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Goodbye Jesus

Time As A Concept.


Guest Valk0010

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As I understand it, not without outside input. Earth gets energy input constantly from the sun. Living things increase order by taking in energy and converting it to matter (growth) and work. Photosynthesis is the most efficient energy/matter conversion method known.

As soon as the energy transfer ceases, disorder strikes again (decomp.) Galaxies are in a constant state of decay from energy to matter.

 

I get the feeling you're very familiar with the laws of thermodynamics.

 

Par... this is how I understand it, too, and being a biology undergrad I only recently heard this explanation again for the umpteenth time.

 

As for time... my husband and I have talked about this many times, believe it or not, since we're both interested in various aspects of science and we're always watching those physics and astrophysics shows and looking things up in an attempt to wrap our heads around these huge concepts.

 

Anyway, my understanding is that time is a measurement of the movement of matter. (I think someone else posted a similar thing earlier, too.) The Time-Space continuum might as well be called the Time-Matter continuum. Approaching the speed of light, Time slows down because the molecular movement of the Matter slows down at that speed.

 

However - and this was a recent discovery we made - despite the molecules slowing down (which you would think might make the temperature of the matter approach absolute zero), the substance itself gets hotter due to the energy involved with moving forward at that speed.

 

(Don't ask me why... that's the full extent of my knowledge on that. ;-) You now know everything I know.)

 

And I think someone else asked about how we came up with 60 seconds and so forth - the whole 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 360 degrees stuff was from ancient Mesopotamian math and astrology. The numbers 360, 60, and 12 were easily divided evenly. So it caught on.

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As I understand it, not without outside input. Earth gets energy input constantly from the sun. Living things increase order by taking in energy and converting it to matter (growth) and work. Photosynthesis is the most efficient energy/matter conversion method known.

As soon as the energy transfer ceases, disorder strikes again (decomp.) Galaxies are in a constant state of decay from energy to matter.

 

I get the feeling you're very familiar with the laws of thermodynamics.

Yes I am, but my point is still that we measure growth as much as decay using time. I suppose in a closed system we measure decay, but in an open system we measure growth as well. ;)

 

Couldn't you also say too that galaxies are also in a constant state of creating new forms and well as decay? How are stars born? I'm not sure I can view the universe as a dying one, not by a long stretch at this point anyway. Eventually perhaps where no more gasses to form stars and all conversion has ceased and we are just using up the last of it, but is it fair to say or proper to look up at night sky and declare, "Dying!" I guess it's sort of a half-glass full vs. half-empty way of looking at things. ;) But yes, as a whole, if there is no new energy source coming into this universe from outside it, eventually all these self-creating processes will cease, if you look at it from the outside, not from within.

 

BTW, Happy Birthday.

 

:party:

 

You're decay is underway! :HaHa:

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Ovum I am impressed by your inquiry into this subject. I suspect that time is complex. But other than that I have little to offer on the subject.

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Ovum I am impressed by your inquiry into this subject. I suspect that time is complex. But other than that I have little to offer on the subject.

Is it because you don't have time? :)

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Ovum I am impressed by your inquiry into this subject. I suspect that time is complex. But other than that I have little to offer on the subject.

Is it because you don't have time? :)

:grin: I probably do have too many irons in the fire at the moment A-man. But mainly it's because I am ignorant on the subject.

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Ovum I am impressed by your inquiry into this subject. I suspect that time is complex. But other than that I have little to offer on the subject.

Is it because you don't have time? :)

:grin: I probably do have too many irons in the fire at the moment A-man. But mainly it's because I am ignorant on the subject.

It does take time.

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Damn you!!!!!!!!

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:grin: I probably do have too many irons in the fire at the moment A-man. But mainly it's because I am ignorant on the subject.

 

Really Legion, you have no experience of how you experience time?

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At the risk of being laughed at by those who believe that an outside source has to tell them what time is - isn't that something we all experience for ourselves? I have never really experienced time as linear but have always felt as though everything is happening at the same time. I know though that other people experience it differently.

