Oct 13, 2020

Is Time an Illusion?

We all need to respect each other's time and enjoy the time we are living in

I remember growing up as a young boy, older people saying to me the years go faster as I get older. Well, I have found this to be true.

One year when I was a kid, the days seemed to be a large amount of time. Now, the years seem to fly by. As I got older and started studying the Bible, I learned that God spoke of no beginning and also no end.

Time is what we experience. We have a beginning and we have an end.

The more I thought about time, the more I dove into others who question the phenomenon.

Here are a few examples:

THE ORDER OF TIME 
By Carlo Rovelli

According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli, time is an illusion: our naive perception and its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature and time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in THE ORDER OF TIME, much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton’s picture of a universally ticking clock. Even Albert Einstein’s relativistic space-time — an elastic manifold that contorts so that local times differ depending on one’s relative speed or proximity to a mass — is just an effective simplification.

Albert Einstein showed us that time is just a fourth dimension and that there is nothing special about ‘now’; even ‘past’ and ‘future’ are not always well defined. The malleability, space and time mean that two events occurring far apart might even happen one order when viewed by one observer, and the opposite order when viewed by another.

◄ Ecclesiastes 3 ►
(King James Bible) 

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace

In all honesty, no one knows how much time we have on earth.

The time we do have is precious. I know we all need to respect each other's time, and to also love one another so we can enjoy the time we are living in.

To everything (turn, turn, turn)

Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season) is a song written by Pete Seeger in the late 1950s and it was first recorded in 1959. Talk about a song being ahead of its time and also a throwback at the exact same time.

The lyrics consist of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes. Additionally, the song became an international hit in late 1965 when it was adapted by the American folk-rock group The Byrds.

Does anybody really know what time it is?

Many people believe that we are living in the "End Times" — the time when Christ returns to our earth to save us from self-destruction.

There's one song that comes to mind when I think about it.

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? is a song by the rock band Chicago. It was included on their 1969 debut album Chicago Transit Authority and released as a single in 1970 — written and sung by Robert Lamm.

So, how's time represented in film?

Herbert George Wells was an English writer and a lot of his books were translated into film. Prolific in many genres, he wrote dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, history, satire, biography, and autobiography.

One of his most notable science fiction works is The Time Machine — written in 1895.

I remember reading "The Time Machine" in English class when I was ten years old in 1968. Back then, I got to see the movie around the same time, too. It's still one of my favorite science fiction stories and it was magical for me as a young boy growing up.

Now that you've spent a portion of your time reading this article about time, I'd like to leave you with one last bit of timely information. Here's an excerpt from an article by Craig Callender, Is Time an Illusion?

As you read this sentence, you probably think that this moment—right now—is what is happening. The present moment feels special. It is real. However much you may remember the past or anticipate the future, you live in the present. Of course, the moment during which you read that sentence is no longer happening. This one is. In other words, it feels as though time flows, in the sense that the present is constantly updating itself. We have a deep intuition that the future is open until it becomes present and that the past is fixed. As time flows, this structure of fixed past, immediate present and open future gets carried forward in time. This structure is built into our language, thought and behavior. How we live our lives hangs on it.