The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

supposedly the lack of a unique objective distinction between past and future, since these apparently depend on the reference frame. As he stated, “The four-dimensional continuum is now no longer resolvable objectively into sections, which contain all simultaneous events; “now” loses for the spatially extended world its objective meaning. It is because of this that space and time must be regarded as a four-dimensional continuum that is objectively unresolvable” (Einstein, 1994, p. 411). These quotes provide a succinct description of Einstein’s philosophy of time. As Whitrow (1980, p. 4) noted, this viewpoint was concordant with the idealist philosophy. He writes: “The elimination of time from natural philosophy is closely correlated with the influence of geometry. ... The primary object of Einstein’s profound researches on the forces of nature has been well epitomized in the slogan ‘the geometrization of physics’, time being completely absorbed into the geometry of hyperspace. Thus, instead of ignoring the temporal aspect of nature as Archimedes did, post-renaissance mathematicians and physicists have sought to explain it away in terms of the spatial and in this way they have been aided by philosophers notably the idealists .” (emph. added) As is usual, attempts to analyze time usually smuggle in hidden references to other temporal processes, resulting in viciously circular analysis. Thus, time is “analyzed” in terms of time. For example, Whitrow (1980, p. 348) quotes Weyl (1949, p. 116) ‘the objective world simply is , it does not happen . Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the lifeline of my body, does a section of the world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continually changes in time.’ Weyl, as an eternalist, says the objective world does not happen; yet, to make sense of it all, surrenders to a temporal process of crawling along a world line as the generator of change . In this regard, Weyl’s view is philosophically incoherent; and his explanation is not philosophically cogent. The problem with the eternalist view, and Weyl in particular, is that by rejecting the reality of the flow of time it replaces a single flow of time with myriads of subjective time flows (“…fleeting image in space which continually changes in time .”) in individual consciousnesses crawling along world lines. Hardly a convincing simplification. So then, under this influence of relativistic physics, time as an illusion was mistakenly embraced by many as a “scientific fact,” and the philosophy of “eternalism” was subsequently taken up by philosophers. One of the first, and perhaps more frequently cited papers, is the paper by Hilary Putnam (1995). Putnam’s essay outlines and restates the essentials of the arguments of the physicists. However, Putnam’s arguments when carefully analyzed are unpersuasive. He commits the usual erroneous interpretations of simultaneity to support the argument and endows the operationalist viewpoint with unwarranted metaphysical conclusions. Appendix A deals with these arguments in detail. Here we merely point out that the idea that the mathematics of relativity theory compels one to an eternalist view has been correctly denied by many. Originally among these are Eddington and Reichenbach. More recent advocates of the reality of time and the flow of time are Ellis (2012) and Unger and Smolin (2015). Whitrow (1980, p. 348) commenting on Weyl’s remarks above summarizes Eddington’s and Reichenbach’s criticism of the eternalist philosophy (cf. Figure 1 for the accompanying illustration): Nevertheless, as has been stressed by Eddington (1935) and Reichenbach (1956 passim ) the theory of relativity does not provide a complete account of time. Despite what Weyl has said, the theory is not incompatible with the happening of events but is neutral in this respect. Any given instant E on the world line of an observer A (who need not be regarded as anything more than recording instrument), all the events fromwhichAcan have received signals lie within the backwards-directed light cone with its vertex at E. ... there is an objective time order for all these events and the anomalies of time ordering that Weyl had in mind when he made the statement quoted above concern only events that lie outside this light cone. Signals from these events can only reach A after the event E and when they do reach A they will then lie within A’s backwards-directed light cone at that instant. The passage of time corresponds to the continual advance of this light cone. As far as the theory of relativity is concerned, we can consider either the set of all these light cones or the continual transition from one to another. The theory is compatible with either point of view and does not invalidate the concept of temporal transition. To recap, as Whitrow points out, the pseudo-Euclidean metric of relativity only imposes a causal structure on space-time, and the causal relations are determined by the null cones as shown in Figure 1. The null cones represent the surfaces of fastest causal signals, and thereby separate space-time into regions which can causally influence each other. Within the interior of the forward null cone are future events that can be influenced by event E; and within the interior of the backward null cone are the events that can influence E. The remainder of space-time, consisting of all events outside the null cone at E (and called spacelike relative to E ), can have no causal connection with E. No observer at E can see the spacelike events. In short, an unknown and operationally indeterminable “now” does not imply the nonexistence of “now.” The arguments above answer the eternalist on the basis of their presuppositions -- showing their internal incoherence. However, the strongest argument for the reality of time is from the presupposition of Christian theism. From a theological perspective, the unreality of time is incompatible with biblical revelation. First, and most important, the reality of time is presented in the Bible in the opening verses of Genesis that describe the miraculous creation week and the occurrence of the first day. Further, both theologically and philosophically the unreality of time would: (1) imply that all men are co-eternal with God but merely unaware of the fact. This is clearly a version of pantheism; Dennis ◀ Young earth relativistic cosmology ▶ 2018 ICC 17