Posted on 06/23/2007 12:21:46 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Is this a contest?.. You're holding your own..
A contest of ideas can produce humility.. and wisdom..
or bruised dogma..
So who is "feeding you lies" here? Are you saying that I am a liar? What, exactly, am I "falisfying" in this process?
Do you even know, that is understand, what you're talking about here?
Just between you and me, dearest brother 'pipe: It looks like nihilism to me.
But I'd be glad to stand "corrected": Provided RightWhale can make any kind of persuasive, rational case to the contrary of his initial idiotic observation [i.e., that there is "...none right, none true, none wrong, none false"].
Any "manic control issue" would seem to be secondary to RightWhale's initial mistake, a consequence of getting the first point wrong. Or so it seems to me.
Thanks dear 'pipe.
Many secular leaders have referenced an official world religion and the necessity of merging religion and science in the space age. None have been more up-front in this prediction than Catholic priest/paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin and psychologist C.G.Jung.
No one person has contributed more to the merger of science and religion than the French priest/paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin. Treated as an apostate by the Vatican, banned from teaching, and forbidden to publish his writings, the controversial Jesuit, (who was known as the father of the New Age Movement) became a hero of sophistocated Protestants and then "returned to the good graces of Rome 26 years after his death" in 1955. Teilhard was named most frequently mentioned by 185 leaders in the New Age Movement when Marilyn Ferguson-preparing her book on "Transformation in the 1980s"-asked who was the most influential person in their lives. Teilhard expounded a "new theology in which soul emerged as the driving force of evolution" leading to an awakening to the collective superconsciousness and a new earth (nooshere). H.James Birx explains that Teilhard argued for"the coming of a deeply moral super-humanity ennobled by the universal spirit of the cosmic Christ....Human sconsciousness, growing ever more complex and interdependent, feeds what Teilhard calls the Noosphere, a layer of mind or spirit enveloping the earth. A fourth future layer, the Theosphere, is envisioned by Teilhard as the culmination..when the converging human spirits transcend space and matter and mystically join god-omega and the omega point."
He even classified the newly evolved 'human species'....Homo noeticus...New man.
Calling himself a Teilhardian, Robert Muller (Assistant Secretary of the United Nations) refers to the key turning points in his life during his 36 years at the United Nations as "my Teilhardian enlightenments." He built speeches around Teilhard's 'philosophy of global evolution', of the nosphere, of metamorphosis, and the birth of a collective brain to the human species," into which he fits the role of the U.N."
Teilhard has had incredible influences on people like Muller, Jean Houston, Agnes Sanford, Bruce Larson, and many, many others.
Teilhard has influenced several generations of religious leaders, of many stripes. Most agree with the notion of the evolution of man to 'Self-actualization" and thence godhood. These have been "tweeked" as the oldest known religion of Wicca, Hinduism, Buddism (a Hindu cult), Christian Science, Mormonism, Sai Baba, TM, Unification Church,, and hundreds of other cults., all with their own particular twist, but not unique. It is the oldest lie this earth has ever produced, and as we watch the new sorcery merge with religion it has taken on a mantle of 'respectablity'. All of the mystery religions have a very minimalist deviation from one to another but there are common threads which cannot be denied. (1)All deny Biblical Truth. (2)All deny the deity of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. (3)All assert, in one form or the other, assent of man to god-hood. (4) All believe there is a nonpersonal force, which , if tapped, will move one to god-hood. (Gen.3:1-7) Here in verse 5 the serpent asserts that by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil their eyes will be open (from the Latin "gnosis" meaning knowledge) and they will be "like God". This notion of godhood sells. It is intoxicating to the mind of man, but it is deadly. Once believed, there is nothing else to "evolve toward" or "account to."
Seemingly unaware, America, once the leader in finance, buisness, science, educations, and technology, is asserting itself in a new enterprise-the rise of New Age Shamanism.
