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Socrates4Jesus
Guest
Fascinating! So a newer dimension of time (eternity, or something beyond time) would be 12, and the number of dimensions would be complete after all.
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JimG
Guest
Another dimension right now would just mess up the equations of M-theory!Fascinating! So a newer dimension of time (eternity, or something beyond time) would be 12, and the number of dimensions would be complete after all.
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Socrates4Jesus
Guest
And i’m sure the proponents of this new theory would not mind taking the spotlight from the M-theorists one bit! Perhaps that’s one reason why science is sometimes referred to as a moving train and religion a solid rock?
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Detales
Guest
Does M theory account for awareness and consciousness?
RE: “Hmmm” Don’t worry; it only seems kinky the first time.
RE: “Hmmm” Don’t worry; it only seems kinky the first time.
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Fnord
Guest
I think it would make sense that only God would exist outside of time and everything else exists inside of time, since everything else began to exist. Thus while it may not be the same concept or experience of the passage of time in the physical plane, there is no way we could ever logically be outside of time, only outside of the physical plane of time, but not time in an ultimate sense.
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JimG
Guest
No, it has nothing to do with that. I believe that it ‘only’ tries to unify gravitation and quantum theory. It concerns space-time and matter-energy.
It’s a big-TOE theory–an attempted “theory of everything.” But not such things as consciousness or self-awareness.
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jkiernan56
Guest
"Even If I count them, they are more than the grains of sand; even if I come to an end, I am still with you. " Psalm 139:18
Personally I could care less how many levels or what have you are in heaven. Just to know that God is and is with me is all I need to know.
Personally I could care less how many levels or what have you are in heaven. Just to know that God is and is with me is all I need to know.
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Detales
Guest
I’m sure that it is wonderful to have the simplicity of that kind of security engendered by simple belief. Some of us are not that fortunate. We are engendered with a curiosity that forces us to make demands of ourselves to take the risks of perception necessary to explore the bit of infinitude of this astonishing creation while we have the brief chance of this little short life on Earth.
God made this astonishing Unverse and it is His art work. For me as an artist I believe it would be a slap in the face, a refusual of an infinite gift, to not explore the glory of posssibiity inherent in the phenomenon of the world not only around us, but in us and as us. We cannot be separate from the wonders of this creation, and to know it as thoroughly as we can is to know ourselves and God as well. It says in may places, times, and many ways “Gnothi Seauton.” “Know Thyself.” This is not a frivoulous injunction.
If God is the root of creation and of conscious awareness, then I will, like a child learning to walk, make my tiny steps and take my tiny falls. I will refuse to give up my right to fail, and will stumble on the landscape of life and maybe die from my bleeding and bruises. But I will know where the rocks are, the cool grasses and the fresh ponds. I will have met sages and sabre tooth tigers and take my stripes from each. I will fall exhasted at heavens gate, laughing, whooping, crying, yelling “What a ride! Thank you, thank you, thank you.!”
I will go where I have earned to go. But I will go there in good conscience and having faced the encounter offered to me by this exhorbitantly generous gift of possibility with energy, curiosity, and a willingness to make my errors and learn from them. I will give back as best possible the gift of appreciation for the bit of infinitude that was mine to make use of and learn from.
Heaven, as I understand it, is the feeling of Unity with God. Hell is the feeling of separation. I wish to know God as His Creation as thoroughly as possible and never have to say I didn’t try when I had the chance. Will God fault me for making my best effort by my best conscience?
God made this astonishing Unverse and it is His art work. For me as an artist I believe it would be a slap in the face, a refusual of an infinite gift, to not explore the glory of posssibiity inherent in the phenomenon of the world not only around us, but in us and as us. We cannot be separate from the wonders of this creation, and to know it as thoroughly as we can is to know ourselves and God as well. It says in may places, times, and many ways “Gnothi Seauton.” “Know Thyself.” This is not a frivoulous injunction.
If God is the root of creation and of conscious awareness, then I will, like a child learning to walk, make my tiny steps and take my tiny falls. I will refuse to give up my right to fail, and will stumble on the landscape of life and maybe die from my bleeding and bruises. But I will know where the rocks are, the cool grasses and the fresh ponds. I will have met sages and sabre tooth tigers and take my stripes from each. I will fall exhasted at heavens gate, laughing, whooping, crying, yelling “What a ride! Thank you, thank you, thank you.!”
