B-Theory of time FAILS

UNDER HEAVY CONSTRUCTION.

[[B-Theory of time]] 

First of all, what do we mean when we talk about the B-Theory of time? The B-Theory of time is defined as, “A view of time according to which all events (past, present, and future) are equally real and temporal becoming is merely a subjective feature of consciousness. The number of past events in a beginningless universe on such a view would be obviously actually infinite, since it would be akin to a spatial array of items.” This is much different than the A-Theory of time. On the A-Theory of tie there is a real difference between past, present, and future. The present exists, but the future is unreal, it is just potentiality, and the past has faded away and no longer exists. On the A-Theory of time Temporal becoming is a real and objective feature of the world. That is to say, things actually come into existence and then go out of existence. This is the common sense view of time that virtually everyone hold to. In contrast, The B-Theory of time says there really isn’t any difference in the past, present, and future. It suggests that the past, present, and future are all equally real. Your eating breakfast tomorrow, your future marriage, your death, etc are just as real as what is happening right now and what happened in the past. Similarly, the things that happened in the past are still real and never go out of existence/never vanish into non-being. So the difference between past, present, and future on the B-Theory of time is that it’s just an illusion. It’s an illusion of human consciousness. For us today is the present, but for the people living in 2099, 2099 is the present and we are in the past. But on the B-Theory of time neither is right or wrong, they are just an illusion. So again on the B-Theory of time there is no temporal becoming, things don’t come into being and then go out of being, they just all exist.

(Dr. Craig - https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/past-and-future-in-the-kalam-cosmological-argument#ixzz29ojSIAwV

Now, as it pertains to ''The Elliott Argument,'' we welcome proponents of both the ''A-theory of time'' and the ''B-theory of time.” First let us point out that B-Theory of time, ''static time'', or “Block Universe Theory” simply falls under the definition of 'STE or SCPN depending on how you want to break it down. How? Because even though tenseless, in a B-Theory of time, space exists eternally in the past without true beginning. It is key to remember here is that the definition of STE includes both time without space as well as space without time. "On a classical view of B-theory of time, the universe never truly comes into being at all (has no true beginning). The whole four-dimensional space-time manifold just exists tenselessly. Although the space-time manifold is intrinsically temporal (in that one of its four-dimensions is time), it is still claimed to be timeless, in that it does not exist in an embedding hyper-time, but rather exists tenselessly. Meaning it neither comes into being or goes out of being. The four-dimensional space-time manifold is this latter sense eternal." (Naturalism: A Critical Analysis (200) pp 232-3 ~ William Lane Craig). But if your opponent wants to say that the entire system came from pure nothingness at some point (that would of course be SCPN). And if your opponent wants to push the question back and say the entire system was the product of something else causing it to exist, then you just play the “where did that come from” game until they will ultimately be forced to admit STE or SCPN.

Before we begin to cut into this, let’s talk about illusions and take some cues from the many experiences we know to be illusory. If I hold out my outstretched fingers nearly touching in front of my face, I will see the illusion that has amused children since the beginning of humanity. There, floating in space right in front of my face, is a finger sausage that appears to be connected to nothing. There is an enormous amount of literature devoted to much more elaborate illusions than this one. Here is one of the more remarkable ones. When one glances at a certain type of pattern, they see it as animated. It appears to be a seething, moving, boiling surface. But this is simply an illusion. There is no motion, no movement, no boiling surface at all. The image is entirely static. By two means, we convince ourselves that both of these are illusions. First, we note that viewing the illusion slightly differently, it can be eradicated. Merely shutting one eye leads to the sausage disappearing. Or in the case of the anomalous motion illusion, we can eradicate the motion in any smaller part of the image by merely covering the rest. Second, we can often identify the mechanism through which the illusion arises. In the case of the finger sausage, it results directly from an improper fusion of the images received by each one of our eyes. No doubt similar explication of the anomalous motion illusion is possible in terms of vagaries of our visual perception. It is striking, for example, that the illusion is eradicated merely by fixing one's gaze rigidly on just one spot of the image. The illusion seems to require both the use of peripheral vision and the motion of the point of view.

