Time allows change to take place and the very evolution of the universe is what requires some conception of time. Mathematically can we write down a universe that doesn't have time? Sure. Do we think that would be realised in the larger reality that is out there? None of us take that possibility seriously.

...things are the way they are in our universe because if they weren't, we wouldn't be here to notice.

The absolute worst thing that you ever can do, in my opinion, in bringing science to the general public, is be condescending or judgmental. It is so opposite to the way science needs to be brought forth.

In the far, far future, essentially all matter will have returned to energy. But because of the enormous expansion of space, this energy will be spread so thinly that it will hardly ever convert back to even the lightest particles of matter. Instead, a faint mist of light will fall for eternity through an ever colder and quieter cosmos.

When you know the answer you want, it is often all too easy to figure out a way of getting it.

Falsifiability for a theory is great, but a theory can still be respectable even if it is not falsifiable, as long as it is verifiable.

So: if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image right now, and if you agree that your now is no more valid than the now of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events in spacetime.