Atlaw, I am still working on an appropriate answer to your question, but I wish it to be properly organized and annotated. I simply thought this might tangentially dovetail with Bettys' remarks and Atlaws question.
I would only add that the idea of evolving to godhood is everpresent in the theory of Evolution. I would expound but I don't think this thread is place for it unless there is interest in it.
Call it an "observer problem" if you wish, but your "contest of ideas" looks more like a game of rhetoric.
Do you even know, that is understand, what you're talking about here?
The context of the exchange was with regard to a select few on either side who attempt to get everyone to chose sides. Unless you count yourself among them, there is no reason to think they applied to you.
Yes.
We are in a place/venue of rhetoric..
"You"(people) post scientific "papers" in other venues..
Is/are rhetoric "observations"?..
Whatever people believe, it seems clear to me that the only route to personal sanctification/salvation (i.e., "god-hood") comes via Jesus Christ, and in no other way. I am not prepared to say on the basis of what I know personally, that the Jesuit Father Teilhard de Chardin thought differently. Notwithstanding whatever subsequent reinterpreters of him might have to say.
I would submit that these statements alone indict one as a pantheist, and is not in keeping with the idea of a transendent God , separate and distinct from His creation, not even subject to His laws of Nature, and can therefore reach into His creation, not with godhood assignment, but with forgiveness, justice, mercy, and despite my offences to Him, salvation, in spite of me, because of Grace and only because of Him.
These two divergent world views clash and cannot be reconciled, one with the other. Chardins' view are clearly are clearly pantheistic, which antithetical to the God of the Bible.
I studied this field for six years in grad school and never once was that mentioned.
Are you doing metaphysics/theology or science?
Of course dear Texas Songwriter, you are free to interpret de Chardin's statements (or Gowen's, or mine) any way you want to.
As for me, the least, most humble exemplar of divine creation sings the glory of God, down to the least bug, the least blade of grass, the least molecule, the least atom, the least photon....
Does that make Chardin -- or Gowen or me -- a "pantheist?" Or simply, in my case, a person who recognizes with all my soul that all of created nature sings the glory of the One God Who stands outside of His creation? And that it is only human beings who forget to give praise and glory where it is due?
Please remember that God is the Lord of Life with His creatures. Such recollection is better use of your time and energy and life than chastising Teilhard de Chardin for whatever sins you think he committed. Just perhaps, God does not see it the way you do. It seems to me wise to allow for that.
All praise and glory be to our Father, His Son, and the Holy Ghost which proceeds from Father and Son wholly, equally. Amen.
When I was in graduate school, my research topic led me to reading the great George Gaylord Simpson,PhD from Harvard. You will recognize him as a Paleontologist and he wrote much on vertebrate paleontology. He was an expert in Comparative Vertebrate Antatomy. I guess I overdid it with reading Simpson, and one day I read a statement by Simpson which was, "If one places a chimpanzee in front of a typewriter and he strikes 60 elements per minute, given enough time he will reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare."
Now I have not read all of Shakespeare, but I have read some and I know he did a lot of writing. I was struck that this statement was an article of faith which Simpson had. He was not saying this hyperbolically. He meant it. I could no longer believe Simpson, just because he said something. So in the latter two years of medical school, when I had a little spare time, I rekindled some learning from my upbringing, that being my Christianity. I basically moved much of my interest in apologetics, but one which did not discount emperic science. I love science. I always have. Years of study have led me to study Philosophy and Logic, which are the very underpinnings of Science. Understanding the law of Causality, which is the desire of science....how and why do things work the way they do...things became more clear. I believe in Christianity we need a more thorough apolgetics to engage questions in science and follow evidence where it will go. Science, I have found is no enemy to faith and likewise, Christianity is no enemy to science.