If the B-theory of time were true, and passage of time is simply an illusion, it is quite unlike these familiar examples of illusions. It carries none of the distinguishing marks that enable us to identify other illusions. First, it seems impossible to eradicate passage from experience in a way that would reveal its illusory character. Indeed, there is a healthy tradition in experimental psychology that seeks to generate temporal dislocations in our experience. Subjects hear sounds in each ear that are delivered slightly dislocated in time. Yet they misperceive them as simultaneous. Subjects are led to misperceive the exact timing of an event they see by hearing cleverly timed audible clicks. These sorts of experiments are quite successful in leading to dislocations of the order of milliseconds. That sort of dislocation is remote from what one would expect if the entirety of passage is an illusion. With all the tricks at their disposal, why can't an inventive researcher induce dislocations of the order of a day or a year? But if the passage of time is an objective fact independent of our neural circuitry, that failure is no surprise. The greatest dislocation possible would only be the milliseconds of time involved in the neural processing of the moments once they have been delivered to our senses and are routed to consciousness. Secondly, what about identifying the mechanism that restricts the delivery of moments to consciousness into the rigid series we experience? In particular, what in the neural machinery blocks us from having perceptions of tomorrow or next year? While neuroscientists have made enormous advances in recent years, I do not think that circuitry blocking this avenue of perception has been identified. But if passage is an illusion of our perception, there must be some mechanism that blocks us from perceiving the future. With all of that out of the way, lets now get into some more detailed reasons of why B-Theory of time fails.

1.) There is no evidence which suggests space is eternal. To the contrary, all the reputable scientific evidence strongly supports the same conclusion that space had a true beginning a finite time ago. A point at which space itself came into existence. (See section on the scientific evidences which disprove STE). To deny this is to deny science and to deny the evidence. More than that, it would be to deny logic. Science says that the Universe not only had a finite beginning, but that it will also (sometime in the future) experience a 'death', die, and no longer exist. However, if the B-Theory of time were true then the Universe wouldn't die in the future, it is already dead.

2.) B-theory of time is illogical and self-refuting for a number of reasons. "Static Time”, or the B-Theory of time, requires us to believe that our experience of change in the external world (as well as within our own minds) is wholly illusory. Both tenets are required to be believed if one wishes to hold to a B-Theory of time. However, if our changing experiences are themselves illusions, then we are experiencing a changing illusion, which is objective and leads to a vicious infinite regress.  For example, if the change you’re currently experiencing is an illusion, then something's causing that illusion, and the illusion before that, and the illusion before that, etc. Therefore, the static theory of time is self-contradictory." Claiming B-Theory is true would itself be illusory and would depend on prior illusions which are also dependent on prior illusions, etc. So, if B-Theory of time were true, then past, present, and future events are all equally real. This again means the passage of time is simply an illusion. For example: My Grandfathers death did not come and go, it just always existed. The passage of temporal becoming for every event therefore is nothing more than an illusion. If each independent event is an illusion, and space-time was eternal (without true beginning) then in fact there has been an infinite regress of illusions. The issue then becomes, we can never arrive at the current or present illusion in the chain. Why? Because even though all events would exist (past, present, future) and be equally real, the events on the chain must still be traversed/cycled through in order, as to arrive at the next event (illusion) in the line. You are currently experiencing an illusion, and that illusion was preceded by a different illusion, which was preceded by a different illusion, infinitely in the past.

P1. An infinite regress of illusions cannot be correct
P2. B-Theory of time requires an infinite regress of Illusions
C. B-Theory of time cannot be correct


