We have been examining the philosophy of presentism – the claim that “only present things exist.” In its strong form, presentism would insist that “only present things exist, have existed, or will exist.” Of course, biblically, presentism is false because past things and future things are real according to Scripture (and are known by God). Thus, the Bible endorses eternalism – the claim that past, present, and future are equally real. But Phil Dennis has criticized eternalism and insists that presentism is true.[1] Yet nearly all of his arguments are strawman fallacies – criticizing a misrepresentation of eternalism as if it claims that past, present, and future all exist now – in the present. Sometimes a presentist will retreat to a trivial claim that “only present things exist now – in the present.” But no one would disagree with this. Eternalists accept that only present things exist in the present. But we maintain that the past and future are just as real (true to the mind of God) as the present. Let’s continue to analyze Dennis’s claims.
Is Time Real?
Dennis states, “We live in space, and we persist as time passes. We are born, grow, and ultimately die as time passes.” However, we saw in a previous article that time could not pass if presentism were true. The passage of time requires multiple different times to be real so that time may pass from one to another – hence, times other than the present do exist. Dennis refers to being born (a past thing) and to dying (a future thing) as if such things really exist. But remember, according to presentism “only present things exist.” There is simply no logical consistency in presentism. Dennis seems to both affirm and deny past and future events. But that is not logical.
Dennis demonstrates that he does not understand eternalism or spacetime when he states, “This is space and time, not an objectified static block called spacetime in which nothing happens.” This too is a strawman fallacy. Spacetime is not a “static block” just because we represent it that way on paper – and this seems to be the source of Dennis’s confusion. Any worldline that is not perfectly vertical in a spacetime diagram represents something that is happening – motion!
Dennis claims, “Amazingly, Lisle seems not to understand what ‘persisting through time’ means.” I think I have sufficiently demonstrated at this point that Dennis doesn’t understand what “persisting through time” means. After all, there can be no “persisting through time” in presentism since only one point in time exists – the present! To persist through time requires a timeline – multiple points in time that actually exist. And such is not possible in presentism.
Dennis falsely claims, “To refute presentism, he [Lisle] ironically compares the passage of time to spatial dimensions.” No. To refute Dennis’s claim that we can persist through time without a time dimension, I used the analogy of spatial dimensions. Dennis didn’t understand the argument apparently.
Dennis quotes my statement, “What is a ‘three-dimensional spatial universe that persists through time’ if not a four-dimensional spacetime? It would be like a person arguing, ‘there are only two real dimensions of space: length and width, but these lengths and widths persist over height.’”
Strangely, Dennis states, “Lisle defends his ontological spacetime by a word salad, a mere linguistic twist, viz. that ‘3 + 1 = 4’.” Hardly. Actually, Merriam-Webster dictionary defines spacetime as “a system of one temporal and three spatial coordinates by which any physical object or event can be located.” Thus, Dennis’s claim is analytically false. The three dimensions of space and the one of time by definition are spacetime. Dennis is welcome to disagree with Einstein about the nature of spacetime. But the existence of spacetime is necessarily true if there are three dimensions of space and if we “persist through time” – both of which Dennis has admitted.
Dennis states, “Lisle’s counterargument in which he presents an analogy comparing a spatial object, which has no temporal attributes (or causal connections between parts), with something that does have temporal attributes is philosophically and logically absurd” (emphasis in original). Dennis has committed the fallacy of irrelevant thesis. Namely, his point that spatial dimensions have no temporal attributes is utterly irrelevant to my point. Rather, my point was that Dennis was both denying and tacitly affirming that time is a dimension (in order for something to persist through time). Thus, his claim is like a person denying a dimension of space while also tacitly affirming it.
Dennis states, “Lisle seems to have forgotten that the geometry of Minkowski is pseudo-Riemannian.” This is both an ad hominem fallacy and also the fallacy of irrelevant thesis. In my book I explicitly pointed out that the time interval portion of the spacetime interval adds differently than the spatial components do – that’s the pseudo-Riemannian structure. But this is utterly irrelevant to the existence of the time dimension. The time dimension must have reality in order for it to contribute to the spacetime interval at all. Thus, Dennis’s claim (that time is not a dimension) is refuted.
