[Avodah] Time and Emunah

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Sep 06, 2007 at 10:57:51PM -0400, MPoppers at kayescholer.com wrote:
:> IOW, it's not important whether our bodies experience time as we
:> perceive it. What the Torah discusses is the perception, time as part
:> of a soul's existence.

: In support of what small amount of Micha's thoughts I can bend my mind
: over: can we not infer from Ma'aseh B'reishis that time preceded that which
: is part of this world, even as it's a way (similar to anthropomorphism) in
: which this-worldly creations can comprehend what essentially is beyond
: comprehension?

That first sentence bothered me, so let me summarize my point without
the heavy physics and philosophy references.

Scientifically, it's hard to explain why time seems to different than
space, why processes evolve through time in a way they don't when you
follow them off to the right.

Philosphically, it's hard to explain why science works at all. Why the
universe makes sense in a way our brains analyze things. Kant, Mach,
and Einstein conclude that this is because we can't know or study the
world as it really is -- we can only know how it seems to us given the
structure human perception puts on things. Thus the world makes sense
because the world we're studying is already through human concepts of
"sense".

Last, REED writes that the flow time is a perception created by the
change in psyche caused by the eitz hada'as. And the minhagim about the
length of aveilus etc... presume some sort of connection beetween the
deceased and time even though no physics involved.

It would seem that time is something the soul imposes on its perceptions,
with a guf, and even without (under at least some conditions).

GCT!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             A pious Jew is not one who worries about his fellow
micha at aishdas.org        man's soul and his own stomach; a pious Jew worries
http://www.aishdas.org   about his own soul and his fellow man's stomach.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rabbi Israel Salanter