Our Concept of Time Essay -- Existence Creation Essays

Our Concept of Time If our perception of time can successfully be challenged, the implications are huge. The story of evolution, which is supported by our observations and is largely becoming accepted as truth, conflicts with most religious stories. The story of evolution, like many other scientific stories, is changing the story of religion. If God did not really create the earth in seven days, the days must be symbolic or represent time on a different scale. If God did not create the human species in the beginning and designate us to rule the earth, perhaps he set the ball rolling, knowing what was to come.* The story told by religion seems to be accommodating more and more to the story of evolution. Do these stories have to be mutually exclusive? Both stories are embedded in time. They are explanations of our existence based on history. An explanation outside of time is the only way that I can understand the supernatural to coexist with the natural, without denying facts or excessively accommodating for them. Can we think of an answer to the great question, "Why are we here?" without explaining it in terms of time? Can we even ask the question without wondering "Where did we come from? How did we get here?" or similar questions bounding our reality within time? Can we think of any story outside of time? This is a huge question that I do not pretend to be able to answer. But, through an exploration of our understanding and use of the concept of time, I hope to confuse our conception. It may be hard to truly imagine breaking the confines of time until we gain a better understanding by emerging ourselves in it, questioning it, and messing it up. Before we examine the possibility of a story told outside of time, it is ... ...time as a directional course of moments. Time is headed in a direction because we are. Time does seem to be upheld by reality. Most things that occur can happen in reverse order. Thermodynamics by "law" cannot. The second law of thermodynamics states that systems tend to a state of higher disorder. Obviously, this tendency is a tendency over time. Perhaps this increasing disorder is the basis of our understanding of time. But disorder depends on perspective. If we look at a single particle, disorder, and consequently time, are irrelevant if not imaginary. Therefore, it is not reality, but only our picture of reality which requires time. I do not have an answer to the conflict of the two stories we tell within our concept of time, but it is helpful to keep time in perspective, and to continue to play with it in order to change the reality that we understand.