infinity. So, even according to their own words, what kind of a mistake did they make? They made infinite infinite mistake. A huge mistake that to go from infinity to a finite number. Now, if we ask about the Torah definition of in the beginning, what does it mean? What does it mean bereshit, in the beginning? According to Torah, and this is recorded in our earlier commentators 1,000 years ago and earlier, bereshit, the first word in the Torah, signifies that until that point in time, there was no universe, there was no space, there was no time, even. There was no matter and no energy. Nothing existed until that first word Bereshit. In fact, Ramban says almost a thousand years ago that the universe started with a single tiny grain like a mustard seed and it expanded from there. If almost a thousand years ago I would say this to any philosopher he would laugh at me and say it cannot be. It cannot be because the universe is eternal and it cannot be. How can something start from a mustard grain and develop into a huge universe? But the words of Ramban a thousand years ago are confirmed by science itself. The science itself now claims exactly the same. Yes, there was a beginning. Beginning not only to space, energy, matter, but even beginning to time. Until recently also the scientists thought that time cannot be changed. The time is a constant entity that is outside of space, outside of matter and energy. And Einstein through his theory of relativity proved e equal equals mc square where time is part of mass, the time is part of energy and part of um your velocity, your speed. And that was a big shock as well because that meant that just like we can change the speed, we can change the the forces, the gravity, we can control time as well. The signs and the experiments were conducted to show that yes, time can be slowed down, time can be accelerated. In places where there is great gravity, the time slows down. When the velocity, when the speed of an object increases tremendously, time slows down. And in fact, one of the explanations that Rabbi Dr. Gerald Schroeder used to explain how is it that we claim that the universe only existed for a few thousand years and that the whole world was created in just 6 days when the science tells us that the universe existed for 15 billion years. He explains that since at the beginning of creation, the entire mass of the universe was concentrated in one space, so there was a great gravity, very large force of gravity, so time was very slow. And as soon as the universe expanded, it started flying out at great speed, at speeds that were very close to the speed of light. And at that speed, the time slowed down as well. And therefore, you had a combination of two two things that slow down time. Very high gravity and very high velocity. And together, they produced situation where time was going very slow. At that time, if you would use your your watch, it would show you that the time is ticking very, very slowly. However, as the universe expanded and and the space became more rarified and the the and gravity went down and the the the velocity went down, slowly the time started going faster and faster until when we are in our time and we look back counting with our clock of course, according to our clock, it's 15 billion years. But if you use the watch at the moment of creation and as it was going slowly, you continue measuring the time, you will see that it only took 6 days. That's briefly what he says in a big book called Genesis and the Big Bang. I refer you refer you to that to learn about it. But the first argument between science and Torah ended with a victory of Torah where the science admitted that yes, there was a beginning to the universe. We were wrong all this time. We were claiming that the universe was eternal. That is wrong. That is false. The Torah was right all along when the Torah declared Bereshit in the beginning, that was true. There was a beginning. There was beginning to space, time, energy, matter, everything that we know of today came into existence at one point in time. Now, the next word that the science presented as a challenge to religion was bara. Bara means created. Because they said, yes, we admit there was a beginning. But let's say that the it happened by itself. Let's say there was no creation. And even though you want that there was a the beginning, but you claim that God created. And we say there was no creation. It happened randomly. It happened randomly that something exploded and from a a point time, space, matter, all the laws of physics were created. Yes, it's very hard to believe, but that's what we imagine. That's what they claimed. So, how do they explain the the existence of the universe? It randomly happened. How do we explain the existence of the laws of of the of physics? It randomly happened. So, they they call this phenomena the Big Bang. And they said, "Let's say that the the entire universe with all its laws came about in one moment and it just continued based on the laws of physics just continued and the result that we see is a natural outcome of an accident." Now, this was a satisfactory answer for some decades until recently more honest scientists started thinking. And um I heard this question being asked at the an astronomy lecture at the at the college about 10 years ago. It was a a lecture for community by a famous astrophysicist. And at the end of his presentation on birth of stars and the life cycle of stars, somebody asked him a question. And they said, "Professor, you told us that the universe started through Big Bang and it was all through random events. But how do you explain that our universe is so perfect? How do you explain that the laws of the of physics are so precise? How do you explain that the relationships between different forces, the relationships between subatomic particles, for