Imagine this…
It’s June… the last day of school. You spend the day signing your friends’ yearbooks and asking your teachers for grades. One of your teachers is Miss Taken. As she’s flipping through her grade book to find your final average, you look down on her desk and see an old pocket watch. You’ve noticed it before, in fact you seem to remember having seen it there all year. It piques your curiosity and you say…
- You: "Hey, what’s the deal with that watch? I’ve noticed it sitting on your desk all year, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen the hands move… is it broken?"
- Miss Taken: "Oh, it’s not broken, it has supernatural properties."
- You: "Supernatural properties? Come on! It doesn’t even tell time!"
- Miss Taken: "Well, actually, TO YOU it might not look like it’s telling time, but in fact it is OUTSIDE of time. It is in space, but not in time. So it’s not affected by the passing of time like you and me."
- You: "Outside of time? But I can see it, and I’m IN time… so how can you claim that it is OUTSIDE of time, when I can see it from INSIDE time? I saw it yesterday, and I'm seeing today... right now."
- Miss Taken: "It’s hard to explain. I guess you’ll just have to trust me… it has supernatural powers. One of the definitions of supernatural is: of or proceeding from an order of existence beyond nature… inexplicable."
You stand there for a minute. Inexplicable. Yeah, she’s inexplicable! "What a wackjob; just admit that the watch is broken!" you think, but you’re careful not to say it… instead you wish her a nice summer, and walk out.
Can you make a logical case against her claims?
6 comments:
I think that when she says that its not affected by passing time like you and me, she is wrong because it still ages. if it was outside of time then in 50 years someone would say that it is new. but in actuallity it still ages and eventually becomes an antique. everyone has their own beliefs and views on what time is. ill have more once i think about a little longer.
Alex
Evangeline said...
I agree aith Alex all things are still in time. Whether the watch shows time or not it still lives in time. There is only one being who does not live in time and that is God he is the only one who does not lkive in time becasue he created it.
Alex and Evangeline,
Thanks for your thoughts… can you make a more compelling argument to PROVE that it is still in time, to prove that it ages? Your comments thus far imply that anything that is IN time changes and ages, and anything that does not age or change is not in time. Does everyone agree with that definition of being IN/OUT of time? Can anyone challenge that with a counterexample?
Evangeline,
I’ve heard other people say that God created time and is therefore outside of it… but those people also claim that God created the universe… and yet they don’t claim that God is outside of the universe…
Many in the Christian tradition claim that God does not change… so does that mean that He is outside of time? If so, how do we interact with God, if we are trapped in time, and He is supposedly outside? Is it possible for God to enter into time and interact with us, and not change Himself? Within the Christian tradition Jesus is said to have entered into time, and He seems to have changed considerably during that time… it is even recorded that His relationship with God the Father changed while Jesus was on the cross and cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” These are some hard questions that I’ve had a difficult time trying to resolve.
(To the atheists and people of other faiths who are reading this blog: Philosophy is a love of wisdom, and does not discriminate between sources of true wisdom… so if a Christian, or Muslim, or Buddhist, or Humanist, or Atheist, or Nihilist wants to have a philosophical discussion that involves elements of their faith, we should be willing to engage them at their level of belief… all that philosophy demands is that we are consistent in how we explore, critique, and confirm/deny theories in our rational and loving pursuit of wisdom. You can question anyone’s beliefs and/or theories… as long as you’re willing to listen to them when they try to answer. After all, you don’t have the right to disagree with someone until you truly understand things from their point of view.)
d.anger,
Thanks for reminding us how subjective our sense of ‘time’ really is… and that we often consider death to be somehow the end or stop of time, at least for the individual who dies. But the fact that time still seems to march on for us, even when someone else dies, seems to imply that there might be a time outside of our perception of time… time that would still exist even if everyone died… time that existed before the first being ever came into existence.
Can you make a compelling argument that time exists outside of our perception of it? Or, can you make a compelling argument that without people/beings perceiving it, time would no longer exist in concept or in reality?
Great thoughts d.anger!
I'll have to think about them some more before I respond to them :)
mrb...
thank you for your thoughts you have raised some very controversial questions that i intend to answer. thank you again!!!!!!!!
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