Why Time Travel is Dumb…Or Why Desmond’s story fails….

So I mentioned a couple of weeks ago in sermon that Singleton’s gift to me was that he reminded me of God’s mysterious nature. If you listened closely you might have also heard me suggest that I never adopted his view of time either. I remain convinced that the tenet atemporality is meaningless.

For starters I think it is helpful to note that in so far as the metaphors that we know and in so far as the English language lets describe we know of two conversations that surround God and time. One linguistic and the other philosophical/phenomenological.

I often hear this in response to my presupposition that God exists with in the confines of time (said better…experiences duration with us). “Time is man’s invention,” and “God is above time because He created it.” This are both correct given some version of the creation story be it mythical/reality depicting for the hearer. The language about time, sun dials, our means of measuring seasons, the sun coming up and down, calendars, etc. are all in adoptions by man to explain the phenomenon of duration. Somehow I’m different and older than I was yesterday. However, just because I say it is 2:01 P.M. on June, 24 2008 means nothing ontologically for God. All this is man’s designation of increment to make his experience more coherent and logical. This is what I mean to suggest, in conceding that time is man’s invention. As a linguistic device that offers both explanatory power and coherence to our situation, “the time discussion” is fictional.

I also concede this and I’m no expert on string theory nor am I quantum physics…at the beginning of the big bang, in 1/10 of a millasecond, the ten or so dimension that they now posit “unrolled” (a metaphor) “began” or started to “begin”. As a result of this 4 dimensional phenomenological perception would now later be available to evolving humans some 10 trillion zillion years later (trillion zillion an exaggeration, what the Hebrew people might have used in the case of hyperbole (that was supposed to be funny)). This included the experiences of both change marked by time and/or duration.

Here I might be a bit evangelical, but as one who believes that God’s sovereignty includes his governance, preservation and concurrence…this big bang narrative and all it’s logical outworking would include the phenomenological perception of time. Hence I will concede that God invented time in this sense as well.

None the less. I reject God’s atemporality. First, this statement is meaningless. Even if it is true we can have no idea what it means because we have absolutely no frame of reference for it. This is the same as saying God is a;ldfkjasd. What this means we have no idea because it is made up. The best theological description would be a negative one. God’s relationship to time is “not like ours.” It is a description of something we have never experienced and have no data to even suggest of its ontological existence. In the same way our description of time is fictional our description of atemporality and the concept/word itself is fictional.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly I read nothing in the Biblical narrative to suggest that God operates outside of time or even wants to be perceived that way. In almost every passage which is used to posit God’s timelessness the careful philosophical reader will notice timelessness, but rather God as eternally past and everlasting. Take three quick examples

Psalm 90

Lord, you have been our dwelling place
In all generations
Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
From everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You turns us back to dust,
And say, “Turn back, you mortals.”
For a thousand years in your sight
Are like yesterday when it is past,
Or like a watch in the night. ( Ps 90:1-4)

The only indication here is that God is from eternal past will exist into the future eternally. Nothing about God’s experience above our outside of time.

Takes it’s New Testament variant in 2 Pete 3:8. “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like on day”

Time seems to be phenomenologically different for God, but God is never described as outside of it. I think what is meant here is something like this. Because God’s perspective includes his omnipotence and eschatological vision of the future time feels different or is experienced differently by God. In the same way I’ve heard people say that time flies the older they get. In reality time passes at the same increment/rate. Their experience of it changes.

Lastly, consider John 8:58 Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I am.” By making this claim Jesus does the opposite of making a timeless claim. He, in taking Yahweh’s title places himself within time. In suggesting that he existed before Abraham, Jesus claims “sequence” a logical affirmation of one who experiences duration.

Perhaps in another post I could make the constructive case for God’s experiencing duration. Emotion, history, etc.

Now for Desmond.

Here is the nonsensical nature of all atemporal/time traveling proposals. Let’s be concrete and pick the moment when Desmond goes back in time to visit Penny in her apartment to both secure a promise from her to receive his phone call in 8 years and also to get a number that he could use in the future to contact her with. It’s ontologically true that this moment in history occurred once in Desmond’s past. It would be the first occurrence of December 24, 1996 for Desmond. In this narrative we’ll say Jack and Desmond had a beer and watched a game at the local pub instead of Desmond going to Penny’s house. Thus this storyline has a certain ontology to it. In addition to this, we have to believe that the epistemic experiences that shaped Desmond’s initial (jack at the bar on Dec. 24th) narrative remain intact even though he now has an alternative ontological past that also shapes his present epistemological demeanor. One might object that “no he lost all this when he past through the wrong coordinates,” but the writers failed because when he got back to the island he did not feel compelled to be reintroduced to everyone. There was a presupposition that this piece of his memory, a piece that belonged to his previous narrative was still in tact.

When he goes back in time he rewrites that piece of the script by not instantiating the actions of his original 1996 Dec. 24 experience, but rather by going to Penny’s. A change that would rewrite all that time in between so that Desmond could successfully place the call he did on Dec. 24 in 2004. But what about these competing story lines that exist in Desmond’s past? The same absurdity exists with his repeated saving of Charlie. Every time he prevents he eventually saw something that had no substantial ontology to it because it never occurred. One then has to ask, did Desmond really see correctly?

The more I think about what Abrams et all are doing I think they find their best expression through thinkers like Leibniz, Molina and contemporary figures such as Craig and Plantinga. It a sort of possible worlds/Molinism proposal. These are possible outcomes predicated on the choice of the characters. I guess the anomaly would be the ability of the competing narratives to collide in their ontological nature. For example. Locke is paralyzed in 2004 real time, but dragged back to 1996 (island time) and thus takes on physical characteristics of original 1996 body. This is odd to me. Why do people take on physical characteristics and not emotional and intellectual ones? Why is Claire still pregnant? Why doesn’t Walt behave like he is 1? Etc.

OK more on this as I think about it.