THE TRUE NATURE OF TIME

Dental technician Miniere offers a brief discourse on time and its measurement.

In his nonfiction debut, the author propounds what he characterizes as a new theory about time, which starts strong: “Time does not exist, except in our minds,” he writes. He goes on to assert that the vast universe is full of inanimate matter that has no concept of “past,” “present,” or “future,” but only exists. Miniere posits that biological awareness, which is experienced by “a few tiny islands of living, universal matter,” is what brings time into existence, and that this awareness is the gift of God: “To abandon our wonderful, God-given, Biological Time Mechanism would be the height of foolishness,” he writes. Taking this as his conceptual basis, Miniere proceeds to discuss various ideas about time that have confounded scientists and other thinkers, such as the famous concept of “Arrow of Time,” which depicts chronology as happening in one direction only—from the past to the future. Miniere links these questions back to his concept of biological grounding, noting that humans only experience time in a straight line: “Since true Time only exists in our heads,” he writes. “I would say that Time is linear.” Likewise, he discusses conventions for marking time, addressing the current calendar and the use of “B.C.” and “A.D.” to denote years, and concepts such as time travel. Some of the book’s insights involving religion, which appear over the course of the book, may particularly appeal to Christian readers. However, in many of the author’s discussions, the flaws in the arguments are frequently clear; for example, the phenomenon of stellar decay, happening billions of light-years from Earth, effectively demonstrates that the existence of humans isn’t necessary for time to exist. In addition, the book doesn’t address that pre-Christian civilizations had elaborate methods for calculating time.

An earnest but ultimately flawed thought experiment.