Which theory of time is the most evidence-based?
Which theory of time is the most evidence-based?
Presentism: This theory posits that only the present moment is real, and the past and future are simply constructs of human consciousness. According to presentism, the past no longer exists, and the future has not yet occurred.
Eternalism/Block Universe Theory: This theory suggests that all moments in time, past, present, and future, exist simultaneously. Time is viewed as a sort of block, where every event that has ever occurred or will occur already exists, similar to how all the frames of a movie exist on a film strip.
Growing Block Universe: This theory is similar to the block universe theory but adds the idea that time is "growing" or expanding as new events come into existence. The past and present exist, but the future does not yet exist.
The Block Time Theory/Moving Spotlight: A variant of eternalism, this theory suggests that time is a dimension similar to space, and just as we can move through space in any direction, we can also move through time.
Transactional Interpretation: In quantum mechanics, this theory suggests that the past, present, and future are all interconnected, and events in the future can influence events in the past.
Presentism: This theory posits that only the present moment is real, and the past and future are simply constructs of human consciousness. According to presentism, the past no longer exists, and the future has not yet occurred.
Eternalism/Block Universe Theory: This theory suggests that all moments in time, past, present, and future, exist simultaneously. Time is viewed as a sort of block, where every event that has ever occurred or will occur already exists, similar to how all the frames of a movie exist on a film strip.
Growing Block Universe: This theory is similar to the block universe theory but adds the idea that time is "growing" or expanding as new events come into existence. The past and present exist, but the future does not yet exist.
The Block Time Theory/Moving Spotlight: A variant of eternalism, this theory suggests that time is a dimension similar to space, and just as we can move through space in any direction, we can also move through time.
Transactional Interpretation: In quantum mechanics, this theory suggests that the past, present, and future are all interconnected, and events in the future can influence events in the past.
Comments (83)
On the surface, they all make the exact same predictions, so from that standpoint, there is zero empirical evidence one way or another.
Some of the views conflict with other philosophical assumptions (free will being probably the biggest one), so one might choose a compatible view so one doesn't need to challenge other beliefs.
You have not represented the views well. Eternalism does not posit that all events exist simultaneously, which means at the same time. The events all exist with equal ontology, but they have frame dependent time coordinates that are not all the same, so they're not 'simultaneous'. For instance, any time-like separated pair of events is objectively ordered 'this one, then that one'. They can not be simultaneous or ordered the other way around.
Block Time theory as distinct from eternalism? Something you move through? That sounds like a different name for moving spotlight, so perhaps I withdraw my initial comment. It's a dualistic epiphenomenal view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)
This interpretation seems to me both the most evidence-based and consistent with human experience.
I agree with you. If the past still exists, why can't we visit it and change it?
Because it's the only one that allows relativity of simultaneity, something that derives directly from the premises of special relativity. Black holes don't exist except in eternalism and moving spotlight, and the latter is kind of a solipsistic view.
None of them are theories. They're all interpretations, and being interpretations, they cannot have empirical evidence.
Quoting Truth SeekerYou can visit it. If you look at last year, you'll find yourself there. Of course the same goes for 2025, except that a view of that is not available in 2024.
Quoting 180 Proof
You acknowlege that they're interpretations, which is means there cannot be evidence. Perhaps you feel otherwise. I know at least one that does, and cannot conceive of any other view.
Any presentist model (they all are except eternalism) is more consistent with biological intuition since an assumption of such is extremely advantageous for being fit. So it's built into living things at a very fundamental level. But that doesn't make it true.
I have seen photos of black holes online - doesn't that prove they exist? Why would they only exist in eternalism and moving spotlight? I don't understand. Please explain. Thank you.
Quoting noAxioms
How do I visit last year?
The one presentist interpretation of relativity that I know about (an alternate theory that denies all the postulates of SR) calls them frozen stars because all the matter piles up around where Einstein would put the event horizon. Nothing can fall in in finite time, and the black hole will evaporate before the matter does, so no black hole.