 

 

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The new M Theory and its acceptance of 11 dimensions, including an infinite set of universes alongside our own, is beginning to put holes in the whole "there was nothing, including time" before the Big Bang. According to M, our universe was probably created by the explosion of an older universe dying, or the collision of two universes, or the splitting of a massive universe into two or more pieces (new universes). In this, time would happen from universe to universe, back ad infinitum, no beginning point to existence, and that we are not only star stuff, as Carl Sagan famously said, but previous universe stuff as well.

 

It brings up interesting possibilities, such as that our universe may NOT be a closed system, and that maybe black holes (and their counterparts, white holes) transfer material between universes.

 

The part that I find most interesting is the idea that there are an infinite me's out there, each doing something slightly different at every decision I ever made. An infinite me's who did not drink too much at that college party, or an infinite me's who did not marry my ex wife, but also an infinite me's without the joy of my son.

 

With M Theory, God get once again pushed further and further out....now it order to be in control of it all, it is not enough for God to control a tribe of people, or a planet of people, or a galaxy of people, or the universe, or even an infinite universes, but everything on all dimensions. That is very far removed from the desert deity of an obscure tribe of Bronze Age herders and agriculturalists a couple thousand years ago or so.

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Galien I have a subjective sense of time, no doubt. But I also think that time exists objectively. The real question here in my mind is... What is the nature of objective time? I think it is likely complex.

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Galien I have a subjective sense of time, no doubt. But I also think that time exists objectively. The real question here in my mind is... What is the nature of objective time? I think it is likely complex.

 

Hmm, maybe Ovum is right and I am an anti intellectual, but I tire of having to have some guy in a white coat, or holding a degree or wearing a pastor's frock explain everything to me, as though I am too stupid to understand it myself :)

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Galien I have a subjective sense of time, no doubt. But I also think that time exists objectively. The real question here in my mind is... What is the nature of objective time? I think it is likely complex.

 

Hmm, maybe Ovum is right and I am an anti intellectual, but I tire of having to have some guy in a white coat, or holding a degree or wearing a pastor's frock explain everything to me, as though I am too stupid to understand it myself :)

It's not a matter of stupidity. It's a matter of ignorance. I think people in general are fairly intelligent. I also think people in general are ignorant, including myself and many scientists. We have the capacity, but we have not yet made the investment to understand.

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Animals don't have a concept of time, do they? Isn't time just another one of man's inventions? (Like religion?)

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At the risk of being laughed at by those who believe that an outside source has to tell them what time is - isn't that something we all experience for ourselves? I have never really experienced time as linear but have always felt as though everything is happening at the same time. I know though that other people experience it differently.

 

 

True - as I personally have experienced the passage of time, there are moments when it feels as though all time is one time, or that the moment is timeless. But the distinction must be made between the senses of the WORD 'time.' There's a subjective experience of it's passage - or non-passage, as the case may be.

 

But then there's the objective measurement of it, which varies with speed and mass and so forth, but that sense is only meaningful in a mathematical sense, since we can't actually achieve the speed of light.

 

To have a specific discussion, we must define our terms. I took the OP to be referring to physics. Not the personal sensation.

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Animals don't have a concept of time, do they? Isn't time just another one of man's inventions? (Like religion?)

 

My border collie Lucky has a sense of time. He knows when it's time for a walk, for dinner, or for bed, even without me giving any cues whatsoever. He comes to ME and stares at me at the same times every day. I've heard of other dogs doing the same. Not sure about other animals, though.

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Yeah I know how it all works. Probably just tired of being told I have to do years of university study and understand the ins and outs of everything before I have any credibility, and that my subjective experience counts for nothing. That's what I hated about christianity too :) <BR><BR>

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Someone explain how time and space are linked into one continuum. I know that is an important part of relativity but it seems very strange and counter intuitive doesn't it? I can see that we measure intervals between one happening and another - that is time. That seems like an arbitrary creation of the human mind but yet it isn't. Our thoughts from these minds have actually revealed scientific laws about how the universe works. How is it that time is actually a part of space other than this measurement thing? Space seems very real and time seems -- strange.

 

No doubt that over a span of time things change. My body is not the same as in 1969! or even the last minute for that matter. But, I have always been fascinated by this. Is it a line, or can it go backward? If there was a beginning of time (Big Bang) will it reverse and then end? I love thinking about things like this.