3.) The delivery of the (supposed illusory) doses is perfect. There are no revealing dislocations of serial order of the moments. While there may be minor dislocations, there are none of the type that would definitely establish the illusory character of passage. We do not, for example, suddenly have an experience of next year thrown in with our experience of today; and then one of last year; and then another from the present. There are some minor dislocations, but they’re not the sort that suggest passage is illusory. They are the sort we would expect exactly if passage were objective, but there were occasional malfunctions of our perception of it. Take, for example, the odd experience we have under anesthesia of no time at all passing between the administration of the drug and its wearing off. That is easily explained in the passage view as a suspension of that part of our neural system that detects the passing moments. Think of someone resting comfortably on a sofa. The sofa presses uniformly over the body, Yet the pressures are communicated to consciousness in a slow series that starts at the feet and marches inexorably up the length of the body to the pillow behind the head; and it is the same for every reclining body, without failure or serious dislocation. The result is that the reclining body and all others like it experience an illusory passage of pressure. If this sofa parable sounds fantastic, then you should find equally fantastic the same idea of a B-Theory of time. There is something odd in the idea that an element of our experience that is so universal and so solid and immutable is just an illusion.


4.) As already mentioned above, why can’t we identify the mechanism that restricts the delivery of moments to consciousness into the rigid series we experience? In particular, what in the neural machinery blocks us from having perceptions of tomorrow or next year? While neuroscientists have made enormous advances in recent years, I do not think that circuitry blocking this avenue of perception has been identified. But if passage is an illusion of our perception, there must be some mechanism that blocks us perceiving the future. We don’t see that and there is a reason that we cannot find any such mechanism. 

5.) In many well-known phenomena, the appearance of violation of time-reversal symmetry indicates the existence of a profound transition. The transition from the normal state into a superconducting state in unconventional superconductors is one such example. The broken time-reversal symmetry is an important clue on the transition point of such a phenomenon. If this is an "illusion", someone has a lot of explaining to do." Radioactive decay doesn't care if we have a "mind" or not. It will take the same amount of time no matter if we designate time as fundamental or an illusion. Considering that at a single nuclear level, this is a random process and yet as a conglomerate of nuclei, they all somehow "know" the decay rate that they have to "obey", I'd say that these nuclei know about "time" and respect it. Why not claim that length and space are an illusion as well? Why stop with time?” 

(http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.com/2007/03/time-is-illusion.html)

In a universe that was essentially static, there would not have been any dynamic reason why something like the stars suddenly turned on. Or went from their non-lit state to their lit state. It has been realized that the universe is in fact not static at all, but rather expanding. Galaxies are moving steadily apart from each other. This means that in the past they were closer together. One can plot the separation of two galaxies as a function of time. As again, we have stated over and over again in this book time is defined as a measure of events.

 

6.) Subjective sense of flow: While the idea that there is some objective sense in which time is flowing can be denied, the fact that conscious beings feel as though it is in some sense flowing cannot. However, if the flow of time didn't have an objective existence, then it is argued conscious beings would simultaneously experience all moments in their lives. A response is that since the brain presumably perceives time through information processing of external stimuli, not by extrasensory perception, and obeys the laws of causality, it is hard to see how the flow of time, whether it exists or not, could make any subjective difference: all conscious beings are built to perceive time as a chain of events, whether or not it occurs as such.

7.) Differences between past, present and future: Many of our common-sense attitudes treat the past, present and future differently.

A. We fear death because we believe that we will no longer exist after we die. But if the B-Theory of time is correct, death is just one of our temporal borders, and should be no more worrisome than birth.
B. You are about to go to the dentist, or you have already been. Common-sense says you should prefer to have been. But if Eternalism (B-Theory) is correct, it shouldn't matter which situation you're in.
C.  When some unpleasant experience is behind us, we feel glad that it is over. But if the B-Theory of time is correct, there is no such property as being over or no longer happening now—it continues to exist timelessly.