Dennis continues, “Minkowski spacetime has a distinction between time and space as embodied in the signature of the metric. Time is distinguished from space in the metric by its opposite sign.” This too is the fallacy of irrelevant thesis. What Dennis wrote here is true, but it requires the existence of a time dimension, which Dennis denies. Hence, his position is contradictory.
Dennis then states, “So, comparing the time with the spatial directions ignores a fundamental feature of the Minkowski mathematical model of relativity.” That is simply false. We can compare things that have some differences. Time is different from space in the way it contributes to the spacetime interval. My point was that time intervals must actually exist in order to contribute to the spacetime interval at all! And yet, time intervals cannot exist in presentism since only one time exists – the present.
Dennis writes, “Of course, there is no causation among spatial dimensions. . .” This is again true though irrelevant. It’s the fallacy of irrelevant thesis.
He continues, “. . . and similarly in the static block universe called spacetime there is no causation.” This is demonstrably false and is therefore yet another strawman fallacy. Of course there is causation in spacetime. That’s what a worldline represents – the necessary succession of events, which is the very definition of causation.
Dennis misrepresents the physics of Einstein in stating, “This is the notion that time is a place or the spatialization of time.” That’s completely false. In a spacetime diagram, time is represented by replacing a dimension of space with the temporal dimension. But that doesn’t mean we don’t recognize the difference between spatial dimensions and temporal dimensions. Perhaps you have read a textbook with a timeline of historical events. Would Dennis claim that such an illustration is implying that these different times actually represent difference places? How about a calendar? Do the different dates represent different spatial locations since they occur on different parts of the page? Dennis’s reasoning here is quite silly, and he does not accurately represent the position of his opponents.
Dennis continues, “Of course, this is precisely the metaphysics of eternalism that Lisle embraces.” No. It is a bad misrepresentation – another strawman fallacy.
Dennis states, “Lisle has just admitted that he believes in the spatialization of time when he introduces a 3D cube to try to elucidate the unreality of time.” This is demonstrably false. First, I believe in the reality of time. It is a real dimension consisting of a real past, present, and future. That’s the essence of eternalism. Ironically, it is Dennis whose position cannot allow for time as a real dimension with a past and future since in his view “only present things exist.” Second, Dennis is confusing how we represent time on paper with the nature of time. I might use a timeline to represent historical dates; that doesn’t make those dates locations in space!
When a person is losing an argument badly, he sometimes feels the need to simply lie about his opponent’s position to make it sound absurd. In that vein, Dennis states, “Jason Lisle believes time is a place in a Humean universe of eternal conjunctions. A universe where there is no human free agency. Just as there is no causation in the spatial dimensions, there is no causation in the time dimension. Just as spatial objects do not flow, time also does not flow.” Every sentence Dennis said there is false, and is the opposite of what I actually affirm. I challenge Dennis to provide any documentation from any of my writings or lectures where I affirm any of the things he attributes to me in the above quote. Let’s take them one at a time.
