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

by dhw, Saturday, June 19, 2010, 12:09 (5059 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: You gave me something to think about.-Ah, tit for tat!-MATT: In discussing stars--you (unwittingly) allow for the exact fallacy I was worried about in the original post. You can look at a star through a telescope and see it as it was only an hour previously. But the light you see even then is not reality. The reality for however long ago the light was emitted, but even with that; a star is much more than just light. So even in your example you're not getting the star in itself, are you?-True, but this observation applies just as much to the present as to the past. It depends what level we're thinking on. I can never "get" anything "in itself". I can only get my perception of it. The example I gave was witnessing the crucifixion, but if you and I witnessed a crucifixion together in our present, we would still offer different accounts, so we couldn't claim that our version was reality or the crucifixion in itself. On this level, in line with your observation that the past does not exist and only our measurements of it exist, one would have to say the present does not exist ... only our perceptions of it exist.-You conclude: "Reality ... for each of us ... is ONLY where we are at this very moment in time." If at this very moment in time I watch a 3-D newsreel of some past event (the equivalent of my watching the crucifixion through my telescope on Planet X), I will be in the presence of the past. Once again, what I perceive is not the thing in itself ... it never can be ... but the image is as "real" to me as the view I have out of my study window at this moment. And so on one level I'd say you are right, because we can never claim that what we see is reality in itself, but on another level, theoretically, the past ... in the same sense of perceptions of the past ... can go on for ever, depending on the position of our observation post out there in space.-Perception is one thing, but how about participation? Supposing life is one gigantic computer game, with infinite potential for repetition and variation? Could the Illusion of Time actually = The Illusion of Life?