Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The light shining through the film, rather than what the images on it purport to do.

Ideals are not absolutes and it's been a complete and utter fail on the part of the philosophers not to point that out.

You think the scientists have it all figured out, try this:

Is time the point of the present, moving past to future, or change turning future to past?

We are mobile organisms, so this sentient interface between body and situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our experience of time is as the present moving past to future, but it's change turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.

There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

Energy goes past to future, because the patterns it generates coalesce and dissolve, future to past. Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it's the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy and feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the forms/information. So we tend to think of it in terms of patterns, rather than processes generating them. Maps rather than territories.

The scientists have just succumbed to authoritarianism. Circling their own totem.