Yes

by Daniel Relph

Created on: January 16, 2010

This might surprise some of you down-to-earth people, but yes, non-temporal things are real. Many people think that non-temporal things are things like ghosts or spirits. It is hard to prove these things exist, but there are other non-temporal things we know exist. The big problem with this question is we must take the time to define two words “Real” and “Non-temporal.”

Real – Things that exist. This can be tested by asking the question, can the thing affect other things? Can you touch it? Can you trip over it? Can it affect you or can you affect it? Can you sense it in anyway? Is it a part of your existence? If the answer to any of these questions is, yes, then it is real. Non-temporal – Things that are ruled by time are temporal things; therefore, non-temporal things are things outside of the realm of time.

According to modern scientist the whole universe is held together by the “Time Space Continuum.” Our common way of defining things comes from a three dimensional point of view. When we look at time we ask the question, when did this thing come into existence? Where and what was it before it existed? We might look at an Egyptian column and ask. How old is it. The answer might be three thousand years ago it was quarried from a rock formation. That rock formation was formed 200 million years ago by an ancient sea. The sea might have been formed one billion years ago by tectonic forces on the Earth and the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago. So, in the traditional way all things have an age. There is a broader view; we’re only looking at that column from our perspective on the Time Space Continuum and omitting the fourth dimension of time. Time itself is a variable in the Space Time Continuum frame work.

This position is not new and was brought to light in Genesis where God created the Universe. Everything must come from something, except something that always was and always will be. This something was defined in Genesis as God. The Bible further defines God as knowing all things; this includes the future as well as the past. The Bible defines God as being independent of time. Therefore, if you believe in Judeo - Christian God, you believe in something that is non-temporal.

But not all of us believe in God. You may be like Stephen Hawking, an atheist. Stephen Hawking has spent a lot of time trying to mathematically describe the “Big Bang” theory. According to this theory before the “Big Bang” there was no Space Time Continuum. Nodes in the multi-dimensional universe spawned the Big Bang that created the Universe as we know it and the Space Time Continuum came into existence. There was nothing that can be described as time before the Big Bang.  If you believe in the Big Bang theory, you believe in non-temporal things.

A more down to Earth example would be light. We all know that light is real. Physicists describe light as wave of energy; and an emission of particles called photons. For this to happen the photon doesn’t exist all the time as it travel through the universe. It advances in quantum increments. What happens between these quantum steps is outside of temporal conditions. It is like a car moving down the road and instead of advancing continuously with time, it jumps in hundred foot increments; the car is motionless when we sense it and it would stay in place for a period of time, but between jumps there would be no time passing as it jumps to the next position. We generally visualize movement as a continual process as time passes. That only happens in a temporal world. If that were to happen the car would pass into and out of the temporal existence just like a photon. The movement of photons is a non-temporal process.

Einstein made a big deal of this in his theory of special relativity. Light moves at the same speed no matter what your frame of reference. If you are moving toward a star at 90% of the speed of light in a spaceship then the light of the star would still be moving toward you at only the speed of light. Our temporal world tells us that the light would travel toward the spaceship at the speed of light plus the speed of the spaceship. It doesn’t add up in our temporal definition of things. Again light is non-temporal.

So much for physics, what about meta-physics? What about ideas? In the early Bronze Age someone came up with this great idea called the wheel. Was that idea formed in that person’s mind? If so, how can we explain the guy, a thousand miles away, that had the same or similar idea? Think about it. Ideas are already exist before they materialize in the mind. Catching a good idea may be a process we’re proud of, but they always existed and will always be; ideas are non-temporal. Things like numbers always existed; they’re non-temporal. Shapes like circles, spheres, squares, cubes, triangle, and pyramids exist outside of time. Mathematics and physics exist outside the frame work of time. We just discovered them. They are concepts or ideas and they always were and will always be. They have no beginning or end and they exist outside the realm of time. They affect us all and they are non-temporal.

Non-temporal things are real and they affect us all. The discovery of non-temporal things happened long ago and we use them everyday life. Non-temporal things are real and facts of life.

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