Let me make some connections for you. Perhaps no other idea within the past 2 centuries has had more impact upon 20th century mankind than the theory of evolution. It directly or indirectly influences nearly every aspect of our modern culture. Evolution was an established religious belief at the heart of occultism and mysticism for thousands of years before the Greeks gave it scientific status. As Theodore Roszak has pointed out, mysticism is the "parent stock from which the theory of biological evolution springs." It is a core belief in Hinduism and witchcraft (socery), and is at least as old as the theories of reincarnation and karma, in which it it a key element. Michael Harner reminds us that "millennia before Charles Darwin, people in shamanic cultures were convinced that humans and animals were related. Occult literature , ancient and modernm, contains repeated references to evolution, as do commmunications through past mediums and present-day channelers. (Please do not think I give great credence to these people as par players with working biologist, chemists, physisicists.
Even the theory of evolution as a "scientific" theory, predates Darwin by many centuries. In Evolution: A Theory in Chrisis, medical doctor and molecular biologist Michael Denton points out that materialist philosopher Empedocles proposed a theory similar to DArwin's in about 450 B.C. One hundred years later Anaximander and Empedocles was said to have postulated that sea slime was the environment from which life forms had their beginnings Out of this primeval soup, he theorized, emerged sea life, which then evolved into more complex forms suitable for terrestrial living.
After 2500 years, this ancient naturalistic speculation remains the foundation for most modern evolutionary theory, in spite of the fact that with today's mathematics we know (what Anaximander and Empedocles may be excused for not knowing) that this imaginative idea is patently absurd. Eminent British astronomer Sir FRed Hoyle, sid, "even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup" the chance of producing the basic enzymes of life by random processes without intelligent direction would be approximated one in 10 to 40,000th power. No one can conceive of such a number, but the comparison offered is similar to the liklihood of reaching out and by chance plucking a particular atom out of the universe would by about 1/10 to the 80th power. After every atom became another universe the chance of reaching out at random and plucking a specific delineated atom would be 1/10 to the 60th power. Hoyle concluded that "Darwinian evolution is most unlikely to get even one polypeptide sequence correct, let alone the thousands of protein enzymes and cellular proteins with precision specificity required for survival of a cell." Hoyle states, "This situation (mathematical impossibility) is well known to genecist and yet nobody seems to blow the whistle decisively on the theory. If Darwinism were not considered socially desirable...it would of course be otherwise. Most scientist still cling to Darwinism because of its grip on the educational systems. You either have to believe the concepts, or you will be branded a heretic.
In "Chance and Necessity, Nobelist molecular biologist Jacques Monod gives a dozen or more reasons why evolution could not possibly occur. He explains, for example, that the essential characteristic of DNA is its perfect replication of itself; that evolution could only happen if something went awry in that mechanism; and that it is absurd to imaginge developing even a single cell, much less the human brain, from a series of random and harmful mistakes in the DNA mechanism. Yet after giving reason after reason why life could not possibly be the product of chance, monod concludes that it "must", nevertheless have happened that way.
On this thread you have seen the many quotes by me, Betty, Alamo-Girl, and others saying much the same thing.(I won't repeat them here).
The next stage of evolution purported to develope has much to do with my remarks remarks about Teilhard de Chardin. He was not an unimpressive person. There have been many more. I will not bore you with Carl Jung (psychotherapist, and heir apparent to Sigmund Freud) who developed his theories on the collective unconsiousness and the need to evolve (pyschically) toward god-hood. As TKheodore Roszak put it: "An evolutionary leap in consciousness; the idea...that the world wshall be redeemed by contagious psychic mutation hatched in the grey matter of a chosen few." Ken Wilber lays it out clearly in "The Atman Project: "If men and women have ultimately come up from amoebas, then they are ultimately on their way to god-hood. Wilber states that the belief in man' ascension to godhood is at the heart of the perenial philosophy of evolution and is the essoteric core of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism..."
