The future has already been

I have always been disatisfied with the portrayal of time travel in fiction. In most cases, the author adopts the deterministic view of time. Any intervention in the past has already become a part of history. There are any number of problems with this crude view of time travel.

First, the use of the word "travel" is problematic, since travel normally means traversing some distance (xyz) in some finite time (t) interval. We could probably call it spacetime transfer. With this in mind, if a device could tranfer a finite bubble of spacetime/matter fabric from spacetime point A to spacetime point B, then this would be roughly the equivalent of time travel.

For example, in the novel and movies "The Time Machine", the machine itself does transfer from one time to another, but it magically moves with the Earth as the Earth move through the universe. This may be OK if we divide the transfer into increments and assume that with each infinitesimal transfer in time, the machine somehow retains its relative relationship to the Earth's surface as the Earth tries to move out from under it. Still, there is a sense that this concept of spacetime transfer is not consistent with maintaining a constant relative space position. A spacetime transfer would more likely involve all 4 coordinates -- flying saucers would probably be better in this regard than "stationary" devices.

Let's set aside the crude physics for a "moment". Even more problematic than defining or describing spacetime transfer are the philosophical problems associated with time travel. Assume that time travel is possible in the H.G. Wells manner, i.e., the traveler could move through time while maintaining a constant position relative to the rotating surface of the Earth. Let us also assume that time travel in this (or any) sense is possible. Lastly, let us assume that mankind will indeed survive, thrive, expand into space, and continue to advance both technologically and socially to the point that time travel is possible. What does this imply?

The first assumption we must make is that whatever interventions our future progeny have made, have already been made. In other words, the past has already been altered. In fact, history itself is the net result of the unfolding of events and interventions. History in this sense cannot be changed because the interventions are already a part of history.

If this assumption is incorrect, then it implies an infinity of universes, slightly or greatly different from one another, a branching at the points of intervention, and the "ability" to "create" new alternate universes by going back in time and intervening. A simplistic way of looking at this is that it would be physically impossible to intervene because the energy required to create a new universe would be infinite.

All these silly notions spring from what may be a flawed model of the structure of spacetime. To treat time as simply another coordinate axis is not really a valid paradigm. Since the direction of time is axiomatic for concepts such as cause and effect, sequentiality, beginnings and endings, and entropy, time travel is almost impossible to conceptualize. Which is why we have such a problem with the concept of a God who transcends time.

A transcendent God, omniscient and omnipotent, must be "outside of" spacetime. The Alpha and the Omega must transcend the entire framework. Creation was not an event which occurred in time. Even the sentence I just wrote does not actually make sense in a transcendent frame. Words using tense or spatial reference do not apply to a transcendent frame; we only use them because we do not have words or concepts which can transcend the spacetime fabric we call the universe. From within the universe we can talk about a beginning in the sense that time is unidirectional. As we look back to the beginning, spacetime will take on characteristics which can only be described mathematically because the Alpha point cannot really be described at all. If God "looks" at His creation "from the outside" of it, then His observation cannot really be called observation, it is apprehension, spaceless, timeless, without bounds as we understand them. No eyes, no light, no transmission of electromagnetic energy, no sequential stimulus and response, none of these concepts make any sense when we step outside the spacetime universe (whatever that means.)

Here is a paradox which will truly enrage the radical materialist. Suppose that time travel and intervention were possible. Then couldn't an atheist go back and kill Jesus as a child, or perform an abortion to prevent His birth? Wouldn't it have already happened? In a practically infinite universe of possibilities with a practically infinite future, and with the possibility of mankind filling our galaxy, if not universe, with cultures and civilizations, and nearly limitless human beings, if time travel and intervention is possible, what would stop a mad future terrorist from going all the way back to the origins of life and destroying it? If it can be imagined, then it can probably be done, right?

Perhaps evolutionists will embrace the concept of punctuated intervention by the future in order to solve their inability to explain speciation through natural selection. This would provide both intelligent design advocates and radical materialists with a mechanism they would both agree upon. There is no God, only future humans who have beneficially altered the past. Of course, there is one small problem. Were these interventions deterministically bound, or did a whole series of impossible universes get created only to sputter out, to be devoured by the Langoliers?

Well, the sophisticated agnostic knows better than to adopt any point of view here; but since I am neither sophisticated nor agnostic, I will go out on a limb. Time travel is NOT possible because of all of the above and more. Spacetime distortion, gravitational mechanics, tachyons, wormholes and all such physical possibilities remain on the table, but historical intervention by the future is not possible. It is nonsensical. Take that, Captain Kirk!