8.) Determinism and Indeterminism: People tend to have very different attitudes towards the past and the future. This might be explained by an underlying attitude that the future is not fixed, but can be changed, and is therefore worth worrying about. An open, undetermined, future is the only kind worth worrying about. In other words, a flow-of-time theory with a strictly determined future (which nonetheless does not exist at the present) would not satisfy common-sense intuitions about time.  In his discussion with Albert Einstein, Karl Popper argued against determinism: “The main topic of our conversation was indeterminism. I tried to persuade him to give up his determinism, which amounted to the view that the world was a four-dimensional Parmenidean block universe in which change was a human illusion, or very nearly so. (He agreed that this had been his view, and while discussing it I called him "Parmenides.) I argued that if men, or other organisms, could experience change and genuine succession in time, then this was real. It could not be explained away by a theory of the successive rising into our consciousness of time slices which in some sense coexist; for this kind of’ rising into consciousness’ would have precisely the same character as that succession of changes which the theory tries to explain away. I also brought in the somewhat obvious biological arguments: that the evolution of life, and the way organisms behave, especially higher animals, cannot really be understood on the basis of any theory which interprets time as if it were something like another (anisotropic) space coordinate. After all, we do not experience space coordinates. And this is because they are simply nonexistent: we must beware of hypostatizing them; they are constructions which are almost wholly arbitrary. Why should we then experience the time coordinate—to be sure, the one appropriate to our inertial system—not only as real but also as absolute, that is, as unalterable and independent of anything we can do (except changing our state of motion)?

The reality of time and change seemed to me the crux of realism. (I still so regard it, and it has been so regarded by some idealistic opponents of realism, such as Schrödinger and Gödel.)
When I visited Einstein, Schilpp's Einstein volume in The Library of Living Philosophers had just been published; this volume contained a now famous contribution of Gödel's which employed, against the reality of time and change, arguments from Einstein's two relativity theories. Einstein had come out in that volume strongly in favor of realism. And he clearly disagreed with Gödel's idealism: he suggested in his reply that Gödel's solutions of the cosmological equations might have ‘to be excluded on physical grounds’.

Now I tried to present to Einstein-Parmenides as strongly as I could my conviction that a clear stand must be made against any idealistic view of time. And I also tried to show that, though the idealistic view was compatible with both determinism and indeterminism, a clear stand should be made in favor of an "open" universe—one in which the future was in no sense contained in the past or the present, even though they do impose severe restrictions on it. I argued that we should not be swayed by our theories to give up realism (for which the strongest arguments were based on common sense), though I think that he was ready to admit, as I was, that we might be forced one day to give it up if very powerful arguments (of Gödel's type, say) were to be brought against it. I therefore argued that with regard to time, and also to indeterminism (that is, the incompleteness of physics), the situation was precisely similar to the situation with regard to realism. Appealing to his own way of expressing things in theological terms, I said: if God had wanted to put everything into the world from the beginning, He would have created a universe without change, without organisms and evolution, and without man and man's experience of change.”(Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography)

Here's a fun conversation I had with a B-Theorist on this matter:

AK - "If the future exists right now as we speak, and is just out there fixed and set, that means nothing we do can affect it (the future) or change it. The future would be a real tangible thing just as much as present events are."

B-Theorist - "That's correct. The future is just as real as the present and the past. It is already existing right now."

AK - "So if you murder someone next month, technically it wasn't your fault because the future already existed and was set."

B-Theorist - "Hmmm...I never thought of it that way."

AK - "I wouldn't worry too much about it...I'm sure the judge will allow the accountability of your actions to be chalked up to the future already existing...it's not your fault...it was the B-Theory time fault!!!

One thing I always ask those who believe in determinism, such as B-theorists, 5 Point Calvinists, etc. is…If you believe the future is fixed, immutable, cannot be changed, or altered in anyway, prove it by putting on a blindfold and walking across the interstate. They never do it for some reason. This is very odd, because for the predeterminist, nothing they do can alter or impact their future. Let have a look at the following argument known as the ‘Blindfold Argument’ that was written in 2024 by myself and Christopher Schatz’s.

P1: B-Theorists believe there is NOTHING they can do to impact their future.

P2: If there is NOTHING they can do to impact their future, then crossing the street with a blindfold on wouldn’t impact their future.

P3: If crossing the street with a blindfold on wouldn’t impact their future, then they should be willing to do it.

C: B-Theorists should be willing to cross the street with a blindfold on.

