Dear Elizabeth,
I Googled The Intention Experiment and watched the author’s video. There are many philosophies in human history, and science is merely one of the most recent—only really catching hold in the past couple of centuries. I can’t say that McTaggart’s book is science, since all philosophies are belief systems. But science does acknowledge just how little we know. There are more stars in the universe than all the grains of sand on all the Earth’s beaches, and we haven’t even visited the next sand grain. It’s as if we had stepped into a 14-billion-year-old story and just now opened our eyes. Put another way, if you were to drive home on Jefferson Avenue from the Detroit-Windsor Ambassador Bridge, it would be a fourteen-mile trip. Now, say each mile represents a billion years. Within the first mile, you’d see superlarge stars (Jovians) appear. Then, as you continued, you’d see those stars explode and die as trillions of new ones were born. By the time you reached the tenth mile, at Eureka Road, you’d see, out of all those trillions, our sun burst into being. Once you reached the eleventh mile, at Pennsylvanian Road, microbial life would appear on Earth. Just past the eleventh mile, at the bridge to our island, vertebrate life forms would be crawling out of the seas. By the thirteenth mile, at Horsemill and Meridian roads, life in all forms would be in the air, land, and sea. By the time you reached your driveway, Homo erectus (upright man) would show up, and at your doorstep, Homo sapiens (thinking man) would appear.
And in that very last millimeter of porch right before your front door, if you had a good magnifying glass on you, you’d find civilization, rational thought, and science.
No wonder we often get that feeling that we’re new to all this!
Bob
