[Avodah] "God who knows the future"

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 12:18:50PM -0400, David Riceman wrote:
> RMB:
>> The common people do. Open an organizer, or Outlook. Time is arranged  
>> in a line down the page.

> Me: [ie RMR -mb]
>> I don't know how to determine the "common" view of time, but I  
>> suspect it's viewed as a cycle, not a progression.>>

> In some contexts.  Cycles help explain "l'ma'alah min hazman"...

How does it help?

In any case, I disagree. People see the calendar as cyclical, but today,
thoughts of time are dominated by our belief in progress. People get older
and mature (or r"l some simply age). Science and technology progress.
Something many O derakhim have to overcome is the West's assumption that
morality too progresses, as this is often seen as a contradiction to
nisqatnu hadoros. OTOH, R' Tzadoq and RAYK also believe in progress in
morality as well.

But in any case, this is tangential. The point wasn't whether the
dimension is linear or cyclic (or a helical combination of the two),
but that we see time as a dimension. Perhaps not as literally as Einstein
did, perhaps yes. Things happen "in time", "at a certain time and place",
etc... Not that time is a logical consequent of events.

So today, we can model lemaaleh min hazeman with meshalim like the
following: We see the universe as a 3D movie. To HQBH, it is closer to
a 4D sculpture. There is no flow of past-present-future, so it's just
another direction much like the other 3. (Or 9 or 10, for the string
theory efficionados among us. Or 2, if your more into the holographic
principle.) Or at least, closer to that than our movie-like experience
of a changing 3D reality.

The medieval worldview had no parallel.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Brains to the lazy
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Fax: (270) 514-1507                 - Bechinas HaOlam