That makes for an interesting way to prove to yourself that presentism is true or not, similar to a way to prove an afterlife. You fall into a large black hole. If you find yourself in there unharmed as Einstein suggests, then all forms of presentism are false. Problem is, just like the afterlife test, you cannot report your findings to the rest of the universe.
Moving spotlight allows them because there isn't a present time, only a present event (a single point in all of spacetime), and that point can be inside a black hole, so there's no contradiction. The other views posit a present moment in the universe, and no foliation of spacetime covers all events, so there are places (black holes) that cannot exist since the present will never get to them.
You're already there.
We do it all the time the "visits and changes" are our memories.
Also, all the starlight that reaches Earth is years-to-millennia millennia old and would require us to travel faster-than-light (backwards in time according to Einstein's GR) in order to reach those past stars.
Some reasons why a "Block Time Theory" doesn't make as much sense to me as the "Growing Block Universe".
A problem I see here is what would we call evidence to either confirm or deny one of these theories. What would that look like? When I go back to change something existing in the past, when I get there, am I changing something which is presently in front me that is supposedly in the past. Is this evidence of presentism or block theory?
It seems this idea of going back to change edges in being nonsense.
I am in the present continuously, not in the past. I am living the 12th of May 2024 today, not some day in 2023. What you said doesn't make any sense to me.
I am not talking about our memories. I am talking about physically visiting another point in the past and changing events e.g. going back in time and preventing the murder of John Lennon. Can we do that? If so, how do we do that?
Like I said in my previous post ...
Quoting 180 Proof
:nerd:
Well, I suspect that that sort of 'temporal change' would branch-off into another timeline (i.e. 'parallel' version of this universe) in which JL lived at least one more day ... but in y/our native (original) timeline JL would still have been murdered.
Perhaps the same could be said about space. In a similar way to Presentism, it could be said that only the space that I exist in is real, and any space outside is simply a construct of my consciousness.
This approach has the advantage of treating space and time as two aspects of the same thing, ie, space-time.
Perhaps any theory of time is dependent upon a prior theory of space-time.
OK, you are a presentist then. Under raw presentism, the past doesn't exist, and you can't 'change' what is nonexistent.
The eternalist view there is no 'the present' or 'the past'. There is a worldline that is 'you' and that worldline is as much a part of 2023 as it is 2024 or 2025. 2024 is not special in any regard. Hence my comment that 'you're already there', It was an eternalist statement, not a statement that makes sense given your interpretation of choice.
Under moving spotlight and growing block, you have a worldline very much like eternalism. You are there in 2023 as well as in the present. Your assertion above indicates that you don't buy into any of these worldline views.
Holding a strong belief in one of the options is just fine. But you can't critique the others if you don't understand them.
Quoting Richard B
Much of this topic seems to have revolved around the concept of 'time travel', which is defined differently from one interpretation to the next. In presentism, there is no past to go to. Under growing block, if you go to a place that isn't the present, how can you 'do' anything since you are no longer at the present? Do you bring the present with you? Such travel is very incoherent in growing block.
Under eternalism, time travel is any worldline that doesn't progress into its own future light cone.
Under any interpretation, time travel seems to be a state where the object is in a state that is causally a function of subsequent events: People having memories of future events for example. This is impossible under classical physics, so discussion of it will not yield any "evidence" about which interpretation is more likely.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Classical physics does not allow reverse causality. No physics allows non-local information transfer, and saving John would very much constitute non-local information transfer.
Quoting 180 ProofCase in point. No known physics supports that. It again would constitute non-local information transfer. The branching is allowed under some interpretations of QM. The cause of it coming from subsequent events is not.
Quoting Joshs
The phenomenological experience of time is identical for every interpretation. That's why they're called interpretations.
Quoting noAxioms
By phenomenological I meant phenomenological
philosophy ( Husserl, Mwrleau-Ponty.) This does not mean mere introspection, but a method of
reflection on experience that brings out structures unavailable to empirical third person models.
