Does Time Exist - No

How many of you have heard the old argument: there was no causality before the big bang because time didn't exist? The short answer is: time still doesn't exist, only sentient beings with wrist watches. Today the atheist uses time and chance as their “magic wands” and with time and chance anything can happen. In fact if we give the atheist the smallest chance that life could have evolved from non life; given an eternity of “time” it could very well happen! Beware!

I was preaching on campus last week and I had a discussion about the Cosmological Argument (CA from here forward) with an astute atheist. This guy seemed to have all the answers. We went all the way back in our discussion to when the universe was dense matter and energy. I asked him "What outside force moved on this eternally inert energy?" He replied "there is no cause and effects before time and the energy just exploded". NOTE: the atheist wants to believe that time is real and causal and without it the laws of inertia and causality can’t exist; this is not so as you will see.

Time is a Phenomenological Term Used To Describe Events and Order

I pondered this for a moment and asked him what is time? What is energy? He couldn't answer. As I pondered our discussion I came to realize that time is not real nor does it exist;” time" is just a concept. All we have in the universe is existence and being; and we have an eternal being, contingent beings and innate objects that are mutable, but time is something we conceive of and therefore the laws of causality are not precluded by "time". I don't go gray because of time, grandma’s biscuits don't rise because of time; rather my hair grays due to chemicals in my body and grandma's biscuits rise not because of time but rather the yeast reacts with the flour and water. Though time is a valuable phenomenological term used to describe how things correlate to the rotation of the earth or the sand in an hour glass. Time is important to our language and we use it in a similar way as the weatherman says: sunrise tomorrow at 7:00 AM. Yet the sun doesn't rise but we use the handy term...

Time Has No Existence Nor Does Chance -Much Less Causal Influence

After studying up on my physics I remembered the concept of temporal and spatial locality as it applies to causality. What this says is that every cause must be local (touching leaving not one point in space or time between the two events) of its effect and simultaneous as well. If you think about it every single causal relationship, the effect occurs at the same time; not before and certainly not after so this argument about no causality before time began isn't a cogent argument. (Time plays no role in causality and again time is a term used to describe existence and the way mutable beings and objects change in relation to one another). As for spatial locality physicists still cannot account for how a cause and effect can be spatially local since no two points can occupy the same point in space and between any two points are infinite points in space. But I believe that the immaterial element that holds all things together is Christ (in the most literal sense) and He is the answer to what subsumes matter, energy and what is holding everything together.

Time has been simplified down to theory A and theory B, but time is really the study of ontology and things existing either in immutable states or mutable states. This debate goes back to the pre-Socratic philosophers who argued that every thing is in flux with no real identity (purely mutable) and the other argued everything has identity and is illusion, and then Plato came along and tried to reconcile this with his forms and material realm dichotomy. BTW both had some truth in their arguments because we humans are mutable but we also have an identity that is immutable.

None the less the moral to the story is that time has no existence but is an valuable concept and organon or tool we can use to measure and compare things to as well as maintain some order in our lives. As long as there has been something in existence then “technically” we can say that we have had time. And it is axiomatic that if anything exists today then something with the power of self existence has always had to exist so in this sense, time has always existed (if we wish to argue that there is time). BWT the reason for this last argument ex nihilo nihilo fit is because if there ever was a time when nothing existed, then what could possibly exist today? But since we see that things exist today, then we no that there necessarily must be an eternal being. If this were not so, then we would be faced with “self-creation” which is impossible since something would have to ante-date itself to create it self, it is also a violation of the law of non-contradiction. This by the way doesn't give the atheist one millimeter of chance to hang her hat on. Time and Chance have no existence and if someone every uses either of these concepts in their "formula for a godless creation of the universe.