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Posted by Pj Boyle on October 14, 2002 05:17:42 UTC

I once read a statement, not sure by whom, that went something like , "to undersatnd time is to have peered into the soul of God". It may have been Professor Hawking that said it. I elaborated on the staement once by saying" to comprehend time is to....

I have enjoyed catching up on what this web site is about.( I am new) I have read many threads. some worthy of further thought and others not so. But all interesting. But one statement( I believe it may be the sites' motto) in particular really stood out. " dedicated to understanding space". Admirable goal indeed.

Another interesting fact I saw is the shear amount of persons who have logged onto this particular thread ( approxamately 22,000 at the
time of this writing ) as opposed to the others.

Mention space and time and you'll always get some bites. Add god to the mix, the numbers go up. But add GOD, then you better brace yourselves.

In casual conversation with a 'man of the cloth" I once put forth the proposition that " A clock is to time as Religion is to God." Expecting
to provoke some thoughtful conversation I instead had a Bible verse quoted back at myself. (Something about my eternal damnation I think.)

Time, space and God. Comprehendable? May I propose that neither one is not? Prove a black hole to me. Or better yet, a worm. Difficult to do. They seem to exist. But can't we say the same concerning the concept of a god? I believe we, as humans tend get our thoughts "short circuited" by our very own finite existance.

Mention time and immeadiately you think "beginning" and an "end". Of course you do, its only natural. Or is it? Without a start and a finish then can time even exist? If the universe is expanding(and I am one who believes that it is not,at least as popular opinion currently does) then from what is it expanding? Away from where? or better yet, away from when? The big bang, even if true, does not necessarily negate infinity. And a 24 hour clock can never truly define time. At least as time relates to space. Space and time are both infinite concepts and at best difficult to comprehend. Even more difficult is understanding them.

Does time exist? If so could we prove it? Of course not. To what would you compare time with? As we have seen, time becomes more and more strechted the further and further one travels into space.
It is then concievable that time would eventually become so strecthed, relitive to where we started, that it would be a negligable value. Perhaps even non existant. Hmmm. Well, at least no longer relative. Hinting of course that whatever time is, it is always existing and only waiting to be pulled in by some force and slowed down to some speed that is proportional to that force. (Professor E's Relativity)

Of couse we can see that space exists. Its out there and it is made out of "space stuff". We know that. And we can say that we understand a little of it. That is, we understand it as it relates to our little place that we occupy within in it. And not very much more. But we have some pretty good guesses as to the rest. But proof? Prove to me that a black hole or a wormhole are as the most popular of hypothesis' put forth today,say they ar. Yet we know that "something" is there. So science can be as much faith as it can be fact.

And, putting all religion aside, then so could God. Just look at the hits for this thread alone compared to the rest. You might say "proove that God exists" And I would challenge by asking you to proove the antithisis of such a challenge. Both valid quests as the one of striving to "understanding space"

So what is time? I dont know. What is space? I dont really know that either. What then is God? Perhaps the energy and the "stuff" that the previous two are made of. And that could help to expalin us. We were slowed down just enough to see it all come together relative to our place in space and time.

That conversation I had with the man of the cloth . I ended with this: "Religion" I said "is mankinds attempt to define a god. Not necessarily Gods definition for mankind".

Yet we continue to go to war in the name of God.
and fully equipped with the weapons of science. Those could be the evidence for both existances.
Such is irony.

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