Remembering the Future

Remembering what? The future you say? Are you daft man? ....Yes, remembering the future is the thesis of my recent studies.  In an uncanny way, my interest has been focused on randomness, the Arrow of Time, particle physics, casting lots, prophecy, cellular biology, brain function, astrophysics, the lottery, a little parapsychology and last but not least, Christian theology.  It has been a dizzy ride spanning decades, punctuated by life's crossroads, but always returning to the next question.  It seems everyday something new comes to my attention that is relevant to... I haven't quite grasped that yet to be honest.  But here is partly what I have so far.

We are designed not only to perceive memories but also the future.  Recent brain research has discovered the same brain functions used in our memories is also used in imagining the future.  The "hard" sciences try to grasp, as well as it can, the future through probabilities.  They can get you in the right neighborhood and even have computer models for weather that are accurate out to 12 days or so.   But, they can't literally "see" the future like the prophecy that is found in scriptures, but rather give you a number.  You can make pretty impressive charts from these numbers, but that isn't literally the future your looking at, it's just a guess.   A guess based upon the past, or those law-like things we can find in the past.  If the future holds something new and seemingly disconnected to any law we can identify today, then you are outside the help of science.  The future is real though as we all find out every moment of the days of our lives.  Time, in the end, is a perception more than a "thing".   Although it is treated as a dimension in physics, it's true nature is still a mystery.

I believe that the future has already happened.  With Relativity, we know time is fluid and the point of reference depends on your location within a gravity field or your speed relative to something else.  The faster you go, the more everything else speeds past you into the future. The very fact that time can be slowed to a crawl in an intense gravity field or traveling near the speed of light shows that the future is no different than the present or past in nature.

Prophecy, interestingly, is often written in the past tense in scripture.  We know the past is fixed, although knowledge entropies over time and becomes much like the mystery of the future given enough... time.  Therefore, the future must be fixed also.  If your one that doesn't believe in scripture or prophecy, that doesn't matter.  Truth is true whether you believe it or not.  We add or take away nothing by our knowledge or ignorance of it. Why then the fuzzy, random nature of the future?  Or is it just a perception that it is random and "fuzzy"?

Consider Ecclesiastes 1:9-11  "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after. "

I can hear you protest, "but that isn't what Solomon meant, that time is fixed and repeats itself..."  That is exactly what he meant.  Time, history, future or however you conceive it, is already finished. Interesting isn't it that our brains are wired to treat the past and the future the same?  Solomon wasn't a brain scientist, but he knew this already.  More on this hopefully later.

Update: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/timelike-entanglement/

Update: Time is an illusion?