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Title: Does time pass?
Source: MIT News
URL Source: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/book-brad-skow-does-time-pass-0128
Published: Jan 28, 2015
Author: Peter Dizikes
Post Date: 2015-01-30 14:00:33 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 18772
Comments: 57

“If you walk into a cocktail party and say, ‘I don’t believe that time passes,’ everyone’s going to think you’re completely insane,” says Brad Skow, an associate professor of philosophy at MIT.

He would know: Skow himself doesn’t believe time passes, at least not in the way we often describe it, through metaphorical descriptions in which we say, as he notes, “that time flows like a river, or we move through time the way a ship sails on the sea.”

Skow doesn’t believe time is ever in motion like this. In the first place, he says, time should be regarded as a dimension of spacetime, as relativity theory holds — so it does not pass by us in some way, because spacetime doesn’t. Instead, time is part of the uniform larger fabric of the universe, not something moving around inside it.

Now in a new book, “Objective Becoming,” published by Oxford University Press, Skow details this view, which philosophers call the “block universe” theory of time.

In one sense, the block universe theory seems unthreatening to our intuitions: When Skow says time does not pass, he does not believe that nothing ever happens. Events occur, people age, and so on. “Things change,” he agrees.

However, Skow believes that events do not sail past us and vanish forever; they just exist in different parts of spacetime. (Some physics students who learn to draw diagrams of spacetime may find this view of time intuitive.) Still, Skow’s view of time does lead to him to offer some slightly more unusual-sounding conclusions.

For instance: We exist in a “temporally scattered” condition, as he writes in the new book.

“The block universe theory says you’re spread out in time, something like the way you’re spread out in space,” Skow says. “We’re not located at a single time.”

Spotlighting the alternatives

In “Objective Becoming,” Skow aims to convince readers that things could hardly be otherwise. To do so, he spends much of the book considering competing ideas about time — the ones that assume time does pass, or move by us in some way. “I was interested in seeing what kind of view of the universe you would have if you took these metaphors about the passage of time very, very seriously,” Skow says.

In the end, Skow finds these alternatives lacking, including one fairly popular view known as “presentism,” which holds that only events and objects in the present can be said to exist — and that Skow thinks defies the physics of spacetime.

Skow is more impressed by an alternative idea called the “moving spotlight” theory, which may allow that the past and future exist on a par with the present. However, the theory holds, only one moment at a time is absolutely present, and that moment keeps changing, as if a spotlight were moving over it. This is also consistent with relativity, Skow thinks — but it still treats the present as being too distinct, as if the present were cut from different cloth than the rest of the universal fabric.

“I think the theory is fantastic,” Skow writes of the moving spotlight idea. “That is, I think it is a fantasy. But I also have a tremendous amount of sympathy for it.” After all, the moving spotlight idea does address our sense that there must be something special about the present.

“The best argument for the moving spotlight theory focuses on the seemingly incredible nature of what the block universe theory is saying about our experience in time,” Skow adds.

Still, he says, that argument ultimately “rests on a big confusion about what the block universe theory is saying. Even the block universe theory agrees that … the only experiences I’m having are the ones I’m having now in this room.” The experiences you had a year ago or 10 years ago are still just as real, Skow asserts; they’re just “inaccessible” because you are now in a different part of spacetime.

That may take a chunk of, well, time to digest. But by treating the past, present, and future as materially identical, the theory is consistent with the laws of physics as we understand them. And at MIT, that doesn’t sound insane at all.

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#1. To: cranky (#0)

Does time pass?

To answer the question, we first have to define what time IS.

The answer depends entirely on the definition.

Time may not even EXIST. It doesn't exist unless we can precisely define it.

I've never seen a definition of "time" that wasn't simply circular.

The word "time" turns out to be like the word "existence": you can only define it in terms of itself.

(Try to define "existence", and you will swiftly find that you cannot do it without using the words "to be" or "being". But then try to define "to be", and you can't do it without using the word "exist".

You end up chasing your tail and realize that you CAN'T define either existence/being or time other than circularly.

Everything ultimately comes back to the definition of the verb "To be".

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-30   15:25:28 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Vicomte13 (#1)

Kind of like a fish saying, "what's water"

Biff Tannen  posted on  2015-01-30   16:06:48 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Vicomte13 (#1)

I've never seen a definition of "time" that wasn't simply circular.

Like my wall clock?

Fred Mertz  posted on  2015-01-30   16:16:37 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Biff Tannen (#2)

Kind of like a fish saying, "what's water"

Sort of. But we can say "What's air?", and then we can give pretty concrete definitions: air is a collection of widely separated molecules within a space.

We could then make a distinction between air and space by noting that, while there are lots of molecules in space, they are much more spread out. So, we could come up with some sort of quantum of molecules per unit of space to delineate where "air" ends and "space" begins. We might call the envelope of air about the earth "atmosphere", to sound hifalutin', and describe its properties.

My point being the fish in water (assuming it had a philosophical mind), or the human in air (or in water) CAN define water, or air, in fixed terms relative to other things. And each of those other things can in turn be defined in fixed terms. What's a molecule? Well, that's a combination of atoms, in fixed proportion, bound by covalent bonds, forming the smallest individual unit of a compound.

