Comprehending Time

A pupil of Einstein said:
It`s rotten
To find I`d completely forgotten
That by living so fast,
All my future`s my past,
And I buried before I`m begotten.

The author writes <<< It is curious that he stated unambiguously that one Divine day is equal to 1,000 Earth years. So six Divine days are equal to 6,000 Earth years, which is also the age of the Earth according to the creationists... >>>

If that is actually what Iqbal said, then he was very wrong in his conclusion. The Quran states no such thing. Unlike the creationists, it does not place a time of 6000 years for the age of the earth, neither does it place an absolute value on time, as the Bible when it mentions ``in the beginning``.

The verse in question that mentions 1000 years, is this (32:5)




As you can see it has nothing to do with the creation of the skies and earth, but the command AFTER they have been created, since it assumes their existence. The important point to note here is the relative nature of time, a recently discovered phenomenon.

Another verse which alludes to the relative nature of time is this one (70:4):



Here it talks about the angels and the rooh ascending in a day equal to 50K years of what you reckon. As you can see the context of both verses is different and the relative measure of time is different as well. Unlike these contexts, the Quran does not give a time period for the ``day`` or period of creation. So ignoring the context and forcing one to the other, as you say Iqbal did is erroneous. Also note that these two verses are presented as contradictions by many evangelicals and their Islam hating friends, both talk about different things, so there is no contradiction, only shows that they are stuck with absolute times when the Quran is stating a much more scientifically valid concept of relative time.

Also note that what happened before Planck time 10 (-43) secs, is a matter of speculation, with no empirical evidence and no scientist worth the name has claimed otherwise, the leading string theorist Brian Greene says the same.

masadi:

You stated, ``As you can see it has nothing to do with the creation of the skies and earth, but the command AFTER they have been created, since it assumes their existence.``

The verse preceding the one you quoted from ayat 32 asserts, ``..It is He Who created the Heavens and Earth and everything betwixt them in six days and then He mounted His Throne,`` like the one I quoted in the article. ``Six Days`` is clearly mentioned in there. The act of creation was completed in six days, whatever way one might like to interpret it.

I quoted these verses with two things in mind. Firstly, the verses state that the act of creation was completed in six days. Secondly, the ``day`` is a measure of time. What I suggested was that ``a measure of time`` is intuitively embedded in the human psyche`.

The second verse that you quoted (70:4) also contains a measure of time: ``A day which is equal to fifty thousand years.`` Iqbal called such a day as a Divine day. Although the language is quite specific in as much as ``one day`` and ``fifty thousand years`` are linked together with equality, they may have been mentioned `figuratively,`

Much of the vagueness of physical time has been cleared by the theory of relativity; a complete understanding `might` emerge from the unified theory whenever it is developed.

Mohammad Gill

299,792.458 km/s is the speed of light in vacuum. But 1400 years ago it was stated in the Koran (Quran, the book of Islam) that angels travel in one day the same distance that the moon travels in 1000 lunar years, that is, 12000 Lunar orbits / Earth day. Today we know that if we remove the Earth-moon system from the gravitational field of the sun all observers will see the speed of light outside gravitational fields to be equivalent to 12000 Lunar orbits / Earth day. Can anyone prove us wrong?

GOTO:
http://www.speed-light.info/angels_speed_of_light.htm

Re #3, when I say ``the Quran does not give a time period for the ``day`` or period of creation.``, what I mean is that the the ``day`` in the six days is not defined in terms of earth days, nowhere does it say, ``of what you measure``, when it says six days, and the two verses that do give relative measures of days are talking about different events and not the creation event, so you cannot transpose one unto the other, as you state Iqbal did.

freethinker;3
The second verse that you quoted (70:4) also contains a measure of time: ``A day which is equal to fifty thousand years.``


and THAT is a reason Ghalib used this ratio:

``tuum salaamat raho hazaar baras
Hr baras kai hoan din, pachaas Hazaar``

Ghalib knew his Qur`an;No wonder! after all he went to a Madressa!

Karachi 79

thank you for bringing to my attention that amazing site. Whoever is doing such great work is definitely doing good dawa among what Quran clearly says ``Doubters``. May Allah bring them disgrace in their futile attempts to lead muslims astray.

I`ll mass e-mail this site with instructions to further e-mail to their e-mail groups. and hereby request all Islam-lovers here to do the same.

More time must be spent in action rather than innane musings & intellectualitis.

who has time for such musings about Time?!

``who has time for such musings about Time?!``(Naqsh miaN)

Nasah miaN has.