If they refuse to do it, simply ask this question. How would crossing the street with a blindfold on negatively affect you other than it might just be scary to do? Based on their beliefs it wouldn’t and when they realize this they will be trapped and have no answer. Keep challenging them to do it and to prove their illogical beliefs. 😊

Hypothetically let’s imagine in 50 years you were going die from an alligator attack. If that were true, and set in stone, then you could cross the street 1,000 times with a blindfold on and still be perfectly fine. You wouldn’t be afraid or scared to do it at all. Similarly, you wouldn’t be scared to go to war overseas if it was true you were going to die falling off a train in Kentucky. Moreover, if you were able to take a step back and look at the entire movie based on a B Theory of Time (how you were born, and how you die) it would become apparent to you that you cannot alter the outcome. If you die from a heart attack you will die from a heart attack. If you die skydiving, you will die skydiving. If you die in your sleep, you will die in your sleep. If it’s set in stone then it’s set in stone, which means it’s fixed and cannot change regardless of what actions you take or don’t take prior to your death. Think of the movie Titanic where Jack Dawson (Played by Leonardo DiCaprio) dies from hypothermia in the Ocean. That movie has already been written and released. Jack Dawsons fate (date time and manner in which he died) is already sealed, set and fixed. Once his fate and the end of the movie was written and set in stone, it wouldn’t matter what the writers said he did leading up to his death. If the ending is fixed and cannot be altered, then Jack Dawson could have played Russian Roulette with himself 10,000 times on the ship without consequence (Prior to them hitting the iceberg), and it wouldn’t have had any effect on the outcome.  Recap. If you are going to die from an alligator attack, then crossing the street blindfolded wouldn’t matter because you wouldn’t die. If you are going to get hit by a car when you cross the street (and that’s set in stone), then there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. You cannot avoid anything, nor can increase the probability of anything. So just walk around aimlessly on the freeway and see what happens or doesn’t happen. Also as far as the Titanic scenario, I’d like to remind my readers, that not only was Jack going to die how he died (no matter what), but if the future is set and fixed, they were also going to hit the iceberg no matter what.

One atheist responded and said this assumes that the person in the hypothetical had a decision to make at all. To which we reply, exactly!! Free will doesn’t exist in the B-Theory of time. Any decision you make cannot affect the outcome, because it’s not really a decision at all if the future is fixed. If free will doesn’t exist then no decisions are really your own. So again, you would have no grounds to deny walking across the street with a blindfold on.

10.) Reference frames are irrelevant for things that don't exist. Just like a photons reference frame for planets that have not yet formed (in an early universe) is irrelevant. 

B-Theorist - "I believe the past present and future are all equally real."

AK - "So you believe that planets existed at .0000001 nano seconds when the Universe first began to exist."

B-Theorist - "No it took a while before planets were able to form"

AK - "LOL"

11.) If the B-Theory of time were true, and time is defined as a measurement of events, then the passage of time is still occurring despite the insistence that it’s not. How you might ask? Well, if B-Theory of time were true, we (as humans/conscious observers) still are only able to see what we call the present. In other words, if the future does exist already, and is real, we still are not able to see it. We are only able to see what we call the present and not any of the future events that are claimed to be fixed. But the present (what we can see/the illusion we experience in the present) still changes in this B-Theory, and these changes (events) can be measured. Thus the passage of time based on formal definitions still exists and is real. There are genuine properties such as being two days past of the current illusion, being the present illusion, being 30 seconds before the illusion begins, etc.

12.) It’s a logical contradiction to be a B-Theorist and also believe in science. Example:

Atheist - "I believe in the B-Theory of time & that space is eternal in the past (without true beginning).

Same Atheist – “I also love science and believe the Universe had a finite beginning because of all the mountains of evidence which support it."

AK – It can’t be both.

13.) If the B-Theorist suggests that the universe came into being at some point in the past, and in that becoming also created the entire timeline of all events in an instant: How would the temporal becoming of 'one initial event' create every single future event by its effect?? If every event (past, present, and future) are all equally real at the same moment, then the very moment that the universe first comes into existence so do you, me, your car, airplanes, cell phones, bicycles, baseball hats, my shoes, the death of the universe, etc. This is why the A-Theory of time is called the common-sense view, and B-theorists are considered preposterous lunatics. Yet another reason to throw out B-Theory.

