Time, according to most modern naturalists, is an altogether natural phenomenon that began with the Big Bang and is strictly tied to motion—whether of light, objects in space, or (the stretching of) space itself. To state the case negatively, NCE (naturalistic cosmic evolution) denies that there is any such thing as “absolute time.”

But common sense clearly contradicts this view. Observe, for example, the workings of your own mind as you try to understand the Big Bang: though warned against it, you simply cannot keep yourself from imagining the singularity suspended in time and space, or from pondering how long it was there before it exploded, or from asking how it got there in the first place, etc. Indeed, in their unguarded moments, naturalists themselves address these very questions! Why? Because we all have the same intuitive understanding of time: it is eternal and unchanging (or “absolute”), going infinitely far back into the past and infinitely far forward into the future. Therefore, try as we may, we cannot accustom ourselves to the idea of time having a beginning.

And this is not all. For the more we ponder it, the more we also realize that time has a subjective, or spiritual, dimension. In other words, we realize that time essentially involves consciousness. In particular, it involves consciousness of duration—an ineffable awareness in some person's mind that both he and the world he lives in are moving out of the present, into the future, leaving behind the past.

To get a feel for this point, you may perform this humble thought experiment. Picture a rock in your back yard. You know intuitively that the rock is not conscious. Therefore, for the rock, time does not exist. This does not mean, however, that the rock does not exist in time. For if you are conscious of the rock, then it exists in time, since you are aware of its existing in time. What's more, you know that even if you yourself are not conscious of the rock, it still exists in time. And reflecting on this, you finally realize that it continually exists in time only because there is a continuing God who is continually conscious of it.

Time, then, as opposed to rates of physical change, is essentially related, not to the speed of light, or to the motion of physical bodies, or to the expansion of space, but to consciousness and self-awareness. In other words, it is not a natural but a supernatural phenomenon. Indeed, it may be that we humans find ourselves “in” time, not because we are in the universe, but because we (along with the universe) are in God, and because God allows us to share a limited awareness of his own eternally enduring self. If all this is so, it is hardly surprising that statements about time “beginning” with the Big Bang—with neither God nor man upon the scene—scandalize our intuitions.

FROM CHAPTER 4
Pantheism on the Beginning

Metaphysically speaking, cosmic evolution is compatible with both naturalism and theism. But pantheism, by its very nature, rules out cosmic evolution. This is because “matter,” for the pantheist, is a byproduct of mind (i.e., Big Mind). More particularly, what we call "matter" is really a mere phenomenon appearing in the consciousness of a sentient being. Therefore, matter cannot exist prior to the “birth” of sentient beings in whose consciousness alone it has its existence. As we saw, this is exactly what the static Hindu cosmology affirms. And metaphysically speaking, the pantheist really has no alternative. A sentient being may suddenly awaken to a dream world in the moment that Big Mind falls from its original unity. But a sentient being cannot evolve from some other substance, since, according to pantheistic metaphysics, no such substance exists.

In passing, let us note that Teilhard de Chardin obviously felt this difficulty and so departed from true pantheism (which teaches that all is divine Mind or Spirit) by declaring that god is a single substance who is both material and psychical. This exotic view, usually called panpsychism, has also been embraced by the so-called "process theologians' mentioned earlier. However, it is impossible to prove panpsychism scientifically—how does one observe and measure the psyche of a molecule or a cell? It is also impossible to prove spiritually, since it does not have the sanction of a credible divine revelation. Furthermore, it is liable to all the ethical problems of true pantheism, since it too makes god not only the author of evil, but its embodiment and victim as well. Evolutionary panpsychism is no more intuitive, reasonable, or “right” than true pantheistic evolution.

We find, then, after careful reflection, that the doctrine of cosmic evolution is metaphysically compatible only with naturalism and theism, since these worldviews alone accommodate a pre-existing substance from which things (and minds) might evolve. Thus, evolutionary cosmogony cannot be grafted onto the rootstock of pantheistic metaphysics. This is why we feel such mental pain trying to imagine the beginning according to EPC (evolutionary pantheistic cosmology). Let us learn from the pain. It is trying to teach us something important: that the much-heralded marriage of pantheism and cosmic evolution is really a shotgun wedding that will not, because it cannot, endure.