If we were to apply the same concept to populations, we would could say that humans are "man molecules", because humans are indivisible. Sure, we're made up of stuff, but once you get to the level of the "individual", if you nevertheless "divide" what can't be divided, what you end up with is a set of compounds and tissues, but the individual ceases to be.

All of these things are definable. Atoms, in turn, are definable by their constituent parts and proportions, right down to the smallest units of mass. The closer you get there, the more like between mass and energy gets blurry.

But then suddenly you ram straight into the word "mass", and "energy", and you start to run out of things you can define anymore, other than circularly.

"Mass is that which has weight in a gravity field and takes up space."

Ok, so, what's gravity...well, its a property that gives mass weight. Fine, but then what's mass? And the definition become circular.

And what's space? It's distance between objects. Ok, then what's distance? Umm...er...well, it's space. Circular.

When you come to the fundamentals you come to things that can't be defined. They're like postulates in Geometry. Everything true in geometry can be proved from an antecedent truth, until you get back to the postulates: "A line segment is the set of points on a straight curve between two points." But what's a point? Well, a point's a point. You can't define it any further. You just have to accept that it IS.

And there it is, that verb "To Be" again.

Ultimately, you can't define mass, energy, space, time, or existence, other than in terms of themselves. They're like postulates. You can only observe their existence - and state that they exist because they exist. And existence itself? It just IS. These things can't be defined.

One either accepts them or one does not. And if one does not accept them, if they in fact do exist, their existence is independent of the perception of their existence. (And this takes us to yet another sphere whose everything depends on definitions: the mind.)

Indeed, whether or not people agree there's a God really depends on how one defines that word.

Definitions are everything when it comes to language.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-30   16:28:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: Fred Mertz (#3)

Like my wall clock?

In a very real sense, yes. When you try to work out what time is, you end up having to rely upon repeating physical phenomena. Then you define the "passage" of time as the beating out of that physical phenomenon.

It may be that that is all that "time" really is: a physical relationship, a measuring stick that relates one thing or one sequence to another.

Mass "exists" in a tangible physical sense. Energy is also tangible - you can't weigh it, but you can certainly feel it. Space is the absence of stuff (and note, there isn't any true vacuum, unless vacuum is defined as the absence of matter, for there is energy everwhere. Outer Space is an ocean of particles, they just don't have mass. But "space" itself - it's the distance between stuff.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-30   16:34:45 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: Vicomte13 (#1)

It doesn't exist unless we can precisely define it.

That's just plain silly.

Time exists independent of humans or any human definition.

Even when there are no more humans, time will elapse.

There may not be anything to mark its passing but pass it will.

cranky  posted on  2015-01-30   16:43:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: Vicomte13 (#1)

It doesn't exist unless we can precisely define it.

Hmmmmmm.....what is the precise definition of God?

SOSO  posted on  2015-01-30   17:21:01 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: cranky (#6)

That's just plain silly.

Time exists independent of humans or any human definition.

If we were talking about something tangible and visible, like matter, or energy, or even space, this would be very easy to assert.

Time, however, is not tangible. It doesn't move anything. It can't be measured.

We're not "measuring time" when we watch a spring unwind or a beat cycle. We're counting things out. It is we, in our minds, who view what is happening TO and WITH a concrete object: a spring, or an energy wave-form, as indicative of something else invisible that is "moving" unseen.

With "time" we are dealing with a concept that we made up to describe something that we think we see.

Our heart beats, and our bodies grow and then weaken and die. These things are so, physical realities. But to describe these physical realities, we create an entity to describe the "force", or intangible "thing" that is "moving".

Ockham's Razor - the original one - was that entities should not be multiplied needlessly. The idea of "time" certainly SEEMS to describe something, some pressure that moves things forward in sequence. Certainly it is a useful variable in algebraic calculations. But that doesn't mean that it actually exists.

After all, the square root of -4 is 2i, but "i" is imaginary. It is useful algebraically, to be sure, but it doesn't represent anything that actually EXISTS in the real world.

Time seems to exist, but it cannot be shown to. Sequentialism exists. That we can see and experience. And when sequential things are placed side by side, they move relatively fast or slow compared one to the other. That does not mean that there is a supreme factor, "time", existing as a real THING, ethereally pushing things along. Perhaps there is nothing there, and "time" is like "i", an imaginary number, measuring an imaginary "thing", that doesn't exist at all other than as a term in an algebraic expression.

Algebra is not reality. It merely models reality. "i" doesn't really exist. And perhaps "t" doesn't either. It's a model for sequentialism, a useful fiction, but not a separate "thing".

And for that matter so may "space" be. We use physical yardsticks to measure distance between objects. We call the distance "something". But really, the distance is literally nothing.

Something can be DONE with this nothing, though: you can fill it up. So it exists in physical reality, if only as "zero".

But time may be like "the ether", something that seemed so logical, but that apparently doesn't really exist at all.