Freethinker -- tell me please in a freethinking moment of `Time` -- why in a universe with no up and down -- no left or right -- time has to move unidirectional `forward` -- why Time is NOT FREE to move in REVERSE direction?

Why TIME like SPACE is not multidirectional.......or is it?

......is poster #1 quote right -- we are buried before we are born -- or as soon as we are BORN and ASCENDING -- we are simultaneously DESCENDING -- towards DEATH -- will that be called -- in Time Reversal..?

dear mohammad gill...I enjoyed reading your article about TIME about which Ghalib says

...main gaya waqt nahin hoon ke aa bhi na sakoon

Of all the writers and philosophers who had a keen interest in TIME, the one that fascinated

me the most was Mexican Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz. He had interesting theories about

TIME. Even his 1990 Nobel Lecture was titled IN SEARCH OF PRESENT. He believed that we

experienced time in many ways...for example what we might think as PRESENT might be

less important than the PRESENT what we do not know and find out later. For example at

this moment at 1230 pm I am writing you a letter.This is my present. But tonight I find out

that my best friend had a serious car accident in Pakistan at 1230 pm. And that experience

might affect me more than what I am doing know. Octacio Paz felt his sense of PRESENT

TIME changed as a child when he saw soldiers going to war and realized that his life is being

affected by the war somewhere else that he could not see or experience directly.

In his essays he says that the biggest philosophical question is not the relationship between

MAN and GOD but GOD and TIME. He does not believe God created Time he believes Time

is Creating God....God is in the Making (and all human beings are part of it)and will be born

when TIME dies. I do not believe in what Paz has presented but I find his essays and

theories and philosophy quite fascinating. He has unique perspectives about language,

literature and culture. Worth reading. His writings are entertaining as well as enlightening.

Your essay reminded me of him. thanks...sincerely sohail

nasah:
The unidirectionality (arrow of time) of time is still not understood very well. As I had mentioned in the article, the fundamental equations of physics are symmetrical with respect to time but time is unidirectional. We cannot recover the eggs from the omelet.
I had also mentioned Vafa Cumrun, a Harvard physics professor, who has hypothesized that time is two dimensional. We still have a lot to learn about time before we find reliable answers to these puzzles.
Like St. Augustine, I know what time is (intuitively) if you don`t ask me to describe it. But we`ve come a long way from Augustine and Kant. We know time is not absolute; it is relativistic. And so is simultaneity.
I wish I knew better.
Mohammad Gill

May be on the other side of Big Bang (t=+0) to (+1) -- is (hiding the Time in Reverse (t=-0) to contracting (-1) that is the Fraction of I .... in the Einstein universe of -- no beginning and no end -- expanding Time of current universe may be balanced by the contracting Time before the Big Bang -- simultaneously or in a parallel universe...:)

Free Thinker you are one of the best things -- including Dost-mitter, Dr Sohail, Hamidm -- that has/have happened to Chowk......:)

Re: # 10

Free thinker -- for the relationship of Time and speed of light -- now that the speed of light has been slowed to a crawl in the lab -- what implication it has for Time and Space.....?

drsohail:

There are many metaphysical descriptions of time. Iqbal also believed (metaphysically) that `Time is God.` Iqbal wrote (The Reconstruction…, p.73), “The problem of time has always drawn attention of Muslim thinkers and mystics. This seems to be due partly to the fact that, according to the Quran, the alternation of day and night is one of the greatest signs of God, and partly to the Prophet’s identification of God with ‘Dahr’ (time) {Surah 76} in a well-known tradition…”

The tradition that he referred to states, “Don’t speak ill of time because time is God.” I have read this Hadith from Iqbal’s quotation but I cannot pinpoint it because I have lost the reference.

However, I am more interested in physical time than metaphysical.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on time at Chowk.

Mohammad Gill

Re: # 10
just as to t=+0 space was compact and since then expanding (for sake of argument), we can assume that time is also expanding. to time at t=+0 was much faster than now.
from t=-0 onwards there could be a parallel world/universe.

Ofcourse the jinns of naqshabandi and echoboom have already solved the problem and have encrypted in some statements spread here and there.
All it requires is for some non-charlatan types like them to do some Real Resaerch and come up with answers. You see the world in 7th century was not ready for this stuff and hence had to be encrypted!

Re: # 11
nasah ;-()

Re: # 11

dear nasah...thanks for your generous thoughts. readers like you keep me inspired.

socrates, like freud, believed that truth is born from the womb of a genuine dialogue....

sincerely sohail

ps...do you write any essays...?