Anthony Pritchard
Active Member
Time: The Return of the Nightmare
For discussion and input, what do you think?When people are confronted with the metaphysical nature of time, they often try to escape the conclusion by raising objections that do not actually address the problem. One of the most common is the claim that human minds may not be the only minds in the universe. The suggestion is that perhaps other minds, somewhere else, might conjure up time, and therefore time might not be metaphysical after all. This objection does not resolve anything. It only avoids the question.
I cannot see through any eyes but my own. I cannot think with any mind but my own. No one can. The materialist cannot prove the existence of other minds, human or otherwise. They can only speculate. Speculation does not answer the question of what time is. Even if other minds existed, the materialist would still have to explain why billions of human minds, across every culture and every era, all conjure up the same concept of time. If time were a mental construct, different minds should produce different versions of it. They do not. And if alien minds existed, the problem would only grow larger. The materialist would have to explain why minds that evolved under entirely different conditions, with different bodies and different senses, would somehow produce the same concept of time that human beings do. The objection does not solve the problem. It makes it worse.
Time is not generated by the mind. Time is perceived by the mind. Time is metaphysical.
There is an important difference between something that is abstract and something that is metaphysical. An abstract idea is a mental tool. It is something the mind can think about without needing a physical object present. Numbers are abstract. Triangles are abstract. Categories are abstract. These things exist in the mind as ways of organizing thought. They are created by the mind and can vary from person to person. They are useful, but they are not part of the structure of reality itself.
A metaphysical reality is different. It is not created by the mind. It is not a mental invention. It is something that exists whether anyone thinks about it or not. Time is metaphysical. Morality is metaphysical. Identity is metaphysical. Causality is metaphysical. These things do not depend on human thought. They are part of the framework in which all thought takes place. Minds do not create them. Minds perceive them.
This is why billions of human minds all recognize the same reality of time. They are not inventing it. They are recognizing it. They are perceiving something that is already there. And if alien minds existed, they would have to perceive the same thing, because time is not a human abstraction. It is a universal feature of reality. The same is true of moral obligation. Every human mind recognizes right and wrong, not as personal inventions, but as realities that stand outside the mind and judge it.
This same problem appears again when the materialist speaks about morality. The strict materialist must say that right and wrong are subjective. They must say that moral concepts are mental conjurations, produced by the brain and shaped by evolution. If that is true, then no one can say that another person’s concept of wrong is actually wrong. In that framework, Hitler may have been innocent. His moral framework would have been his own, and there would be no objective standard by which to judge him. The materialist may feel that Hitler was wrong, but feelings are not truth. If morality is subjective, then Hitler was not objectively wrong. He was only wrong according to someone else’s preferences.
This is the unavoidable consequence of strict evolutionary materialism. It destroys objective morality. It destroys the ability to say that any action is truly right or truly wrong. It reduces moral judgment to personal taste, like preferring one color over another. Yet every human mind recognizes obligation, guilt, justice, fairness, right, and wrong. These are not cultural inventions. They are universal intuitions. If morality were a brain-generated illusion, different brains should produce different moral universes. They do not. Just like time, morality is not material. It is metaphysical.
The argument is simple. If morality is subjective, Hitler was not objectively wrong. If Hitler was objectively wrong, morality is not subjective. If morality is not subjective, strict materialism is false. The materialist cannot escape this conclusion by appealing to hypothetical alien minds. Even if such minds existed, their moral concepts would be their own, and there would still be no objective standard. The objection does not rescue the worldview. It only reveals its weakness.
Time is metaphysical. Morality is metaphysical. Both are universal. Both are real. Both exist independently of human minds. And both expose the limits of a worldview that insists that only matter is real. Strict materialism cannot account for the most basic features of human experience. It cannot explain time. It cannot explain morality. It cannot explain universals. It cannot explain the very things every human being knows instinctively.
Part 1 showed that time cannot be reduced to matter. Part 2 shows that morality cannot be reduced to matter. Together they reveal that the materialist framework is too small to contain the world we actually live in. The universe is larger than atoms. Reality is larger than matter. And the human mind is capable of perceiving truths that no physical theory can ever explain.
“In the beginning God...” Genesis 1:1
~Tony
© A.K. Pritchard 2000 -
Free to use with proper attribution.