Do I believe that “time is a place in a Humean universe of eternal conjunctions” as Dennis claims of me? Of course not. Time is one dimension of spacetime, but it is a temporal dimension and not a spatial one. Second, do I hold to a “Humean universe?” On the contrary. I deny Hume’s position that there is no power behind reality, that laws of nature are merely descriptions of events, and his denial of genuine causation. I am on record as affirming the opposite: laws of nature are examples of God’s power in upholding all things by the Word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). For example, I have written, “Natural phenomena are no less a demonstration of God’s power than supernatural phenomena because God upholds all things by the Word of His power (Hebrews 1:3). God causes the universe to operate in a law-like fashion most of the time, using patterns that human beings can discover by repeated observation and experimentation. This is the basis for science.”[2]
Do I believe in “a universe where there is no human free agency,” as Dennis claims? Of course not. I am on record as affirming that humans make genuine choices. I have stated, “People go to hell by their own perverse choice (Romans 2:5-6). They know God’s law because it is written on their hearts (Romans 2:14-15). And they hate it. They do not want to repent and begin living by God’s law. They want to live by their own standard. And God respects their decision.”[3]
Do I believe that “just as there is no causation in the spatial dimensions, there is no causation in the time dimension,” as Dennis states? Of course not. I am on record as affirming temporal causation. I have stated, “We all have an intuitive understanding of cause-and-effect; the bat strikes the baseball which causes the baseball to move away at high speed.”[4]
Do I affirm that “just as spatial objects do not flow, time also does not flow,” as Dennis states? First, some spatial objects do indeed flow. A river flows. Furthermore, I affirm that humans perceive a flow of time. Indeed, it is the presentists who cannot rationally have any flow of time since only one time exists in their view – the present. Why did Dennis lie about my position? Did he think that no one would bother to check?
Dennis states, “Some may not realize that Lisle believes such. . .” Indeed! That’s because I don’t believe such. Anyone who has actually read any of my writings would know that I believe the exact opposite of everything Dennis claimed of me in his previous statements.
Dennis continues, “Just as you can travel through the three dimensions of space, Lisle believes it would be possible (with some unspecified technology) to travel through time (an actual path through the fourth dimension) . . .” (emphasis in original). So far this is accurate and is obviously true (although Dennis apparently denies it). Of course we can travel through time in the forward direction. Just watch a clock for a few minutes and you will see that you are moving forward through time. Isn’t this obvious?
Dennis falsely claims, “Even into the past, and revisit past happenings, that is, those unchangeable events that are points in spacetime.” This is the exact opposite of what I actually believe and what I have written; it is therefore a lie and yet another strawman fallacy. I am on record as denying the possibility of time traveling into the past. Again, I have written (in the very book Dennis is supposedly criticizing), “Unrestrained time travel into the past is simply not possible because it inevitably leads to the possibility of contradiction” (Lisle 2018 p. 112, emphasis added). Again I wrote, “We conclude that unrestrained time travel into the past is false” (Lisle 2018 p. 112, emphasis added). Why did Dennis lie about my position?
Dennis again states, “Lisle does present some bad news as to why it might not be possible technologically due to some materialistic reasoning.” This is totally false – another strawman fallacy. Our inability to travel into the past has nothing to do with lack of “technology,” nor is it based on “materialistic reasoning.” Rather, it is a logical deduction in the form of modus tollens. Logic is incompatible with materialism because logic is not material. Rather, logic stems from the mind of God. I again encourage Dennis to take a class on logic and to refrain from lying about what his opponents claim.
Dennis continues, “But the inability to achieve actual time travel does not invalidate his presupposition that the past is still there (you just may not be able to get there)” (emphasis in original). This is another strawman fallacy. Do I affirm that the “past is still there”? The word “still” means “in the present.” So, no, I do not affirm that the past exists in the present. I simply affirm that the past is real. Why does Dennis constantly misrepresent my position?
Dennis claims, “Lisle, in an astounding (and mathematically false) quote, claims: ‘Nonetheless, hypothetically if faster than light travel was possible, then time travel into the past would also be possible. This is provable from the Lorentz transformation . . .’ (Lisle 2018, 101, emphasis added).” First, contrary to Dennis’s claim, I proved mathematically that faster-than-light travel would necessarily lead to the possibility of backward time travel. Dennis might claim that it’s mathematically false, but he cannot identify any mistakes in my proof. Second, Dennis falsely claims that I’m claiming in this proof that backward time travel is actually possible, when in fact I demonstrated the exact opposite! Namely, this is the first premise in my proof that faster-than-light travel is not possible for information-bearing systems. The proof is a simple modus tollens, a basic rule of formal logic with which Dennis is apparently unfamiliar. The proof is as follows:
- If faster-than-light travel were possible, it would be possible to travel backward in time.
