although his doesn't really belong in the religious section its the only place that comes close. I was wondering if people could tell me what they believe the 'purpose of time is?'
The purpose of time is for you to waste ours asking silly question. Like many things, the purpose of time is whatever you make of it.
Time exists to stop everything happening at once. It was created when Infinity withdrew from itself to create the finate. For infinity to exist the finite must exist as well. Time seperates cause and effect and is simply the lack of infinate and energy.
cause and effect is my major problem with time. If the whole universe is deterministic it makes no difference if the universe lasts for 1 nano second or 1000 billion years, because you can always predict the outcome from the start.
www.tenthdimension.com - click "I have flash 8" and then hover "Navigation" then click "Imagining the Ten Dimensions". Time exists for us to exist. You will soon understand.
I havn't read this article through, just the preface.. http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/dimensions.html
This is rather interesting, but there is only one scholarly work cited in the document, and I don't see any reference to how these supposed universes with more than one dimension of time and more than 3 of space exist.
It's known that time may slow down or accelerate under the influence of gravity (predicted by the General Relativity Theory of A.Einstein). So, I won't be surprised if some regions of the universe have more than one dimension of time. Gravitational field lines tend to bend and curve into unbelievable shapes around black holes and supernovas and God knows what can happen in those obscure regions of the universe. It may bend and run backwards for all I know...
.. we seem to be getting away from the original question.. i'm not asking "what" time is. i'm asking 'what is time for'? because until you understand what its for, your not going to be able to work out what it is.
"What's that?" "It's an Electron Gun" "What's it do?" "It shoots electrons." "How? " "It uses an electromagnetic field to accelerate them." "Why? What's it for?" "Ahuwo" (I don't know) As the above example demonstrates, in order to know what something is you don't have to know what it's for. Knowing what something is for can give you motivation to learn what it is, but it is not a prerequisite. You don't have to know -why- the electron gun was made, or why electrons need to be shot at things... simply that it does shoot electrons.