Post by Padre Romero on May 11, 2007 9:21:18 GMT -5
Well, I was wondering when you'd bring this up...(We've talked about this before)...
There are a few reasons why I'm some folks might object to HG being god. The most obvious being one of the lesser-known criticisms of time travel:
HG is immortal, which means he'll be flickering through time for a good long time, removing all competition, bettering humanity, whatever he does. I'm not sure how he can avoid ALL mistakes. Eventually, he is bound by the laws of chance to make a desicision which will cause time travel is to not be possible. Then, all his changes will be "Locked in". In this case, his mortal imperfections may cause him to, say, destroy his time machine in a fit of rage or in an accidental repair...of course, since he built the thing in the first place, he may be able to build another one given an infinite amount of time.
HG is omnipotent, omniscient (kinda), and Omnipresent (sorta), but he's missing some other classic tenents of divinity...he's not "Simple" (what's the metaphysical term for that). I'm not sure why everyone thinks that is a big deal, but I'm sure someone would raise a beef. His lack of true omniscience and perfection also make him a poor anchor for morality (The primary reason I think most people need God) "Because the time traveller says so" or "Because that is what the time traveller wants" doesn't have as much weight...of course, I would say the same thing applies to god.
I have no doubt in my mind that we'll someday have a means of producing universes of our own. Technology may even throw us beyond the realm of God himself...we may become our own gods. Weather it may be possible to go back in time and trigger our own creation is a subject of some thinking (especially since the "time" in the wells story appears absolute, so you could concieveably go back "before" the big bang). In fact, Hec, if you wanted to make a story out of this, the time travellers final orders being a suicide mission to create the universe might be a killer ending.
I've long had a theory that god works in causality loops. A classic question you've raised before is that we don't have a mechanism to "show" the hand of god working in the real world. In teza's world at least (And now NO ONE knows what we're talking about), it's suspected that if one travels back in time and gives motzart the sheet music to "alla turka", the true "author" of the piece is god himself, or in this case, the Time Traveller.
There are a few reasons why I'm some folks might object to HG being god. The most obvious being one of the lesser-known criticisms of time travel:
HG is immortal, which means he'll be flickering through time for a good long time, removing all competition, bettering humanity, whatever he does. I'm not sure how he can avoid ALL mistakes. Eventually, he is bound by the laws of chance to make a desicision which will cause time travel is to not be possible. Then, all his changes will be "Locked in". In this case, his mortal imperfections may cause him to, say, destroy his time machine in a fit of rage or in an accidental repair...of course, since he built the thing in the first place, he may be able to build another one given an infinite amount of time.
HG is omnipotent, omniscient (kinda), and Omnipresent (sorta), but he's missing some other classic tenents of divinity...he's not "Simple" (what's the metaphysical term for that). I'm not sure why everyone thinks that is a big deal, but I'm sure someone would raise a beef. His lack of true omniscience and perfection also make him a poor anchor for morality (The primary reason I think most people need God) "Because the time traveller says so" or "Because that is what the time traveller wants" doesn't have as much weight...of course, I would say the same thing applies to god.
I have no doubt in my mind that we'll someday have a means of producing universes of our own. Technology may even throw us beyond the realm of God himself...we may become our own gods. Weather it may be possible to go back in time and trigger our own creation is a subject of some thinking (especially since the "time" in the wells story appears absolute, so you could concieveably go back "before" the big bang). In fact, Hec, if you wanted to make a story out of this, the time travellers final orders being a suicide mission to create the universe might be a killer ending.
I've long had a theory that god works in causality loops. A classic question you've raised before is that we don't have a mechanism to "show" the hand of god working in the real world. In teza's world at least (And now NO ONE knows what we're talking about), it's suspected that if one travels back in time and gives motzart the sheet music to "alla turka", the true "author" of the piece is god himself, or in this case, the Time Traveller.