Prepare to be impressed!

The Definitive Answer on Free Will and Why Time Travel Is Impossible!
A Scholarly Treatise of Immense Religious And Scientific Importance!
Read It Now And Nominate Me For Whatever Nobel Prize I Deserve!

Okay, maybe its not all that hype worthy, because it depends so much on faith and not a whole lot on science, except that if you believe one, then the other must follow.

Here's how it all begins - Exodus, Chapter (10-11, somewhere in there). God through Moses through Aaron baits Pharoah - let my people go or... fill in nasty plague here. If you don't, then I will surely send a plague of locusts, etc... tomorrow. So, here's the thing that drives me nuts. My NIV Bible tries to explain away this judgment from God as making perfectly logical sense based on the time of year, the previous plague and other atmospheric data, and, the tendency of locusts, flies, floods, etc... to occur in Egypt all the time. As if it were that simple. But then it occurs to me, okay - even if that were the case, how did God know that such a plague would occur at precisely that time? And if it was going to occur naturally anyway, what if Pharoah had said, "Okay, you win. Take your people and go?" Would God have been able to stop a naturally occuring plague from striking if all He was doing was looking into the future and seeing something that was going to happen anyway? But if God knew what was going to happen in the future, what does that do with our free will? Questions without answers, it seems, until I finally figured something out.

The key to the whole thing is that we were made in God's image. God gave us free will, but God never claimed that He didn't also have free will. You've got free will, but doesn't it feel like sometimes you have no choice but to do X even though you don't want to? Other people can, one by one, strip you of your options until you only have one choice that day. Its either do X or die. But you still have Free Will. You can always choose to die - you still have that other choice. So if, with our own free will, we can limit the choices of others to the point where they only have one real option left to them - i.e. do what we want them to do - then why can't we also prescribe to God the exact same ability?

Add to this ability of free will is God's omniscience. He knows everything, he sees everything, and he knows how its all going to come out. God can see the future and He can rig it so that all the good people win and all the bad people lose by using His free will to subtly make things so that you have a very limited number of choices (good or bad, right or wrong, God or... oblivion). Ultimately, its up to you to make that choice. Ultimately, you have free will - even if the choice you're going to make is known by God in advance.

Pharoah could choose to let the Hebrews go at any time he wants, but God already knows that Pharoah won't until after Passover. He's looked ahead and seen what's coming in Chapter 12 even while we're back at Chapter 5. So, He can see that there will be a plague of locusts and that this will cause Pharoah distress but that he will still not let Moses' people go.

But how can God be absolutely certain that Pharoah won't change his mind? Because we only get once chance to make the right choice. God may give us plenty of choices to make, but we only get one chance per choice. Time does not move backwards for us. Ever. And every choice we make is inviolate. It can not be undone. It can not be altered after the fact. Every step we take is forward, never backwards.

Because if we could go back and undo a choice we made, if we could "redo" our bad decisions, then we could alter and undo everything that's already been done. We could, in essence, make a liar of God's omniscience. And when the locust plague didn't show up as God had said it would, we would show God to be a fake.

But since we know that God is all knowing and all powerful, we also know that this can not be done. That nothing and no one can undo what God has done, except God.

Therefore, time travel - or more specifically, time travel that allows for interaction with and the possibility of alteration of the past - is not possible. Free will is still free will... but it only goes in one direction.

You may now start the Nobel Committee letter writing campaign and I promise to humbly accept my award next year on behalf of the blogosphere.

Thank you.