Let me try to make the connection. Thousands of years before Lamarck, Darwin, Haeckel, or even the Leakeys, Eashtern religions were already teaching that animals evolved, through biulding up good karma, into ever higher forms of life to become human at last. Modern science has been unable to advance the theory of evolution beyond these pagan roots. Annie Besant, for years the head of the Theosophical Society as successor to the occultist Madam Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, leared in an altered state of conciousness she had been a monkey that had saved the lives of the Buddha-to-be and his family. Because of this good karma building deed, the Beshant monkey evolved to become a human. This occultist evolved for a differnt reason than natural selection, but rather used karma as the tool to replace, time and selection. In mormonism one "evolves" through eons of time to pull himself up by his bootstraps to meet Elohim, knee to knee, thigh to thigh, breast to breast, cheek to cheek, pulled through the veil to evolve to godhood. A different tool for evolving to godhood, but evolution none the less. Witchcraft has as a tool the tool of formulation to evolve. In their mantra and repetitions along with A + B = C. (The shaman slits the roosters' throat, sprinkles the blood in a pattern, chant the mantra and "WHALA" the gods have to do the bidding of you). This is naturalism in its' oldest form.
Moving from a lower species to a higher species is the heart of Darwinism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mormonism, Scientology, Almost every New AGe Cult, TM, Yoga (as a religous technique to abate bad karma and its circular effect). The scientific community tried to put a respectable face on it, but even Darwin said he doubted its efficacy as a scientific theory saying because the theory of darwinian evolution would have had to be the result of chemical changes and the theory itself could not have evolved.
So having run up against a rather large brick wall with First Cause, the appropriation of evolution by those religions as well as much of Humanistic Psychology, look for an evolution toward a higher goal, simply employing different tools to arrive at the same place....a species evolved to a higher level of developement.
I do know that seems a long way from my finding skeletal remains of Smilodon, Canis, Eotherium, Mammut, Equus, Neochoerus, Temarctos, Sigmodon, Castor, Megalonyx, Tanupolama, Felix onca, and many other species as well as artifacts such as Paleolithic projectile points such as Clovis, Archaeics, and others. I loved those studies and still do. I am just interested in the facts. In the final analysis, origins can only be approached honestly in terms of faith....either that of the creationist or that of the evolutionist. I believe the facts lead to a beginning of the universe. To bring the universe out of nothing seems an untenable and irresponsible position. But an Uncaused Cause, God, Eternal with no beginning is rational, logical, and inviolate of scientific method and philosophy.
I am sorry I took so long to try to answer your question.
I join this discussion without having read the entire thread, but only because the discussion about the nature of 'real time' piqued my interest. I hope my ignorance of your prior discussions do not detract from these rumminations or this thread.
As regards discussions of time in general, confusion often arises because it is not clear which of at least four connotations is implied: the dimension of time, the "instants" of time, the "arrow" of time or the "rate" of time we conceive.
With the term "real time" we usually think we are trying to express some kind of 'simulteneity' with respect to some observer - i.e. "real position." But we know in terms of space it only makes sense to discuss "real relative position" which is really "real distance" or perhaps more precisely "real vector." Clearly "temporal distance" is not what we're after, but if we map time into our sense of space, "real position," "real direction" and "real velocity" are pretty much nonsense concepts. Nevertheless, our conception that there is something about the nature of 'time' we can call 'real time' - that there exists some aspect of 'time' common to both 'reality' and our 'perception' or experience of that reality. We really sense there is a real 'rate of time' we can pin down between each other and reality.
Before delving into the meaning of "real time", I think it best to try to understand the nature of those four aspects of time.
I think it fair to say we don't directly perceive either the dimension of time or the instants of time. Rather, we percieve the arrow and rate aspects of time.
