That doesn't make any sense. Just because you can travel back in time wouldn't mean the future is already set in stone?

If traveling back in time doesn't change any event then yes the future is set in stone, however if you change something that causes a different future, then have you not just disproven that.

That would depend on how you define all-knowing. 

Probably a typeo faster than light = back in time . It left the test chamber before it had finished entering, ie the train travels to its destination before it had left the station

As a human. you're supposedly given a choice to accept Christianity Jesus ect. or not. 

With the future set in stone you have no choice 

 

"From this description it sounds more analagous to a train suddenly getting a whole bunch of extra cars that allow the front of the train to arrive at the destination before the caboose has left the station."

Or could possibly be a local distortion in space time. thinking about it. the tracks to the destination crumpled up to nothing. time for some more reading it seems like my destiny

Rev_Devlin,

Please use the quote function instead of quotation marks.  It sure would make things a lot easier to read and keep straight - especially knowing whom you are quoting.

If you don't know how to use the quote function, I wrote a tutorial that you can find here.

Thanks!

 

 

Lazy?  Tee hee!  I think it's a lot more work to put quotes on everything.

 

And that is why the world needs free thinkers. 

This 'unfathomable' is already built into Christianity with the ideas of election and free will. Somehow we have free will AND God knows (and ordained) the beginning and end. It's one of those things that can drive atheist crazy about theistic belief…we accept that there will be aspects of God's infinite nature that we will not be able to understand. (That does not mean we do not strive to understand or to gain understanding in general, it just means that when our understanding comes to an end, we rely of faith.)

I see the preordination/election vs. free will question as a worthwhile version of the common god quandary question, "Can God create a rock so large that He can't lift it?" The absurd answer to the absurd question is clearly "yesno".

The better answer to the rock question is to discuss what it means to say that God is 'all-powerful' (Does not mean that God can do anything….God can't do anything that is against His nature, like lie.)

The Christian theological discussion (since that was how the topic was introduced) might be to discuss what it means to say that God is 'all-knowing'.

Perhaps God gave up some of his omniscience (I know, "then it's not really omniscience&quot in order to give us the gift of free will. At the same time He knows us individually and completely and, therefore, what the major plot development of our lives will be and what will happen in history. Sort of like how you basically know what will happen when you watch a romantic comedy (they meet, fall in love, a misunderstanding occurs, they break up, they realize love each other, they get back together) but still you watch and you care.

Will this mean the end of Christianity? Please. You know the answer to that.

/peace

This idea that there are things you shouldn't try to understand really bugs me. It's one of the things that originally drove me away from Christianity.

There's a very easy way to understand the free will/omniscience paradox: it's a mistake.  Two humans living in different times/cultures with different immediate needs wrote or adopted versions of God with incompatible powers. 

It took awhile for people to notice the inconsistency, but when they did, instead of doing the logical thing and recognizing the error, they made up horrifically convoluted excuses for why it must be true.  Then you get puritans and Calvinists destroying their lives and the lives of each other obsessing over who is one of the "elect" and endless tracts and pamphlets and murders and riots and flogging of Quakers and all the worst things that people can possibly do to each other, all because nobody is willing to admit that there's a mistake in the theology.

 And this isn't the only one.  It makes me sad to think of all the countless innocent people who were dispossessed, exiled, imprisoned, tortured and burned at the stake over the incoherent illogicality that is the Doctrine of the Trinity. 

So at least people (mostly) aren't killing each other over the interpretation of these non sequiturs anymore.  But I'm with Dawkins that it is not a good thing when religion makes a virtue out of believing  something that runs counter to the best evidence (and the more unreasonable or illogical the belief, the greater the virtue).

I have no problem with not knowing something, particularly when there's not enough evidence to go on.  But I personally could never find any fulfillment in calling what is clearly an error or contradiction a "mystery" and then walking away from the attempt to understand it.

Allow me to rephrase.  The idea that bugs me is that "when our understanding comes to an end, we rely on faith." 

The phrase "when our understanding comes to an end, we rely on faith" would work pretty well as a dictionary example of the argument from ignorance fallacy. 

I would rather go in the direction that the people making up the Bible stories made mistakes: for example a consistency error (predestination), unsuccessful incorporation of parts of other religions that didn't really fit (the Trinity) or not thinking far enough ahead because they expected the world to end before it could become a problem (salvation by faith, not acts and deathbed confessions). 