I looked up the SEP article on this, and I don't think I used the term incorrectly. It doesn't seem to presume any particular interpretation of mind. It says:
"In its root meaning, then, phenomenology is the study of phenomena: literally, appearances as opposed to reality."
This is what I am talking about. The phenomenal experience of say a person does not vary depending on which interpretation of time is 'reality'. The experience is the same, and has to be, else there very much would be an empirical test to falsify some of them.
That said, I do realize that some interpretations of mind are incompatible with some interpretations of time. Perhaps this is where you are coming from. My description of one of the interpretations of time conflicts with your beliefs about the nature of mind. That doesn't disprove anybody's view of either.
Quoting Truth SeekerI already acknowledged your stated opinion in this matter.
SEP says otherwise, but I agree here. What most people think of as time travel is impossible. SEP for instance considers time dilation to be time travel, meaning all of us do it just by crossing the street and back. I disagree with this qualifying as much as you probably do.
Quoting Truth Seeker
They're all interpretations. By definition you can't know this. Only one view (spotlight) says the future exists, and its proponents cannot run a test to confirm the premise.
Can you say some more in simple terms about what this might be? Do you mean that time is also an aspect of consciousness and therefore located in our cognitive apparatus (but that may be closer to Kant?).
This bit about 'evidence' below interested me:
Quoting Joshs
Quoting noAxioms
The definition you found refers to the ordinary conception of phenomenological. What I had in mind is a specific meaning of phenomenology unique to philosophers like Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. This IEP snippet may give you a sense of what I mean:
Relativity does give a strong suggestion, but it is going too far to assert full incompatibility.
The two premises of SR is where the trouble is. I googled "premises of special relativity"
PBS came up first: "the same laws of physics hold true in all inertial reference frames and that the speed of light is the same for all observers"
This suggests a metaphysical assumption. If the laws actually are frame independent, then presentism is wrong since it requires a preferred frame.
But if the same two premises are more loosely worded, then presentism works:
The same laws of physics appear to hold true in all inertial reference frames and that the speed of light appears the same for all observers.
Now it's about appearances, about empirical evidence, about science, not philosophy. This is fully compatible with presentism since all it says is that there may be a preferred frame, but there's no way to figure out which one. The one-way speed of light is not c in any frame but the preferred one, but there's no way to measure the one-way speed of light.
The rest of the theory is unaltered since the only difference between the interpretations of time is that eternalism assigns identical ontology to all spacetime events and presentism assigns different ontology to them (each getting one of four values). None of relativity theory rests on the ontology assignment given by some abstract theory, so there is no incompatibility with relativity theory.
I have found fault with any posted falsification of presentism or eternalism, and I've seen plenty of both.
Quoting Tom Storm
There are three kinds of time, and those that ask "what is time" never seem to realize it.
1) Proper time. This one is very much physical and real, and is what a clock measures. Proper time is frame invariant.
2) Coordinate time: This one is the abstract assignment of time coordinates to spacetime events and is thus very frame dependent. A calendar is a decent example of one.
3) Phenomenological time, which is the phenomenological experience of the advancement of the present. It is part of consciousness, yes, but also part of pretty much any system that interacts with its environment in real time, but the word phenomenological only seems to apply to the conscious cases. This one seems to be frame independent, and the various interpretations of time differ as to whether the phenomenon corresponds to any physical noumenon.
Quoting Joshs
I read it all, and while I think it fairly clearly conveys what the common sense view is, it then declares itself to not be that, and what it is (the last paragraph) kind of lost me. I could not, from that, summarize what Husserl is trying to get at.
Quoting noAxioms
Quoting Tom Storm
Maybe this from Dan Zahavi will help:
You have accidentally quoted @Michael as me.
Quoting noAxioms
I am not asking what is time, I was specifically interested in @Joshs comment about phenomenology and time.
Seems complicated. Thanks.
This seems to be the nub of it.
Interesting. I never thought about music in such terms before but it is fascinating that we can experience and make sense of a melody or a recurring motif and counterpoint in a composition. Our awareness may not be located in the present.