example, it's known that if mass of proton or the mass of neutron was slightly different, then the nuclei of of atoms would not be able to stay together. And even after the Big Bang, after the universe cooled down and the time came for atoms to be formed, they wouldn't be able to be formed because the the neutron and the proton cannot stay in the same nucleus. How is it possible that if it happened randomly, that it happened perfect?" And the professor said, "Yes, it's a very good question. We've been thinking about that question for a long time. And we came up with two answers. The same question bothered us. How is it possible that a random event can produce something perfect? And the professor said, we came up with two answers. One is that there must be God. That it was created. But I know that not everybody will buy this answer. And so those who do not want to believe in God, we created a new answer. And what is the new answer we created? And that is we said it's true that one random event cannot produce perfection. Because it's highly unlikely that out out of trillions of possibilities from the first time the perfect one will be chosen, will be created. So, we came up with an idea of multiple universes. And we said just like Big Bang happened in our universe randomly must be Big Bang happened infinite number of times in infinite number of parallel universes. And in those infinite number of Big Bangs, each one produced a different universe. And out of those infinite number of infinite universes with infinite possible possible combinations of laws of physics one universe was produced perfect. And we are fortunate enough to live in it. So, he said, whenever you have infinity now it becomes possible to have one perfect universe. So now the scientist had to adjust their Big Bang Theory because something that is happening randomly cannot be perfect. So they had to adjust their Big Bang Theory to include infinite number of Big Bangs. Now you see in this answer again they had to adjust their theory infinite number of times just like when they claimed that the universe is eternal. And then they came up with a number. It was satisfactory to them. But in reality they made an infinite mistake to go from infinity to a finite number. Now they made the opposite mistake. Now the mistake they made was to claim that there was one Big Bang and now they have to say there are there were infinite number of Big Bangs. And uh now they're hoping that a person will make a choice. Because they say they say there are only two answers either there was creation, there is God and that's why the universe is perfect. Or they're hoping that people will accept their imagination. Their theory that there were infinite number of Big Bangs and that infinite number of random events one of them produced a perfect universe. And of course for somebody who grew up secular and somebody who his whole life was brainwashed that there is no God, there is no God, there is no God, the choice is obvious. It's easier to accept one in infinity possibility in someone else's imagination much easier than to accept God. But if we try to come out of that limitation of being brainwashed by society and allowing ourselves to think clearly, which is very difficult very difficult. I know myself, it took me a long time to be willing to accept this possibility that maybe maybe there is God. Because it's very difficult to admit that you were making a mistake. It's very difficult to admit that you were lied to. And uh that makes it very difficult for scientists to change their thinking and to say, "You know what? We made a mistake. There is a God." But in the meantime, what happened was that the science accepted the first word of the Torah, Bereshit, in the beginning. And the science presented us with two choices for the second word of the Torah. Bara, created. So they said, "Yes, if you want, we'll grant you this possibility. We accept that that is a very easy um choice and it explains a lot. And just again to save our face, we're going to say "Let there be um an infinite number of universes." But logically, it's as if they're saying, "Yes, we admit that our own explanation of the Big Bang does not explain the fact that there is such a perfect universe." And so, they're forced to admit bara, yes, there was there was creation. Now, what was their third objection to Torah? We know the Torah says, "Bereshit bara Elohim." Elohim means God almighty. And our definition of God is that not only he created the world, but that he continues to be involved in the world. He continues to run the world, and he continues to control every little part of the universe. And some scientists said, "You know what? Okay, we'll admit that there was a beginning. We'll admit that there there there was a creation, but it's hard for us to admit that the creator is still involved. Because if he's still involved in the world, it puts a burden on me. That means he's watching me. It means he wants something from me, and that means that the one day I'll have to answer and to stand in judgment. So, they said, "Let's allow God to exist. Let's allow him to create the universe, but we're not going to allow him to run the universe. He created the universe. He wound it as a clock, and he left it with its laws of physics that he created, and that's it. We don't need him anymore. He went on vacation." Seems very difficult to change that claim. How can you show whether God is still involved in the universe or not? And uh in 2011 a group of s- scientists received the Nobel Prize for the work that they've been doing for the past couple decades. And uh to make this work more reliable, it was confirmed by another group of scientists the world over. And the idea was these two groups of scientists asked themselves a question. Okay, we we tried to predict how did the universe begin? And we