The Illusion of Time
Jules Verne popularised the idea of time travel in his novel The Time Machine, but time travel is an impossibility. That's because the past and future do not exist. For the infinitely large and infinitely complex universe in which we live there is only a "now".
Time is an abstract concept, a creation of the human mind. It's like watching a movie. The human eye sees a movie one frame a time. The brain then produces the illusion of time and motion.
Nevertheless, we do have a record of past events written into the fabric of the universe. For example, distant galaxies viewed through an astronomical telescope present an image of space as it was millions of years ago. Buried fossils tell the story of life on earth from microscopic bacteria 2-3 billion years ago to the complex life-forms we know today. But this doesn't mean that the past is still there and is somehow accessible to us.
And since the future does not exist it means that future events are not predetermined. Yes, it is possible for a mathematician to estimate the likely trajectory of a projectile or for a psychologist to assess how a person might live out their life. But that's not the same as to prophesy. To prophesy is to foretell the future. A prophecy is knowledge of actual future events acquired through means other than logical deduction, mathematical calculation or scientific observation.
Some people say they can acquire knowledge of the future through revelation, inspiration or intuition. Typically they have dreams, visions or hallucinations that are brought about by the use of drugs, chemicals, rituals or trances. What they are really doing is drawing on the subconscious mind and inherited racial memories in the collective unconscious. These are purely personal and internal experiences that are disconnected from the external real world.
Read my earlier post: #Do You Really Exist?
Time is an abstract concept, a creation of the human mind. It's like watching a movie. The human eye sees a movie one frame a time. The brain then produces the illusion of time and motion.
Nevertheless, we do have a record of past events written into the fabric of the universe. For example, distant galaxies viewed through an astronomical telescope present an image of space as it was millions of years ago. Buried fossils tell the story of life on earth from microscopic bacteria 2-3 billion years ago to the complex life-forms we know today. But this doesn't mean that the past is still there and is somehow accessible to us.
And since the future does not exist it means that future events are not predetermined. Yes, it is possible for a mathematician to estimate the likely trajectory of a projectile or for a psychologist to assess how a person might live out their life. But that's not the same as to prophesy. To prophesy is to foretell the future. A prophecy is knowledge of actual future events acquired through means other than logical deduction, mathematical calculation or scientific observation.
Some people say they can acquire knowledge of the future through revelation, inspiration or intuition. Typically they have dreams, visions or hallucinations that are brought about by the use of drugs, chemicals, rituals or trances. What they are really doing is drawing on the subconscious mind and inherited racial memories in the collective unconscious. These are purely personal and internal experiences that are disconnected from the external real world.
Read my earlier post: #Do You Really Exist?
posted by Robert Charroux at
3:47 PM
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