[quote=Zahavi] The universe is said to have existed for many billions of years.[/quote]That comment (the verb 'exist for', not to mention the tense, implies a universe contained by time. Physicist probably say this all the time, but accepted physics doesn't word it that way. Most people don't reach for B series speak except for explicit need. But the prevalence of A-series in common language goes a long way toward reinforcing the A view.
So are we going to say "the temporal size of the universe is bounded only on one side, and fuzzily bounded on the other"? Who wants to hear that?
All this commentary of mine seems irrelevant to why you posted this.
OK, but none of this seems revolutionary. Yes, being conscious of what has just been is what short term memory is for. Being conscious of what is about to occur is the ability to predict, a critical ability if one is to be more fit. The quote calls it imagination, not memory. 'Imagination' probably better describes the predicting end and not so much the direct perception of temporal objects. I suppose imagination is a term that can be used to describe the recall of some immediate memory.
I see a reported conflict between the Brentano view and Husseri's, or rather I don't see a conflict. The seem to be slightly different words for the exact same thing, a difference being at a level that, well, seems irrelevant at least to this topic.
Also, there is no perception of a punctual 'now'. There is process to be had, which delays it a fraction of a second, give or take. Anything perceived is already past.
Good example. I don't see the difference between the 'this' and the 'not that'. It seems like being nitpicky about the words to describe the psychological experience of temporal things. None of the article seems to in any way be relevant to this experience being different from one interpretation of time vs another, which is why I thought the topic was brought up.
Quoting Tom StormSo I have. Fixed, sort of. Sorry about that.
You seem to get what Josh is conveying more than I. All I see is different words that don't really contract each other. I agree with both sides, and that's probably wrong in some way.
I think that is vastly overstating the case. Often, a Newtonian version of presentism is hauled out as a strawman to make this case, but there is nothing in modern physics that precludes local becoming.
Richard T. W. Arthur has a great book on this topic called "The Reality of Time Flow: Local Becoming in Modern Physics." It does a very good job explaining how the debate is largely grounded in philosophy, not "science."
The preference for eternalism itself is partly the result of historical accident and positive feedback loops. Many physicists became convinced of eternalism based on philosophical arguments. Some of these were not good, particularly bad interpretations of the Twin Paradox were quite influential. This led to many physicists teaching and repeating these arguments in their books. For instance, Paul Davies, who is a favorite of mine, nonetheless uses one of the deeply flawed versions of the Twin Paradox to argue that eternalism "is what science says must be true," in one of his books. Then, because physicists wrote this sort of things in books, and analytical philosophy has had a tendency to preference to statements of scientists, you get philosophers pointing to arguments grounded in philosophy that have been repeated by scientists and saying "see, this is what the scientists say, it's not your role to disagree."
Russell's push for presentism, which is tied up in his whole agenda, was another influential thread. But his arguments on the elimination of cause have essentially been rejected, even by those who consider themselves "neo-Russelleans" who want to salvage some of his insights. And yet arguments from that period still tend to haunt physics.
I am not even sure how this is a question that could be empirically resolved.
At any rate, it does seem to affect how science is done. For example, because eternalism is popular, there is this tendency to think that physics MUST be time reversible, since that has become an argument for the position. But currently, it doesn't seem to be. The discovery of the Higgs boson overshadowed a major breakthrough showing asymmetry back in the 2010s. And of course, physics isn't at all reversible at macro scales. Nor is decoherence and collapse reversible. So, eternalism, at least of the variety that relies on arguments from "the time symmetry of physics," also seems to require picking specific theories in quantum foundations and ruling out others, even though they all produce empirically identical results. If collapse actually happens, it appears to define the directionality of time in one of the most profound ways imaginable.
In favour of eternalism there's the relativity of simultaneity and the RietdijkPutnam argument.
Yes, these are all dealt with in detail in the book I mentioned. Wheeler's stuff on "many fingered time," and retrocausality would be another relevant avenue. Objections related to these arguments can all be made consistent with local becoming. In particular, the Andromeda Paradox is a weak argument for eternalism and fits fine with local becoming.