Things move sequentially, and because of entropy most reactions and processes are one way. A plant cannot "ungrow", not because there's an "arrow of time" nudging it along, but because once it grows it actually IS something: matter and energy bound in space. And those things cannot simply dematerialize. There isn't a "backwards".

What I am writing is not "silly". It's not overthinking either.

I'm making a legitimate point. Just because people BELIEVE something exists and insist it does, doesn't mean it actually DOES. Just because "i" is algebraically useful doesn't mean that it's actually REAL. "i" is imaginary. And maybe so is "t".

"T" may merely be a mathematical McGuffin that lets us assign a value, v, to the relationship between two things.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-30   17:43:09 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: Fred Mertz, Vicomte13 (#3)

I've never seen a definition of "time" that wasn't simply circular.

Like my wall clock?

Gee, mine and many others are squarish. Does it mean they are not bona fide time pieces?

BTW, they seem to tell time just fine.

SOSO  posted on  2015-01-30   17:45:01 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: SOSO (#7)

Hmmmmmm.....what is the precise definition of God?

"God" is an Anglo-Saxon word that, as used popularly today, means that which is omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal and omniscient, and good (the actual word itself "god" is the Anglo-Saxon word "good").

Scripturally, there are several words that are popularly translated by this one Anglo-Saxon word.

Three words: El, Eloah, and Elohiym - mean respectively Mighty One (masculine), Mighty One (feminine), and Mighty Ones (plural). The Greek work theos, used to translate these words, deus in Latin, and ace in Anglo-Saxon, all refer to the quality of power.

The words El and Eloah do not by themselves convey the meaning "omnipotent", merely "powerful". The plurality of "Elohiym" MAY convey the concept of ALL might (omnipotent), but may also convey the concept of unified plurality: the Mighty ONES.

The word YHWH - YaHaWaH or some variant - is the third person singular masculine imperfect tense of the verb to live. It means he - a masculine singular - either has the quality of living, being, existing or breathing right now and will continue to, and PERHAPS (but not certainly) also had that quality in the past and still does, or PERHAPS (but not, given context) has not yet come to be, but will come to be in the future.

This word is usually translated in English, in the Old Testament, as "Lord", but the word "lord" was a compound word from "loaf" (as in bread) and "ward" as in guardian. So, the guardian of the bread, was the loward of the house - the lord. But the word hasn't been understood to refer to bread for 600 years. Rather, "lord" means leader, ruler. In the New Testament, where YHWH might appear, the word is conveyed as "theos" in Greek, and "God" in English.

The features of the Elohiym and YHWH as presented in the Old Testament, and further presented by Jesus in the Greek New Testament, incorporate elements of omnipotence and eternity, and contain implications of omniscience and omnipresence (with, however, some contrary suggestions - of God sending someone "to find out", for example, clearly indicated that God was not present at a certain place or possessing of sure knowledge of the happensings there.)

The YHWH of the Psalms fits the Anglo-Saxon "God" - omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and eternal, while the YHWH of the Torah seems a bit less absolute in terms of knowledge and presence. Supreme power is always present.

So, when trying to define the word "God", we have different possibilities laid before us. The God of the Torah is omnipotent and eternal, but neither completely omnipresent nor completely omniscient. He has agents traverse distances to find things out.

The God of the Psalms is everything.

Jesus' father has "numbered the hairs of your head" and "not a sparrow falls without his permission", which certainly sounds like omniscience and omnipresence.

Interestingly, Christian traditions (not the Scriptures) immediately muddy up the word by calling Jesus, who certainly is Lord - meaning the leader - as "God" also, along with the "Holy Spirit", who is said to "proceed from the Father and the Son", or just the father.

The Greeks and the Latins have feuded for a millennium and a half over this question which, alas, the Scripture doesn't care enough about to give anything definitive.

If Jesus was God, then the definition of God cannot include omnipotence, for Jesus said his Father was greater, nor omniscience, for there were things that the Father only knew, nor omnipresence, as he had to come down and go up to the sky. Eternity is strongly implied, however. So, Jesus fits the description of part of the Elohiym, the Powers, which collectively and unitedly are the deity of the Torah, and are spoken of with a singular verb.

This, of course, nicely fits the Trinity. Unfortuately, while Father, Son and Holy Spirit do figure prominently in the New Testament, Revelation speaks affirmatively of the writing seeing THE Seven Spirits of God before God's Throne. Not article free "seven spirits of God", not seven indefinite spirits, but The Seven Spirits, which is as different from "seven spirits" as "The Holy Spirit" is different from "holy spirit".

Scripture seems to tell us that there are at least NINE (9) parts of the godhead: Father, Son, and Seven Spirits of God.

Can one, then, transcend the opacity and impose a solution? Well, sure: one can call all of that "God" - Elohiym certainly does that. Of course, it may then be that this "God" is like "i": imaginary. What we're left with if we do it that way is "t" - the very subject of our discussion: something that MAY be imaginary (as described) or real.

So, all of those are the traditional approaches to this word, God.

None of them interest me much, other than as points to be kept cleanly separated, and points of clarification, and points to bring up when someone asserts an excessively perfect unity and consistency to written Scripture or Scripture plus tradition that is not, in fact, there.