14.) How does The Theory of Relativity play into this? According to the theory of special relativity, there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity. But if there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity, then there cannot be objective facts of the form “t is present” or “t is 12 seconds past.” Thus, according to this line of reasoning, there cannot be objective facts about time, and so the passage of time cannot be an objective feature of the world. It can be plausibly argued that while relativity shows that it is physically impossible to observe whether two events are absolutely simultaneous, or that a single event occurs simultaneously for two different observers, the theory nevertheless has no bearing on whether there is such a phenomenon as absolute simultaneity. Events happen, and every single event that ever happened could be observed from numerous locations. This may appear to make an event happen at different ‘times’, depending on your reference frame. For example: Event X may appear to happen earlier for person Y than for person Z depending on his/her location. This, however, is not evidence that every single event (past, present, future) are equally real or all exist at the same moment. Furthermore, it is not evidence that every event does not actually have a ‘true temporal becoming’ which exists independently of anyone’s reference frame. There is no evidence which suggests every event does not have a true beginning or true present which is independent of any reference point. All we know is that being in a different location can give the illusion that a particular event is occurring earlier or later, but that is consistent with our perception and the way our eyes, ears, brain, and sensory input work.

15.) How and Why:  These are important questions to ask an opponent who is attempting to suggest the B-Theory of time could be possible. First of all, if the Universe never began to exist and was eternal in the past, then how did every single event, and every single cause and effect exist in this framework? What mechanism laid out all these events infinitely in the past? For example: It might be true that you are going to die from a gunshot wound in 40 years, and that truth has existed eternally in the past, but according to who and what mechanism set this? And when was this moment, as there was no singular moment for them all to (begin) existing if the universe was eternal. If all events (past, present, and future) never “began” to exist but just always were, then again, by what mechanism did this occur? How was every single cause and effect existing eternally and perfectly (without dislocation)? Meaning without error, as there are no effects which fail to follow their cause. No one ever had their head put in a guillotine and their foot fall off instead of their head. This perfection suggests there would need to be some kind of intelligent mind behind it. Without a law giver, there can be no laws. Without a programmer there can be no program. But for some reason, even with the B-Theory of time, everything abides by certain laws which cannot be undermined. Now if the B-Theorist suggests that the Universe “began to exist” at some point (and is not eternal in the past), ask them what non-personal (mindless cause) created everything, (life, laws, limits, the universe, every single cause and effect, etc.). Also how did this occur? As a mindless cause would have no rationale, volition, thinking capabilities, ability to withhold intention, ability to effectively create laws, etc. And lastly the WHY. Why would any of this exist at all instead of pure nothingness. What is the purpose or reason behind it? Why would there be something rather than nothing? Under the B-Theory of time, why is there even a universe? To say there is a place in which every single cause and effect exists perfectly & eternally in the past without any cause, reason, or any logically explanatory origin, is absurd.

16.) Under the B-Theory of time where did the laws of logic originate? The laws of logic cannot exist without an intelligent mind who produced them. These laws are objectively true and binding. They also exist independently of the human mind, belief, opinion, culture, etc. They are not relative, cannot change, and cannot evolve. For example, the statement ‘God cannot exist and not exist at the same time’ is objectively true, even if no human beings were on planet Earth. These laws can never change. Therefore, we can determine that human beings did not create the laws of logic, rather we just discovered them. The laws of logic exist as part of Gods essential nature and He cannot be violate or undermined them. Again, because they exist as part of his necessary being. He didn’t wake up one day and decide to create them. Rather, they have always existed as part of who he is. Without an intelligent mind, how could the laws of logic exist or have come into being? They couldn’t!! And under the B-Theory of time there is no adequate explanation for their origin.

17.)  If the future is real, fixed, and is out there currently existing just as real as our present, then free will does not actually exist, and nothing you did in your entire life was a choice. You are just doing what had already been eternally written, set, and fixed. The debate between A-theorists and B-theorists is a continuation of a metaphysical dispute reaching back to the ancient Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides. Parmenides thought that reality is timeless and unchanging. Heraclitus, in contrast, believed that the world is a process of ceaseless change, flux and decay. Reality for Heraclitus is dynamic and ephemeral. Indeed the world is so fleeting, according to Heraclitus, that it is impossible to step twice into the same river.