thought it was eternal, but it ended up not. Well, what if we try to predict how will the universe end? What's going to be in the future? Will the universe continue to exist or not? How will it exist? Will it continue to expand forever or will it collapse one day? And they came up with two possibilities. They said, "Let us analyze the the velocity of the universe. And from from the the velocity we'll be able to predict." For example, they said "If we find out that the universe is going with a constant velocity, it's expanding continuously with the same speed, and the speed is not decreasing at all, that means that the universe will continue expanding at the same rate of speed forever. Because must be nothing is slowing it down. Must be that the original explosion was so powerful that it broke the confines of gravity, and now the universe is free. It's just continuing to expand and expand and expand forever. That's one possibility. The second possibility they said, "If we find that the universe is slowing down, it's still expanding, but the expansion is slowing down. If we find that the expansion is slowing down, that means that the total gravity of the universe is strong enough to pull on the universe and to slow it down. That means that eventually the universe will stop expanding, and now the the gravity will still pull on it, and it's going to start contracting. So, they said, "Let us make experiments and find out. Is the universe expanding at a constant speed, and therefore will continue forever, or is the universe expanding slower and slower and slower until eventually we will stop, and eventually we will relapse, we will collapse back onto that one point where we started the at the Big Bang. And maybe the process of Big Bang will re uh restart again. And maybe they they guessed maybe that's how it was forever. And maybe now they had a glimpse of hope. Maybe that actually explains that the universe was eternal. Because if the universe explodes and then after billions of years it collapses back into the into the point and then again it explodes and again collapses, maybe this process continued infinite number of times and maybe the universe actually was eternal. They got excited. They said, "Let us find out." Let us find out what happened. So they conducted experiments for two decades. And the the results shocked them once more. What did they find? Amazing thing they found. They found that the universe is not going at a constant speed. They found that the universe is not expanding at a at a constant velocity. At the same time they found out that the universe is not slowing down. So so what's the other option? There were only two options. They they found out that the universe is expanding with an acceleration. That the universe is expanding and it's expanding faster and faster and faster. They were not ready for that. And they tried to explain it. How do you explain it? That's amazing. If you are driving a car and you want to accelerate, what do you need to do? You need to add more fuel. You need to press on the gas. Okay. That's easy enough. But what if you want to expand and accelerate the entire universe? How do you accelerate the entire universe without adding anything from the outside? So they said, "You know what? Must be must be that there is energy coming in from somewhere. Must be that what our eyes see and what our instruments are showing is not all there is. Because we see energy coming into the universe and the universe is accelerating and we don't know the source of that energy. So they re-tweaked their theory and they said, "Must be that there is dark energy. Energy that is unknown to us as of yet. Energy that we cannot see. Energy that we cannot measure." They called it dark energy and on top of that they invented another idea called dark matter. And interestingly, they said, "What What is the property of this dark energy They said since we observe the universe and we see that as much as it's expanding and growing in size this energy is not losing its power. Must be that this is unlike any other force in the universe because all the other forces they depend on distance. The greater the distance between the objects the less is the the force between them. With gravity we see that as you increase the distance between objects the less gravity they they exert on each other. Or in magnetism, the further you move away the magnet from the piece of metal the less force it it it exerts on that piece of metal. So we would expect that as the universe is expanding this dark energy should put in less and less force. Should affect the universe less and less and we see that it's not so. As much as the universe is expanding the dark energy and the dark matter continue being as strong as at the beginning. They were very surprised by this. And if you think about it their description of this dark matter and dark energy corresponds very very much to our description of God. Because we say God is not visible. God does not occupy space. God is everywhere at all times. God does not weaken. He can be in everywhere at the same time, and he is everywhere at the same time. And the more the universe is expanding, the more the godliness is is filling the the space. But that does not weaken his powers any bit. He's still in control of the universe. He's still running the universe. He's still pushing the universe. He's still in charge. And he's involved. Not only the science had to admit that there was a beginning, Bereshit, and they had to admit bara, there was a creation, because otherwise you need infinite number of big bangs. Now they have to admit that God is still running the universe. Elohim, the power behind all the forces is still running the universe, is still moving the universe, is still supplying the universe with with the energy necessary to increase the the velocity of of the universe. Now