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Another view of time: A closed system increases in entropy (roughly, disorder.) Time is a measure of this increasing disorder. Units of time are based on decay of radioactive elements, or their increase in disorder. Time is just a way of measuring disorder.

Don't we also measure it in increasing order as well, such as the birth of the universe to the formation of galaxies, or the developmental stages of growth in a child, and so forth?

 

Antlerman has a very valid point here. Entropy is not an increase in disorder, it is the decrease in energy gradient within a closed system. Sometimes this leads to an increase in order. A drop of water is made up of molecules that are moving more or less at random. In a cold enviroment, as that drop of water cools and reaches entropy with its enviroment molecules crystalize into geometric patterns resulting in a snowflake that is so complex that it is unique. The formation of planets, stars and galaxies are also an increase in order through entropy. Even the formation of heavier and heavier elements within a star is an increase in order via entropy.

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Another view of time: A closed system increases in entropy (roughly, disorder.) Time is a measure of this increasing disorder. Units of time are based on decay of radioactive elements, or their increase in disorder. Time is just a way of measuring disorder.

Don't we also measure it in increasing order as well, such as the birth of the universe to the formation of galaxies, or the developmental stages of growth in a child, and so forth?

 

Antlerman has a very valid point here. Entropy is not an increase in disorder, it is the decrease in energy gradient within a closed system. Sometimes this leads to an increase in order. A drop of water is made up of molecules that are moving more or less at random. In a cold enviroment, as that drop of water cools and reaches entropy with its enviroment molecules crystalize into geometric patterns resulting in a snowflake that is so complex that it is unique. The formation of planets, stars and galaxies are also an increase in order through entropy. Even the formation of heavier and heavier elements within a star is an increase in order via entropy.

 

Thermodynamic entropy is decrease in ability to do work. As water nears the temp of it's colder surroundings, it's entropy increases. It's crystalline structure is irrelevant to thermodynamic entropy. Entropy increase marks the direction of time.

 

I'm talking way above my pay grade here.

 

 

 

 

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Someone explain how time and space are linked into one continuum. I know that is an important part of relativity but it seems very strange and counter intuitive doesn't it? I can see that we measure intervals between one happening and another - that is time. That seems like an arbitrary creation of the human mind but yet it isn't. Our thoughts from these minds have actually revealed scientific laws about how the universe works. How is it that time is actually a part of space other than this measurement thing? Space seems very real and time seems -- strange.

 

No doubt that over a span of time things change. My body is not the same as in 1969! or even the last minute for that matter. But, I have always been fascinated by this. Is it a line, or can it go backward? If there was a beginning of time (Big Bang) will it reverse and then end? I love thinking about things like this.

 

 

First you have to seperate time from the human perception of time. Human perception of time is flawed and inconsistant which is why we developed instruments to accurately measure it, i.e. clocks. Human perception of space is also inconsistant. If you asked a hundred people to hold thier hands 3 feet apart without a ruler or a reference, how many would get it exactly right? About the same number who could measure a minute without a clock or counting, none. The units used to measure both are arbitrary, but the distance for both is real.

 

Regarding your question on space-time. Our universe has four dimensions that we can perceive. There may actually be many more, but that is another topic all together, so lets stick with the first four. Start with a geometric point. A point is a dimensionless coordinate, it has no length, wifth or depth. To illustrate the first dimension you need a second point and a line connecting them. A line is a one dimensional object, it has infinite length (it extends beyong the two points) but no width or depth. To illustrate the second dimension you need another line that intersects the first. These two lines form a plane. A plane is a purely two dimensional object that has infinite length and width but no depth, like an impossible thin piece of paper that stretches forever. To illustrate the third dimension you need two planes that intersect. These two planes form a space. A space is three dimensional as it has length, width and depth that are infinite. Here is where we hit the first road block. How do you illustrate the fourth dimension? You have to have another space but the first one already encompasses the volume of the entire universe. The fourth dimension is a line that connects a space that exist now and a space that exist latter and we call the distance between the two, time.

 

Here is video that explains these concepts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uY_ZgAvXsuw

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Another view of time: A closed system increases in entropy (roughly, disorder.) Time is a measure of this increasing disorder. Units of time are based on decay of radioactive elements, or their increase in disorder. Time is just a way of measuring disorder.

