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From: palmer@uw-june.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: A theological question
Message-ID: <1340@uw-june>
Date: Sun, 29-Apr-84 17:32:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-june.1340
Posted: Sun Apr 29 17:32:55 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 30-Apr-84 06:08:09 EDT
Organization: U. Washington, Computer Sci
Lines: 33

fnord

    A simple question for anybody with a religion which supports prayer.

    Does it have any effect to pray to prevent or cause something which
may or may not have happened or refused to happen.

    If, for instance, you see a house explode (or some other
catastrophe that has no possibility of leaving survivors), would it do
any good to pray that there WERE no people in the house at the
time?

What about events where the ordering is relativistically indeterminate?
If you see a star, 10 light years away, that looks like it may have become
a supernova at a time 5 years after the light which you are seeing left
the star, that is 5 years before the present, would it do any good to
pray that it didn't?  (A supernova 10 l.y. away can have nasty
consequences)  If you move into some other frame of reference, then, by
relativity, the prayer may actually occur BEFORE, the time when the
star might go supernova.  (For my fellow physicists, I mean that the
interval between the prayer and the possible supernova is spacelike.
For theologians, I assume that omnipresent, as well as meaning "being
everywhere" also means "being in all frames of reference").

    Also, is god non-local.  That is, can different parts of him
communicate at greater than the speed of light.


    If this question sparks a large debate, we may have to move it to
net.religion.relativity :-)


                    David Palmer