TIME TRAVEL, EINSTEIN, GRANDFATHER PARADOX, TIME DILATION #CHRISTIAN #CREATION SCIENCE #TIME TRAVEL #EINSTEIN #Bible

CAN  CHRISTIANS  BELIEVE IN  TIME  TRAVEL

Hi guys and gals! 

Another beautiful week has gone by already. I am not able to get outside everyday because I am nearing the finishing chapters of my new novel, the second one in the series of Sign of the Oth. Much of the research I have done is all coming together now as the series advances along the time line. When I am in the thick of writing I am so tuned into the ancient Mesopotamia era that it is almost a culture shock when I stop and interact with the real world I live in, lol! It feels very much like I have traveled back in time.

Speaking of time travel, I read an interesting article on this phenomena. You must first understand, though, that really we all travel through time. If you look at a clock and see the second hand ticking away, it demonstrates that we move from one second on to the next. And there is no way to stop it, or reverse it. 

But the most shocking part about time travel is that most scientists, secular and creation, both have discovered that time travel is, in fact, possible. Even more fascinating is that time travel has actually been documented. Can you believe that! But before you get your hopes, or your doubts, up read a little more. Several factors play a part in how time travel in this day and age is limited. “First, it is limited in direction. It seems that time travel into the future is permitted, whereas time travel into the past is not. In principle, it’s possible to send a person forward 100 years or more to see his distant descendants. However, he could not come back. Second, time travel into the future is limited in degree by our current technological level. While it is theoretically possible to send a human into the distant future by traveling close to the speed of light, such speeds are far beyond the limits of our current technology. The velocity necessary for noticeable time travel requires energy that drastically exceeds what we can currently produce. For the moment, we can only accelerate subatomic particles through time in any noticeable way.”¹

It would seem at first that us humans cannot accelerate passage through time by any means. It might feel like time

passes faster or slower, thus we say ‘time flies when you’re having fun’. But a glance at the clock will show the actual passage of time has been unaffected by our emotional state. “Our intuition suggests that the forward progression of time is absolute and unaffected by anything we do. But our intuition is utterly wrong.

“The famous physicist Albert Einstein discovered that the

passage of time is affected by motion. A moving clock does not tick at exactly the same rate as a stationary clock of identical construction. We don’t notice this effect in our everyday lives because the effect is minuscule at the velocities we ordinarily experience. But imagine an astronaut traveling through space at 99% the speed of light—over 660 million miles per hour. He would experience one year for every seven Earth years! That is, he would be moving through time seven times faster than observers on Earth. If he were to return in 70 (Earth) years, he would have perceived and aged only 10 years. This effect is called time dilation. It’s strange but true.”² Through logic and basic geometry, Einstein was able to calculate how velocity affects the measurement of time. Since Einstein’s time actual

experiments have confirmed his calculations. For example

this effect has been measured by atomic clocks on jets. “Furthermore, physicists have accelerated subatomic particles to nearly the speed of light, at which the effects of time dilation become quite pronounced and are easily observed.”³ 

So is time travel for humans possible? If the velocity was sufficiently high enough, the answer is yes. However there

are other factors that inhibit this at this time, and make going back in time impossible. First, “Einstein’s equations show that if a person traveled faster than the speed of light, then he could travel back in time. The problem is that it would take an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light. As a mass is accelerated, it becomes more massive (“heavier”) and increasingly more difficult to accelerate. Since it takes an infinite amount of energy to accelerate a mass to the speed of light, a mass can obviously never go faster. Hence, anything with positive mass cannot go faster than light and therefore cannot go back in time.”⁴ 

Second, is the grandfather paradox. If a person is sent “back to a time before his grandparents met, it would then be possible for him to prevent his grandparents from ever meeting each other, thereby preventing their marriage and any subsequent descendants, including himself. But if he were never born, then how could he possibly travel back in time to prevent his own birth? In this situation, the man must both exist in the present (to travel back and prevent his grandparents from meeting) and not exist in the present (since his grandparents never met) at the same time and in the same way—a contradiction. And it will not solve the problem to have the man simply vanish when he prevents his grandparents from meeting. After all, if they never met, then the man could never have existed, in which case he could not have prevented them from meeting.”⁵

Third and most importantly, the Bible indicates time travel to the past is not possible for humans. You see “God alone is beyond time, and hence He alone knows the future. In Isaiah 46:9-10 the Lord says, ‘I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done.’ Only God can say at a given time what will certainly happen at a later time. Humans can only make educated guesses. But if time travel into the past were possible, then we could simply jump back to 1970 and know with certainty what will happen over the next four-and-a-half decades. This contradicts God’s claim that He alone can declare those things that have not yet happened. Also, in regard to His coming, Jesus said, ‘But of that day and hour no one knows…but My Father only.’ But if we could travel through time, we could jump ahead to the moment of His return and then come back to the present. Then we too could know the day and hour.”⁶

I used to think time travel was possible if we had the technology. But God’s word reveals everything including time travel. He even knew we would be very curious about our origins and ancient past. And He was caring enough to oversee the writing of scripture which has important details of history and even a glimpse into the future. The Bible shows us that time, the past, present and future is under God’s sovereign control. And past, present and future reflect the awesome and mighty trinity of the Holy Godhead. 

Until next time, God bless and take care!

Willow Dressel

References:

^1-6http://www.icr.org/article/time-travel