Don't we also measure it in increasing order as well, such as the birth of the universe to the formation of galaxies, or the developmental stages of growth in a child, and so forth?

 

Antlerman has a very valid point here. Entropy is not an increase in disorder, it is the decrease in energy gradient within a closed system. Sometimes this leads to an increase in order. A drop of water is made up of molecules that are moving more or less at random. In a cold enviroment, as that drop of water cools and reaches entropy with its enviroment molecules crystalize into geometric patterns resulting in a snowflake that is so complex that it is unique. The formation of planets, stars and galaxies are also an increase in order through entropy. Even the formation of heavier and heavier elements within a star is an increase in order via entropy.

 

Thermodynamic entropy is decrease in ability to do work.

 

A decrease in energy gradient and a decrease in the ability to do work are the same thing since an energy gradient is required to do work.

 

As water nears the temp of it's colder surroundings, it's entropy increases.It's crystalline structure is irrelevant to thermodynamic entropy.

 

It is irrelevant to entropy itself, but it is an increase in order due to entropy. I am pointing out the causal relationship that entropy has on order in this example.

 

Entropy increase marks the direction of time.

 

I'm not argueing against that point. What I am argueing against is that entropy leads to disorder.

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Guest Valk0010

To an extent I think time is a human construct in how we view the world and process it. We view events within the context of a forward linear progression of time. We use time as a way to measure something such as seconds and minutes but is time a "thing"? I'm not really sure, it's definitely an interesting concept. But if we view time as something related to space or spacetime it would be a part of the universe so it wouldn't exist apart from the universe meaning the universe was the origin of time, so there wasn't a time before the universe.

I would say the idea of a time before the universe is only a problem for a theist. I just got my first lesson every in Einstein's theory of relativity last night, so blame that. :wicked:

 

If the theist says "God is outside of time" how is that a problem for them? Whether there is or is not time would not matter, right?

I am saying we have no ability to put time in a timeless realm, we can't say anything is eternal with out some point of reference of time in that dimension. Eternal implies there is something to be eternal against. Now if we are talking purely about one dimension that doesn't have time, then how can we say with any certainty anything is eternal. You can't be timeless if there is nothing to be without, is what I am thinking. Correct me if I am wrong. You could say timeless as compared to a different dimension but I am not sure if that is a proper I guess equivocation(not sure of the right word there).

 

If there is no time how can we say anything time related, like eternal. If there is no time all we could say is no time in that dimension, can't say anything about any material entities "temporal qualities" or lack thereof.

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Ok Antlerman, my bad for defining the terms I used in my message to Valk. Mea culpa!

 

Hence the need to respond to your post. What you say is valid, but because I didn't define my terminology and cite the right sources, there's a degree of misunderstanding between us. I hope this will help.

 

 

If a thing exists outside of time, then "eternity" would have no meaning to it. It probably couldn't understand time any better than we can understand "not time."

 

God isn't eternal, reality is.

Florduh would be right. The word "eternal" is a word we use in reference to time, in a time-based language. It's like the word infinite. I prefer the word timeless rather than eternal. And yes if you exist in a timeless state, then time has no meaning, as it doesn't exist. All that is just is. So when BA says "God isn't eternal, reality is", then reality is Reality, or God. The placing of God in reference to time is anthropomorphic. Reality IS. Time are simply finite points of reference, like matter.

 

As a Multiversalist, I use the words, 'eternal' and 'infinite' in the context of theories like these... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaotic_inflation ...where an eternally-existing domain of self-reproducing universes creates an infinite quantity of such continua. This process has no beginning and will have no end, so in that sense, it is eternal. It is also infinite, in that the number (quantity) and spatial dimension (size or volume) of these universes are beyond counting and beyond measurement.

 

Also, the Big Bang event is not considered to be the origin of anything but our universe. Other universes that came to be 'before' ours and others that will come to be 'after' ours will experience their own Big Bangs, which will resemble ours and also appear to be the origination of only these universes. I use the terms 'before' and 'after' lightly, for obvious reasons. Applying any kind of temporal or spatial frame of reference to these concepts is a difficult matter, at the best of times! (Joke!)