More: The B-theory of time is also burdened with more heavy philosophical problems. On the B-theory, temporal becoming is an entirely subjective phenomenon, and hence not an objective feature of reality. In the absence of minds, every temporal moment and event simply exists tenselessly; there are no tensed facts; no past, present, or future; nothing comes into existence or happens except in the tenseless sense of existing at certain appointed stations as opposed to others. If the mental phenomenon of temporal becoming is an objective feature of reality, this amounts to a denial of the B-theory of time. If the B-theorist bites the bullet, stating that there is no temporal becoming of mental states, then this flies in the face of experience. Sir Arthur Eddington states, "We have direct insight into 'becoming' which sweeps aside all symbolic knowledge as on an inferior plane. If I grasp the notion of existence because I myself exist, I grasp the notion of becoming because I myself become. It is the innermost Ego of all that is and becomes." Philosopher Dr. William Lane Craig explains that the B-Theory suffers the same incoherence as all theories that time is illusory, namely, that an illusion or appearance of becoming involves becoming, so that becoming cannot be mere illusion or appearance. The Buddhist can consistently deny the reality of the physical world, since the illusion of physicality does not entail physicality, but this is not the case with temporal becoming. John Laird writes: "Take the supposed illusion of change. This must mean that something, X, appears to change when in fact it does not change at all. That may be true about X; but how could the illusion occur unless there were change somewhere? If there is no change in X, there must be a change in the deluded mind that contemplates X. The illusion of change is actually a changing illusion. Thus, the illusion of change implies the reality of some change. Change, therefore, is invincible in its stubbornness; for no one can deny the appearance of change." We should stop protecting our vanity and admit what is now becoming obvious. We have no good grounds for dismissing the passage of time as an illusion. It has none of the marks of an illusion. Rather, it has all the marks of an objective process whose existence is independent of the existence of we humans. Passage exhibits no sign of being an illusion.

Time passes. Nothing fancy is meant by that. It is just the mundane fact known to us all that future events will become present and then drift off into the past. Today's eagerly anticipated lunch comes to be and satiates our hunger and then leaves a pleasant memory. The passage of time is the presentation to our consciousness of the successive moments of the world. Time really passes. It is not something we imagine. It really happens; or, as I shall argue below, our best evidence is that it does. Our sense of passage is our largely passive experience of a fact about the way time truly is, physically. The fact of passage obtains independently of us. This passage of time is one of our most powerful experiences. What is not in that experience is the idea of a present moment, the "now," that has any significant extension in space. The "now" we experience is purely local in space. It is limited to that tiny part of the world that is immediately sensed by us. There is a common presumption of a present moment that extends from here to the moon and on to the stars. That there is such a thing is a natural supposition, but it is speculation. The more we learn of the physics of space and time, the less credible it becomes. For present purposes, the essential point is that the local passage of time is quite distinct from the notion of a spatially extended now. The former figures prominently in our experience; the latter figures prominently in groundless speculation. 

(John D. Norton- Department of History and Philosophy of Science University of Pittsburgh)

(https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/passage/index.html)

(https://sites.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/Time_passes.pdf)

(https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2503-a-theory-and-b-theory-of-time)

"The Eternal Block Universe Theory and B-Theory of time give a deeply inadequate view of time. It fails to account for the passage of time, the pre-eminence of the present, the directedness of time and the difference between the future and the past.” – Philosopher John Lucas

Lastly, we need to remember that the B-Theory of time is nothing more than STE or SCPN depending on how your opponent wishes to break it down. Therefore, it does NOT defeat the argument in any way, nor does it offer a coherent refutation or prove a false dichotomy. Because of all these aforementioned issues, we see the B-Theory of time fails miserably as an attempted rebuttal of T.E.A.

[[For another able defense of the reality of the passage of time, see (Tim Maudlin, "On the Passage of Time" Ch. 4 in The Metaphysics within Physics. Oxford University Press, 2007.)]]

'B-Theory of time is dead, and anyone attempting to subscribe to it is committing intellectual suicide. God Bless' - AK