The real question is why we even experience an "arrow" or "rate" of time. Bosons don't. Last I checked, the "arrow" of time is not a provable "reality" independant of our perception. As to the rate of time we perceive, we probably can't even assume we individually perceive it at a 'common' rate - just as a color-blind person can't conceive of what non-color-blind person actually experiences or vice versa. All we can say is that it seems as though the conscious life forms with which we are familiar share something of a common experience as regards 'time.' (although even that may be pushing it - I would argue that our perception of 'rate' of time is more likely proportional to our 'remembered' length of existence: - if I may presume somewhat similar ages - our 'year' is perceptually equivalent to a toddlers 'week' and an infants 'day'). For flora and non-living objects, 'time is at best irrelevant if not entirely meaningless as it certainly is for bosons. (Lasers really highlight this distinction. I am absolutely astounded that we were able to invent those devices since their operation is absolutely incomprehensible from our 'chrono-chauvinistic' viewpoint.)
The system of science is at very best missing a lot as regards time. For example, there are difficulties with the 'special relativity twin paradox' vis-a-vis general relativity. It is argued (even proven by having flown atomic clocks around the earth) that it is the non-earth-stationary twin who is less aged when the two are reunited. Since they each see the other as not aging or aging more slowly while there exists relative velocity between them, the 'resolution' in favor of the 'earth-bound twin' "really" aging (observing 'correctly' that the travelling twin is not aging) is that it was the 'travelling' twin who accelerated away and back. Those accelerations "fix" the "truth" of the other clock in some mysterious manner since accelerations do not enter the calculations in any form (one also wonders when exactly the 'travelling' twin's observation of the 'stationary' twin not aging is revealed as 'false' and in fact just the opposite has occured). General relativity tells us gravity and acceleration are 'equivalent;' while the special relativity twin paradox indicates some distinction as regards "real time" - acceleration disrupts time 'truth' while gravity (experienced by the earth bound twin) does not. My point is, I am thinking we cannot look to science to understand fully our perception of time.
Science is a closed system, so 'scientific truths' are not 'whole truths' - merely truths within the closed system of science. As Godel so beautifully 'proved,' no system can be at once complete and internally consistent. Any 'system' must be either incomplete or inconsistent (or a third possibility: 'illogical' and therefore not subject to Godels 'proof'). Since 'logic' is a construct of consciousness (i.e. does not exist independantly from consciousness), that latter possibility suggests what we might 'see' were we to go through that loophole of incompleteness in science - many most wondrous faces of creation. Through each loophole, we might be able to construct yet another 'system' to make sense of what we find, but there will always be another loophole. And if we open all loopholes, the totality of creation, we would have to say, is 'illogical' - we cannot 'know' God in His fullness - only a finite number of His infinite number of 'faces'.
As the twin-paradox-paradox indicates, I think we have to distinguish between physical time and conscious time. It appears that the "arrow/direction" and "rate" of time are aspects of conscious time rather than physical time. Certainly we see the different "rates" of time predicted by special relativity in physical clocks, but the real question is: "Is there a 'so what'?" Are there any underlying "consciousness-free" ramifications to such differences.
The answer, as far as we know, is no. "Events" do not interact across time in the manner that they do across space via the fundamental forces. "Instants" of time (i.e. temporal positions) are independant of each other. Whether two clocks are in phase or have altered relative phase upon comparing two instants affects nothing in the inanimate physical creation.
Briefly, this is what we know about 'physical time':
The only relationship between adjacent instants of time seems governed by inertia. That is, the arrangement of matter in space does not alter much between nearby temporal instants owing to inertia. In that sense, inertia - a property of matter - appears to be something of a glue bonding adjacent instants together and implies a fundamental relationship between the dimension of time and matter. Bosons don't 'experience' time and, and when we look sufficiently finely at 'matter' where it approaches our perception of it's energy face rather than its particulate face, we see things like quantum tunneling - the 'glue' of inertia breaking down. Both gravity and inertia are related through their 'dependance' on the 'matter' face of 'creation.' Gravity and inertia seem to be the macro scale counterparts, perhaps even 'opposites' in the sense they are 'organizing,' to the micro scale weak and strong fundamental forces and even medium scale electro-magnetism.
In the energy face of creation we find temporal and spatial dimensions tied together at an 'angle' by the constant 'speed of light' ratio; while mass, energy and the dimensions of space-time are all related through E=Mc2.
