[neutralino]

I've not really looked into this thread since it blossomed into existence, so I have a reply to the very first post.

Originally Posted by Graybeard

~~~ Space, Time & Einstein ~~~

If we accept General relativity, and its implications of space and time dilation ... then we must also conclusively accept that the past, present and future exist in this universe at the same moment ...

I'm not 100% sure what you mean here. The word that troubles me is "moment." Discounting the notions of past and future for now, it is not even true that the "present" is the same for every observer. For example, you can't have one guy sitting in the middle of the universe observing everything as the "present" since some of the things he will see are in the past! This is commonly known as the relativity of simultaneity. It's also why we rarely discuss global time, but instead assign light cones to each point in space.

In other words if we could freeze frame our surroundings so that only the present were visible, then the only parts visible would be the parts that were in the same still state as the observer ? Would our arm swinging the baseball bat be visible, or only return to our view once the home run had been hit, would roads be empty of all traffic ?. (Of course this is impossible as Nobody pointed out, if time was frozen, light would be frozen and we would receive no light at all.)

Freezing time does not make much sense to me, as it stands. One can, however, talk about taking a spacial hypersurface of the four dimensional spacetime. (Sorry, that's a bit technical.. it basically means looking at the graph of space versus time, and taking a specific value for the time coordinate; that is slicing the worldsheet of the universe, like cutting a loaf of bread. Each slice will correspond to the state of the universe at a particular moment in time.

Or are there simply billions of Graybeards, perish the thought, all acting in near-unison in parrallel universes and our 'esse' is just a condensed persona of them all ... LOL

Well, I think there would be infinitely many but no, this isn't too crazy!