I will go where I have earned to go. But I will go there in good conscience and having faced the encounter offered to me by this exhorbitantly generous gift of possibility with energy, curiosity, and a willingness to make my errors and learn from them. I will give back as best possible the gift of appreciation for the bit of infinitude that was mine to make use of and learn from.
Heaven, as I understand it, is the feeling of Unity with God. Hell is the feeling of separation. I wish to know God as His Creation as thoroughly as possible and never have to say I didn’t try when I had the chance. Will God fault me for making my best effort by my best conscience?
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gavanhe
Guest
Just a thought about dimensions. With each increase in number of dimensions there is an order of magnitude of information. For example to think of one dimension is to think of a point in space and no further. Two dimensions allows us to roam in a flat unbounded space. Three dimensions allows us to roam in a space without boundaries, add in the fourth dimension of time and information flows at us from all directions, add in a fifth and all the way to the 11th, I cannot begin to imagine the infinite knowledge and wisdom inherent in Our Lord the creator of all these dimensions.
Cheers
Gerry
Cheers
Gerry
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JimG
Guest
Well, the physicists are still looking for a Grand Unified Theory, so if anyone wants to have a try at it, better start out as a physics major and keep trying to unify relativity and quantum theory. Physics has been pretty stagnant for the last few decades–new thinking is needed.
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yppop
Guest
Hello Nickpeter
I ended my last post on my thread: God exists, but how? With the following statement: “*The concept of parallel universes also allows us to reconcile many theological questions about salvation, the nature of heaven; why God allows evil, etc.” *
I was waiting for someone to ask about my view of Heaven, but since the question appeared on this thread first, here it is:
The Parallel Worlds Theory (PWT) comes from the Many Worlds Interpretation of the Schroedinger Wave Equation. It implies that we all exist in many if not an infinite number of possible worlds. This seems to me to be the perfect answer to the question of Heaven. When I started out in my quest to find the meaning of life twenty some years ago, I began with the premise that in order for the world to have meaning, there must be hope, and the only hope is for God to exist in order to provide the promised salvation. So I imagined what I wanted Heaven to be like. I wanted to live this life over again with the same relationships to my parents, my children, and my grandchildren. I didn’t want, for example, to be the same age as them. So when I die, I expect my soul to show up in another lifetime with the same body and the same relationships that I experienced in this one. Yes there will be time in Heaven.
In the addition, in my next lifetime, some of the regrets of the this time around will be eliminated in the next, so that with each succeeding lifetime, my life and the world would be better. Eventually, we would all live in a perfect world, Heaven, the omega point, or the Pleroma, or whatever else you might want to call it.
Heaven based on the PWT offers many ways to rationalize answers for many of the questions we all ask ourselves. We all, for example, have done things we regret. I think regret, when genuine, builds conscience. That conscience, which is part of the soul, will follow me into the next lifetime, so, if I am confronted in the next lifetime with the same choice, I will be more apt to choose the one I won’t regret. Furthermore, a good confession will guarantee that those particular regrets that are confessed will be rectified in the next lifetime. The fewer regrets I have, the more awe, peace, and joy—the rewards for accepting God’s grace—I will experience.
I hope that some of you could see the possibility of other ways to find answers to unanswered questions on the basis of a Heaven based on PWT.
Yppop
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gavanhe
Guest
Sometimes wishful thinking can lead to odd ideas. Would your parents and their parents not feel similarly as you, that is age differentials that reflected relationships in our earthly life.
Jesus never promised us this sort of outcome in heaven nor does the church teach this. All we can be assured of is a happy existence with our creator in eternity in or outside of time.
As the creed teaches us “the resurrection of the body and life everlasting”.
Rebirth or reborn in a mortal sense is not catholic teaching or belief, but rather new age belief!
Cheers
Gerry
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MelanieAnne
Guest
This is just a guess, as I am not a physicist, but perhaps we, in heaven, experience time in some way, but it doesn’t have the same meaning or value as it has here.
