Time is absolutely real. Physicists do not debate this with any merit. The book "The Secret" popularized the idea that physicists proved that time didn't exist but that book is cover-to-cover lies and mysticism.
The second law of thermodynamics has time as an integral component. If scientists didn't believe time existed or mattered, I doubt that'd be the case. There's lots and lots and lots of examples of this, that one is just the most poignant.
There's lots of things we don't understand about time, just like there's tons of things we don't understand about dark matter, gravity, and particle physics.