One of the fun things about Arthur's book is that it shows how Gödel and Robb anticipated a lot of these later arguments, but ultimately rejected them (not unlike how Aquinas toys with the ideas of Locke and Berkeley). For Gödel, and I'm inclined to agree with him, the idea of every moment existing "all together," makes the very thing we're trying to explain incoherent to us. Events exist exactly where and [I]when[/I] they occur and nowhere else. To ask if the future "already exists," is to have already abstracted yourself out of the manifold, such that you are no longer at a specific where and when [I]within[/I] it. Whether or not the future is "already contained" in the present or not, is of course a different question, one of determinism, and there isn't a clear answer on that one either since different interpretations of quantum mechanics will have different things to say to us about this.
If becoming is local, as it seems it must be if it exists at all, then it seems obvious that light from the same location will reach different locations at different times, causing disparate effects on what seems "simultaneous." This is no problem.
Gisin makes an interesting argument that the preference for eternalism in physics is grounded in the Platonist assumptions in mathematics in Einstein's day. He has some interesting ideas about intuitionist mathematics being a better model for the sort of indeterminacy we actually see in physics, that, at first glance, would seem to flow well with local becoming.
The language and metaphor that we use to talk about the concept(s) of time is multifaceted coming from all parts of one's personal experiences incorporating our most deeply held phenomenological biases. Visual experiences motivate the idea of thinking of time as similar to a film strip in that there is an already existent future waiting to be projected while the past has long since been done away with (spot-light view of time). That or we think of time as similar in nature to a substance that has a beginning and end to itself without any change except the illusory irrelevant scanning of our eyes across the length of such a block (the block view of time). Then our own experiences involving cultural biases seem to motivate other philosophies of time such as the growing block from talk of the past as already having happened (it being 'behind' us) while leaving the future unwritten.
I'm fearful that this implies that the choice of one's language is then not a matter of ontology but pragmatic, aesthetic, choice depending on your intentions as to what you desire to do with it. Block theories of time are favored by those of mathematical bents because they allow us to freeze the world into determinate, precise, states to record down mathematical relations among the curves within it. While esoteric philosophies emphasizing the irreducibility of the language of change or who talk about 'rivers of time' rather than film strips will be favored among those closest to Human experience.
I don't understand what you mean. Please explain how time is negative.
I have never related to time. In what way do you relate to time?
I agree that I can measure how much time it takes to do something but how is that negative? 10 seconds is just an amount of time.
There's also the view according to those like Rovelli who believe in neither presentism or eternalism (as described in his aptly named Neither Presentism nor Eternalism) which rejects the concept of global simultaneity while also affirming temporal becoming as fundamental. I'm actually partial to that idea and it seems like the view that most aligns with what we understand about physics (particularly relativity). I think other physicists mentioned here like RTW Arthur also subscribe to the same idea so it's not particularly new either.
There are some who seem to argue that because the relativity of simultaneity runs counter to the concept of a global time which presentism relies on then a version of eternalism as you've described it must be true, though honestly I think that's a bit of a stretch. Relativity certainly does show that there isn't a global time (assuming we don't introduce a hidden one ourselves arbitrarily) but it doesn't show that time is just another dimension of space. Of course some have suggested that some other form of eternalism is supported by relativity, one where all times "exist equally", but I don't really have an idea what that could mean. There's actually a whole problem in the philosophy of time behind it called the triviality problem which I won't go into here but does suggest that the presentists and eternalists may be talking over each other for the past several decades.
Block theories of time, which posit that past, present, and future exist simultaneously as an unchanging 4-dimensional block, serve as useful conceptual models. However, they may not accurately depict time's fundamental metaphysical reality. The only objective reality, in my view, is the ever-changing present moment. Our sense of the past stems from memory representations, and similarly, our notion of the future arises from imaginative faculties extrapolating potential states based on current knowledge, without objective existence until actualized.