2. It is not possible to travel backward in time.
3. Therefore, faster-than-light travel is impossible.
Indeed, Dennis misrepresents my argument as if it were a modus ponens with the second premise, “Faster-than-light travel is indeed possible,” and therefore the conclusion would be, “Thus, it is possible to travel backward in time.” But anyone who actually read my book knows that this is not my argument! I was arguing against the possibility of faster-than-light travel, not for the possibility of backward time travel. From my book: “The conclusion of the whole matter would seem to be this: unrestrained time travel into the past is simply not possible because it inevitably leads to the possibility of contradiction. . . And since faster-than-light travel necessarily leads to unrestrained time travel into the past, we must conclude that faster-than-light travel is not possible for any information bearing systems” (Lisle 2018, p. 112).
Dennis states, “Fortunately, there is some good news. The eternalist philosophy of time is not a necessary deduction from relativity no matter how much the eternalists insist” (emphasis in original). We will prove in the next article that Dennis’s claim here is false. The physics of Einstein requires the reality of past, present, and future, and is therefore fundamentally incompatible with presentism.
Dennis states, “The presentist view of relativity is that there is an ontological now and time is real” (emphasis in original). Actually, in presentism, only one point in time can be “real” – namely the present. There could be no flow of time if presentism were true, as we showed previously.
Dennis continues, “As Christian creationists, we must say the creation is on the order of ~7,000 years old.” Actually, it’s much closer to 6,000 years. In any case, a consistent presentist cannot conclude that anything has age because age is the current time minus the time of origin. But since the time of origin is in the past, it cannot exist according to presentism. Thus, age cannot exist in presentism.
Dennis continues to mispresent my position when he considers the worldline of the person “Albert.” A worldline represents an object’s (or person’s) path through spacetime. Dennis claims that eternalists would say, “The worm Albert exists as a totality in a timeless reality.” This is again an obvious strawman fallacy. A worldline requires time and cannot exist in a “timeless reality.” Dennis just can’t help himself in misrepresenting my position.
Dennis continues to express how he thinks an eternalist would view Albert’s worldline, saying, “His soul has an unsaved part and a saved part. His body has a living part and a dead part. The entity Albert is a born, lost, saved, dead, resurrected thing (a spacetime worm to stress the metaphysics) extended in spacetime.” I am okay with that description as long as Dennis doesn’t try to invoke the strawman that all these aspects of Albert exist at the same time. The worldline allows us to look at multiple points along Albert’s journey, including his birth, his salvation, his death, and his resurrection. Of course, in presentism only one of those points can actually exist.
Dennis says of this view, “This is not Christian.” But clearly it is. The Bible describes a person’s physical birth (Luke 7:28), his (past) dead spirit (Ephesians 2:1), his present (and future) living spirit (Ephesians 2:5-6), his death (Hebrews 9:27), and his future resurrection (John 6:40). All these real events can be visualized on a worldline. But according to presentism – “only present things exist.” Thus, all past and future events are not real – they have no existence. But the Bible affirms the reality of past and future events.
Dennis falsely claims that in eternalism “You are your worldline.” That’s yet another strawman fallacy. The worldline is not “you.” Rather, it represents your path through spacetime. Perhaps you have used Google maps to drive to a particular address. Are you the same as the path you took? Clearly not. That would not even make sense.
Dennis claims, “In presentism you are not a worldline.” Neither are you your worldline in eternalism. But in eternalism, you do have a worldline. You have a real past, a real present, and a real future. Furthermore, all parts of your worldline are fully known to God even now. That would not be the case if presentism were true since “only present things exist.”
Dennis states, “You are not spread through time.” What does that mean? Does it mean that I do not “persist through time” as Dennis previously affirmed? Does it mean I have no future or past existence? If so, then Dennis’s claim is false. We all have a real worldline – a path through spacetime – that is already written in God’s book. As David so eloquently put it, “Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them” (Psalm 139:16).
Dennis then states, “You are three-dimensional and your entire being—body, soul, and spirit—persists within a 3D space as time passes.” Not that I disagree with Dennis here, but to persist as time passes necessarily means that we have temporal extension. In other words, our being is not limited to the three spatial dimensions but includes the time dimension as well. Thus, we are four-dimensional beings with real length, real width, real height, and real age. Of course, in presentism, there can be no persistence through time because only one time exists – the present.
