If you have a high speed connection, and some patience, you can download an excellent video from:-

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8133582867583552629&q=einstein+duration%3Along&hl=en

Its a 233 MB mp4 file (might be less in the alternative google video 'giv' format)

It's well worth it watching, and fits this thread topic beautifully!!!....

Details: -

Nobel Conference: The Legacy of Einstein. [Sep 2005], From Gustavus Adophus College

This is a lecture by George F.R. Ellis, Professor of Complex Systems, author of "Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics"

From his summary notes:

" It is the overall set of laws and initial conditions that make our own existence possible.

There is a considerable degree of fine-tuning of initial conditions and laws that underlies this existence.

The ultimate reason this is so is a metaphysical issue that is undecidable through any scientific experimentation.

Positive Ethics (sympathy/compassion) is crucial to our survival on a cosmological timescale, on our own and in a possible interstellar interaction:

- this is not attainable by science alone. We have to go to some other resources - philosophy, religion, spirituality - in order to be able to make the kind of ethical transition that is necessary."

There's something for us all in the lecture, and he says it much better than we can on the forum.

"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once" - John Wheeler