h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There is a new thinking in physics that I had read about not to long ago that would seem to support what you have to say about time, but not causality. It apperantly is now thought that time is only a perception of the human mind. Your reel of film example is almost exactly the way it was described in the article I read. I'll try to find that magazine (I kept the copy because the article agreed with something I've been saying for several years) and get you the particulars.

As for the causality aspect, I would argue that the end would have to cause the beginning. If indeed there is no time, and that all instances of 'now' exist simultainiously, and all causes effect all other causes, then the cause that is now that is also the end of everything would have to effect the cause that is now that is also the beginning. If that makes any sense to anyone other than myself. Of course, that means that life is not percieved as a linear line, but as an arc of a perfect circle. That would also mean that this has all happened before and will all happen again, in fact is happening again in the eternal now. Basically the big crunch creates enough energy through intense gravity to cause the big bang, which leads to the big crunch through the theories of entropy. Which would make everything meaningless, being as it has already happened, and no matter what you do in life, it will all happen again. The good news is that I can always look forward to another beer.

I do believe that there is a way to make that work, mathimatically, but I'm not really that good at the more abstract maths.