Time: Does It Exist?

What are your views on the concept of 'time'?

Some food for thought...

Is time part of the natural order of the universe? Or is it a human construct?

Does the future exist? Does the past exist?

Are we in the 'eternal now'?

In my own personal undertanding, Time is merely a concept invented by humans. As a christian, i do not believe that God has a sense of time like we understand it. For example, my grandmother dies and goes across the veil of death, and to her it feels like 30 seconds before i am walking across that veil to meet her. To me it was 60+years. I also feel that this has great ties to the theories of evolution. I was ignorant in thinking that God made the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th in a LITERAL sense. Making God's concept of time and my concept of time the same. But after meditation and realization, I feel God DID make the earth in 6 days....but why are God's 6 days 24 hour peroids of time like my own? Who's to say that God's/or a higher powers (in case you do not belive in God) concept of time is 24 hour periods? So there are dinosaur fossils which proves that dinosaurs once walked the grounds of the continents....and when God created all manner of beast, why can't the bible be talking about dinosaurs? who knows how long it REALLY was by our standard of time before God created man.



Maybe i'm wrong. Who knows? I would like to hear everyone elses perceptions on the matter though in order to grow my own. I know there are probably ideas that i missed when considering my own

Agreed, man's invention to classify events, and measure..

A [strike]yard[/strike], excuse me my European brothers and sister, (... :lol:...), a meter doesnt exist either...

It is another invention of man to classify, and measure... To record... separate and pigeon hole... It is how science works...

I hold an bird egg in my hand, and when it hatches, till it dies, that bird thinks I am a never ending enity, forever here, and everlasting...

And compared to the bird, I am...

As I hit send, I forgot to add...

Time is a thought, is and idea.... Like God is a thought, and idea... Not necesarily a physical concept...

But an idea is a thing, and things exist....

20 questions begins with:

"Is it a animal, vegetable, mineral, or idea?"

Perhaps I'm playing devil's advocate to what has already been said...

I believe that time does exist, being "part of the natural order of the universe", because it is basically the progression of existence itself. For example, as the sun rises and then sets, and all existing things progress, "time passes by".

It is true that units of time, such as hours, minutes, seconds, days, weeks, etc., have been fabricated by human concepts. However, time itself (without specific regard to any unit) has not been a human fabrication. It is just as real as the sun dawning and setting and dawning again and the light, darkness, and light of days.

Ah, here is an old bugaboo. Or is it a new one?

I am attempting to begin instructing my son in this malleable concept we call time as we speak. I explained to him that, yesterday, we called the day we are in now (today) tomorrow. and tomorrow we will call today yesterday. does this in any way change the events of those days or alter their length? no. only our frame of reference has changed.

as master war beauty mentioned above, why should god's concept of a day match ours? we know that a day, by our reckoning, is a different length on every planet and moon in the solar system. which one is 'right'?

so to conclude my rambling, time is indeed a 'something': we see its effects as we age, as days pass, seasons come and go. it exists, this much is inarguable. so i think that this initial question (our views on time) can be summed up for me by saying, of course it exists. even the effects of relativistic travel have been observed and proven. but what does that mean to my son? nothing.

time exists, distance exists whether we humans exist or not. My opinion is that both space and time are defined by the force. (And that the force is a spaceless and timeless entity)

Time is a manmade creation. It exists solely in our minds.

War Beauty wrote: In my own personal undertanding, Time is merely a concept invented by humans. As a christian, i do not believe that God has a sense of time like we understand it. For example, my grandmother dies and goes across the veil of death, and to her it feels like 30 seconds before i am walking across that veil to meet her. To me it was 60+years. I also feel that this has great ties to the theories of evolution. I was ignorant in thinking that God made the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th in a LITERAL sense. Making God's concept of time and my concept of time the same. But after meditation and realization, I feel God DID make the earth in 6 days....but why are God's 6 days 24 hour peroids of time like my own? Who's to say that God's/or a higher powers (in case you do not belive in God) concept of time is 24 hour periods? So there are dinosaur fossils which proves that dinosaurs once walked the grounds of the continents....and when God created all manner of beast, why can't the bible be talking about dinosaurs? who knows how long it REALLY was by our standard of time before God created man.



Maybe i'm wrong. Who knows? I would like to hear everyone elses perceptions on the matter though in order to grow my own. I know there are probably ideas that i missed when considering my own

Yes when the Bible taks about being in heavan for a 1000 years it kind of means "no time" or "eternal present" and all that.

But there is alot of openness about this philosohy. One does not need to attach oneself to this idea. It can be used, belived in a very real sence but ofcourse we are still here on this earth and can contend with things in different ways.

If I held up a pen and asked you what it was you would say "It is a pen"

But it most definitely is not a "pen"... "pen" is a sound. What I am holding is not a sound

What I am holding is this *scribbles on some paper*. That is what a "pen" is

"Time" is a word for a human concept just as "Gravity" or "Distance" are words that describe concepts that are familiar to us

"Time" does not actually exist per se... but rather the thing that we observe and call "time" exists