So, that's what OTHER PEOPLE think, but what do I care about that? What I care about is what I think. And here's the truth: A "God" that is not absolute - that is not omnipotent, eternal and capable (therefore) of omnipresence and omniscience (but who may choose to not always fully exercise all of his attributes) - a God who is not those things is not INTERESTING to me. Because such a lesser "god" is not really God at all. It is, rather, another creature. More powerful, to be sure, but ultimately bound by SOMETHING.

And truth is, I am only interested in that SOMETHING that binds such a powerful creature. Jupiter Capitolinus may have been of unbelievable power and strength, but whatever LIMITED him was god TO HIM, and therefore more powerful than him, and I am interested in whatever that limit would be.

This is why I am a scientist, and why I was a scientific pantheist. Absent divine revelation, the only thing that seems to be omnipotent, omnipresent and eternal is Natural Law. Therefore, natural law is god-LIKE. The question, then, turns on the matter of omniscience, or any-science. Does natural law think (other than through creatures such as us and the animals)? If it does, is it able to control all matter, everywhere, for all time? If so, then THAT is God.

God is that which is omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal and omniscient. The Natural Physical laws appear (or appeared) to fit three of those four elements of the only definition of God that is of any interest to me. And that is why I was a pantheist, of the unconscious (or perhaps evolving towards consciousness) Laws of Nature, Nature itself: god, and with evolution to intelligence, eventually God.

That was my God, which fit my definition of God, and which was intuitively observable.

Then an intelligent, invisible spirit capable of comprehending my thoughts and manipulating my physical body reached out of the air and spoke to me, repeatedly, and demonstrated empirically that there is an intelligence which is capable of overbearing the laws of physics.

The quest for tangible artifacts that document that for all to see is what led me to the litany of physical proofs that I provide all the time.

So, the CORRECT answer to "the precise definition of God" is not the imprecise and contradictory wanderings of the different terms in Scripture, but their being brought together in their strongest form, as a written account inspired by that which is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and eternal.

Put differently, that which is omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal and omniscient is God, and if you find something that is those things, that is God.

Natural law fits the first four, but the intelligence of God demonstrates that the Natural laws are not an entity, merely an opinion of that omniscience.

The final piece of the puzzle for ME, that transformed pantheism into theism, was being grabbed and spoken to repeatedly. The pieces that turned that theism into Christianity was the physical artifacts that the Omnscient ruler of the Natural Law left on earth: Shroud and bread and blood relic, incorrupt bodies and healings, coupled with the fact that he never left one speck of evidence like THAT for any of that for any OTHER religion.

So, that's WHAT God is: that which is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and eternal.

And THAT he is, and WHO he is, is proven by the miraculous artifacts that completely override the physical laws of the universe and present facts that cannot exist, but that nevertheless are plain to see, all of which scream the identity of Jesus.

Which in turn requires is to know what we can about Jesus, and we discover from his own mouth that he himself has a God, his Father.

Therefore, THAT is what, and who God is: God is Jesus' God.

And that is the definition of God.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-30   18:26:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: Vicomte13 (#10)

God is: that which is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and eternal.

Ok, that is what you consider to be the precise denifition of God.

Here is what some others say:

God; noun: god; plural noun: gods; plural noun: the gods

1. (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.

2. (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.

OR,

God - noun

1 capitalized : the supreme or ultimate reality: as

a : the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped as creator and ruler of the universe

b Christian Science : the incorporeal divine Principle ruling over all as eternal Spirit : infinite Mind

2 a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality

3 a person or thing of supreme value

4 a powerful ruler

OR,

God - noun

noun

1.a supernatural being, who is worshipped as the controller of some part of the universe or some aspect of life in the world or is the personification of some force related adjective divine

2.an image, idol, or symbolic representation of such a deity

3.any person or thing to which excessive attention is given ⇒ money was his god

4.a man who has qualities regarded as making him superior to other men

5.(in plural) the gallery of a theatre

So there seems to be lack of consensus on the precise definition of God. You may have better luck with finding consensus of the precise definition of time.

My point, if you haven't gotten it yet, is that a precise definition of something is neither necessary nor sufficient to determine if something exists or not.

SOSO  posted on  2015-01-30   18:46:13 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: cranky (#6)

Time exists independent of humans or any human definition.

Even when there are no more humans, time will elapse.

How do you know that?

A Pole  posted on  2015-01-30   19:14:34 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: Vicomte13 (#8)

It can't be measured

Elapsed time can be measured.

cranky  posted on  2015-01-30   19:39:31 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: A Pole (#12)

How do you know that?

For one thing, matter decays.

As matter decays, time elapses.

Things begin and end whether people are around or not.

Between the beginnings and the endings is elapsed time.

cranky  posted on  2015-01-30   19:45:30 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: SOSO (#11)

So there seems to be lack of consensus on the precise definition of God. You may have better luck with finding consensus of the precise definition of time.

My point, if you haven't gotten it yet, is that a precise definition of something is neither necessary nor sufficient to determine if something exists or not.