we the the three three main large claims that the science had have in the words of science itself have confirmed to the three simple words in the Torah, in the Chumash, "Bereshit bara Elohim." At the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. It says by Arthur Compton, the Nobel Prize winner in physics, the following, "An orderly universe testifies to the greatest statement ever uttered. In the beginning, God created." Imagine, this is the Nobel Prize winner in physics saying exactly what we've shown today. That the orderly universe testifies to the greatest statement ever uttered. In the beginning, God created. And Rav Tzadok Hakohen from Lublin says that God wrote the book. And that book is the world. And he wrote a commentary on that book. And that commentary is called the Torah. When we look in the Torah, we see the explanation of whatever we see with our eyes. When we look in the Torah, we will see the explanation of every event, of every physical law, of everything that happens in history. And now, let's look at what the Greeks represented throughout ages with their multiplicity of gods that they took from pagans, they also tried to say that the the Just like we are not satisfied with one God, we have to invent many gods. So too, they were not satisfied with one universe. They said we cannot explain with the world with one universe. We have to explain it with infinite number of universes. So you see again, history repeats itself. Originally, we had to fight against idol worship, where they said, "No, no, don't tell us the idea of one God. It's too complicated. Let's make it easier. Let's invent many gods." And now the scientists are following the same pattern, and they're saying, "It's too difficult to explain one universe, because one universe implies one God, and we cannot accept it. Therefore, we have to invent the idea of multiple universes, infinite number of universes, infinite number of Big Bangs." But like everything else, eventually all these theories will be proven wrong by the scientists themselves. They themselves will have to admit that we have no answer. We have no answer because it's becomes illogical. The more we learn about the universe, the deeper we look into space, the more surprised we get, the more shocked we get, until we go back to the beginning, to the first three words of the Torah, in the beginning God created. Now, people people argue about against the Torah from a different point. They say, "Rabbi, yes, okay. The universe was created. But what about what about um evolution? What are you going to say about evolution, Rabbi? Don't we know that uh what what what Darwin claims that that we came from monkeys? Isn't it a proven fact? Wasn't it proven conclusively that that's the only way it could have happened that first there were bacteria and then there were multicellular organisms and then they evolved and evolved and evolved until we turned into human beings? And here also, using the the the words of science itself, we will we will see that the idea of evolution does not make sense scientifically. For the simple reason being that in order for evolution to work, what they claim is that a more simple organism through random produced a more advanced organism. Sounds good. Sounds interesting and sounds logical. Yes. Through random mutation simple molecule evolved into a more complicated molecule. Simple organism evolved into a more complicated organism. The problem is that there is a law in in chemistry and physics which is called the second law of thermodynamics. And this law the the second law of thermodynamics states that in any closed system without influence from the outside the processes will go to the state of greater chaos. And this is a law in physics. This is not a theory, it's a law that says that in any closed system without influence from outside if you leave the system alone, what's going to happen? Will it evolve to become better? No. Physics states that any closed system will only go down. Will only deteriorate. Devolve. Left to itself no simple protein will make a complicated protein. No simple organism will turn into a better organism. It's only possible to become worse. There's only one way. In any system that does not have outside influence, all the processes will tend to go to the state of greater chaos. And that means that if originally the whole universe started with chaos, laws of physics say nothing else can be produced from it randomly besides more chaos. And even if you say that yes, okay, at the beginning God created a perfect universe and he left it like this and organisms started to evolve, that would not happen. If you exclude God from the picture, rules of physics state that every system left to its own will go to the state of greater chaos. Now, if you ask this the scientists, those that are stubborn, how do they explain it? They will give you one of the similar excuses that they that we we pointed out before. What will they say? They'll say, "Yes, it's true that any system will always go to the state of greater chaos. But that's only on average. But in a system in a in a in a in a large system, you might have areas where certain parts of it are going down and certain parts are going up, which means part of the system is feeding off the other part and the energy is being pumped into one part of the system and giving it enough energy to evolve while the rest of the system is going down in its chaos. Increasing its chaos. But again, th- this would would require interference from an outside source, from an intelligent being to arrange the energy going one way and not the other. Why would a random system decide to share its energy for the sake for the sake of um someone else to create a small version of of communism and say, "I'm going to give my own energy to you so that you can evolve." That doesn't sound