He taught institute classes back in the '80s in Cambridge MA.
He divorced Cindy Barlow, who was gorgeous by the way, and lost his position as institute instructor. Apparently, divorcees are not allowed to teach. He asked if they could make an exception, but they declined. No exceptions.

I'd like to know what ever happened to him. He was unable to deal with the church's historical issues. He say things like, 'don't do anything drastic'. What Phil, you mean like leave?

I have other comments too, if anyone knows anything of his whereabouts.

Is this the guy? Sounds like it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Barlow


ETA: He's all over the internet, including a Dehlin interview.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2021 12:00AM by Lot's Wife.

Yes, that's him, thanks.

Reading his wiki bio, sounds like he has some serious academic horsepower. Also sounds like he is still very much Mo. It still amazes me that someone can see how the sausage is made and still remains an insider. Of course it gives him big fish status at places like the Maxwell Institute, and Oxford University Press takes his phone calls. I guess that's something.

One bit about his research interests caught my eye: concepts of “time” in secular and religious society...

When I was in HS reading Isaac Asimov level science books on relativity (yup, born science nerd), I used to speculate that maybe God didn't live in a higher dimension, but rather in a lower one. Specifically, there is some scripture, probably in the D&C, that says all things are present before the Lord. So I'm thinking, hey, maybe on Kolob, there is no fourth dimension of time. There is only the present, and "time" as we know it is an artificial construct, or at least a temporary construct.

Time being relative to motion and position is of course a central feature of Einstein's theory of relativity, and there are other interpretations in physics in which, with the proper definitions, and if you squint real hard, time can be defined out of existence.

Anyway, the placing of "time" in quotes in the wiki article reminded me of the good old days, when I still was able to see Mormonism as kind of a fun mental game. I guess for Brother Barlow, it is still a fun mental game.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> Reading his wiki bio, sounds like he has some
> serious academic horsepower.

Yeah, someone who under the latest S.O.P. would never be hired by YBU.

Here is a famous account and comment made by Einstein near his death:

"Upon the death, in March 1955, of one of his oldest and closest friends, Michele Besso, Einstein sent the Besso family a letter of condolence that bears eloquent and poignant testimony to his personal conviction that relativity, properly understood, requires us to relinquish the tensed view of time. In this letter, written less than a month before his own death, Einstein says of his friends: 'He is now a little ahead of me in bidding his strange world farewell. That means nothing. For us devout physicists, the distinction between past, present and future likewise has no significance beyond that of an illusion, albeit a tenacious one.'"

This idea of time being an illusion was, and currently is, a popular (and correct) interpretation of Special Relativity. SR implies a "block universe" where time does not exist (an "illusion"). With some interpretative effort, this may work for the relative "motions" in the inertial reference frames of SR, but it does not work for General Relativity because acceleration and the gravitational fields of GR involve non-inertial reference frames, and thus accelerated absolute (rather than relative) motion. And, if there is motion, there is time, unless the gravitational field is also an illusion.

Sometimes it seems to me that modern science's most important concept is "illusion."

Thanks for the additional detail. I used to try and keep up with such notions, but now am content to struggle with much more mundane issues, like what to have for lunch.

I remember him from institute classes back in the 80s. Good guy.