I'm not stupid. I got your point.

My reply would be that if the definitions people use of a difficult concept are inaccurate, incomplete or fuzzy, they will not arrive at truth.

It's very much like those who arrive at definitive theological conclusions using bad translations of Scripture. Sure, they arrive at a fixed point and have text to back it up, but what they have proven doesn't in fact exist.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-31   0:15:48 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: Vicomte13 (#1)

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. One of the measurements of time we have from creation.

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools " (Romans 1:21-22)

redleghunter  posted on  2015-01-31   0:19:32 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#17. To: redleghunter (#16)

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. One of the measurements of time we have from creation.

We don't know that at all. You are making an assumption that is not supported by Scripture or anything else. There are no records on what the Sun was doing or not doing at the point in time of creation and for quite some time thereafter.

SOSO  posted on  2015-01-31   0:23:03 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#18. To: Vicomte13 (#15)

My reply would be that if the definitions people use of a difficult concept are inaccurate, incomplete or fuzzy, they will not arrive at truth.

That isn't absolutely true either.

SOSO  posted on  2015-01-31   0:24:31 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#19. To: cranky (#13)

Elapsed time can be measured.

Not really.

What you are "measuring" is the rotations of an electric motor, or the unwinding of a spring.

You've taken an object with a cyclical behavior, drawn an arbitrary set of marks around the edge, and placed a pointer on the rotating axle or the spring-unwinding control mechanism. This gives you an artbitary number based on the cycle speed of the object on which you've placed it.

You can compare that to other cycling things and set a standard to relate sequences to sequences, but you're not actually measuring the passage of time: time is not causing the spring to move or the motor to cycle. Rather, you're ascribing the mechanical fact of rotation past arbitrary numeric indicators to the imaginary thing that you're trying to "measure".

The same thing happens in the sky. A set of 12 star patterns rotate cyclically across the sky. This cycle is predicable, and certain weather patterns recur every year when those certain stars are in the sky, due to the correlation between those stars' presence and the tilt of the earth relative to the Sun.

But those constellations up there are not CAUSING anything. They're a different cycle, running in parallel to your sun cycle. You can relate the one to the other, but there's no content to the relationship.

Unless of course you're an astrologer. THen you think there's this thing that is somehow reaching out from the stars that CAUSES the behavior of things on earth.

Coincidence is mistaken for causation, and because the correlation appears to be perfect, the causation seems clear. But it's still just coincidence.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-31   0:25:54 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#20. To: Vicomte13, cranky (#19)

Elapsed time can be measured.

Not really.

Obviously you have never been early or late for anything as these concepts do not exist in the real world.

SOSO  posted on  2015-01-31   0:29:39 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#21. To: redleghunter (#16)

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. One of the measurements of time we have from creation.

The Sun does not rise at all. The earth spins on its own axis, and the sun, coincidentally, happens to be out there at a relatively fixed place day to day (though the earth is also moving around it, and it around the earth too (to a lesser degree - in truth, both are moving in tandem around a common center of mass and spiraling forward as they do).

We choose to arbitrarily set the earth as the fixed point, to say that the Sun revolves about it, rising and setting, and then we define a day as the period of the coincidence. We can do that, but it doesn't make the "day" as such real outside of the minds that have decided to assign meaning to that cycle.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-31   0:30:59 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#22. To: Vicomte13 (#21)

Yes understand all that. Even the Jesuits were keen to teach me that. The point was how people observe time. We are on earth not the international space station.

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools " (Romans 1:21-22)

redleghunter  posted on  2015-01-31   0:34:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#23. To: SOSO (#20)

The concepts exist, but they are relative concepts. Things cycle along, we assign value to a certain cycle, and then call that concept "time". All that it is is observation of sequence. It's not an actual THING that DOES anything.

People burnt their children to Molech once. The burning was certainly real enough to the children. But though the effects of the actions taken were very real, the burnings for Molech were burnings, there was nevertheless probably not really any Molech.

People gave meaning that had real world consequences to an agreed-upon figment of their imagination.

So it may also be with time.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-31   0:34:52 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#24. To: redleghunter (#22)

The point was how people observe time.

And my point is that they are not OBSERVING anything.

They are seeing the sun pass above. They choose to reify the sequence of that passing and call it a "thing" - time. But all there really is, is the sequence. The Sun isn't moving across in something REAL called time, which it is measuring. The Sun is just moving, and men have decided to call the speed of its movement time. That's dandy, but it doesn't mean that there really IS a thing that is "time".

People talk of "time travel". But given that time is merely the observation of the Sun passing over, abstracted out, then to reverse time one would merely need to make the Sun move the other way.

Of course even if one made the sun move the other way, that would not change the other sequences out there. The sun moving to and fro does not change (much) The human body and its own cycles.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-31   0:39:27 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#25. To: Vicomte13 (#23)

So it may also be with time.