Dennis falsely claims, “Shockingly, what applies to our fictional Albert, pertains to Christ incarnate. Christ is still on the cross suffering for sinners again and again and uttering ‘It is finished’ (as potential time-travelers journey back in time to witness the event).” Notice the strawman fallacy. Do eternalists believe that Christ is “still on the cross?” “Still” means “in the present.” No, eternalists do not believe that the Crucifixion takes place in the present. We affirm that it is a real past event. But in the presentist view, the Crucifixion has no existence because it is not a present thing. Thus, our sins are unpaid. Likewise, does Christ suffer for sinners “again and again” (i.e., at multiple times)? Not according to eternalism. Christ died once for all, and this was a real past event (Romans 6:10). Again, I deny that it is possible to travel back in time to witness this event. But as an eternalist, I affirm that the event was real. And since God is beyond time, His Son was able to pay for my sins in the past, even the ones that exist in my future. Of course, no such sins exist in presentism. Presentism makes nonsense of the Gospel.
Dennis continues his libel, stating, “Christ is still talking with the disciples (which Lisle would like to do also after he jumps in his time machine).” This again is false. “Still” means “in the present.” And no eternalist believes that Christ’s past conversations with his disciples are occurring in the present. Rather, we affirm that they really happened at actual points in time in the past. But since such conversations are not “present things,” they could have no existence in presentism. Notice that Dennis continues his false claim about my position on time travel.
Dennis states, “Of course, there are so many more abhorrent theological consequences of eternalism that Lisle may want to work through.” Such as? So far, Dennis hasn’t managed to produce even one legitimate criticism of eternalism. All his arguments have been against a strawman misrepresentation of my position, are directly contrary to Scripture, or both.
Is Presentism Better?
Dennis then states, “Presentism stands in stark contrast to the eternalist philosophy. Presentism is the view that the present is real; that there is an actual real moment called now throughout the Creation.” Notice first of all that this is not the definition of presentism. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Presentism is the belief that only present things exist.” I and all eternalists can agree that a real present exists. Who would disagree with that? However, Einstein discovered that this present – as it pertains to distant locations – will differ between different observers in different references frames depending on their chosen synchrony convention. That is perfectly fine if eternalism is true. However, this is an aspect of relativity that Dennis apparently doesn’t understand or embrace – likely due to his antibiblical philosophy of presentism.
Dennis claims that the present is “a present moment that continually passes.” But the present cannot “pass” into the future if the future has no existence. And so this is where the philosophical naivety of presentism becomes apparent. It is simply not a well-thought-out position. The passage of time requires a real dimension of time, which Dennis denies. It is simply not a self-consistent philosophy.
Dennis continues, “The past is forever gone, the future will be.” I can even agree with that as an eternalist. The past is “gone” in the sense that we cannot directly sense it or affect it in any way. But it is nonetheless real. It has real existence – not in the present of course – but in the past. And all events that really occurred in the past do exist as past events. We can even access some of them by memory. We can read about others in the Bible. Thus, the (strong) presentist claim that “only present things exist, have existed, or will exist,” is false. The future will indeed be, in the sense that future events have reality and are already known to God. We can even read about some of them in Scripture (e.g., John 5:28-29). But how could this be the case if only present things will exist, as affirmed by strong presentism? And as we pointed out previously, it will not do to claim that Dennis is merely defending trivial presentism (that only present things exist in the present) because this does not contradict the eternalist claim that past, present, and future are equally real.
Dennis claims, “Reality is a three-dimensional universe that exists at each moment of time.” In other words, reality is a four-dimensional spacetime. Dennis can deny it all he wants, but he can’t have his cake and eat it too. If the universe exists at each moment of time, then it exists in the past, present, and future, and hence has temporal duration. It is therefore four-dimensional. There is no getting around this unless you are willing to assert that time does not flow and only one point in time exists – that the past and future are not real.
