Philosophy of time

Time and space go together. Therefore Einstein introduced the concept of space-time. To ask when something does happen makes no sense without a location statement, a where. What time concerns: time and time arrow of the past towards the present arises only  by an observer that is able to store information and to have expectations. Say, to remember the past and to make questions about events and operations in the future.

In a letter to the family of a recently deceased friend, Michele Besso, Einstein wrote, "... for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one." Since time is relative to the observer, it is impossible to divide it up into past, present and future in a way that is universally meaningful. In some sense, past, present and future are all there at once.


"This notion is sometimes called block time, but I like to call it the timescape because it's a bit like a landscape," says Davies. "If you look at a map, the whole of the landscape is there before you, all at once. If you add time as the fourth dimension on this map, then all of time is there at once too. The fact that nothing in physics singles out a particular 'now' is a mystery."
Incidentally, there is nothing in Einstein's theory that prohibits time travel, be it into the future or into the past. 

 The more you look into the past, the more what happened back then is impregnated by mistery, and lack of knowledge. The more time back, the more gaps in knowledge. Besides the few glimpses of knowledge that supernatural revelation and scientific, archeological, historical, and written texts have provided to us. The same is even more true for the future. What is, can give us a slight idea what is in front of us. And a few prophecies and divine revelation as well. But the more we look into the future, the more what might happen, vanishes in front of our eyes. We can only speculate. We know most about the here and now. The here and now gives us most evidence about the past and the future.

https://plus.maths.org/content/what-time-0

 Jim Johnson "A metric we use to explain observed changes in the observed and measured changes in matter and energy."
Time not only changes with speed through the medium we call "space" but also with proximity to a gravity well. Consider the minor adjustments that have to be made between the atomic clicked located in Grenwich and Colorado due to the fact that one is close to sea level and the other is high in the mountains, and therefore farther from the center of the earth's gravity well. Atomic clocks measure the rate of atomic decay also debunking the "fact" that the rate of decay is constant. The rate of decay depends on the conditions (speed/location) of the atomic particle being observed and measured.

Time is a huge topic in philosophy. What is time? We all know intuitively what it is, but when I ask you to formulate it, to bring it into words, you will soon perceive the difficulty. When you go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning, 6 to 8h did pass. But you did not perceive it. If you have a very deep and good sleep, it's almost when you wake up as if you did not perceive any gap of time. When you dream, there are sequential events in a dream, there is action, but you do not perceive time like when you are wake up. What does that mean? Two things: Time is bound to physical action. That's why there cannot be time if there is no matter, energy, and space. Where there is no action and physical reality, there is no time. And secondly: Even IF there would be time, space, and matter, and action, but no mind and conscience, there is no entity to PERCEIVE time.

So in order to have a sense and perception of time, the following ingredients are necessary:  Mental reality that can sensor external reality, space, matter and energy, physical action, and a mind is in a relationship with that said external physical reality in action. Then, only THEN, time can be perceived. Some have questioned: How can God exist BEYOND the universe sans universe, and sans time? Here is the answer: If we can dream and perceive a sequence of events in our mind but without EXPERIENCING time, since this sequence only occurs in our mind, so can God exist timeless beyond the universe, have mental states of action and sequential events in his mind, but not EXPERIENCING time. Basically, time is only something that MINDS EXPERIENCE, upon the perception of physical activity.  

Has it ever occurred to you, that you had a nightmare dream?  Sometimes, in our nightmare dreams, we experience awfully horrific events, which we have no idea, where they came from, and are in a real panic. What is the reaction? We try at all costs to flee that event and wake up in panic. So there is an event occurring in your mind, which provokes a PHYSICAL EVENT. You wake up. Every decision we make can and does often have physical consequences. I can decide to type the letter a. That mental decision provokes a physical event, where I move my arm, my fingers, and type on the keyboard the letter a. I don't know HOW that can occur. Nobody knows how this interaction can take place, but it does.  The lesson here is:

God CAN have existed in a timeless dimension sans creation, and have DECIDED to create the physical world, and provoked the creation of the universe upon his mental power and decision. There is nothing absurd about that. I can decide to write the letter a, and in an instant, AT THE SAME TIME that I take the decision, type the letter a. So there has to be no time lapse between a decision process and a physical event. It occurs simultaneously. So God can have existed in an exclusively mental dimension with sequential events, but experiencing no time, then he took the decision to create the universe, and simultaneously to his decision, made it all start, and time begin with the advent of physical reality.