Whether time is real or not is irrelevant as the physical world, if not the Universe, as man knows it would not physically function without the concept of time. Yes, of course time is relative but as you noted measuremenst of time is relative to some physical phenomena, be it movement of a spring or atomic motion. Such measuremets are expressed as something (e.g. - rotations) per time increment (e.g. second). How much time must pass for light emanating from the Sun to reach the Earth? That is a very real thing even if the construct to express it may be imperfect to define the essence of time. The speed of light has meaning. But perhaps you allow that light may not be real either.

SOSO  posted on  2015-01-31   0:46:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#26. To: SOSO (#17)

We don't know that at all. You are making an assumption that is not supported by Scripture or anything else. There are no records on what the Sun was doing or not doing at the point in time of creation and for quite some time thereafter.

I was pointing out what we can observe. From here on planet earth not on the moon.

I guarantee if you get up early you will see the sun rise; then later in the evening it will set.

If you can physically see rotation, even though we know it happens, let me know what space station you are on or monitoring station. And don't forget to wind that old Mickey Mouse watch now and then:)

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools " (Romans 1:21-22)

redleghunter  posted on  2015-01-31   0:49:04 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#27. To: cranky (#0)

people age

Cheese, wine and spirits age over time.(time passes)

Otter  posted on  2015-01-31   0:52:35 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#28. To: Vicomte13 (#24)

Humans have measured days, weeks, months and years using heavenly bodies since the beginning. Why make this so hard. The same egg heads that try to define time or if such exists are the same types who question the origins of morals.

God is not only the Law giver but the time keeper.

The tag line explains some of this "wondering" of men.

"Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools " (Romans 1:21-22)

redleghunter  posted on  2015-01-31   0:54:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#29. To: Vicomte13 (#8)

Ockham's Razor - the original one

Not the compromised second draft

Biff Tannen  posted on  2015-01-31   7:26:24 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#30. To: SOSO (#25)

The speed of light is a relative property of light that assumes that the mechanical cycle whose transit we subdivide into equal units and call "time" really ARE equal units. The only way we can "know" that is by comparing to other cycling things. Spring clocks have the weakness that the de-tension of the spring is not uniform. Electric clocks have the weakness that motors speed or slow slightly (or a lot) based on fluctuation in currents and time lags in capacitor discharges. One can maintain "steady current", but one cannot retail PERFECTLY steady current. Only "steady enough for our purposes". Atomic clocks have the weakness that the speed of atomic vibration cycles are affected by the intensity of gravity, and gravity fluctuates.

All we can do to set ANY of our clocks is compare one rotating or de-tensing or vibrating cycle to another.

And in every case, this comparison is one physical thing doing something to another physical thing doing something. What is absent is any REAL thing that is being measured by their fluctuations.

Planets and asteroids unknown are whirling around unknown stars outside of our vision (probably), and each could be a clock (if something or someone chose to use it as such).

But none of these things are actually measuring anything real. They're all just vibrating and cycling, and we call the relationship between the cycles "t". We call the square root of -4, 2i, and that lets us play with things mathematically, but there is no "i", really. It's a useful fiction.

Billions of dollars were made watching men wave stick and shout "Avada kedavra" in thick English accents, with imaginary green bolts of death shooting therefrom. The cash profit was real enough, and those "avada kedavras" produced them. But only because of the effect on people's minds. There was no REAL avada kedrava, there's not REAL "i", and while I agree that "t" is a very useful concept, what it is, is a mathematical relationship between objects referred back to objects in motion, and set quite arbitrarily. It's not a real THING the way, say, magnetic force is real.

It may be useful to see time as an ever rolling stream bearing things away. But there's no evidence that there's actually a stream of anything. "T" is probably just a mathematical relationship of one thing to another.

Pie is real, and round. But pi is just a mathematical relationship of proportions. There's no real pi out there forcing a pie into a certain shape.

Time is not wearing things out. There's no external thing there doing the wearing.

It's a useful mathematical relationship, but it's not a FORCE the way electromagnetism is.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-31   8:12:30 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#31. To: Biff Tannen (#29)

Well, you know "The simplest explanation that fits the facts is the best" is a good way to look at things, and it certainly derives from "don't multiply entities needlessly", but the thing that Ockham's original really gets across is that the entitles that are multiplied are not real things. Which is my point here.

Electromagnetism, strong and weak force are real things, effects of particles doing thus and so.

But time, like pi, may just be mathematical abstracts, relationships between real things, but not actual things in an of themselves.

A and B are blocks. There's a gap between them. One can measure that gap using different yardsticks. Each yardstick is a physical thing, and the arbitrary division with tick marks is visible and shows a relationship. But while the yardstick is a real thing, as are the blocks, the "distance" between the blocks is a relationship. In that case, you can actually DO something with the empty space: you can fill it up. So, the space is real, even though it is literally nothing. The yardstick is real. But the notion of "distance" is just an idea, a relationship. Space is an entity, but distance is not an entity. It's a measurement of an entity.

The question is whether or not time is an entity, a thing that CAUSES things, or whether it's just an arbitrary set of tick marks placed on a cycle, that shows the relationship of cycles to cycles.

People speak casually of time as though it WERE an entity. I am taking the opposite position: that time is NOT an entity, just a relationship. The cycling things are real, but time only exists in our heads.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-31   8:22:10 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#32. To: redleghunter (#28)

Why make this so hard.

