God and the Concept of Time

by ezekiel3 60 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  ezekiel3

  From Bridging Science and Spirit by Norman Friedman (an interesting book that comments on David Bohm and quantum physics in realtion to spirituality):

  Some might suggest that if time is an aspect of a timeless order, then determinism is a valid notion. But that is not the case. Our world is made up of happenings that have been selected, and areyet to be selected, from a vast sea of probable events. We are not restricted in our choice; free will does operate. ... The decomposed wave function in quantum theory represents this freedom. (pg 290)

  So let me lay my belief on the line:

  1. I believe in free-will.
  2. Free will = power of acting without constraint of necessity or fate. Oxford Dictionary
  3. For example: if I choose a JW because God won't kill me I am acting out of constraint of necessity, not free will
  4. I do not believe that a God who can see into the future and/or has a specific purpose for the future = option for human free will.
  5. Thus I do not believe that God (however you define that) can "see the future" or acts to change the future to God's purpose.

  When I realized that this universe was perfectly "made", any rationalization for God having to fix it disappeared. I don't know about you, but if I going to go through the trouble to believe in a higher power, it's not going to be "Jehovah": the emotionally insecure creator of a fragile experiment, running amok with mutinous creatures.
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  zen nudist

  Free will has to exist by definition. Don't believe that you have free will? Here's a test: what is the one thing that God cannot do? (Yes, he can lie, we'd just never know it.) He cannot make you worship him.

  if your actions have causes, how are they free? what are they free of?

  if your actions are uncaused, random, etc, how are they willed?

  freewill as many use it is an oxymoron term.

  ---can anyone change a single step in the unfolding of the universe which has washed us up on this shore we call the present moment? are any of us anywhere but where we must be at this very second? can anyone change where they find themselves right NOW? has it ever been different? are we not always at the very last link in a chain of events?... how long ago was the very last moment that deposited us here? now? according to science it was about ten to the power of minus twenty three seconds ago [10^-23sec.] and when you consider that it takes on average about 3/10ths of a second from the time you see something to the time you are able to react to it [10^-3sec.]... you may, if mathematically inclined realize that 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 events have transpired before you moved... do you really think you have the freewill to change any event that quick?

  when you come to a decision between two or more options, literally trillions of events going on within you have participated and lead to that final moment of choice....can you change time and reverse a single one of those steps?

  if you think of our mental processes like dominoes, one knocking into the next in parallel lines perhaps a million across until at the moment of choice they all end up knocking over one and only one dominoe, you can perhaps appreciate that there is no such thing as freewill as not one of those dominoes falling can be undone...not one.

  what most think of as freewill is little more than the illusion of choice which comes from our ignorance of what we will actually chose until we actually chose it...dont know about you, but many times in a touch decision I am sure which way I will go until I actually decide and often suprise myself.
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  Pole

  Zen made a fine observation:

  everything about any time we discuss is always in relation to some means of measuring actual properties of space and objects in it, namely changes of relationships compared and contrasted with other changes and relationships.

  There's linguistc evidence which confirms the above. Can anyone (including Stephen Hawking) give me an example of an expression used to talk about time which (expression) is not a spacial metaphor? Give me a word/phrase you use to talk about time other than "time", and make sure this word was not originally used to talk about the only 3 dimensions we can directly conceive of.

  long time, short time, before 5 o'clock,between Tuesday and Wednesday, deadline, "march toward entropy" - they're all metaphors

  Even all the prepositions used to talk about time are or used to be spacial prepositions.

  The trouble is time is a mere concept just like love is concept. It may be a practical concept in our every day lives, but one should never hope to be able to come up with "the real definition of time". Any attempts to define the ontological status of time are doomed to fail as metaphysical bu***sh**t.
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  Annanias

  zen & pole - first of all I have to ask you a personal question: are you ex JW's? If you are, I can understand why, as one of my personal (yet hidden) peeves was the inability to have a meaningful conversation above the repetition of "Bible, Field Service, Study, Meetings!"

  zen, you seem to be a Quantum Mechanic. I especially appreciated your statement on everything being illusory, primarily because I agree with you. But probably not to the depth that you go. After having read a rather poorly illustrated explanation of Schroedinger's Cat and the paradox of quantum uncertainty, the physicist who authored the book quoted The Beatles, "Nothing is real." (Strawberry Fields) After all, if the things that make up the things that make up the things that make up us aren't real, are we real? Obviously, as gravity vs. Calculus was to Newton, the uncertainty principle is waiting for a new invention in math before it can be properly described. However, and this is totally unscientific, on a personal note, I believe in God. Primarily, because it seems obvious. But also, because without the thought that he does exist and we actually are going somewhere, this all becomes really, really boring. I mean, so what if all of this is happeneing if nobody cares? ("I was once walking in a forest by myself when a tree fell right in front of me and I didn't hear it." Steven Wright) Which brings up free will, which can be dissected and divided down to the quantum level and it becomes as mysterious as everything else; but, if God has even the most tiniest modicum of any sort of intelligence at all, he will absolutely assure and insure that there is free will.

  pole - your discussion on time as per the english language is cool. It was rather intersting to me a few years back when I red an article in an engineering mag about how (I think is was HP, but it might have been Bell Labs) had managed to make a fempto-second ( what is it, 10 to the minus 11 seconds). How do you make a division of time, seems to me it's already there. I don't know if you've ever studied much about the Navaho understanding of time, but it is interesting. I haven't studied it at all, but I understand that they do not see things as being in the past or in the future, they believe that everything is just in different parts of now. Curiously enough, this concept of time seems to be a lot more in line with Membrane theory than the traditional western sand grains thru the hourglass idea. The idea of that nether-world existing in the .3 seconds of time between an acutal occurrence and our brain interpreting it is interesting. I was starting therapy with a psychologist who was asking me all of these "preliminary" questions, one of which was: have you been halucinating. I repled, "How the hell would I know?" but he didn't think it was funny. Like my answer to zen, though, I gotta believe there's a God, and unless he personifies stupidity, he would have had to give somebody (us? the porpoises?) free will, which would necessitate the advent of time. Or, rephrased, necessitate the advent of some sort of environment where our free will could be continually exercised in a non self-interfering way. (Which negates time travel by definition ala "The Butterfly Effect")
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  Narkissos

  have you been halucinating. I repled, "How the hell would I know?" but he didn't think it was funny.