As an example, all those who have gone before us, and are now, we hope and pray, in Heaven, or at least on their way, perhaps they experience time differently than we do. So when your parents pass away, 40 years before you do, it seems like a long time to you before you meet them again, but for them, it’s a different time period, perhaps it seems shorter, or longer, who knows. This is all speculation of course.
I suspect that, as people that can only understand life in terms of a linear progression of time, that it would be difficult for any of us to grasp some other construct.
As an example, all those who have gone before us, and are now, we hope and pray, in Heaven, or at least on their way, perhaps they experience time differently than we do. So when your parents pass away, 40 years before you do, it seems like a long time to you before you meet them again, but for them, it’s a different time period, perhaps it seems shorter, or longer, who knows. This is all speculation of course.
I suspect that, as people that can only understand life in terms of a linear progression of time, that it would be difficult for any of us to grasp some other construct.
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tm30
Guest
My own take on this subject is that time does not exist in heaven - at least in the sense of time progression. There will only be the eternal “now”. Time measures physical movement, so, it’s hard to imagine how time could function in the non-corporeal realm. And since God is immovable (He contains all things and cannot be contained), He is thus immutable, and so, eternal. I think what we will experience in heaven will be a similitude of time, but not time, per se. I speculate that it would be an awareness or level of consciousness that replicates the passage of time through the “physical” passage of one thought to the next, but even as one experiences that passage from one thought to the next, they will have remained in a single, unending moment, in the presence of God. By these thoughts, we will also have the experience of “travel” or “movement” - a kind of bilocation that takes us anywhere in the universe in the human “past”, “present”, or “future” without ever leaving the “throne room” of God.
I also think this could be applicable to the notion of Purgatorial “time” - not so much a chronological length of time - but a repetition of thoughts and exposures to past actions that will certainly feel lengthy (or not, depending on the state of your soul), but in actuality, not move from the instant of death, nor, even more mysteriously, from the instant of entry into heaven. Yet the soul will still experience a similitude of time passage through the painful progression of thoughts - a sequential “time” - as one other poster put it - until the purification is complete and the soul is rid of it’s earthly attachments.
I also think this could be applicable to the notion of Purgatorial “time” - not so much a chronological length of time - but a repetition of thoughts and exposures to past actions that will certainly feel lengthy (or not, depending on the state of your soul), but in actuality, not move from the instant of death, nor, even more mysteriously, from the instant of entry into heaven. Yet the soul will still experience a similitude of time passage through the painful progression of thoughts - a sequential “time” - as one other poster put it - until the purification is complete and the soul is rid of it’s earthly attachments.
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Detales
Guest
th30, Good post. I believe yours is very useful direction to go in with your evaluation of the question. Most on here, however, don’t seem to realize that that whole area has been pretty clearly explicated for a long time, and in a far less complex manner than the convoluted and self contrdicting manner of the christianists. Heck, *that *whole dynamic has been clarified as well, and yet we still see religionists, politicicsts, scientists, atheists, etc, still positing incomplete and misleading theories. I do not believe that such would happen on a hypothetical civilized planet. Maybe Heinlein was right (and Gandhi) in that the first human civilization is yet to come, circa 2500? Unfortunately, he was too early on the correct predictions he has made so far. If we ever grow up as a race and understand the timlessness you allude to, we might be “watching” from that unexamined perspective. Bon chance!
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tm30
Guest
An additional perspective, from Thomas Aquinas:
books.google.com/books?id=Jt0EAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA2-PA9&output=text
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Detales
Guest
Yes, if you know Aquinas, you will recall that at one point he stopped writing, saying it was “all as straw.” Yet we concentrate on his writings instead of that one, final, iconoclastic revalation. I sense that he entered that state of timelssness you speak of, and became on of those excptionally rare individulas who are written about hwo can balance "heavan: and “Earht” in one state of awareness. This is the rarest kind of human being.
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JDaniel
Guest
Interestingly enough, what I was taught in religion/catechism class was that upon becoming an angel, one would “instantly be infused with all of the knowledge of the universe.” Now, this did not mean, all of the knowledge about the universe, but rather, all of the knowledge there is. If that is so, then we can’t grow, or, change, in knowledge in Heaven. So, there could neither be a sequence to gaining knowledge, nor, a time-line for gaining it.
Local motion, on the other hand, would seem to be strictly a property of mundane things, not angels. However, as I have heard nothing regarding local motion as it relates to heavenly entities, I may be wrong in surmising that there can be no local motion in Heaven.