Because we're creating entites that don't exist and asserting they do, for our ease of passage. This then deceives us into seeing the entities as real.

Go back and look at the definition of a DAY, as God defined it in genesis 1.

Day, Yom, is the period of "order" - the period of light.

Which means that there is on day a year at the north and south poles, and more days a year as one moves down the latitudes until one comes to the place where the sun rises and sets with a regularity such that about 365 such cycles occur before the stars overhead return to their starting positions.

But a YEAR, by the Biblical clock, is not 365 days. There is no fixed Biblical year measured by days.

Years, rather, are measured by a cycle of months, and months are based purely on direct physical observations of the moon. When there is no moon, by direct physical observation, that is designated the New Moon and a new month begins. Months have no relationship to numbers of days. Nor do years. Not in Biblical time.

Years are cycles of months. The months have names, and the names are based upon agricultural cycles in the Middle Eastern climate zones. Thus, a certain new moon won't be declared a certain month if it doesn't correspond to the agricultural cycle. Rather, an intercalary month would be added.

This was not due to a day count or a year count. You cannot declare the month of new shoots, for example, if the new moon comes and the ground is frozen solid with snow piled deep. The month of new shoots hasn't come yet.

Relative to some sort of fixed calendar (say, the position of the stars overhead in the temperate zone at a certain time period, this declaration of certain months based on observation of the moon AND observation of the weather is how the Hebrew calendar over time was always set to the natural cycle and why growing seasons did not get weeks, then months out of synch. There was no calendar drift, using God's time, because you don't declare the first month unless it IS the first month based on what is happening.

There is no relationship between Biblical months and days. Indeed, a Biblical month on earth, were the calendar applied, everywhere, would have months of one continuous day and no night at all, at the poles, and months of only a couple of days, and months of NO days, during the months of polar darkness.

And the calendar would not start on Antarctica, because a new moon coming would never be accompanied by the New Shoots, so the long year would wind on and on, through light months of one day, and dark months of no days. At the poles, there would be one Sabbath Day every 7 years.

God's calendar in the Bible was not FOR the whole world, for he didn't give the Israelites the whole world. He gave them a tightly bounded piece of land in a certain zone, and he gave them a calendar for that zone, only.

Apply that standard of time outside of that zone, and it does not work.

God did put stars, moon and sun "for signs and seasons", but he did not then give the world a calendar by which to measure them. That's up to us. He gave the Hebrews a specific calendar, for THEM, which works in the specific geographic zone that is Israel, but which doesn't work at all when you move to the Arctic or Antarctic. If there are no new shoots, the year never begins. Ever. And at the North and South Pole, measured by the time system God gave, the world still dwells in Year 1, there having never been the requisite conditions to declare the first month of year 2.

God's calendar is relative to the moon, and flows with the moon. Which is why certain feasts always fall or begin or end on a sabbath day. If the day count were separate from the moon count, that would not work.

What you're trying to do, because it is comfortable, is to take our precise and scientific notions of time, and preserve them all as ENTITIES, and seeing God as having ordained those entities all the way back to the beginning. But our entities of time are not in the Scripture at all. And the entitles that ARE, the way God defined days and months, and years, we would find to be ragged, and result in different day counts and month counts and year lengths depending on where we lived on the planet.

We think globally. But God gave a time system whose details work exclusively for the land of Israel, for that where all of the people to whom he gave that sequence were supposed to live.

This is also why God gave the food laws as he did. He said right up front, right after giving the first food laws, that if the Israelites followed all of his laws and statutes, he wouldn't afflict them with the diseases they had in Egypt.

So, he moved them from Egypt, through a desert, to next-door Canaan: same weather, same sun, same animals, same seas, with their cyclic pollutions (from a human perspective). In the Mediterranean and Red Sea, hot and without water flow, the oysters and crabs from flat muddy, fetid beds are very likely to produce disease in an era without refrigeration. They were "unclean". But were oysters in Norway unclean, or crabs in Murmansk? There, where the water is cold, one can eat them raw year round.

So, are they prohibited to Jews? Unanswerable from Scripture, because Hebrews weren't supposed to be in Norway. They were supposed to be on their promised farm in the Promised Land, in just precisely that latitude and longitude. They were supposed to be tending their farms and raising their families THERE, and God gave detailed rules for that specific people, in that specific land, doing what they were supposed to be doing, in that zone, using a calendar that works for THERE. God didn't fill in the rules for the whole planet.

It was Jesus who - knowing that he was preaching new things for the whole world, revealing life after death, and life in the City of God, and the resurrection, revealing all of these things to the whole world - said that what goes into a man's mouth doesn't make him unclean. Kosher laws of uncleanness worked for ISRAEL, but they were pointless for Norse and Canadians, Russians and Scots, etc. You don't necessarily get sick from eating oysters or parasites from pork, but you do if you're in ancient Israel, in THAT zone.

