Editor:
The essay on reality by Barry Evans (“Field Notes,” Oct. 31) reminded me of a quotation from Arthur Eddington: “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”
A consequence of Einstein’s relativity is that moving observers slice space-time in different directions so that a distant person’s “now” intersects my future (or past) if she is moving toward (or away from) me. To quote Einstein: “The distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent. The only thing that’s real is the whole of space-time.”
As Brian Greene emphasized: “If you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image right now, and if you agree that your now is no more valid than the now of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events in space-time. The total loaf exists. Just as we envision all of space as really being out there, as really existing, we should also envision all of time as really being out there, as really existing, too.”
If the whole loaf already exists, then free will is an illusion (yet I have no choice but to believe in it). When I face my day of judgment, I will call upon Einstein as a witness to confirm that I had no choice.
Don Garlick, Fieldbrook
This article appears in Come Hither, Dear Doc.
Actually, the idea that the whole loaf “already” exists is skewed in both arguments, as it doesn’t preempt the concept of time. The whole of existence, being an absolute immediate infinitesimal, can be argued to guarantee complete free will just the same as it can be argued to negate free will altogether. Just as the idea of a chain reaction relies on the concept of time, truly erasing time within that idea creates the infinite moment of a decision being made…a surfer on a wave negotiating his movements and positions to continue the ride, forever.
So what’s the practical value of this philosophy? We are conceptually bound by the genuine paradox of all existence. Whether or not free will exists as well as it doesn’t, we have the ability to decide to NOT destroy “life as we choose to know it”, the natural environment around us, from which we have come into some sort of existence of thinking-therefore-being. Look around at anything and everything human…humanity is constantly and consistently destroying its own lifeblood, however not necessarily as a collective individual species, but through a self imposed hierarchy of individual group tiers, whatever their perspectives, allowing themselves to cognitively assist this process of self destruction and just as formally “program” other individuals below their place in the hierarchy to abide by obviously destructive means to an obviously destructive end…the power of belief, another topic altogether.
Free will does not exist in Creation if time and space are illusions and have no absolute reality. I deliberately use the term “Creation” vs. “universe” because in my Celestial Torah Christian belief system we live in a perpetual state of “maya”, the world as illusion, going from one point in time to another. It is the way Creation works for those within Creation’s dimensions, the illusion of time and space moving ever forward in temperal direction but to the Creators of Creation, it’s an advanced CD movie, big technical effects, but in the end, a video selection, a documentary on How to Create God in 18 Billion lessons.. Celestial Torah Christianity. It isn’t your grandmother’s Christian religion any more..