Dennis continues, “That such a view is consistent with the Bible should be readily apparent.” I agree, but then again, such a view is really an eternalist view – not a presentist one. In presentism, past and future have no existence and are thus non-real. But the biblical universe has both a real past and a real future (e.g., Isaiah 46:9-10; Revelation 22:13).
Dennis states, “Before I proceed, let me address a possible misconception, and a very important one. I have encountered a small number who think that presentism compels one to embrace the heresy of open theism—the view that God is subject to time.” It is easy to prove that open theism would necessarily be true if God exists and if presentism is true. If “only present things exist” and if God exists, then God is necessarily a present thing. God could have no existence in the past if the past has no existence, and God could have no existence in the future if the future has no existence. The idea that God could know the future would be impossible because knowledge is true, justified belief. And if the future does not exist, then it is not true/real. Thus, God might be an excellent predictor of future events, but He could not know a future that has no existence – by definition. And, of course, that is contrary to Scripture.
Dennis continues, “Open theists, obviously and unsurprisingly, embrace presentism. But in their version of presentism God is trapped in time as something outside of God, independent of God and uncreated. That is not the God of Scripture.” I appreciate that Dennis is attempting to distance himself from the open theists. But this is only because he is unwilling to take his philosophy to its logical conclusion. God cannot be beyond time if “only present things exist.” The biblical God is beyond time and is equally aware of all events that have ever happened or will ever happen. In fact, God has determined all that will happen in the future from the beginning of time (Isaiah 46:9-10). This is an eternalist view of time, not a presentist view.
Dennis states, “On the other hand, theistic presentism is built on the fact that both space and time (but not spacetime) are creations of God.” Again, we see that Dennis is trying to conclude that space and time do not constitute spacetime. But Einstein showed that space and time are inextricably linked. They are two aspects of one underlying reality: spacetime. In fact, what any one observer sees as time only, another observer will necessarily see as a combination of time and space. This will be demonstrated in the next article.
Dennis continues, “If one would want to say God can only exist in time according to presentism, then would they say that God can only exist in created space? Such is not sound reasoning. God is not subject to any aspect of His Creation.” Dennis’s argument here is the fallacy of false analogy. The presentist insists that only present things exist; and so it would necessarily follow that God can only exist in the present. Otherwise, He would be something that exists but not strictly within the present. So I agree that “God is not subject to any aspect of His Creation,” but that proposition is incompatible with presentism (since “only present things exist”).
The person who believes that God created space does not insist that “only spatial things exist.” Otherwise, it would indeed be the case that God could not exist beyond His own creation. But the eternalist has no problem with the existence of the biblical God who is beyond spacetime, having created it. The eternalist does not claim that “only spatial and temporal things exist.” And so we can have a God who is beyond both space and time. But if only present things exist (the definition of presentism), then a God who is beyond time cannot exist. And so Dennis is comparing two unlike positions and drawing inferences from areas in which the two things are not alike. That’s the fallacy of false analogy.
Dennis continues, “God is immanent within the Creation (omnipresence). He is present within the spatial creation at each moment of time. He is also transcendent and exists independently of the Creation in every respect.” Except in time – if you are a presentist. If only present things exist, then God can have no existence in the past or future. Yet the Bible teaches that God not only transcends space, but time as well. Thus, God can say, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). But there is no beginning or end in time to the presentist since these are not present things! Again, presentism is simply not compatible with the Bible.
Dennis states, “Presentists deny that the mathematics of relativity theory compels one to an eternalist view.” And we will demonstrate in the next article that they are wrong. Relativity (both special and general) requires a real past and future. The physics of Einstein would not work without the reality of time.
Dennis continues, “Originally among these are Eddington and Reichenbach.” I have already shown that Eddington and Reichenbach have refuted Dennis’s ideas about synchrony conventions. Dennis seems to imply that they were presentists. But they certainly were not. They embraced a real past, present, and future, as is evidenced in their writings.