These explanations have the virtue of not requiring any convoluted perigrinations to explain away.  Probably more importantly, they also have the advantage that nobody is likely to go to war or burn heretics because of a difference of opinion about the mistakes.

The appeal to purpose (or context) is often used as an escape hatch to explain away inconsistencies that conflict with what Bible-readers want the book to mean.  Frustration and doubt are a healthy response to circumstances where your own experience of the evidence conflicts with an existing schema. Maybe your frustration and doubt are signals from your brain that you should pay attention to, instead of repressing them.

jive Turkey are you subscribing properties to God ?

I show argument from ignorance to be "a logical fallacy in which it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proved false or that a premise is false only because it has not been proved true." So statements like, "No one has proven that God does not exist, therefore God must exist" or "No one has proven that God does exist, therefore God must not exist," would be examples of argument from ignorance.

This statement seems to indicate that you believe my conciseness is separate from my brain which implies the existence of a soul, which implies the existence of God. But I understand what you mean, my point is that people can and do parse words to get from them what they want. One could use the words of MLK to justify discrimination (in their own mind) if they wanted to. Similarly people use the words of Christ to justify all manner of selfish and destructive behavior. But that's more about what's in the heart (or head) of man than it is about what's in the bible.

That's why this username just works!

I suppose I am…the bible subscribes many properties to God, I think I'm just trying to relay what the bible says rather than pulling stuff out of my rear (not that I'm above that).

There's already plenty of problems with "free will".  In short, in my view, Christianity has been long disproved, Christians just don't know it.  I doubt that anything along these lines would be problematic to any Christian that already dismisses nearly infinite problems with their religion. 

I'm pretty sure I heard that they made a mistake, but I can't quite remember where I heard that.

Anyway, it is just light. It cannot carry information, and it will not magically transport us to the future. 

 

No it couldn't the wavelengths distort. 

I have no idea what you are talking about.

I figured you question was an attempt at some childish trap but I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt...I'll know better next time.

And no-response again jive turkey

 Then you are of the Judaic/christian restricted religious belief system.

And this is a trap

 

Trap ? how can I trap you

And what can I trap you with ?

The truth ? 

jive turkey. this prison for your mind is constructed from fear and illusion. 

If you deny truth. to stay within the comforting walls of this prison then accept the consequences of this choice. and live with this fear and illusion in whatever peace you can.

Accepting that it is neither moral or ethical to perpetuate this fear and illusion by attempting to imprison other minds. however comforting this companionship may seem

 

Oh, nonbobblehead, you're awesome You've invented a brand new logical fallacy! Argumentum ad Schwarzenegger.

The article says nothing about time travel backwards. They exceeded the speed of light, that is going forwards in time, not backwards! I was actually disappointed there was no time travel going on.

 

Hi Jacob Cordingley

Faster than the speed of light. is time travel

 

(speed of light) you hand a letter to a postman, and you look at the time on your watch 10.15 - 7/7/07

The letter arrives at its destination 1 day later 11.25 - 7/8/07 it has traveled forward in time. at the same speed as you have

(Faster than the speed of light) you hand a letter to a postman, and you look at the time on your watch 10.15 - 7/7/07

The letter arrives at its destination 10.14 - 7/7/07 before you have finished handing it to the postman it has traveled backwards in time

 

 

 

One can only hope it does affect Christianity Rev. I hope it stirs dormant brain cells all over the world.

It's true that it reverses causality as we understand it, YAY! I'm so over linear causality anyway, it's boring, (next step in my dastardly plan for humanity = dump the whole thing altogether in favour of quantum coherence). But a few theists have adopted many bodies quantum theories on you Reverend, they can still have faith in free will, with the exception of answering the question how did the light know which past to form in, free will is relatively safe for them.

But for literalist christian orthdoxy, free will is violated in a very large way by that experiment. It's simple. The light was sent from the future into the past, the experimenters observed the light appearing in its own past. The future determined the past ergo the future determines the past. No free will allowed in linear terms. Literalist orthodoxy begs to be taken seriously as a linear validity (see: young earth creationism) only for them, if they are right, their God is a mongrel who won't allow them to choose anything. How not nice.. but if this is the death of that stupor more's the happiness in our world, for mine. Hallelujah!  

 On the other hand, the idea of two way causality which is raised by this result in 2000, among other things, hasn't gone unquestioned. Though we can't say the answers are sure quite yet, I'm happy we know the question.. aren't you?

Where is your scientific proof that something goes faster then light actually travels back in time? If you go faster then light, you will see old images, but that doesn't mean that you are physically in the past.