Literary Las Vegas: M. G. Person

In his book, "A Presentist Path to World Peace," Las Vegas resident Maynard Person, writing as M. G. Person, suggests that taking a presentist view to the world could be just the thing to take the turmoil out of international politics, religious strife and personal relationships. While he won't claim to be a trained theologian or a physicist, Person, a cheerleader for objectivity, said his book is intended to unify understanding of the relation between religion and science. For more information about the book, published by local press Houdini Publishing, visit presentistpath.com.

Excerpt:

If you draw a time-line form the Big Bang, some 13.7 billion years go, into the future, you have to place a pointer we term "the present" to represent where you are in time. The past is no longer real and can only be experienced through memory or recorded history. The future is not real and can only be imagined by extrapolation from past experience or through the use of other information. Then you realize that the present is a real phenomenon. Every action that has ever happened has been in the present. You have lived your entire life in the present. This is reality. The present is the only fixed point on the time-line. But since it is fixed it can have no elapsed time. Now, this whole idea drives the physicist around the bend.