  Welcome Annanias!
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  zen nudist

  zen & pole - first of all I have to ask you a personal question: are you ex JW's?

  yes and no officially I never resigned, and they never officially gave me the golden boot...but they did lie and tell people I resigned officially and since the only reason I cared at all was because of my now ex, I really don't care what I am officially any more...unofficially, I have come to believe that I am a wave upon the ocean and the ocean, and as the ocean JWs are a part of me, much like a cancer or other virus for which I seek a total cure.

  I believe in God. Primarily, because it seems obvious. But also, because without the thought that he does exist and we actually are going somewhere, this all becomes really, really boring. I mean, so what if all of this is happeneing if nobody cares?

  I believe in GOD, the Generator Of Diversity, the ultimate reality, the ONE ocean which underlies all of us waves...but not God as in the bible god....to me that is just silly jewish mythology born of ignorance and fear and not much different from other cultural myths. as to who cares, I find there is meaning OF life, but there is plenty of meaning found by the living...like me. I find meaning because I am aware that my next move, my next gamble, always has consequences for my own contentment, which includes others because they are all part of me.

  if God has even the most tiniest modicum of any sort of intelligence at all, he will absolutely assure and insure that there is free will.

  I find this just mythology... after all, God or GOD did not create GOD or God and so has no real choice over the true nature of things, GOD is just what GOD is, nothing more nor less...just changing patterns within GOD, the waves upon the ocean...us. We come and we go and maybe come again, but never really leave as there is no creating nor destroying eternal energy, whatever it may be.

  had managed to make a fempto-second ( what is it, 10 to the minus 11 seconds). How do you make a division of time, seems to me it's already there.

  how do you make a division in a cherry pie? you cut it of course...and you can mathematically slice any countable system such as a cycling stable repeating event, otherwise known as a clock... you have heard perhaps of the leap second? they need to adjust atomic clocks every so often because they earth, which is the primary means of determining the seasons and days and nights is slowly changing its rotation speed, etc.

  I gotta believe there's a God, and unless he personifies stupidity, he would have had to give somebody (us? the porpoises?) free will, which would necessitate the advent of time.

  first of all, this premise is just sheer wishcraft, having little to nothing to do with a meaningful search for the nature of reality, it is just borne of a fear of meaninglessness which I have previously demonstrated to exist indepently of a god or freewill.

  as for GOD being intellegent or stupid, is a snowflake intellegent? there are many examples of spontenious order as being a property of the only reality we need worry about, no god[s] required.
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  Annanias

  zen, as I said, it is a personal slant. If nobody is there to care, then the mafia is right.

  As for the fempto second, I agree, all you need to do is divide time up. You can divide a fempto second into a 1000 different parts (millifempto?). The things was, it took quite a lot of engineering to be able to do that practically. In other words, even though it existed, until these guys "made" a fempto second, it didn't exist, except in theory.
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  zen nudist

  In other words, even though it existed, until these guys "made" a fempto second, it didn't exist, except in theory

  .I think you are missing the basic point.... it did not exist in a practical way until it had a practical meaning in reference to some real events, something that could be used to measure it, etc... time is always a measurement of relationships between objects in measureable space.

  as far as the mafia being "right" right and wrong are always arbitrary even if a god hallucinates them... they are always also relative to someones goals and plans...what is right for me is hell for Elle McPheirson
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  zoolander

  What is infinitely long in two opposite directions, each point is infinitely small and is only measurable in arbitrary defined segments?

  A line

  I may of course be wrong but I see time and in fact God (at least while I was a JW) in the same light.
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  Terry

  QUOTE: Here's a test: what is the one thing that God cannot do? He cannot make you worship him.

  ************************************************************************************************************

  Can a robber put a gun to your head and ask for your money?

  The threat is motivation to reach into your back pocket and fetch your billfold.

  Coercion is a word we have for being forced to use our will to do something we'd rather not do.

  How many people actually WANT to get out of bed and go to work each morning? Circumstances coerce the behavior. The threat of starvation is the gun to the head.

  Our fragile nature is dependant upon action to self-sustain. Sanity is carrying out that action.

  We are not "free" to ignore the nature of our self. That is death. The wedge issue in discussions of freewill is life/death. Man cannot choose not to die in the long run. That happens whether he chooses it or not. Man can only take actions to delay the inevitable.

  We are not asked whether we want to be born or not. No choice.

  We are not asked who we want for parents. No choice.

  We are not asked what heredity we possess. No choice.

  We are not asked what our sex or inclination will be. No choice.

  We are not asked what nation, tribe or tongue or talent we'll possess. No choice.

  The notion and description of "god" is poured into us along with mother's breast milk. We deal with what we are given.

  As long as humans regard this "god" thing as a means to the end of postponing death they have a gun to their head.

  What god adds to the picture is this.

  The robber holds the gun to your head and says: "Give me your love".