A further item of interest is that nothing was ever said about other metaphysical forms, such as souls in Purgatory, or, Hell. What are your thoughts on all of this?
I have also heard that we, once created, participate in one-half of eternity, rather than all of it. Only God participates in all of eternity. The concept of “half of eternity” is an interesting one, don’t you think?
I don’t know if you are correct. God could simply re-constitute us with our original form, which I would think might be the case - especially considering that our original bodies would probably not look very good after years of decay.
jd
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yppop
Guest
Hello Gavanhe,
In searching for the meaning of life, I developed a model to explain how God might be present in what we experience as reality. (thread: God exists, but How?) In addition to searching for the meaning of life, my motivation for investing as much time as I have in the last twenty-some years, was to find answers that my grandchildren could use in arguments with non-believers.
Non-believers come in three flavors: cynic, skeptic, and materialist. The cynic believes that God doesn’t exist because the presence of evil and suffering argues against a benevolent supreme being. The skeptic believes that God doesn’t exist because there is no proof. The materialist believes that God doesn’t exist because matter alone defines reality and since the laws of physics define matter, there is no reason to invoke a supernatural agency. There are strong arguments supporting each of the positions of non-belief. Of the three, materialism presents the most vociferous and powerful argument against the existence of God, primarily because it is based on the success of science. Consequently, I developed a model of dual reality that describes how God might exist at a deeper reality than the reality science describes and argues that all matter has a spiritual component.
To answer the cynic and the skeptic I called on the scientific theory of parallel worlds (universes) to create answers to some of the most difficult questions that are not normally answered by theology in a way that a cynic or skeptic would accept, hence my view of the nature of heaven. Yes it might be wishful thinking, but wishful thinking is the seed of hope and hope is a Christian virtue.
My parents never gave Heaven (or Hell) a thought. Of course, Jesus never described nor the church taught such an outcome. Parallel world theory is, and certainly was, not common knowledge and most of those that ascribe to it are in the non-believer camp and if such persons realized that it could be used in a religious sense, it would die a quick scientific death.
Personally I can imagine only one happy existence and that is the one I am living right now. The idea of multiple lifetimes is not so much for my benefit as for those that haven’t found the joy, awe, and peace that I have and I would like to think that they could have another shot at it. For example, I would hope that in a subsequent lifetime the child born with spinal bifida or those with any number of other maladies would be born with the same body but without the malady. Being reborn into the same body I believe is called resurrection; be reborn in a different human or non-human body is called reincarnation. Since I begin my prayers each morning with the Apostle’ Creed I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. And that, of course, is a Catholic teaching and not “new age”.
I am a devout Catholic, and if I thought anything I wrote or write is in error, I would immediately renounce it. I have not been prompt in answering your post because it encouraged me to go back and read Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter, “Fides Et Ratio” on the relationship between faith and reason. I only got halfway through before my eyes glazed over, but I found nothing in what I read that would give me pause about what I think, in fact, there is a lot of encouragement in that document for individuals to think and reason as long as it gives precedence to faith. Here are just three of the many quotes I gathered:
- “The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.” This is to say that with the light of reason human beings can know which path to take, but they can follow that path to its end, quickly and unhindered, only if with a rightly tuned spirit they search for it within the horizon of faith. Therefore, reason and faith cannot be separated without diminishing the capacity of men and women to know themselves, the world and God in an appropriate way.”
- Although each individual has a right to be respected in his own journey in search of the truth, there exists a prior moral obligation, and a grave one at that, to seek the truth and to adhere to it once it is known”.
- Moreover, the first absolutely certain truth of our life, beyond the fact that we exist, is the inevitability of our death. Given this unsettling fact, the search for a full answer is inescapable. Each of us has both the desire and the duty to know the truth of our own destiny. We want to know if death will be the definitive end of our life or if there is something beyond—if it is possible to hope for an after-life or not.
Yppop
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RosaryFan
Guest
I don’t think time exists in Heaven. My reasoning is because the angels are either with God or against Him and have no opportunity to fall again or repent if they’re fallen. For instance, satan doesn’t have the opportunity to repent and be saved. He made his decision to go against God once and for all.
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