Strange Argument... --

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Subject: Strange Argument...

Author:
An Atheist

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Date Posted: 21:13:54 06/25/01 Mon
In reply to: The Anti-Clique 's message, "Does Time Exist?" on 20:51:03 06/25/01 Mon

I've never heard anything like this before, how strange!

However, you claim "So no matter how minutely you divide "time" into instants, you still have a flying pen that's stationary in that instant." By 'instants' I am going to assume you mean 'time-intervals'. If you take some time interval during the path of a pen being thrown in the air, the pen will *always* be in a different location at the end of the time interval than in the beginning of the time interval. So what you're saying in this respect is wrong. The pen is *not* stationary but has an appearance of movement, no matter how small you sub-divide your time interval this will always be true.

The only exception would be if you take the limit as the time interval goes to zero. Possibly this is what you really meant by instant. However, the time interval is zero, so all that means is that from the beginning to the end of that instant no time has gone by. Yet this doesn't mean time does not exist, it would simply be a snapshot taken out of a continuum - and that continuum, of course, signifies a real passage of time.

If time really *didn't* exist, everything would remain stationary, and you wouldn't be able to throw a pen in the first place.

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Zeno	Flannel	11:52:11 06/26/01 Tue