More to the point, these relationships involve only physical time, not conscious time in that the 'arrow' and 'rate' of time are not factors - only the existence of a dimension of time and adjacency of instants of time. While 'rate' of time exhibits itself in special relativity, it is not a relevant factor to the 'physical' world excepting conscious life because relative 'age' (temporal phase) is relevant only to conscious (self and situationally aware) creatures.
Of 'concious time' we have the 'arrow of time' and perceived rate of time. The arrow of time is a fundamental aspect of 'conscious time' because it is the basis of "cause and effect."
"Cause and Effect" is not a reality independant of consciousness, or at least sentience. Getting back to the operation of lasers to illustrate: from our 'chrono-chauvinistic' vantage ther operation is non-sensical. That one photon simply passing near an excited state electron should induce that electron to drop to a lower state in order to emit a photon phase locked to the first so long as we ensure that the energy differences between electron states will produce a photon of the same wavelength is a truly 'magical' construct from our vantage. There is no mechanism for that inducement. Yet, lasers work. They work because they involve bosons, for which the direction of time is not a reality. If we time reverse the 'sequence' it makes perfect sense from our conscious perception of time. Two coherent photons travelling along, one of which 'hits' an electron which can absorb it because the energy required to bump up to one of its next energy states is equal to to that of the photon. For photons, if it works perfectly well in one direction of time, it will work perfectly well in the reverse direction of time. Lasers are our 'effect and cause' rather than our 'cause and effect.'
Again, why do conscious creatures perceive an arrow and rate of time? Perception 'makes real' "cause and effect" in the sense that C/E is a conscious construct rather than an underlying physical reality - however that way of phrasing it implies that 'physics' is 'more real' than perception - and I will argue momentarily that such is not 'truth.'
Most certainly, the concept of 'free will' is inseperable from 'conscious time.' Physical time denies 'free will' - things are as they are; the arrangement of events in physical time is fixed by the 'laws' of physics. 'Time' and 'Will' - note that even the noun 'will' derives from the verb 'will' implying an arrow of time - are inseperable. (And you thought you could separate discussion of the physical from the meta-physical? ;-> )
Is 'will' the chicken or the egg? Does 'will' require 'time' or does 'will' create 'time' or do they perhaps merely co-exist as a result of consciousness? If indeed the aspects of conscious time (arrow and rate) 'pre-exist' or exist independently from 'will' then we could say 'will requires time.' I can see neither evidence nor argument for such a proposition. Conscious time is at very best irrelevant absent 'will' to shape it; but irrelevance does not prove non-existence (and may only prove my lack of intelligence to perceive relevance) Since conscious time is a construct of consciousness, the question becomes whether 'will' is an inherent sine-qua-non aspect of consciousness - hence the 'creator' of conscious time - or is 'will' a level of consciousness above some foundation or basis of consciousness - hence likely dependant upon conscious time.
While I can imagine sentience - that is some awareness of 'other-than-self' - absent perception of arrow or rate of time, the concept of 'consciousnees' includes an awareness of self's "situation." Now what is a "situation" if not some concept that "situations" are variable and potentially 'alterable'? I think 'consciousness' necessarily implies "awareness of self as an actor" - and that last word directly implying 'will.' I would argue that 'will' is a building block towards consciousness. Self develops an ability to in some manner alter selfs state (i.e. grow, reproduce, ingest etc. - any aspect of 'living') - the genesis of 'will.' This does not yet imply either arrow or rate of time (it could just a easily be: shrink, merge or emit). In either direction of time - 'situation' is altered which fact is now something about which to be cognizant because the altered situation in turn affects self's state - or at least selfs ability to alter selfs state. Meaning 'proto-will' gives rise to 'proto-consciousness.' Awareness stems from action, conciousness from will - or at very least the two co-build upon each other and are inseparable. In any event, 'will' would seem to be a deeper, more fundamental aspect of consciousness than is 'conscious time'.
