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Could time-travelling scientists from future influence religions?
- Thread starter Silver
- Start date
That likely won't be possible for a few reasons:
1) All possibilities yielding potential time travel in physics currently involve closed timelike curves or otherwise require a device to exist "on the other side:" meaning that the first time traveller couldn't stop by for a visit until the first time machine is built.
2) Eh I was going to get into the fact that if you travel back in time without moving in space the earth will NOT be anywhere near you because it a) orbits the sun and b) the sun orbits the milky way's galactic center so you'd kind of probably die in the vacuum of space, but that one is actually "theoretically solvable" by time travelling in a space ship so nevermind... just #1 is a good reason why that probably isn't likely to happen.
But anyway, if it did happen, most assuredly a time traveller could easily influence religions or even start them. With any fraction of technology they would appear as gods or angels or whatever -- sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to the untrained person, after all.
1) All possibilities yielding potential time travel in physics currently involve closed timelike curves or otherwise require a device to exist "on the other side:" meaning that the first time traveller couldn't stop by for a visit until the first time machine is built.
2) Eh I was going to get into the fact that if you travel back in time without moving in space the earth will NOT be anywhere near you because it a) orbits the sun and b) the sun orbits the milky way's galactic center so you'd kind of probably die in the vacuum of space, but that one is actually "theoretically solvable" by time travelling in a space ship so nevermind... just #1 is a good reason why that probably isn't likely to happen.
But anyway, if it did happen, most assuredly a time traveller could easily influence religions or even start them. With any fraction of technology they would appear as gods or angels or whatever -- sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic to the untrained person, after all.
logician
Well-Known Member
Time travel to change something would be very hazardous, and would require the ability to travel in both directions (past and future). If you could make it to the past to change something, even the smallest change could modify the future probability tree of outcomes so much, that you could not get back to your future as you knew it. I don't think we'll be invaded by time travelers.
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Venatoris
Active Member
You wouldn't actually be able to change anything. If you could actually create a time machine, before you even use it, all of your actions from trips to the past have already happened in your original timeline. This means that you would have appeared out of nothing, at your destination in the past, and whatever actions you did or didn't take ultimately led to the same sequence of events in which you were able to create the aforementioned time machine. I hope that made sense, I haven't had my coffee yet.
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
Nope.
Butterfly effect.
Butterfly effect.
To the same extent that they could change, say, literature or entertainment movies, I guess they could.
Incidentally, I believe that the whole Urantia Book commotion purports that a similar scenario is indeed true.
Incidentally, I believe that the whole Urantia Book commotion purports that a similar scenario is indeed true.
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
There is, IIRC, a book about this. A man carrying a swarm of personal nanomachines goes back in time to Israel circa 30 AD to meet Jesus. However, he finds that Jesus himself doesn't exist, and so is left recreating the miracles with his nanomachines, and claiming that they are from God. I'll edit this post if I can remember the title.
Maybe those devices already do exist, but we don't realize it. Maybe they're disguised as something else.
It would certainly go a long way to explaining the Tamagotchi.
We do it for fun & profit.
Btw, does anyone have a spare oscillation overthruster with a 7G sector gear lying around?
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angellous_evangellous
Guest
Eliot Wild
Irreverent Agnostic Jerk
The best reason I can think of, that a time-traveling egomaniac would influence the establishment of religion, goes something like this:
'And it shall come to pass, that one day a perfect child shall be born, and He shall be filled with the Spirit of the Lord, our God, The Grand Designer, The Master Engineer, The Holy Eternal Flame of All that Is. And this child shall be God on Earth, granted power by all nations and all tribes. And this child shall grow to be a perfect man, loved by all and worshiped for He shall be the Voice of God here on Earth. All shall bow in His presence and All shall submit to His power and All shall be guided by his Wisdom. And his name shall be Eliot Wild.'
Ehhh, or something like that.
'And it shall come to pass, that one day a perfect child shall be born, and He shall be filled with the Spirit of the Lord, our God, The Grand Designer, The Master Engineer, The Holy Eternal Flame of All that Is. And this child shall be God on Earth, granted power by all nations and all tribes. And this child shall grow to be a perfect man, loved by all and worshiped for He shall be the Voice of God here on Earth. All shall bow in His presence and All shall submit to His power and All shall be guided by his Wisdom. And his name shall be Eliot Wild.'
Ehhh, or something like that.
So small minded you are! You'd never make it as an engineer....too mired down in those pesky laws of physics. (Laws were meant to be broken.)
Time machines have been around for decades now.
Two words: tele portation
You think L Ron Hubbard came up with Scientology all by himself? The concept took a crack team of 25th century humor researchers 3 years to develop!
Venatoris
Active Member
I have one. It's all yours if you have a working chameleon circuit you're willing to part with. I'll take camouflage over the ability to drive through a mountain any day.
no-body
Well-Known Member
It almost sounds like behold the man by Michael Moorcock:
Behold the Man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber & Business Owner
Logically, if in the future they go back to the past to alter religions, it would mean that the time travelers have already visited the past. It would just mean the time travelers were fated to travel in the past.
meogi
Well-Known Member
As far as I understand, if a time machine were to be created, it would be a one way machine, future to past (but not farther in the past than when the machine was created). The moment the machine turned on we would receive start to receive information from the future. But nothing before the machine was actually created could manipulated.
But who knows? I honestly don't believe in time travel... except out extremely boring linear time perspective. Only relativity.
But who knows? I honestly don't believe in time travel... except out extremely boring linear time perspective. Only relativity.
I've got a time machine. I travel through time quite a bit... forward at exactly one second per second. I haven't worked out other speeds or reverse yet, but I'm sure they'll come in time.
If my personal beef with the implicit geocentrism in Back to the Future hadn't already ruined Back to the Future for me, xkcd pushed me over the edge:
xkcd: Back to the Future
What the hell's a gigawatt?!
Okay... maybe I still like parts of it.
Midnight Pete
Well-Known Member
Money, power, influence. Women, prestige, really nice clothes. Expensive cars. Lordship over the earth. Lots of people to worship and fear you. Lots of people ready to kill for you, to die for you. In short, everything Satan promised to Jesus during his 40 days in the wilderness if he would only fall on his knees and call the Devil his master.
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