I have existed for all time and I will exist for all time

No, I'm not claiming to be immortal, but the fact is that I have been around since the dawn of time and will be around until the end of time – indeed, it is even possible that I existed before the dawn of time and will exist after the end of time, but I cannot prove that so I will confine this debate to the space-time that exists within our current universe.

Of course, I haven't always existed assembled as I am now, as a human being living on a planet revolving around one of 200-400 billion stars in one of 200-400 billion galaxies some 13.7 billion years after time (as we understand it) began. [1,2]

However, the atomic and sub-atomic matter that makes up my body, which was originally created in the Big Bang and has been travelling around the universe, in one form or another since then, came together (by happy coincidence from my point of view) to make up the infant Brian Eggleston and all the food and drink I have eaten that has enabled me to grow and survive until now.

Naturally, I am not unique in this claim: you can make exactly the same boast for yourself. It seems incredible that we – that is to say, the matter which constitutes our bodies - were all present at the beginning of time and we will all be there at the end of time. Well, it may seem incredible, but it's true.

Thank you.

[1] http://www.universetoday.com...
[2] http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov...

Thank you for accepting this debate, Brainmaster. I should like to respond to your rebuttal as follows:

Let's say I'm a master criminal at the weekends and one Saturday night I break into the Tower of London, steal the Crown Jewels, take them home and put them up for sale on eBay.

Now, let's say as I was fleeing the scene of the crime, I was set upon by the Tower's resident ravens and my nose got pecked off before I could make good my escape, and I turned up for work on Monday morning with a big hole in my face.

Now, one of my colleagues, who had read all about the robbery in her morning newspaper and knew that the police had recovered a nose from Tower Green, got suspicious when she noticed that my countenance was deficient in nasal organs to the count of one and she grassed me up to the filth, and when they arrived one of the detectives took the nose they had found, placed it on my face, and it made a perfect fit.

"Is that your nose, sir?" the detective might ask, to which I would be bound to reply:

"Yes, officer, that is my nose. Even though it is currently physically detached from my person, that nose remains a constituent part of my body," before adding "I want to call my lawyer."

But now let's say that I avoided the wrath of the ravens but the police tracked me down using the DNA extracted from the saliva I left upon a cigarette stub which I carelessly discarded in the Jewel House as I was putting the Crown Jewels in my sack.

Now, even though my DNA is microscopic, it still came from my body: it is my DNA; and the same applies to every single atom and sub-atomic particle in my body.

As I stated in my opening argument, I haven't always existed as a human being and one day I will die and my body will decompose, but even though the atomic and sub-atomic constituent parts of my body have not always been, or always will be, physically attached to each other, they remain part of who I am and, therefore, because they have existed for all time and will exist for all time, so have I and so I will.

Thank you.