The food law was abrogated explicitly to make it clear not that people of God are not Jews, under the law, but because God gave all animals to man to eat, and then carved out excepts FOR Israel, because of the conditions of Israel. With the teachings of the resurrection and Jesus calling all, the law reverted to what GOd told Noah: eat anything, but not living flesh.

Likewise the calendar. Seasons and signs? Sure, that's generic. "Day" in scripture means the light? Yes.

But past that, the calendar God gave the Hebrews, with its more specific units, only applied to them, in that land. It was MADE FOR that specific land. It doesn't even WORK when you move to the hinterlands.

Does that mean that men were not intended to live in the Arctic, where the calendar fails utterly, and where virtually ALL of the food is "unclean" from a Jewish perspective? No! Man was told to fill the whole land. It just means that JEWS before Jesus were not intended to live outside of Israel. God didn't give time sequences or restrictive food laws to Eskimos and Saami, and they WERE supposed to be up there, eating what was there, all of which was unclean TO JEWS.

When Jesus pronounced the doom of the Temple and Jerusalem, and God destroyed it for good, now the calendar and the food laws have passed EVEN FOR JEWS. Jewish is not an ethnicity: the way to God is through Jesus for them too.

So don't become obstinate about Biblical time. DAY is defined as light. But the months and years? What God laid out fit Israel. It doesn't work to the North or deep South. He left us to figure out our own time using those stars and moon and sun. Whatever we do is fine. but we must not pretend that it is REAL, or certainly that OUR concept of time is ordained by God.

What God ordained, we don't do. We don't define "day" as he did. We don't define month as he did. Our years don't fit his calendar. Time as we measure it is not in the Bible, and actually makes it hard for us to read the Bible.

For we read "year" and we think pf a solar cycle. And we read "day" and we think that midnight is part of a day. But midnight is night, and the day is the period of light, as God used the word.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-01-31   9:13:37 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#33. To: cranky (#0)

However, Skow believes that events do not sail past us and vanish forever; they just exist in different parts of spacetime.

Hardly a novel idea. Any moment in our lives is as real as any of our other moments.

"The biggest mistake that libertarians make is the way they view government and private sectors. Government is the root of all evil, and the private sector is the source of all good. Libertarians have never figured out that people are the same whether in the government or in the private sector." --Paul Craig Roberts

Palmdale  posted on  2015-01-31   9:48:58 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#34. To: Vicomte13 (#19)

What you are "measuring" is the rotations of an electric motor, or the unwinding of a spring.

Or cesium decay.

Doesn't matter how elapsed time is measured but measured it is.

This may come as quite the surprise but all the events that have occurred in human history did not occur simultaneously.

cranky  posted on  2015-01-31   9:56:41 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#35. To: Palmdale (#33)

Any moment in our lives is as real as any of our other moments.

Not in my life.

There is the here and now and that's it.

The rest of those 'moments' are memories and not anyway connected to time passing.

cranky  posted on  2015-01-31   9:58:27 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#36. To: cranky (#35)

There is the here and now and that's it.

Interesting. Is your yesterday less real than your tomorrow? Is your five minutes ago less real than your five minutes from now? Is your one second ago less real than your one second from now?

Just how long is your here and now?

And how long did it take to write your reply?

"The biggest mistake that libertarians make is the way they view government and private sectors. Government is the root of all evil, and the private sector is the source of all good. Libertarians have never figured out that people are the same whether in the government or in the private sector." --Paul Craig Roberts

Palmdale  posted on  2015-01-31   10:06:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#37. To: Palmdale, cranky (#36) (Edited)

There is the here and now and that's it.

It may look to you, cranky, like something is instantaneous but there is actually no “now.”

If you think you are reading these words "now," you are really not. It takes time for the light to travel from the computer screen to your eyes. So what you are seeing is something from the past.

Look around, you may think you are seeing all the objects “now “… but you are not since light bounces from each object and it takes a different time to catch your eye.

The present is nothing but a sum total of delayed sensorial inputs you only think is “now.”

There is no ideal state of being that is totally here and “now.” Just as there is no golden rules, no absolute truths and certainly no sure-fire methods on how to live your life. So, just enjoy it. Be it and live it.

You may think there is no “past” and I have proven to you there is no “now” … is there a “future?”

Gatlin  posted on  2015-01-31   11:01:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#38. To: Gatlin (#37)

It may look to you, cranky, like something is instantaneous but there is actually no “now.”

Cognition is tricky business.

"The biggest mistake that libertarians make is the way they view government and private sectors. Government is the root of all evil, and the private sector is the source of all good. Libertarians have never figured out that people are the same whether in the government or in the private sector." --Paul Craig Roberts

Palmdale  posted on  2015-01-31   11:15:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#39. To: Palmdale (#38)

"Cognition is tricky business."

True. Human beings can only experience about 16 straight hours of it before they need to disconnect conscious thought and escape into sleep. Without that escape, they'd go insane.

misterwhite  posted on  2015-01-31   11:43:22 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#40. To: Vicomte13 (#1)

"I've never seen a definition of "time" that wasn't simply circular."

Even then, that definition is only right twice a day.

misterwhite  posted on  2015-01-31   11:45:30 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  



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