[Serious] Is the Past Real?

[Neo-Scholastic]

In your opinion, is it any more problematic than an eteranalist causality?

I don't really have an opinion. I must confess that I feel a bit out of my depth here.

I am geniuinely interested in your opinion even if you have only pondered theories of time in passing. You think for yourself, which I respect.

The tension btwn eternalism presentism seems similar to the tension between Parmenides and Heraclitus. Eternalism seems very static in the way that Parmenides's philosophy depicts reality. As Yogi Bera might have said... nothing happens when everything happens at once. IMHO it seems odd to talk about causal sequences in an eternal now that encompases all moments of time.

I have noticed those contributors that reference physics (general relativity, in particular) are focusing on the relations between events within the universe. May I suggest to them a more truly universal perpective, i.e. that the universe itself has a history. Taken as a whole what is going on do you thin? Does it go from state A to state B to state C...and so on with each new state annihilating the previous one or is it a Belacqua suggested all possible state (A,B,C...) have equal ontological status and the arrow of time is an illusion?

Jeananne and Helios, I pity you both for your inability to see past for your own contempt. Theologically, eternalism comports better with theism than presentism, the position I have chosen to explore.

[Anomalocaris]

I don't really have an opinion.  I must confess that I feel a bit out of my depth here.

NS is proposing the god explanation (again).

christians don’t propose.  they push, the only question is whether under either true or false pretenses.  the empty promises of their god boy does not cover good faith effort to discover whether the god boy is likely to be plausible or not.

[Jehanne]

Jeananne and Helios, I pity you both for your inability to see past for your own contempt. Theologically, eternalism comports better with theism than presentism, the position I have chosen to explore.

Both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are hard subjects. You can find a small class on YouTube where I believe a UC San Diego (or Davis?) physics professor begins his Quantum Field Theory class by writing the following equation on his blackboard:

QFT = QM + SR

For practicing physicists, the trick is to develop a new model where the 'SR' is replaced by 'GR'.

Who, prior to Albert Einstein, even proposed the idea that a clock sitting in one's basement would tick slower than an identical clock sitting upstairs? And, yet, GPS, which is in your phone and mine, would not work if not for Special & General Relativity.

Our Universe has its strange aspects to it. The explanation, "God did It", absent God's settling the matter once and for all (e.g., "spontaneous healing of an adult amputee" or the equivalent), is leading nowhere. No NSF grant proposals have been submitted in support of such a hypothesis, only books to be sold on Amazon.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Jeananne and Helios, I pity you both for your inability to see past for your own contempt. Theologically, eternalism comports better with theism than presentism, the position I have chosen to explore.

Theology is just a more respectable version of palm reading and astrology. Thank goodness the study of time falls into the realm of a real line of study. You have chosen to highjack it in service of your myths and I do indeed find that contemptible. Oh, spare me your pity and reserve it for yourself.

[LinuxGal]

I'm not sure whether the past is real. I AM sure that it doesn't matter whether the past is real.

The relativity of simultaneity means no one can agree on what the present means.  What is present to Alice might be past to Bob.  To be fair to Alice, Bob should consider his past to be real.

[John 6IX Breezy]

There are a number of different traditions (including, I think, some physicists) which say that everything exists all at once. They say that time is an artefact of how we perceive things. Time is among the mental phenomena, like color, rather than being in the noumena. 

I don't understand this at all. 

It's been a while since I've gathered my thoughts on time, but I tend to fall under this tradition.

It's not so much that everything exists all at once in my view, but rather that events are all that exists. When an event occurs, our minds are perceiving change of one form or another—an object is being repositioned, reshaped, or undergoing some other kind of transformation. Multiple events can occur in succession and have a duration, but time itself is a psychological abstraction derived from the observation of change.

In other words, the notion of time becomes meaningless inside an empty room where nothing happens and nothing changes.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Jeananne and Helios, I pity you both for your inability to see past for your own contempt. Theologically, eternalism comports better with theism than presentism, the position I have chosen to explore.

Theology is just a more respectable version of palm reading and astrology. Thank goodness the study of time falls into the realm of a real line of study. You have chosen to highjack it in service of your myths and I do indeed find that contemptible. Oh, spare me your pity and reserve it for yourself.

Helios, please respect the Serious tag.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Helios, please respect the Serious tag.

I am being serious 

[Anomalocaris]

Theology is just a more respectable version of palm reading and astrology. Thank goodness the study of time falls into the realm of a real line of study. You have chosen to highjack it in service of your myths and I do indeed find that contemptible. Oh, spare me your pity and reserve it for yourself.

Helios, please respect the Serious tag.

indeed, the highlighted part is unforgivably facetious.

[arewethereyet]

I don't think voicing an opposing opinion is against the serious tag. But I will make a report of the 'offending' post so that staff may discuss it.

The serious tag does not mean 'agree with me or else'.