I've come to the conclusion, that from a Christian persepective, Time Travel will always be impossible. This might be obvious but I haven't given it much throught previously, other than I just thought the very idea of time travelling was stupid.
I was brought to this conclusion by watching an episode of Stargate Universe. I'll try to keep this vague, so I don't create any spoilers, but there's an episode that involves time travel and some of the people who go back in time die, and one assumes from the episode that this prevents the other 'current' versions of these people dying.
And I realised, that would mean there could be two of you at the one point of time, which would require two of your souls, when clearly we only have ONE soul, and if one of 'you' died and the other didn't, how would you be judged? Or what if you both died, at the same point, one would assume you'd be having two souls judged.
And also, if you saw your future self die after he/she has time-travelled back to your time, then you'd probably take note NOT to travel back to this point in time in the future, to avoid that death. Which means you've died but had a second run... which the bible obviously disagrees with.
My conclusion is open to change, by the way, that's just the conclusion I've come to so far.
That, and the idea of going back in time is just stupid anyway.
6 comments:
But what about Harry Potter-style paradox-free time travel where you can't change the past? So if you see yourself cast a patronus from across the lake/see yourself die, then that's what had to happen, and you're bound to go back to the past in the future (and it's impossible for you to die before you come back from the future).
I did think about that. But IF time travel existed, it couldn't be like that, because people would still break the rules and create paradoxes.
Keep in mind that in HP it is not possible to go forward in time, and it is not impossible to die before coming back from the past. Hermione strictly warns Harry not to be seen because wizards have killed their past or future selves by allowing their past self to see their present self.
You certainly can change the past with HP-style time travel - another thing Hermione strictly warns him against.
This is going pretty deep into nerd territory, and I don't expect you to agree with me, but I think that Hermione was deliberately misled about time travel, because there is only one time-line. Suppose future-Harry hadn't saved past-Harry, and past-Harry died. This isn't possible, because otherwise future-Harry couldn't be there.
In single-time-line time travel it is completely impossible to change the past, because there is only one past. Say you cut your finger on Monday. On Tuesday you go back to Monday and try to stop Monday-you cutting her finger. You necessarily fail, because what happened on Monday was that you cut your finger, and you can't both cut and not cut your finger.
If you could change the past, then there would have to exist multiple universes, and multiple versions of you (or at least the act of changing the past would spawn a new universe and a new version of you), each with a different soul, and the act of "changing the past" would not change your past, but the present of another universe.
YFNA
I think your argument is exactly the reason I was saying Time Travel can't exist.
When it comes to HP time travel though, I don't think Hermione was misled. Obviously JK Rowling was not out to make it realistic, so I'd imagine that if Harry had not created that patronus, and his past-self had died, then his present-self would just evaporate due to the fact he had died.
JK also often admits there are parts of her books she didn't put a lot of thought into. You wouldn't think that, considering the intricacies of the web of storylines, but there are minor details she often messes up. (Eg. she has contradicted her own laws of magic, in some instances she's suggested Hogwarts is home to near a thousand students, but if you look at the structure of dormitories and houses it couldn't have more than 300 at most, she's gotten characters' dates of death mixed up, etc). I'm sure the intricacies of Time Travel are one of those things she probably didn't give much thought to.
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