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From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden)
Newsgroups: net.physics,net.origins
Subject: A reasonably sane man doesn't believe in time travel
Message-ID: <587@imsvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 3-Aug-86 21:22:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: imsvax.587
Posted: Sun Aug  3 21:22:45 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 4-Aug-86 01:46:36 EDT
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Xref: mnetor net.physics:2531 net.origins:1959






     Basically, the idea of time travel does violence to any
reasonable notion of free will.  I fail to see any conceptual
difference between traveling forward or backwards in time; the
possibility of someone in the future sending anything back to us
more or less IMPLIES the possibility of us seeing the future and
vice versa.  The possibility of seeing into the future implies
that there is something there to see, basically unalterable, and
written out like the pages of a book, essentially what you would
call predestination.

     The idea of predestination should be hateful to any rational
person and, in a way, it contradicts the law known as Occam's
razor.  Why should humans or any other creature have intelligence
or any capability of analyzing data and making decisions if the
future is laid out for them in an unalterable manner?  Given
predestination, intelligence simply isn't NEEDED, and should not
have evolved.  It shouldn't exist. 

     Similar considerations force me to disbelieve the
possibility of any being in our universe being omnipotent i.e. I
believe the universe cannot contain anything bigger than IT.  An
omnipotent being would necessarily be omniscient and would be
able to see into the future (if he COULDN'T, that would be
something he couldn't do, and that contradicts the definition of
omnipotence).  Aside from being able to see what I figured to be
doing tommorrow at 5:00PM, and there being nothing I could do to
alter it, he would also be able to see what HE figured to be
doing at 5:00 PM tommorrow, and there would be nothing HE could
do about it either.

     Therefore, I regard the idea of omnipotence as a one-word
contradiction of terms.  That doesn't mean that I am an atheist
or a total evolutionist, merely that I believe that ALL beings in this
universe must live within certain limits, time being one of
these.