Opus 2022-035: Time for Idle Speculation

One of the themes of science fiction is time and time travel.  It is one of those fertile fields of entertainment because anything goes.  It does ask some key questions though.  One of the questions is, “Can the past be changed?” and following that is, “How does that effect the present?”  

The big question is that if you changed the past would you know it today?  

I read a short story years ago.  I have no memory of the title or author but it stuck in my mind.  A group of scientists were conducting an experiment on what would happen when you changed the past.  The picture was a great machine like a pendulum which would swing back and forth through time in ever increasing arcs.  The first swing was just a few feet and there were no observed changes.  When the arc increased the narrative pointed out that the color of the scientists ties had changed.  Bigger arcs brought successively bigger changes.  Finally at the end the crowd of humans watching the experiment had morphed from what we would consider normal into amoeba like slugs in pools on the concrete.  The final comment by the observers had to do with the fact that nothing had changed.

What got me off on this was some answers to prayer.  One answer involved a newly discovered regulation that brought the requested result.  My question was, “Was the regulation always there and we just didn’t know about it or did God go back and insert it to bring the result we wanted?”  I don’t know that we will ever know.  Since God is outside time and created time then it would seem that He is capable of reaching His goal either way.

I don’t offer this as a doctrinal statement, just speculation.  There are time when I wonder if I need more chores so that my mind doesn’t have so much time to wander.

homo unius libri