Does the world have a (temporal) beginning? Discuss.
In this essay I am going to put forward arguments for and against the idea of the world having a temporal beginning. I will start by outlining the basic problems of this debate and show why I intuitively believe in time having a beginning. I will then delve deeper into this debate to try and support this idea and show how I will possibly have to look to other areas, such as science, in order to prove my point.
First of all I will start of with Kant and how he gave the basic problem of there not being a beginning in time which first gives me the intuitive belief that surely time has to have a beginning. Kant says that assume that the world has no temporal beginning, this would mean that there must have been an infinite amount of time and moments leading up to where we are now in the present day. Kant argues that it is impossible for all the parts of the series of infinite time to be finished all in succession which would mean we never would have got to the present, but of course we have. This means time must have had a beginning. I feel this is a strong argument automatically making me think it is impossible for time to not have had a beginning but I will have to continue to find stronger arguments in support of this.
On the other hand there is a simple problem with the whole idea of time having a beginning, though I think this is less inviting then the previous argument. This is that surely time can’t have a beginning as
Time, what is time, and why is it important? Well time is a concept that humans’ brains can perceive, in fact their brains basically construct the past, the present, and the future. Basically, time is a measurement system, and without it the human race wouldn’t have ever existed. Humans have a very simple understanding of time, and they still do not understand its full potential. Humans only understand the measurement of time, and the manipulation and capturing of time overwhelms them. To this day the only way humans have captured time is their memory, and even then they still get it wrong sometimes.
time,” is a statement which this book The Daughter of Time demonstrated very well. It showed how
Properly dating the book of Genesis would allow us to build a timeline of creation which we can be used to trace back to day one of creation. However, this is extremely difficult to determine for two fundamental reasons: (1) the Bible provides no controllable statis- tical data that apply to the problem of absolute chronology; (2) most of the events took place in the preliterate period for which we have no extrabiblical written documents. (Ch. 1 Pg. 28)
Let us begin by saying that time cannot be stopped nor slowed down but must be followed. Meaning that on some occasions we
In this essay, I shall analyse the problem of “Why didn’t a temporal God create the world sooner?”. This essay shall begin with an exposition of the problem as provided by Leftow, and then explain Leftow’s and Swinburne’s solutions. Furthermore, I shall explain the ineffectiveness of these solutions exposed by Craig, and I shall provide the view that the most effective solution to the problem is that God’s temporal mode of existence changes from timeless prior to creation, and temporal post-creation. However, firstly, we must understand the problem with which we are dealing.
In the beginning there was nothing, except God. God made everything out of nothing. He made the heavens, earth, and all things. It took him 6 days and on the seventh day he rested.
In A Wrinkle in Time, there is not really a time because they basically time travel. I think
J.M.E McTaggart’s ‘The Unreality of Time’ is respected today as his foremost and best known work within Academia. It is appropriate that this work shares the title of one of his most enduring Philosophical projects, establishing that Time is unreal or does not exist. In regards to the question ‘Did He Succeed?’ while being a perfectly typical critical Philosophical essay topic, it would be beyond the scope of this essay to definitively say Yes or No. The standards of Western Philosophy just seem to be that for any of those enduring questions that have been the topic of study for in some cases nearly three thousand years in the discipline to be said to be definitively answered, the standard and breadth of evidence would be so great that no one would be asking if a Philosopher really did succeed in his project nearly a century after his death. So in this essay I will discuss how McTaggart attempted to establish the unreality of time, but in the context of not trying to argue he actually established it beyond doubt. McTaggart sought to establish the unreality of time by means of demonstrating how flawed conventional conceptions within Philosophy of Time were. So I will also seek to demonstrate he did at least establish that current conceptions of time were flawed and throw serious doubt upon then.
We plan our day around different times of the day. Time tells us when to eat, when to sleep, and how long to do things for. If time were based on these simple terms, then this mysterious enigma would not be in debate. There are the issues of space and time; what is the relationship
It could argued that our common-sense notion of endurance through time is incorrect. That this mistaken self-conception lead us to experience the passage of time. If so, this would be illusory no? And if this enduring ‘me’ is an illusion then so is the passage of time.
Time travel has been debated for years by philosophers and non-philosophers alike. While the possibility of time travel is intriguing and alluring, I do not believe its portrayal in today’s media is plausible. In this paper, I will argue that time travel, particularly back in time, is not possible in our current world and universe.
In this paper I will be discussing the concept of the paradox, examples from Zeno and McTaggart, and how modern science has potential solved the paradox put forth by McTaggart. Both of these paradoxes have a enormous repercussion on how objective fact about the world can be understood. I claim that McTaggart’s theory of time can be solved by modern physics as Einstein’s theory of relativity makes time a relative factor in how time is understood.
The notion of time is used as the basis for the argument in 'To his
This postulate developed by Einstein has what some would call key problems and would cause uproar in conventional thinking. Things such as time now become variables when original thinking classified it as an unchanging constant. Just thinking about this prospect can be mind boggling. Time is something that everyone takes for granted as being a constant flow, just ticking away, and perpetual. But, in fact, it is something that depends entirely on space-time. How do we know that time is relative? Imagine a different kind of clock. This clock is unique because instead of a hand ticking away it is actually a beam of light bouncing between two mirrors. This would seem the most logical choice of an accurate clock because light is a constant right? As we observe the clock it ticks off at regular
There would be an infinite regress among causes if there were not a first cause; therefore, there must be a first cause, namely, God. If the chain of efficient causes that have produced the world as we know it today had no beginning, then it would form, not an extensive infinity, but an intensive infinity, which is harmless.