Anthony Pritchard
Active Member
Time: The Evolutionist’s Nightmare
For discussion and input, what do you think?
The strict materialist, the strict evolutionist, begins with a simple claim. Only physical things are real. Only things made of particles, atoms, and molecules truly exist. According to this view, everything that is not material is merely a product of the brain. Concepts, abstractions, metaphysics, and the entire realm of the non‑physical are said to be nothing more than electrical patterns produced by our neural processes. Love, justice, right and wrong, meaning, purpose, and every other non‑material reality are reduced to chemical reactions and bioelectrical signals. The materialist insists that reality is nothing but matter in motion and that anything beyond matter is an illusion created by human thought.
It has been said, with a bit of humor, that time is what keeps everything from happening at once. The joke works because it touches something true. Time is not a physical object, yet it orders every event in the universe. It separates moments, arranges sequences, and gives structure to change. We live inside it, but we cannot touch it. We measure it, but we cannot reduce it to particles or molecules. It is real, but not material.
The strict materialist’s claim sounds tidy until we examine one of the most basic features of reality. Time is familiar to every person. We measure it, feel its passage, and see its effects in the world around us. Yet time refuses to behave like a physical object. It cannot be weighed, touched, bottled, or broken into constituent parts. It is real, but not material. This alone creates a problem for the worldview that insists that only matter exists.
Time is not an epiphenomenon. It is unique unto itself. It does not arise from matter, nor does it depend on particles or molecules for its existence. It stands as a fundamental feature of reality, present whether matter is present or not. It shapes every event, every change, and every sequence, yet it is not composed of anything physical. It is a reality that cannot be reduced to the material world.
We also know that time does not pass at the same rate everywhere in the universe. It is affected by velocity and by mass. A clock on a mountaintop runs faster than a clock in a valley. A clock in orbit runs faster than a clock on the ground. A clock moving at high speed runs slower than a clock at rest. Even a few feet of elevation change the rate at which time passes. The difference is too small to measure directly at that scale, but it is measurable at a few miles. This means that time is not a physical substance. It is a dimension whose behavior depends on physical conditions, but is not itself made of physical components.
If the materialist is correct and non‑material things are only mental abstractions, then time itself would be nothing more than a product of human thought. But both the materialist and the creationist agree that there was a period when no human mind existed on this earth. If time is only a mental construct, then there was no time before human minds appeared. There would have been no duration, no sequence, no change, and no history. Yet the materialist insists that the universe existed for billions of years before humans. He insists on cosmic history while denying the existence of anything non‑material. He cannot hold both positions at once.
This leads to a simple question. What atoms or molecules are the constituent parts of time. What subatomic particles form its structure. The answer is that time is not made of particles at all. It is not a quark, a lepton, a boson, a field, a vibration, or a chemical. It is not emergent from matter. It is not reducible to physics. It is a non‑material feature of reality that existed long before any human mind could conceive of it.
If even one non‑material thing exists independently of human thought, then strict materialism is false. Time is that thing. It is universal, measurable, structured, and real, yet it is not composed of matter. It existed before us, and it will continue after us. It is part of the created order, not a product of human imagination.
Conclusion
But we know that time is not an accident of matter. It is not a trick of the brain or a shadow cast by particles. Time existed before man, and it existed before any human mind could imagine it. It is part of the created order, established by the One who set the universe in motion and who upholds it still. The materialist may insist that only matter is real, but time itself stands as a witness against that claim. It is real, measurable, and universal, yet it is not composed of atoms or molecules. It is a non‑material reality that points beyond the physical world to the God who formed it. The existence of time before the existence of man reminds us that creation is larger than matter alone and that the foundations of reality rest in the hands of the Creator, not in the thoughts of the creature.
“In the beginning God...” Genesis 1:1
~Tony
© A.K. Pritchard 2000 -
Free to use with proper attribution.