For 'will' to be full-fledged will - i.e extend beyond 'self state alteration' to 'deliberate alteration of situation' - almost certainly implies the conscious construct of C/E and especially that one situation is necessarily in some fashion 'superior' to or more 'desirable' than another situation. Will is by definition 'purposeful' and 'purposed towards betterment.' Curiously, our conscious arrow of time seems bound to that direction in which an event of altered/improved self state/situation (effect) 'follows' an event of willful action (cause). Even if our 'memory' operated in reverse time, our willful actions would still attempt to effect an improved situation in that direction - still act across time.
While not yet a rigorous argument, it appears to me that conscious time must arise from consciousness/will - 'will' creates 'conscious time.' - at least the arrow of time if not the rate of time.
The ramifications of that statement boggle my mind. At very least, it puts 'consciousness' on par with the fundamental physical forces. The latter act across space. Only through consciousness is there interaction across time. Consciousness is then just as important an 'agent' of God upon creation as are the physical forces.
If consciousness did not construct an arrow of time, thereby obviating a perception of C/E, willful action events would be meaningless - improving situation in one direction but simultaneously worsening it in the other. Without 'purpose,' conscious creatures would not act and 'free will' to act would be irrelevant. Conscious time is both a delusion from physical reality and a consciously created reality which underpins and 'makes real' interactions across time. In that sense, conscious time is every bit as 'real' (effective upon the state of creation) as is physical space.
Before turning to our perceived "rate of time" - or at least "passage of time," we need to explore why 'experience' - in the sense of 'memory' - is unidirectional. If conscious creatures could 'see' in both directions, 'intelligence' would be pointless. bi-directional 'seeing' conscious creatures (able to perceive both past and future) would 'know' the effect of any willful act and would barely even need instinct to act. Instead, because we cannot perceive future, and therefore be assured of a particular 'effect,' our form of consciousness (past seeing only) must 'learn' from 'experience' likely effects of our actions. We are not guaranteed the desired effect, but must select acts on the basis of probable effect.
It is really quite remarkable that consciousness as we know it is in fact temporally unidirectional. Nothing in physics is. What it shows is that consciousness is not 'of physics.' Life in general can still be considered 'of physics' - even if a most remarkable development that somehow it is even possible to assemble inanimate particles in a particular scheme such that those particles in that assembly are 'animated.' I think the mere existence of such a scheme is illustrative of God. Still, life itself need not be viewed as temporally unidirectional. We could view a movie of a life in reverse and not see anything more remarkable about it than the way in which we experience it in our 'forward' direction. I wouldn't say that creating life out of mud, as it were, from the stuff found in a coffin or urn, is any more mystical or unfathomable than creating life out of 'conception'.
The aspect of consciousness we conceive of as 'memory' is fundamentally different. The chemistry and physics of the nervous system, where 'knowledge/experience/memory' is apparently stored, are not inherently unidirectional. Why is the 'data' stored unidirectionally while the 'medium' is not? I suppose we could surmise that the data could be stored 'bi-directionally' i.e. 'knowledge' of both past and future, but where that occurs, it does not give rise to 'intelligence' as argued above. There may indeed be lifeforms which store both past and future 'experience' but we are unaware of it because they are not 'intelligent' life forms, and likely not even conscious life forms. Unidirectional 'memory' is also tied to 'free will' in curious manner - or more properly might be considered 'equivalences' in the same way gravity and acceleration are 'equivalents.' Free Will in a temporally bi-directional reality necessarily means that either past or future must be of a 'singular possibility' nature while the other is of an 'infinite possibilities' nature. That is, the concept of free will requires as many futures (or pasts) as there are possible actions at any instant, and as many times more as there are possible actions at another instant and so on - hence past or future must be of an infinite possiblities nature. Similarly, the other must of a singular possibility nature or else actions could not be characterized as 'willful' but simply random. Now we know that the physical creation, absent the willful actions of consciousness, is of a (largely) singular possibility nature. That is, the arrangement of events is fixed (not static - but entirely pre- and post-dictable) according to laws of physics. Actually, there is some variability deriving from quantum level radomnizations and spontaneous creation of pair matter/anti-matter particles out of nothing (another quantum level activity), but these affect the universe very, very little. So it is consciousness, with its interactions across time, which transforms a 'singular possibility' universe into an 'infinite possibility" universe. Clearly infinite experiences cannot be stored, or if they can, not in a retrievable or relevant manner, so it is less surprising the 'memory' only works in the 'singular possibility' direction. We simply name the knowable vector of time as 'past' and the un-knowable vector of infinite possibilities as 'future.' Why we all share one specific vector as the 'knowable' one is yet an unanswered question.
