Are You into Time?

[Lestat]

Back in my drug-induced teenage years, whenever someone would ask me what time it was, I'd reply, "I'm not into time". Who would've thought that this might've been the correct position to take?

From everything I've been reading, it's looking more and more like time might not actually exist. Clocks? They are simply devices that measure movement, not necessarily time. We construe movement as time, but that doesn't mean there is such a thing as time. There also seems to be no good reason for time to point towards the future. If it existed at all, it should just as easily point towards the past. So my question is:

If there really is no such thing as time, then does this mean there is no such thing as eternity? Or how about infinity? Also, does this increase or decrease the likelihood of a God? You no longer have to account for "what created God", since without time, it becomes more reasonable to assume that God could've always existed.

[godBoy]

I'm not too sure what you are trying to explain, prove/disprove here.

Time is a word to describe the consistent changing nature around us that can be measured. It's just a word, and everyone knows that it exists. After 80 or so years of it - they will go into the ground.

You might as well be asking is there such thing as existence? It doesn't seem like a sensible question to me.

[Lestat]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not too sure what you are trying to explain, prove/disprove here.

Time is a word to describe the consistent changing nature around us that can be measured. It's just a word, and everyone knows that it exists. After 80 or so years of it - they will go into the ground.

You might as well be asking is there such thing as existence? It doesn't seem like a sensible question to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not trying to explain or prove anything, since I'm nowhere near smart enough to fully grasp the concepts of time and space.

Anyway, this stuff isn't so obvious to me. Time, the way most people conceive of it, is kind of like a yardstick where the we keep moving away from a beginning. That's kinda the way I always looked at it. But time doesn't have to be like a one-way yardstick. It can loop back on itself, or might not exist at all. Again, not simple or obvious stuff to most people.

[godBoy]

Now your question is different, it seems like you are asking if it's possible time did not have a beginning.

This is different to asking if time exists at all - which is what I was answering with yes.
I'm doing so in the same way those math types claimed .999{repeating} was exactly the same as 1.
Time itself - is a useful concept that we can use to make measurements with.

Are you asking if eternity exists?
I would say it's impossible to test from our observation point(somewhere within it), but it is a very interesting philosophical thing to question.

[Rodney_King]

I completely agree. It decreases the likelihood of a God that judges you based on what you do(not that you'd believe in that anyway).
The Buddhists seem to have it right. Enlightenment is when you can let go of time, and merely exist. Everything is one, infinity may just be when we divide existence into more and more pieces.
I understand what you're saying, although it is hard to explain.

[godBoy]

[sarcastic]Oh, now I see how Lestat's point is directly promoting the idea of re-incarnation and the Buddhas great theory about escaping this wheel of suffering.[/sarcastic]

[PairTheBoard]

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You no longer have to account for "what created God", since without time, it becomes more reasonable to assume that God could've always existed.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can see in that sentence the difficulties logic starts to have when you make just a small beginning to thinking outside of the box.

PairTheBoard

[Lestat]

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You no longer have to account for "what created God", since without time, it becomes more reasonable to assume that God could've always existed.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can see in that sentence the difficulties logic starts to have when you make just a small beginning to thinking outside of the box.

PairTheBoard

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I still don't see what you're getting at. Thinking outside the box is good, but logic is still important and we ought not abandon it. The difficulties we face are not with logic itself, but in the problem presented. Namely one in which we do not yet know the answer to. Suspending logic so that an any answer can be plugged in, is just not acceptable.

[PairTheBoard]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You no longer have to account for "what created God", since without time, it becomes more reasonable to assume that God could've always existed.

[/ QUOTE ]

You can see in that sentence the difficulties logic starts to have when you make just a small beginning to thinking outside of the box.

PairTheBoard

[/ QUOTE ]

This is carried over from DS's thread on Cost/Benefits of Religion:



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I submit this is why many people cling to religion even while suspecting they could be wrong. You can't tell me people like NotReady don't see or understand the sound logic that is presented on this board, day after day. Of course he sees it! But it's like being told your mother's not your mother. He's better off refusing to accept that, and he knows it.

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You only think you have "sound logic" because you don't understand the nature of what you are applying that logic to.

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So what IS the nature of what we are applying that logic to? I say it's reality. You say, it's what?....

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You might try rereading my last couple of hundred posts, as many of them have been speaking to this point. You can see from your discussion of Time here that you don't even understand the nature of our physical reality as it relates to Time all that well. Your logic is breaking down already as you try to apply it in that context. Yet you presume you understand the nature of All Reality well enough that you can apply your logic with brute force to questions much more mysterious than Time. Like "God", whatever is really being pointed to by that word.

I usually distinguish between physical reality and Spiritual Reality so as to emphasize that concepts discussed involving the Spiritual must be dealt with differently than those to which science can be applied. But even then I have to recognize the limitations of my descriptive tools for Spiritual Reality and its nature. This is why I started the Thread, "Is a Zen Koan Accurate". Did you read that thread?

Zen Buddhists are quick to point out that their descriptions of the True Buddha Nature cannot really tell it to you. You must experience it to realize what they are talking about. Even in Christianity, the Vatican freely admits that the best we can do with our language is provide metaphors and analogies for that which we experience in Faith. I understand that none of this makes much sense to you. That's why I pointed out to you in this thread what starts to happen to your logic when you make just a small beginning to thinking outside of the box.

PairTheBoard

[Lestat]

<font color="blue"> Yet you presume you understand the nature of All Reality well enough that you can apply your logic with brute force to questions much more mysterious than Time. </font>

But I do no such thing. At least I don't think I do, or I try not to. I'm willing to entertain all kinds of notions about the "spiritual world" as you call it, or the "oneness with the universe", etc. I don't know much about Buddhists, but from the little I know, it has a much sounder philosophy than most other religions.

All I'm saying is that logic stands and should not be abandoned or suspended. Logic means you can change your stance (and probably will). However, in lieu of concrete answers, the proper stance is, "I don't yet know, or it's probably this, or there's no reason to suspect this, etc.".

That's all I'm saying. It doesn't matter that we're still ignorant about much of our universe. There are a myriad of potential answers, but we still don't abandon logic. And abandoning logic is what you MUST do, if you want to be a Christian.