The apparent persistence of past and future is an illusion created by the continuity of conscious experience. As conceived, the past and future are mental reconstructions and projections rather than objectively existing realms within reality's fabric.
Essentially, while valuable conceptual tools, block theories may reflect human cognitive tendencies to construct temporal narratives more than time's underlying metaphysical nature.
a) That would be tampering with the evidence and divine justice forbids.
b) we don't have the time, because we are always busy being present.
Quoting Truth Seeker
Whatever is evident is given as the present; this can include present memory of the past and, allegedly, the more rare foretelling of prophecy. That is all the evidence.
I think the ever-changing present moment is a subjective reality because this is what we experience, nanosecond by nanosecond. How can this be objective?
What divine justice? How do you know that there is a "divine justice"? What about everything that has ever happened is just?
While our conscious experience of the present moment is inherently subjective, there exists an objective present reality that underlies and gives rise to these subjective experiences. The objective present encompasses the totality of all physical states and interactions occurring in the universe at any given instant, governed by the laws of physics. In contrast, the subjective present refers to the physiological states and interactions within an individual, governed by biological and psychological laws.
This objective present reality exists independently of any observer's perception. Objectivity implies the ability for multiple observers to independently verify phenomena, despite subjective means of perception. Phenomena like the passage of time, existence of space, and presence of matter are considered objective, as they can be independently verified.
Compared to block theories of time positing the simultaneous existence of past, present, and future, the concept of an objective present reality underlying subjective experiences is more parsimonious and aligned with our lived experiences. It acknowledges the objective reality of the present while recognizing the inherently subjective nature of conscious experiences, without requiring the metaphysical assumption of a pre-existing block of spacetime containing all temporal moments.
Divine justice is usually conceived as tautological. Think "I made the world and I make the rules, so I can do what I like." Tautologies, of course, do not require evidence; whatever happens in the world is evidence of Divine justice. You, for example, will probably come to a bad end for asking such an impertinent question. Or, if Divine justice is tempered with Divine mercy, you may be forgiven. This is the great thing about God, it explains everything, and by looking at creation one can discern His character. It is so useful to any thinker who, when asked impossible questions can happily respond "God knows!"
Sounds like faith, rather than fact. How can the abundance of suffering, inequality, injustice, and death in the world be considered just? I think all the Gods are either imaginary and evil or real and evil. I am an agnostic because I can't know for sure.
Sounds like faith. :naughty:
Sorry, I have been winding you up. It was not a serious comment in the first place, I was just amused by your religious phobia.
It's not faith - just circumstances. No apology is needed. I don't have a religious phobia.
Every species came into existence as a result of genetic mistakes. We are all mistakes of nature. It explains our flawed biology and the fact that 99.9% of all the species to evolve so far on Earth are already extinct.
Quoting ChatGPT 3.5:
You do recognise that this is strictly nonsensical. don't you? There can be no mistake unless there is a plan. :scream:
Yes, there can be mistakes when copying genes. When a gene is copied correctly, there is no mistake. When it is copied incorrectly, there is a mistake.
"Exactly", I will allow, but "correctly" implies that the gene was "correct" in the first place, which by hypothesis it never was.
Flaws imply design. You might want to put that to your mechanical chat-buddy, which appears to have a few design flaws of its own.
No, it doesn't imply anything. It simply means that a sequence such as ATCG was copied by mistake as ACCG or ATTG, etc.
Evolution relies on what you call 'mistakes' as you well enough know. And the rate of copying 'mistakes' evolves itself because 'error correcting genes' are also a thing. Thus 'mistakes' or as I like to call them 'variations' are more common in some parts of the genome than others.
I agree. The point I am making is that we are not intelligently designed by an all-knowing and all-powerful God or Gods.
If so then @unenlightened's point stands: there can be no mistakes when copying genes since we are not intelligently designed by a God or a team of Gods.
I disagree. When a gene is copied correctly, there is no mistake. When it is copied incorrectly, there is a mistake.
