Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeraph
1. The obvious one, how it looks. There is one present that we are all traveling forward in, the future is indeterminate. The past is permanent. Free will to the extent that the past controls our present.
2. Time is a complete illusion. Everything "happened" at once. The past, present, and future are "predetermined" (sort of...) The metaphor for this is like reading a history book, everything is there, nothing changes from one reading to the next, you can skip to the end and it always reads the same.
So which do you prefer?
I think #1, the most "obvious" is rather the least likely.
#2 seems the most likely, yet the hardest to understand. It is uncertain whether this would allow for free will in the normal since. I like to think that if this is the reality that free will comes in in the understanding of the choices we made.
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My personal opinion (at the present moment) is that it is both #1
and #2 minus the illusion part.
#1 is what we are currently experiencing...
this universe, which had a beginning and will have an end. In other words, time (past, present, future) started (began) as a condition or law of the universe and it will eventually stop. We exist within this universe, for a brief, personal experience of past, present, future, within the long continuation of past, present, future. As beings in time, we know that time exists (not an illusion), because we see the effects of it (aging, decay, the expanding stars, etc.). We experience things starting and ending. As individuals, we begin and eventually we end. We also know that free-will exists, because we can see the effects of it as well; in our own lives, in the lives of others, and in the collective actions and decisions of the human race throughout known history.
If time were a road stretched from New York to San Francisco, we are a free-will microbe traversing the 1000 ft or so of our brief existence on that road. During our existence, we are free-will to the extent that our decisions and the past controls our present and affects our future and The future; but, we affect The future only to a microscopic degree in the overall "big picture." As a race, our collective free-will decisions affect the planet upon which we live. Beyond that we pretty much, as a world, are a microbe within the larger universe, having little to no effect upon it as it continues on toward its conclusion.
However, there is a map of the road (the big picture). We are simply too small to see it or comprehend it (which you might argue
is the illusion). Due to free will, the road is somewhat under construction, but the end-point is determined (i.e., it will eventually occur). If you believe in God, you can even say the end point is pre-determined. To use the illustration of the book (#2), the book has a first page and a last page, but it is still in the process of being written, by virtue of a universe where free will is a reality. The current page of the book is the present, but there are only so many pages to be filled. I would say that the universe is subject to the law of time (a beginning and an end), just as we are.
I do believe there is a universe or reality in which there is no law of time, in which reality simply is always now, and everything within it simply exists as it exists now. That universe or reality has no beginning and no end. It is an eternal now.