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To: MHGinTN
My concept of time is just the ordinary, everyday one. If you have an extraordinary alternative, you probably need convincing reasons why we should prefer it.

By the way, I claim no originality for my argument. People hae been arguing this for 2500 years. An omniscient entity is pretty much incompatible wih the human self-image as free actors. If I ask you to pick a card from a deck, you do it, and it turns out I've written down which card it was - and assuming it isn't a trick - wouldn't you assume I'd someohow rigged for you to choose that card?

377 posted on 09/01/2006 10:17:48 PM PDT by HayekRocks
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To: HayekRocks; betty boop
Okay, I'll risk it (ridicule and condescension are such frequent replies on these threads) and share an alternate way to conceive of dimension time.

The traditional way of defining 'eternity' is as time flowing but never flowing out. When you write about having your behaviors all recorded before you do them, you are conceiving of time flowing from your present into some future present, thus the future present omniscient one views back to the current present and every moment in between and records the moment by moment (as it were) intervals.

Try this notion: present is a variable expression of dimension time and eternity is the constant present without a past or future to flow from or to. An omnipresent deity has access to past, present, and future time as you have access to linear, planar and volumetric space. You, existing in the constant present tense but perceiving only events that have already occurred, would not have access to actual present. If your entire lifetime in the body is lived in the present receiving only information from future not from the universe at the exact present of your existence, from a future time perspective your entire lifetime is as a single event, not something flowing. Free will is a phenomenon you perceive to be in force as if your lifetime is flowing, whereas your free will is an instantaneous phenomenon occurring in present time which is invariant.

The multiverse approach to this concept would declare that at every choice you make in life, a new pathway is branched off for temporal flow. I don't buy that, but it would probably make sense to you in order to maintain the illusion of freedom to choose at every instance since you prefer to believe time is flowing.

There is a problem with the way we define time presently, as evidenced in the problem of entanglement, where two or more particles may be separated by vast distances yet when one is acted upon, instantly the entangled partner is effected ... this is classic sharing of a moment regardless of spatial separation, thus time is not as we have defined it as flowing. The fact that an electron can be its own interference pattern partner also hints that time is not as classically defined or characterized.

385 posted on 09/01/2006 10:48:09 PM PDT by MHGinTN (If you can read this, you've had life support from someone. Promote life support for others.)
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