Posted on 04/25/2022 7:54:20 AM PDT by Red Badger
Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious: Of course it does! Just look at a calendar or a clock.
But developments in physics suggest the non-existence of time is an open possibility, and one that we should take seriously.
How can that be, and what would it mean? It'll take a little while to explain, but don't worry: Even if time doesn't exist, our lives will go on as usual.
A crisis in physics Physics is in crisis. For the past century or so, we have explained the Universe with two wildly successful physical theories: general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Quantum mechanics describes how things work in the incredibly tiny world of particles and particle interactions. General relativity describes the big picture of gravity and how objects move.
Both theories work extremely well in their own right, but the two are thought to conflict with one another. Though the exact nature of the conflict is controversial, scientists generally agree both theories need to be replaced with a new, more general theory.
Physicists want to produce a theory of "quantum gravity" that replaces general relativity and quantum mechanics, while capturing the extraordinary success of both. Such a theory would explain how gravity's big picture works at the miniature scale of particles.
Time in quantum gravity It turns out that producing a theory of quantum gravity is extraordinarily difficult.
One attempt to overcome the conflict between the two theories is string theory. String theory replaces particles with strings vibrating in as many as 11 dimensions.
However, string theory faces a further difficulty. String theories provide a range of models that describe a Universe broadly like our own, and they don't really make any clear predictions that can be tested by experiments to figure out which model is the right one.
In the 1980s and 1990s, many physicists became dissatisfied with string theory and came up with a range of new mathematical approaches to quantum gravity.
One of the most prominent of these is loop quantum gravity, which proposes that the fabric of space and time is made of a network of extremely small discrete chunks, or "loops".
One of the remarkable aspects of loop quantum gravity is that it appears to eliminate time entirely.
Loop quantum gravity is not alone in abolishing time: A number of other approaches also seem to remove time as a fundamental aspect of reality.
Emergent time So we know we need a new physical theory to explain the Universe, and that this theory might not feature time.
Suppose such a theory turns out to be correct. Would it follow that time does not exist?
It's complicated, and it depends what we mean by exist.
Theories of physics don't include any tables, chairs, or people, and yet we still accept that tables, chairs, and people exist.
Why? Because we assume that such things exist at a higher level than the level described by physics.
We say that tables, for example, "emerge" from an underlying physics of particles whizzing around the Universe.
But while we have a pretty good sense of how a table might be made out of fundamental particles, we have no idea how time might be "made out of" something more fundamental.
So unless we can come up with a good account of how time emerges, it is not clear we can simply assume time exists.
Time might not exist at any level.
Time and agency Saying that time does not exist at any level is like saying that there are no tables at all.
Trying to get by in a world without tables might be tough, but managing in a world without time seems positively disastrous.
Our entire lives are built around time. We plan for the future, in light of what we know about the past. We hold people morally accountable for their past actions, with an eye to reprimanding them later on.
We believe ourselves to be agents (entities that can do things) in part because we can plan to act in a way that will bring about changes in the future.
But what's the point of acting to bring about a change in the future when, in a very real sense, there is no future to act for?
What's the point of punishing someone for a past action, when there is no past and so, apparently, no such action?
The discovery that time does not exist would seem to bring the entire world to a grinding halt. We would have no reason to get out of bed.
Business as usual There is a way out of the mess.
While physics might eliminate time, it seems to leave causation intact: the sense in which one thing can bring about another.
Perhaps what physics is telling us, then, is that causation and not time is the basic feature of our Universe.
If that's right, then agency can still survive. For it is possible to reconstruct a sense of agency entirely in causal terms.
At least, that's what Kristie Miller, Jonathan Tallant, and I argue in our new book.
We suggest the discovery that time does not exist may have no direct impact on our lives, even while it propels physics into a new era. Sam Baron, Associate professor, Australian Catholic University.
When you are young, Time is slow as Christmas.
When you are old, Time is fast as The Grim Reaper..................
I think you see the problem very clearly. We are prisoners in time.
I didn’t mean to,imply that our souls always were and always will be. They had a beginning (i thunk- i dont beleive our souls always existed, but do beleive they always will exist once they are created- if thismis so, and i firmly beleive it to be so, we will continue on knowing once our bodies turn to dust again).
Like,the other fella said, thinking too deeply about eternity can drive a man mad (i had an NDE where i “went” the other way, to hell- i dontmbeleive my soul left my body, or,thatni actually,passed,over, and i think it was just caused by the high fever as i was dying causing brain synapses to misfire, causing hallucinations, but the experience left me shaken- i. It i was “given a test” where i had to count sounds- I lost count, and began to weep, and then a voicd said, dont worry you don’t exist, and i slipped,into a,blackness where nothing existed, BUT i could sense that i was somehow a lart,of,the nothingness, and it was frightening- foating around with no purpose or direction or meaning, and unconscious of things like time, cold/hot, aging, feelings, etc, but somehow still conscious of it all- it’s hard to explain really (now,you see why i doubt it was an actual passing over- it was totally unbiblical. I,guess the point is that it really messed with my mind for many years, causing me to wonder about eternity, and what it might be for a soul, and it caused me to thunk about time/eternity. If I had been “conscious of” a time before I was born whenmthe experience happend to me, wow! That would have been wicked freaky- I’m glad wasn’t really- it was a bad enougn trip as it was).
We are gonna get new incorruptible bodies some day, but till then we will just be souls awaiting that day, but waiting in the presence of God which is a-ok,with me
Eternity is the Non Existence of time.
A. W. Tower said “Time marks the beginning of created existence, “
But I wonder, wouldn’t even thinking about creating something be considered a part of “time”? (Ie, there was a time before creation that the thought came to be that soemthing shoukd be created)? Or would,one say that a timeless God always had the thought of creation in his mind for eternity? Acts 15:18 tells us “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world (from eternity).” his decrees were from eternity, before anything was ever created, infact, his decrees always were in existence- he always knew the end even before the beginning began. God doesn’t learn as he goes, for he knows all,things and zlways has.
If so, what prompted him to “wait so long” to begin the creation? And was it really a situation where he “waited” if time doesn’t exist? is it always “now” in an eternal existence? is there a “sequence of events” if time doesnt exist? (a sequence of events can only really be meausred by th3 passing of time i think? ie, something happens “first”, then another thing happens “second”, after the first thing happened, marking a chsnge in time, and so on and so forth)
All that is finite and created have a cause, and only an eternal agent can cause the finite to exist, to have a beginning. That eternal cause can grant eternal life to the created finite being if it so chooses, and thbakfully,God did.
That was a cool response. Thanks.
Yes. The uncaused cause is not available in nature. An event is not a time. A sequence of events are delineated by the observer as occurring according to a structure of time. It is how we distinguish one thing from another.
What is the relationship between consciousness and time? Conscious is in the moment. It is the eternal now. We cannot be conscious of the past or of the future, only of the now. In consciousness there is no time, only now.
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