If you don't mind, could you elaborate on that? I'm not sure I follow you. I don't see how defying our understanding of time is qualitatively different than defying our understanding of space, any more than the fact that they are different events.
I will give it a try. This is a good-faith effort. The issue is: What is the difference between my mother and others hearing her father's voice from many miles distant when he needed medicine and predicting the future? I have anecdotal evidence for the former in that my mother told me about this, one of several of her stories. I have no evidence for the latter, though some others may. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm equating the two. One is 'Voice Projection'; the other is 'Predicting the Future.'
Hearing her father at a distance was a real-time event. It happened in the thirties. As nearly as we can tell, his voice was heard at the time he spoke. Other people heard it; she recognized his voice, and this was corroborated by his pet name for her: 'Poor Hopes' It was unlikely that she was ever born; my grandmother was sick with TB at the time and died two years later at age 42. This was further corroborated by the fact that he really did need his meds and my mother was able to get them for him. I have no further information.
Now, this incident is not well handled by the current scientific paradigm. It does not accept the travel of a voice over distance. There have been some interesting results experimentally with 'quantum entanglement' of individual particles that suggest a connection regardless of the fact that there was no time to send a signal between them. I'm not convinced invoking quantum entanglement or invoking faster than light travel are necessary to explain this incident. He simply projected his voice to another space. We do not (and cannot) know whether this happened in a simultaneous manner or whether there was a lapse to allow for transmission time. Sound travels at 720mph. The distance was less than 100 miles.
I really do not know how to take this much further. My speculation is that her presence acted as a lightning rod for his thoughts. They were emotionally close. How this turned into a 'live voice' I could not say. I don't even know if it was consciously done on his part, i.e.: He may have said, 'Poor Hopes, I need my medicine' consciously or with thought alone, but I doubt he consciously tried to get in touch with her by some sort of telepathy. He was desperate and she was receptive. However, my feeling is that it is not a giant leap out of the current paradigm to allow for this to happen. Yeah, it's 'out of the box' certainly, but it's not so far out as to be in the next universe. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if someone during our lifetime published a theory for how this works and what mechanisms lie behind it.
Predicting the future is a whole ‘nother ball game. It requires a much greater leap out of the current paradigm and challenges the very concept of reality. If the future can be predicted, does this mean that life is deterministic? What does that say about free will? If I have no free will, how can you hold me accountable for my actions; I’m simply playing a pre-conceived role without deviation? If you predict the future and it does not happen, have I changed it? How did I do that? Is the ‘Many Worlds” theory true? Does each decision branch off into another universe? Or were you simply wrong in your ability to predict? How can we tell the difference? What implications does this have for philosophy and theology? In other words, the ability to predict the future is a giant leap out of the current paradigm.
One of the things modern physics has done is equate time and physical dimensions, then invented a calculus that incorporates the two as if they were the same. We are being asked to believe that our passage through time, which is an intellectual construct, is IDENTICAL to length, width, and breadth in the physical world. After ‘we’ played with this for awhile new dimensions were added to the mathematics to allow the formulation of String and Brane theory, among others. The original leap of faith, however, is equating time as a dimension. We may have fallen in love with our own analogy here. Now you could say mathematics ‘proves’ it, but what you are really saying is, ‘mathematics allows it.’ If you take a course in symbolic logic, you can start out with a premise, and in certain situations, you can prove “A” or prove “Not-A” simply by arguing in a different direction. When I pointed this out to my philosophy professor and did a side-by-side set of equations on the board, all he said was, “Well that’s not considered to be fair.” In a similar manner, a mathematical calculus may force you to be internally consistent and provide a ‘proof,’ but it does not necessarily reflect reality.
So on the one hand you have a ‘Voice Projection’ that uses an unknown mechanism, but that can be explained within the current laws of physics. There is no ‘violation’ of the speed of light or sound. Is it outside the current paradigm? Certainly, but it does not require an invocation of God to explain it. We could theoretically come up with an explanation of the mechanism tomorrow, and nothing else would change. It wouldn’t throw religion into a crisis. It wouldn’t require a complete re-examination of philosophy. It would not call all of physics into question. In fact, if the RV people are correct, we already have an explanation—it’s just classified.
On the other hand, if you can predict the future, you have to change your view of reality and your place in it completely. Just because you can place both ‘Projected Voices” and ‘Predicting the Future’ in the same ‘unknown’ category does not equate them in importance or mechanism of explanation.
My grandfather wrote an unpublished manuscript entitled 'Evolution and the Bible' which shows his mindset. If you're interested, it's here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/20968/Evolution-and-the-Bible. It shows his thoughts as a late 19th century M.D. grappling with issues much as we are here. Given his thoughts on these issues, it kinda makes me wonder if we are related.