Dennis states, “More recent advocates of the reality of time and the flow of time are Bohm (1965), Ellis (2012) and Unger and Smolin (2015).” No one denies that human beings experience a flow of time. So this seems to be a strawman fallacy. Again, I have seen eternalists use nonliteral figures of speech to indicate that our perceptions of time do not encompass the fullness of the real nature of time. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t distinguish between past and future, or that we fail to perceive the passage of time. It is simply that we embrace the reality of the past and future. It is the presentist who cannot – in a logically consistent fashion – accept that time flows. The flow of time requires a real time dimension in which to flow. But the presentist will only accept the reality of one point in time – the present!
I want to give a quick example of an eternalist using nonliteral language that Dennis takes literally in order to construct a strawman argument. Dennis states, “Whitrow (1980, 348) in his comments regarding the flow of time quotes the eternalist Weyl (1949, 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.’ The reader will detect that Weyl smuggles in time after saying it does not happen.”
Does Weyl literally deny that things happen (and then contradict himself) as Dennis claims? Not at all. Weyl is referring to one way of viewing spacetime in which we consider past, present, and future times of some person or object on paper or a chalkboard. Such diagrams are necessarily static – in our actual time. But they allow us to examine multiple times by representing them spatially. This doesn’t mean that Weyl is confusing time with space or denying that time passes. His reference to “crawling upward” is a reference to the human perception of the passage of time. Weyl is pointing out that our very limited perceptions do not encompass the entire reality of time. Only God knows the full reality of time.
Dennis claims, “Also, there is a return to the presentist position among Christian physicists and philosophers that Christians need to recognize.” So? There has also been a return to hyperpreterism, unitarianism, and other heresies among professing Christians. That is not a reason to accept something that is unbiblical. Dennis seems to be committing the faulty appeal to authority.
Dennis then cites William Lane Craig as a modern Christian philosopher who embraces presentism. However, Craig embraces all kinds of other unbiblical philosophy as well. In fact, Craig denies that Genesis is literal history. This denial is due to his man-centered, antibiblical philosophy. I have refuted Craig’s ridiculous reasoning in a series of articles beginning here. No wonder Dennis is confused if he is basing his thinking on Craig’s unbiblical philosophy.
I am not opposed to Dennis seeking guidance from Christian philosophers. However, I would suggest he draw from those whose philosophy is genuinely biblical – rooted and derived from Scripture. I would highly recommend my mentor in apologetics, Dr. Greg Bahnsen. When we start with man-centered philosophy, as Craig does, we are inevitably robbed of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge – the very thing the Bible warns against in Colossians 2:8.
Notice that Dennis never, not even once, made a cogent, positive argument for the claim, “only present things exist.” Why? Nearly every argument he presented was a strawman fallacy – a critique of a misrepresentation of eternalism. Strawman arguments may effectively persuade people, but they are not an ethical nor logical way to debate. I have tried to represent Dennis fairly to the best of my ability and show the heretical implications of his beliefs. Why has he continually misrepresented my position, particularly when I am on record as stating the exact opposite of what he accuses me of believing? Why did the peer reviewers allow such misrepresentations to be published in the Answers Research Journal? I recognize that the peer reviewers may not be knowledgeable enough of relativity or synchrony conventions to spot the obvious physics and mathematical errors in Dennis’s publication. But why did they allow such obvious and blatant misrepresentations of my position?
In any case, I hope that these last three articles have shown the utter intellectual bankruptcy of presentism. It is contrary to Scripture, and is contrary to logic. In the next article, we will show that it is contrary to the physics of Einstein.
Reference
Lisle, J. 2018. The Physics of Einstein. Aledo, Texas: Biblical Science Institute.
Footnotes
[1] https://answersresearchjournal.org/astrophysics/refutation-of-lisles-refutation-of-dennis-2024/
All of Dennis’s quotes used here are from the above article.
[2] https://biblicalscienceinstitute.com/theology/the-christmas-star/
[3] https://biblicalscienceinstitute.com/theology/the-good-news-about-hell/
[4] Lisle, J., Introduction to Logic, p.99