very logical. But that's the only way they can um explain how can how can biological systems go against the second law of thermodynamics? So, from the point of view of random mutations driving um biology, driving evolution, that becomes impossible physically. According to laws of physics, evolution cannot happen. Now, I want to address one more idea that evolution is based on and that is survival of the fittest or the instinct of survival. And here we have to we have to think a little bit. We know that the way evolution explains why does everything want to continue living? Why does everything want to procreate? Because it has an inborn instinct to survive. A human being wants to have children, wants to eat, wants to fight for its survival. An animal, the same thing, wants to eat, wants to procreate, wants to fight for its survival. And every living being The question is where did this instinct to survive come from? Who implanted it in the in the in a living being, this instinct to survive? And if you say that nobody implanted it, it just so happened randomly. Okay, where is it located? So you might say, "Okay, it's located in a brain." So that may answer the question for for humans or for animals. Okay, we have pain receptors, and when we are hungry, we feel pain, and in order to satisfy that hunger, we go and we eat, or we fight for food, we we want to want we want someone to take care of us when we are in old age. So for our own sake, we go get married and we produce children so that they take care of us when we are old. Animals, I'm sure, are not thinking about their old age. So okay, somehow the survival entered their brain. We don't know how. But let's go down to those living beings that don't have a brain. What about a bacteria? The bacteria doesn't have a brain. The bacteria doesn't have nervous system. But if you ask a scientist, does the bacteria have instinct to survive? They'll be forced to say yes, because otherwise how is it surviving? What is causing the bacteria to continue eating, to continue reproducing? What is forcing the bacteria to want to continue to live? Where is its survival instinct located? And if we go to the topic of the day, a virus. A virus is a virus a living thing or not? With all this scare, we would think that the virus must be living thing. But in fact, many scientists have doubts about it. And they say the virus is so simple that it can't even be considered a living being. A virus is just a shell, a molecular shell with genetic information inside. It's just a box with RNA or DNA in some viruses that contains genetic information. And the scientists say that since the virus doesn't eat, and the virus does not reproduce on its own, must be it's not alive. But nevertheless, we see that even such a such a being which cannot be called alive, infects another organism, injects its genetic material into it, and forces the host cell to produce thousands and thousands of copies of that virus. And again, the question is where is this desire to reproduce for the virus is coming from? Where in that shell, this molecular shell, where is it is the desire to survive? Where is the survival instinct? And nobody can answer such a question. So, it we see again the the the foundation of evolution is again dashed by simple question. Where does the survival instinct come from? From the point of view of Torah, it's simple. It says that the that God, after creating every living being, he blessed every living being and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. And from there, our sages say, comes the instinct for survival. It's the command of God that everyone from grass to smallest animals to human beings, they have internal drive to continue living, to survive, and to produce offspring. I would like to quote you something from Theodosius Dobzhansky. He says like this, very Seen in retrospect, so retrospect, evolution as a whole doubtless had a general direction from simple to complex, from dependence onto relative independence of the environment, to greater and greater autonomy of individuals, greater and greater development of sense organs and nervous systems conveying and processing information about the state of the organism's surroundings, and finally, greater and greater consciousness. You can call this direction progress or by some other name. And another quote by Edward Wilson, progress then is a property of the evolution of life as a whole by almost any conceivable intuitive standard. Let us not pretend to deny in our philosophy that we know what we know in our hearts to be true. There's great organization and great direction in all living beings. And to leave it to randomness goes against laws of physics, and to call it by the name of in survival instinct goes against logic. So, we've analyzed a little bit of physics and a little bit of biology. We've analyzed a little bit of scientist theories of how the universe came into existence, and we saw how the science admitted that there was a beginning to the universe. We saw how the science admitted that there must be God, otherwise we have to invent infinite number of multiple universes with random processes happening in all of them and hoping that one of them will produce the perfect universe that we live in. And that the the recent advancements in science are admitting that there is energy, we'll call it dark energy, that's continuing to influence the universe even now. We looked a little bit at at the theory of evolution and we saw how it goes against basic rules of physics. And we asked the simple question, where did the survival instinct come from? And where is it located? And why even such simple organisms like bacteria and even viruses seem to have the survival instinct. I would like to open the floor to people asking questions. Let me unmute everyone and you're welcome to submit your questions.