The Illusion of Time (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 03:59 (5056 days ago)

I recently had a very good discussion with some friends at work (myself), a Christian, a Muslim, and an atheist. -They walk into a bar...-Okay, joking aside, we started probing our Christian friend's ideas on the nature of God. -"If he knows everything before it happens, then he already knows the future."-"No... he just knows the decision you're going to make when you make it."-"Then he has no power. He either knows the future or he doesn't; if he doesn't know the future then he's not all-powerful."-It got me thinking deeply about time; and the fact that time doesn't actually exist. I might lose you guys in Esoteric Buddhism here, but a recent SciAm article contributed to this exact topic. -It impacts our discussions because David has spoken a bit about his God's intelligence, and I think this could provide some synergy for him...-I'll start out by describing my view of what time is. Time is nothing but two "measurements." In Buddhist philosophy, there is an intense denial of the entire concept of time; teachings such as the Prajna paramita Sutra (diamond sutra) focus the concept that existence is a raging river, upon which man attempts to stake his claim. The past: doesn't exist. The future? Doesn't exist. Only NOW exists. -A river is a good metaphor to discuss my idea, for you should imagine yourself standing at the bank, with a timer. A river indeed also hides a crucial fallacy that we all have at one time or another. -Click.
Breath two breaths
Click.-What is it that you have accomplished here? How much time has passed? This exercise demonstrates my point about what time is. There is no measurement for the present. Nietzsche--often discussed his love for the musical arts because they were the only art that doesn't exist for posterity--it is now, it is already gone by the next beat. -Our illusion of time as an actual object comes from our ability as humans to analyze recorded information and infer from it to future events. It seems deceptively tangible--like water as it flows through our fingers as we reach into the water. We can look upstream and see water, we can trace its movement through our fingers, and can watch it flow away from us. -The discussion that spawned all of this got me thinking: if God knows what we're going to do at the moment we're going to do it, the entire universe is that instant, and therefore that "playground." If God literally IS the entire universe, then he can only know its past, know its present, and just like us--can only predict the future. The lack of predictability--is precisely the kind of thing of entertainment for a being that can know the position of everything in the universe at once...

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"