 

Since this forum is called Ex-Christian.net, since there are many Ex-Xians here and since Christian apologists often debate with us, I therefore couched my message to Valk in accordance with these facts.

Christians assert that God created the universe with a specific purpose, for the express benefit of us humans. They place humanity at the center of reality and conclude that everything astronomers discover, "declares the glory of the Lord". This position is unacceptably anthropomorphic, arrogant, selfish and self-centered. So, my comments below are in no way to be considered as dismissive of the value of specific people or of the human race in general. They were made to convey a true sense of our scale in this infinity of infinities, speaking in both temporal and spatial terms.

 

God is an unnecessary requirement, His role as Creator and Sustainer, being supplanted by a natural process, as described by the theory. Thus, Christian apologetic arguments, appeals to supernaturalism, the KCA or advocacy of the Big Bang as the "Genesis' moment of creation, are swept aside by the growing body of hard evidence and data that supports Mutliversalism.

 

We are just a microscopic and not particularly special part of an infinite and eternally-existing multiversal reality, just like our tiny and run-of-the-mill universe.

I'm not sure I'd dismiss our specialness because we're not large or spectacular. This is measuring value on a scale of how we perceive value. Every single spec in every single "moment" is "eternally" significant, to use that language.

 

So, there's no need to get involved in any mind-boggling arguments about what came before what. Given infinite time and infinite opportunities, we were bound to exist.

Sounds to me like a Creative Reality.

 

Really?

Isn't the word' creative' inherently anthropomorphic too?

I make no such claims in promoting Multiversalism. The process of spontaneous universe-creation is devoid of meaning, purpose, intelligence, intellect, will, personality, emotion or anything else 'human' we might care to ascribe to it. It has as much meaning as the erosion of rocks by wind and water. It has as much purpose as the gradual arrangement of crystals in cooling lava. It has as much intelligence as the fusion of hydrogen into helium in the core of a star in the Andromeda galaxy. That is to say, none at all.

 

So when I say that we were bound to exist, I do so without recourse to any kind of humano-centricism, anthropomorphism or supernaturalism. We were bound to exist, simply as the statistical expression of an ongoing natural process. Given infinite resources and infinite opportunities, nature was bound to bring us blindly and purposelessly into existence. That is all. No over-arching scheme or plan or meaning.

 

Game over!

And begins. ;)

 

 

Now to add some thoughts to human reference of time that might be of interest for discussion. Anthropologically speaking human's understanding, views of reality in regard to time has shifted over the course of our evolution. As early man roamed as hunter/gatherer, there was no thought to next year, next season, or even next week. It was next day, eat, stay alive, survive. The sense of self was earth-bound, the cycle of eating and surviving, one with the eco-system. As agricultural societies developed, the view of their reality in relation to time shifted to a cyclical reality. Live till next season, plan, store, end and begin again with the rise of the new cycle. Time was cyclical. Self was identified as part of this cycle of seasons.

 

Then as societies began to accumulate and distribute wealth and power, man's view of himself shifted to his domain, the sense of his own continuation into the years, symbolically linked to his power, his name, his wealth, his domain. Man became king of his own castle, and his "self" continued through his children, his heirs, etc. He now viewed himself in time as a linear line, from the present into the long distant future beyond just the next cycle. A continuation of self symbolically linked to linear time. Then with the rise of religious myths, that sense of "self" projected onto a linear view of time, took the form of eternal cities, a continuation of life on earth. A celestial paradise where they would never die, and all of it rooted in man's sense of self in ideas of time.

 

In my view, there is only now, timeless Reality. This is "eternity" and there is no after or before. Everything in human experience and perception of time has to do with their sense of a separate "self". At the end of self, death of that distinction, is in fact to dissolve time into the present, into simple Reality, or Being.

 

I'm sorry, but I cannot agree with your view of an eternal, timeless now, if this concept is monolithic and changeless. Multiversalism advocates a process and any process must involve change. Ummm...we seem to have entered the territory of Xeno's Arrow here. So, are you advocating a changeless reality or something else? Please specify, as I'm genuinely curious.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

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Guest Valk0010

Animals don't have a concept of time, do they? Isn't time just another one of man's inventions? (Like religion?)

 

Time would be a bit like mathematics or even even logic, concepts based out of reality that would exist regardless of us.

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