What of the theory that time doesn’t really exist? It is only a means of our attempting to measure something. “Time” is a continuum. Physically we may not be able to revisit the past, but if we are supposedly more than physical beings, perhaps we are able to visit all perceived time lines.
What truly baffles me is the notion of parallel universes where we exisit and each “event” has a different outcome. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around all of these theories. Geometry is not my forte!
Saying that the creator is eternal doesn’t really answer the question of how it’s possible for the creator to exist, and does nothing to solve the regression problem.
If you’re happy to say the creator “just always existed”, then you may as well say she “just spontaneously existed in 1965, then created all of time including the past”.
The preceding points weren’t aimed at you, just at the reasoning that you’re describing.
Your consciousness from June 14, 1987 is still at June 14, 1987, right where it’s always been, of course.
The idea isn’t that “the creator just always existed”. To attempt to make a statement like that belies a lack of understanding of the concept of eternity: An eternal being is outside of time, so things like grammatical tense just don’t apply. It’s ontologically possible for an entity to always exist, but to not be eternal, and it’s likewise possible for an entity to exist which is eternal, but only in a limited scope. If a being is eternal, then it makes no sense to say that it existed in 1965, and exists in 2008, and will exist in 2065. Rather, it would make sense to say that the being exists in 1965, and also exists in 2008, and also exists in 2065.
< First of all apologies for steering this thread from the OP. But I feel as though I have to reply again >
My point was that saying that God exists outside of time gives no more explanatory power than just saying God “just does” exist (that is, zero explanatory power).
I’m not expecting an explanation of God’s existence any time soon, all I’m saying is that if we’re using it as a solution to the infinite regress problem it does nothing to solve the problem whatsoever. It just rephrases it.
It’s interesting that you pick me up on my grammar. I believe that the reason why postulating that God exists outside of time is popular among religions, is that it makes the problem of existence difficult to even verbalise, and so to some it can feel like it has gone away altogether.
Yawn.
OK, so I’ll phrase it like this:
“If you’re happy to say the creator ‘just always existed’, then you may as well say she ‘exists in 1965, and any future time, but not in any prior time but is nonetheless responsible for the creation of all of time’”.
I didn’t mean to incite a discussion on whether or not God existed. I was simply stating that IF God DOES exist he would HAVE to exist outside of the limits of time in order to actually be God. It isn’t a belief limited to the Christian God, but conincides with the God of a multitude of the world’s religions.
Most of the qualities people assign to god are beliefs. Being eternal is one of those qualities God would need to have in order to be considered God.
If we consider something to be God. But it doesn’t exist outside of time and so it regresses to its own creation, then it’s not god. Whatever created it is actually god, unless that regresses as well, then whatever created that was god, and so on and so on. In order for something to be god, it needs to be outside this constant regression. It needs to exist without having anything create it. Thereby having no begining, and thusly having to be outside of the quality of inevitable progression we call time.
In recap. I’m not saying that 'god exists outside of time" is explanatory in any way and that in some way it helps proves god’s existence. I’m saying that IF there is a god, THEN he must exist outside of time, because thats one of the things “god” means.
Anyway, back to the topic of Time Travel
Continuum is a word invented by Michael J. Fox to describe the universe in terms of not just space, but time as well. Just like Dan Akroyd invented ghosts to sell t-shirts. Think of it as an all-scienced-up phrase for “existence.” By itself time is about as phyiscal as width, as discovered by einstein. Time is relative to both rate of motion and gravitational pull. And theoretically can be manipulated the same way you would a spring, if you could control gravity or speed on a strong enough level. Think of it like this: just like more gravity attracts more phyiscal stuff, it also attracts more time.
Actually the vouge theory on the universe is that it’s an ether (again). They were doing some experimentation on the event horizon of a black hole, and they discovered using soundwaves in water behaved almost identically to lightwaves in space/time. Which is kinda cool, thinking that space/time is this soup that were just kinda hanging out in.
Fine. “God is by definition eternal” is OK, and I was careful not to accuse you of evangelising – there’s nothing about what you said that implies you were trying to do that.
The thing that I was replying to was:
…which made me twitch because it implied that “God is eternal” answers something, and it reminded me of the common, fallacious, reasoning used to imply “God did it” has fewer loose ends than saying the universe “just is”:
Anyhoo, twitch over, I’ll accept that I over-reacted in this case. 
If you opened up one of those wormholes…wouldn’t the entrance be crammed with all sorts of ships from the future that there would be huge explosions, massive death and debris and a massive grinding of teeth?
I suppose you could open up an ‘appointment book’ when you start the wormhole and future people would have to find a time slot not used and put their name in. People from the far future would be pissed off that there are no openings.
Certainly it doesn’t prove time travel is impossible, but it certainly suggests it. If time travel were possible, you’d expect a large audience at historical events. Unless people get a lot better than they are now, even if they desired not to change things they would by their very presence.
In fact, if time travelers can change the past, the only stable timeline is one where time travel is never invented, since any time travel would change the circumstances of its invention, up until the one that prevented it.
Spoiler for a novel built on this premise.
Asimov’s The End of Eternity ends like this, where the hero prevents time travel from ever happening, IIRC.
If you REALLY want to play the list game…
A short story:
An insane comic:
http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/dc_032.htm
(that’s the start of the story arc using a multiple-history model with artificial wormholes and such)
Quantum physics and temporal mechanics… as written by a gamer who probably did 5 minutes of research but I didn’t notice when I first/last read it 5+ years ago
http://internal.tbi.net/~max/zphysics.htm
But anyway, I’ve become a little disenchanted with time travel, there are so many theories and they’re all so “possible”, for all I know at least (and i’m not even talking fiction authors here I’m talking in general). I’ve settled on “we have no clue, and I have no chance of figuring out the answer.”
And to directly answer to OP, i don’t thing traveling at relativistic speeds counts as time travel, personally at least. Maybe it does but it just seems “different” and almost like “cheating” to me, maybe it’s my overly romanticized mind that forces me to do things in teh most needlessly complex way possible talking though.