On the "theoretical time travel" thread, SantanaDVX argued that "God wouldn't allow time travel".
This is adding a layer of controversy to what is already a controversial (and need I say speculative) subject. But I thought seeing as it was novel to me, it's worth exploration.
So the question, to start off with, would be whether God would or would not "object" to "time travel", and why. I would like to add that focus on the theoretical physics aspect is not desirable but this would be impractical, so I think the more appropriate condition is not to spend too much time arguing about whether or not God is relevant to Time Travel in the first place!
God wanted humans to have free will right? That's why Jesus never jumped off the temple. He wanted people to believe through faith, not because they witnessed miracles and therefore had no choice. If God allowed time travel, no doubt thousands and thousands of Christians worldwide would wish to travel to the Holy Land to see Jesus and get proof for their beliefs. Assuming God is real, he would not be best pleased about this.
Not to mention the religious mentalists that would go back in time with guns to protect him from the Romans.
Ephesians 1:4-6 "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestined us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved"
It seems that god is above the flows of time, he can eat time itself.
Peter 3:8 it says "But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
God supposedly knows everything that will happen and that has happened, so if there was going to be time travel, God would have found out already. To God, who is not hindered by the concept and construct of time, the future has already happened.Therefore it is we who change while God stays the same (this is also plausible if God only exists as the "erfect ideal). I don't know about you, but I find comfort in the fact that God is "timeless" and "changeless", and if something in History needs fixing, if everyone does not believe in time travel, God himself travels through time.
I don't think going back is possible in any way. Because you existed in the past. If you go back like 10 minutes before your time travel you'll see yourself going back through time but when you arrive you can stop yourself from going back and then there will be two you. Then again you and you can go back again 10 minutes in the past and you can multiply yourself like avalanche. Or if you go back in the time before your birth you can change the course of actions that led to your existence and you may not even be born. Going forward won't cause any mess, you disappear now and pop up in some time in the future. I don't know what are God's thoughts about this, if he/she doesn't want you to be a time tourist you won't be one.
You wouldn't know in what time period you ended up in! in theoretical time travel you have no control over the time period you will end up in. Please understand I'm not talking about some back to the future crap, and time machines, I'm talking about instantaneous travel between space and/or time.
You wouldn't know in what time period you ended up in! in theoretical time travel you have no control over the time period you will end up in. Please understand I'm not talking about some back to the future crap, and time machines, I'm talking about instantaneous travel between space and/or time.
If this is the case, then it would not be contradictory to God or God's will, because we can't control where we'll end up. The only possible one who would be able to control where we go would be some kind of higher being, assuming there is one, and if this higher being doesn't want us to see these events... Oh yeah, I'm agreeing with you DDX, your response explains a lot about the time travel theory.
I'm not trying to be rude to you in any way but you contradicted yourself when you said time travel doesn't have anything to do with God. When in reality it does, because one's opinion on religion can have effect on their other beliefs and opinions on certain things such as time travel.
So, I think religion plays a huge role on whether you believe in time travel.
Also, I don't think God would allow it. I just don't think it could be done without people trying to change the past.
I'm inclined to agree with DDX. If there is or is not a god, theology does not have an impact on the idea of time travel.
If you think of time as a non-linear entity, the future already 'exists'. We're viewing it in a linear fashion, so it doesn't exist 'yet' but in some fashion, it's already there. If time travel gets invented in the future, and they travel back in time with it, that means that all time travel that has occured on the planet up until this point is already said & done, and we're already living the timeline that has been impacted by that time travel.
Putting aside my views on god & religion - With regards to god not wanting us to 'screw things up' - I don't think it has an impact. I hear from people who are religious always using phrases that we can't understand god, or that he works in mysterious ways. If he does exist, I don't think that's proof that time travel is an impossibility, because he might have intended in his great plan or whatever, that we are capable of discovering it.
If time travel was possible, I still think it'd create a paradox. I believe in the whole everything alters everything theory (butterfly effect) and if you travel back trough time, then you'll create new events that have an extremely high probability of altering the future to such an extent that the trip was never taken in the first place, which means the event wouldn't happen and you could make the journey, which means you could go back in time and cause the event...and back and forth forever. Time travel into the future may be possible, but backwards seems like it'd wouldn't be....
With the hypothetical that there is a god, I would think that he wouldn't want us to go back in time for, as people have said, they're supposed to have faith, and so rednecks won't come back to obliterate the Romans with guns. Or because it could alter our world today. Heck, we could end up like the matrix if we make one false movie in history (note that this is an exaggeration, I'm not saying that if we kick some guy in the balls that was bill gates great great grandad that we'll all be slaves to a computer program). If god didn't want time travel, it'd be for a good reason.
However I am atheist, so I think that the only thing keeping us from time travel is because, as the famous saying goes, "Time is only an illusion". If you think long and hard about "time", what it means, and what it implies, I dare you to look me in the eye, explain, and it make sense to me.