How do we know that? How do we know that without divine/simulation intervention, there would be ten times as many car crashes a day, but god/simulation designers are constantly intervening in an unnoticeable way? Once theism or simulation theory is taken seriously, we really can't say that evolution is not being directed.
Did you not read about all the design flaws in organisms and the extinction of 99.9% of all the species to exist on Earth so far? Why would all-knowing and all-powerful God or Gods create flawed organisms? Why didn't all-knowing and all-powerful God or Gods prevent all suffering, inequality, injustice, and death? Why not make all living things nonconsumers instead of making some autotrophs, some herbivores, some carnivores, some omnivores and some parasites? It's possible that there is/are one or more evil Gods and he/she/it/they made flawed organisms and caused suffering, inequality, injustice, and death because he/she/it/they are evil.
If god(s) did what you suggest, it might become obvious that the world is god-made. Perhaps the gods like the world to appear natural. The existence of organisms without flaws would give the game away, so to speak. And none of what you said applies to simulation creators/designers.
Have read the thread and that's somewhat why I say the above.
I would say the present and future exist simultaneously or rather, the future is necessarily co-existing with the present. And this is evidenced by certain conditions in the universe that must-exist-in-order-for-the-present to exist but which also would require some time in the future to decay, thereby ensuring that some future will exist also. The law of mass conservation ensures the future, for example.
I wish you've created a poll in your OP.
I have granted your wish! I have edited the original post to include a poll.
Are you agnostic about Simulation Theory? Bostrom claims it's more likely than not we're in a simulation. Evolution in a simulation is, by definition, an intelligently designed process.
Thank you, Master. Now I have two more!
Yes, I am also agnostic about the Simulation Hypothesis as it is not possible to test this hypothesis.
How is doing what I like the same as justice?
I recommend that you read: https://www.evilbible.com and watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk3V0Qi8W30 Thank you.
Quoting Truth Seeker
My garden - my rules. Slugs and caterpillars are sent to hell, and philosophers get fresh vegetables in due season. When you make a universe, you get to set the rules. You don't let your creation boss you about.
I didn't proselytise. I responded to what you said. The word proselytise means "to induce someone to convert to one's faith" - that clearly is not what I did. I offered you information relevant to your statement - that is all. I take the Bible very seriously because it has had and continues to have serious effects on billions of lives. It has altered the course of human history for both better and worse. It has been and continues to be the most influential book on Earth.
Quoting unenlightened
That's not justice. That's a tyranny without any ethical principles that underpin justice.
No you didn't. I didn't reference the Bible, you did. You responded to a dog whistle like a fanatic because I made a joke that involved the word "God". Other religions are available.
Quoting Truth Seeker Of course it is. IF God made you, he fucking owns you. Go talk to your breakfast about justice and convince it it wants to be eaten.
You said "divine justice". Since 31% of humans alive in 2010 identified as Christians, I brought up the Bible. We don't have religious population data for 2024 or else I would have quoted it. Once we have examined the Bible for divine justice, we can examine the Quran for divine justice as Muslims formed 23% of the human population in 2010. Once we have examined the Quran for divine justice we can examine the holy books of Hinduism for divine justice as 15% of the human population in 2010 were Hindus. We can keep going like this until we have have covered all the Gods of all the religions in the present and the past.
Quoting unenlightened
I am a vegan and have been so for 18 years. I was a vegetarian before I became a vegan. I don't eat sentient beings. I want to be a total nonconsumer. If I could have genetically engineered myself to live without air, water, food and sunlight, I would have done so many years ago and would have offered it to others for free.
God or Gods can't own living things. Living things have intrinsic rights that God or Gods can't take away. Yes, if the Biblical God is real, then the Biblical God is able to kill living things but that makes the Biblical God evil, not just.
Gooder than God. :lol:
I'm sorry. I already said that, but I hadn't realised your total fragility. Just ignore me, and I'll do likewise.
What do you mean by my "total fragility"? Vegans are strong and ethical. We are not fragile. What about examining "divine justice"? Might is right is wrong.