That’s a little bit different, though, from the point I’m making about time. First it’s necessary to see that the concept of ’sequence’ does have meaning without reference to time. For instance, I can take an instantaneous snapshot of houses in a street, all in the same shot, with house numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 (the even numbers are on the other side of the street here in the UK). That’s a sequence, and it’s represented in two spatial dimensions on a snapshot. Sure, it takes time to assimilate the info in that snapshot – but that’s a feature of sensory perception, not of the sequence itself.

If one goes deeper into it then it does turn out that something more is needed just for things to exist at all, something that we refer to as ‘time’. But the point that I’m making is that the thing we refer to as ‘time’ – when we measure time in any way – can always be reduced to a comparison of two distances. There’s no need for anything other than spatial dimensions to fully explain our measurement of time. This suggests that what we refer to as ‘time’ is actually something rather different, interpreted that way by our sensory system as a ‘notational convenience’ (i.e. makes life easier for us). There’s actually no need for anything more than spatial dimensions (including one that our consciousness interprets to us as ‘time’) for a full explanation of observed phenomena. [Note that this is NOT the same interpretation of 'time' as the proposed 4th dimension of 'spacetime' in the sense that relativity theory uses it.]

You can go on and on and finally you see that all lengths are defined in terms of other lengths. Or length is relative. Time is also defined relative to other times.

I’ve having a lot of trouble making sense of any of the arguments. I think a lot more study has to go into this before we can say “time doesn’t exist”

The numbers 1,2,3,4,5 written here are not a sequence in space unless you have time also. You need time to observe the numbers. Things in space have to be observed and observations take time.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding something, I don’t have a degree, and I’m definitively not as good as you with words, but I felt the need to share this.

I’ll have to keep an eye on xkcd.

I like xkcd.

How can somebody determine whether an object is moving fast or slow? Or how can you prevent the occurence of the oncoming evening, when it’s afternoon, and you know that evening is inevitable no matter what you do? You know that it will come at 6pm, for instance, and you wait for it, and, surely, it does come.

Whether time is inherently existing, or it’s just a concept that people invented in order to better understand their reality, the perception of time is created in your brain due to the above mentioned phenomena.

When people talk about time as being the fourth dimension, they talk about a different kind of time. Even though past and future is a time frame in someone’s life, it’s not the same kind of time that the clock measures in order to determine speed, for example. Therefore, it’s hard for some people to comprehend the idea that past and present can exist simultaneously with present in a different, but parallel dimension(s).