In Harry Kemelman's 1978 crime novel 'Thursday The Rabbi Walked Out' his character Rabbi Small talks about free will,
'............The right to choose - '
'Between bread and toast?' the rabbi challenged. 'Between turning right or left at a crossing? The lower animals have that kind of free will. For man, free will means the freedom to choose to do something he knows is wrong, wicked, evil, for some material advantage. But that calls for a fair chance of not being discovered and punished. Would anyone steal if he were surrounded by policemen and certain of arrest and punishment? And on the other hand, what virtue is there in a good deed if the reward is certain? Since God is presumably all-seeing and all-knowing, no transgression goes undetected, and no good deed fails to be noted. So what kind of free will is that? How does it differ from the free will of the laboratory rat that is rewarded by food if he goes down one path of a maze and is given an electric shock if he goes down another?'
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