Every god I believe in can do anything.
But if I did believe in one, he wouldn’t need time travel since everything has already worked exactly as he designed it to.
There are several thousand time-travel stories out there, and a large percentage of them deal with changing the past to effect the future(for good or for bad), so the concept of traveling back in time and changing it can’t be that hard to grasp, can it?
Whether your god resides everywhere and everywhen at the same time or not, from our point of view if the outcome of the Civil War changed and suddenly it is fact that the South won because your goddess/god caused it to happen it would be, for the point of this discussion and from our point of view if we were aware of how it originally was, time travel and a change because of it.
Now I know what it’s like to wrestle with a pack of wet weasels.
As stated-This thread isn’t about needing or wanting.
Just doing.
I see no reason to believe time-travel powers are in the mix.
Well, not yet, anyway; I mean, if some mortal inventor ever slaps together the world’s first working time machine, I figure He could make use of it.
In fact, now that you’ve mentioned it, possibly that’s why He created us? Which sounds like an idea for an entertaining but incredibly messed-up novel.
No, in the sense that the concept of time travel doesn’t exist from the perspective of the God I believe in.
The closest I can get to an analogy would be asking if you could unthink a thought. You can think something different, you can forget that you thought something, but there is no way to make it so you never thought the thought in the first place.
Since the Universe exists in the mind of God, time travel as you are conceiving it would be the same as God unthinking a thought, so it would not be possible.
God/Goddess creates humans to do the one thing she/he cannot do, but needs to do to achieve some long term goal? I would read that just because of the blurb.
It’s like asking if TIME can time travel. It’s a meaningless question. Or an unparseable one at any rate. God doesn’t occupy a “now” as oposed to being located “then”.
The existence of this thread proves that time-travel can’t be that hard to grasp. But why did none of those several thousand stories satisfy you? Perhaps because they didn’t overtly drag another abstract concept like “God,” into it? Perhaps because the mere ability to time travel and purposefully alter reality kinda makes the whole “God” concept redundant? Perhaps because you’re asking a silly question, and can’t reformat your understanding when people answer it seriously?
Now this string of words, on the other hand,* is* that hard to grasp. Because it is gibberish.
Let me try to offer you an only slightly damp weasel (I mean, simplify my previous answer): The God of the Christian Bible corrected his errors with a flood, leaving history intact. That God, therefore, does not time travel. Speaking generally, any definition of God that implies eternity and perfection denies both the necessity and the context for time travel. Last, if there is either a God or time travel, there is no possibility of perceiving it.
Freedom of Belief in God. Freedom Of Religion means believing in anything you choose.
Hatred and Intolerance are the bridle reigns of ignorant beasts, unworthy of the name human, who seem always ready to be whipped and driven by the Wicked to the next hateful and shameful act.
I don’t know if time is perfect or if it is in a near constant state of repair, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was either… or possibly on occasion both…
If I believed in an all-powerful god, by virtue of being all powerful that god would be able to alter reality at any point along any time line of choice. To use your example, if that God chose to change the outcome of the American Civil War, the South would have always been the victor. We, none of us, would have any memories otherwise because for us reality would be a Southern victory. If there was an all-powerful god, s/he/it could be constantly screwing with time and you’d never know nor have a way to know.
How do you know He hasn’t already?
My God can’t nuke a burrito so it’s too hot for him to eat.
I agree, if there’s a God, He exists outside of time. In fact, He created time, so he can do with it whatever he wishes to do.
Why is that a cheatcode? The concept of an infinite multiverse is legitimate (if unprovable).
But, hey, if you want to place arbitrary limits on the question and say that there’s only one universe, I’ll play along. I’d say no, God can’t change the past, any more than a violinist can unplay a note. However, my “no” is no more valid or theologically sound than someone else’s “yes.” I just don’t like the idea of a God that futzes around with reality like it’s a Daffy Duck cartoon.
I don’t believe in a god but if I did he would exist outside the flow time that we experience. Then the question becomes a matter of the nature of his creation. Did he trigger creation and just watches it grow and guides it where he can, like a flower in his garden? If so, he can make the occasional pruning but can’t reverse the direction of the main growth without damaging the creation. This kind of god could not time travel and only have limited influence on his creation, but would have ultimate say over whether it lives or dies.
If instead a god created her universe by placing each individual block consciously, then in this kind of universe, she could easily alter anything she pleases, including the events of time. This kind of universe seems pretty high maintenance to me, but I don’t presume to understand the motivation of a god.
I don’t claim to speak for peoples belief systems, but to me it seems like a lot of people believe in the second type of universe. A place where a god can intervene in every detail. I would have to imagine that time travel should therefore be well within a gods remit. Presuming to hope that your god would go to the trouble of altering the time line just for your wishes would be another thing entirely.
Not being religious, and not having studied much religion, I always found Nick Cave’s line “I don’t believe in an interventionist god” to be fairly interesting. Nick’s god is more the gardener type then, who I believe would not be able to alter our time line.
Yes God can time travel, but only to a limited extent – back to last Thursday. After all it’s well known that Last Thursdayism is the one true religion.
Well, at least He’s giving us yet another chance to get this thread right. The last 17 iterations have just degenerated into Czarcasm sniping that people aren’t letting him prove that they’'re stupid and wrong properly.
God has no interest in such things because what’s past has already happened according to the plan.
As far as you can recall.
A Christian Yahweh type-god time-traveling makes to me about as much sense as a god space traveling. Such a god is everywhere so there is no applicable concept of motion thru space. Ditto such a god is at all times at once so no concept of time travel.
But it does appear that Norse gods can’t time travel, and in fact at least has trouble with moving thru space. Cite.
This is exactly what I was thinking.