Page 213 - Darwin's Dilemma: The Soul

Harun Yahya (Adnan Oktar)

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O Our Life Spans Are Simply a Perception
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For the time we spend in this world, we make comparisons,
thinking about what we did yesterday and accordingly making
plans for the morrow. We think about what happened ten years
ago, believe that time has passed and we have grown older. What
gives rise to this belief is simply the comparisons we make between
those previous moments and the present one.
If you were watching television before opening this book, you
compare the time when you were watching television with the
time when you are reading and imagine that time has passed be-
tween the two events. You refer to when you were watching televi-
sion as “the past,” imagining there has been a passage of time be-
tween the two events. In fact, the time you were watching televi-
sion is information stored in your memory. You compare “the pre-
sent,” when you are reading this book, with the information in
your memory, and perceive this interval as “time.” The fact is,
however, that there is only the present moment in which you are
living. When you make no comparison with recollections in your
memory, then no concept of time remains.
The well-known physicist John Barbour makes this definition
of time:
Time is nothing but a measure of the changing positions of objects.
A pendulum swings, the hands on a clock advance. 129
Time, therefore, consists of a comparison between various
perceptions that arise in the brain. A study of people suffering
from the memory loss known as anterograde amnesia makes it
easier to see that time is nothing more than a human perception.
Such people lose all their short-term memory, they are
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