To some extent, unidirectional 'memory' explains our 'passage-of-time' aspect of 'conscious time.' Each willful action collapses another 'infinite possiblility' instant into a 'singular possibility' instant which is now 'storable' as 'experience.' That accumulation of 'experiences' at least contributes to a sense of time 'passing.' One might argue that simply 'living' also contributes in the sense that 'self state' is constantly changing over time - aging, hunger, etc. all must equally contribute to a sense of time passing, but I disagree. For a set of instants of time to be perceived as more than just that - a set of instants - there must first be an accumulating memory of those instants and meaning ascribed to the accumulation itself. And that is the crux of it: the growing 'meaning' of accumulated memories. I believe that 'passage of time' is nothing more than our 'learning' - the ability to predict an effect from our actions given and instant self state and situation. As noted above, infants add to their accumulated predictions (learn) very rapidly and thus time seems to pass slowly for them. Conversely, as we 'get older' predictions are pretty well learned ('nothing new happening') so our sense of time slows down considerably. However, when we find ourselves in novel situations, time slows down again. Take for example suddenly being in an out of control car. Our 'predicted' effects have suddenly been nullified and an entire sequence of new situations are occuring. Time seems to slow to a crawl as we are rapidly learning how to act in entirely new ways in order to survive. For that matter, the time we are asleep effectively passes in a perceptual instant because no learning occurs during that period.
So we can't say we share a common perceived rate of time among each other, nor is it even constant for individuals. It is a function of the novelty of a particular situation.
To summarize, the physical aspects and conscious aspects of time are 'revelantly' independant. The dimension and instants of time are irrelevant to consciousness just as the arrow and rate of time are irrelevant to physics. Rate of time is 'real' to both physics and consciousness but irrelevant to the former and unconstant to the latter. The only aspect of time we conscious creatures share is the arrow of time and more specifically at least for humans is that we share a direction of that arrow. Why that is so is not yet clear.
So what is 'real time' to us (presumably conscious entitities)? To an individual, 'real time' is measured in 'learnings.' Between individual consciousnesses, 'real time' in the sense of synchonizing them, is the achievement (or is it 'achieving'?) of shared learnings. That is, two or more individuals are only functioning in 'real time' when they have 'learned' the same expectations for their actions and are currently sharing identical situations and self states. Obviously this is such a rarity, that it is very special when it occurs. The Blue Angels come to mind; they are definitely 'in sync' and functioning 'in real time' together.
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I can now reveal the most important reason for this treatise on time. It is to explain why women are so often late for dates. In preparing for the date, time is moving slowly for them because they don't know what to expect, nor the effects of what they choose to wear; whereas men do know what to expect. ;->
Hope you all found some interesting food for thought in it.
Doug
That's ambiguous. Rhetorically, a particular piece of rhetoric can be said to be an observation and be accurate within the range of definitions of the word. Strictly speaking a rhetorical observation is only an abstraction of an actual observation.
SLAP SLAP TL you in there?... wake up man?..
I wouldn't. I read old stuff, not new stuff. If it's still around in a hundred years I might read it if it is commonly cited.
I strongly urge you to not waste time on this.
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