A question on the theology of time travel. If you were to travel back in time and kill the baby version of yourself. Do you go to hell?

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Let’s assume God and the soul is real. Let’s say the soul is timeless and immortal like how it’s popularly claimed. Let’s assume only one changeable timeline exists and cannot branch out into multiple timelines. If I were to travel back in time and kill the baby version of me, what would happen to my soul?

  • Do I go to hell?
  • Do I get two souls, where the baby (who is me) goes to heaven and the adult (also me) goes to hell?
  • If I cease to exist, does that mean only my body ceases to exist, and my soul remains one with God and was never born?
    • If so, how could I remain one with God if I committed an abhorrent child-murder, but how could I go to hell in the first place if I died before I could do such an act?
  • If the Act Itself Seals the Deal: In most Judeo-Christian frameworks, murder, especially infanticide, is a grave sin against the image of God (Genesis 9:6, Exodus 20:13). As the time-traveling adult, I’m exercising free will to commit this act, fully culpable. If the soul, being timeless, isn’t “judged” at death like a mortal checkpoint and is evaluated across its eternal essence. God, being omniscient and outside time, already “knows” this sin as an indelible stain on your soul’s record. So, post-act (or pre-act, from God’s view), I am hell-bound for violating the sanctity of life.
    • So where is the free will here, if I as a baby is already destined for hell?
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This strikes me as the same sort of question as, “could god make a rock too heavy for him to pick up?” If no, then he’s not all powerful, (can’t make that particular rock) if yes then he’s not all powerful (can’t pick up that particular rock).

Or like Joe saying “Everything Bob says is a lie” and then Bob says, “everything I say is a lie”. Nice plot device to make an android short circuit its brain on Star Trek but in the real world, Joe made a statement about Bob that was incorrect or insufficiently qualified because it is possible, if difficult, for inveterate liars to occasionally tell the truth.

I don’t think these kinds of exercises make any real point or (dis)prove anything. For example, the invention of time travel would create all sorts of paradoxes, not just for religion. I’m reminded of an old sci-fi short story about someone who accidentally kills a butterfly when visiting the distant past and then returns to the present to find it changed – a different politician won the last election, and that winner is a Trump-like bad guy and it’s evident that a lot of accelerating change will proceed from there. That story didn’t have a timeline branch (it’s old enough I think it predates the concept). The one and only timeline was simply different, but the only person who was aware of the difference was the guy who time traveled.

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I always have to point out with this specific example that there is an underlying error that rules it out as being a logical impossibility (which is a reason given to refute claims against omnipotence), and rules it out as being a limitation of omnipotence.

If we consider the premise:

p = Make a rock too heavy to be picked up

The first barrier that would be encountered is that no matter what material the rock is made with (even if we allow for hypothetical alloys, etc.), the material strength of the rock would at some point be overcome by the gravitational force once it gets heavy enough.

Let’s say that as “omnipotence” would demand, cohesion should be sidestepped in some way. The material for the rock does not break down because this would be a physical constraint, not a logical constraint, so logically, one can conceive of a rock that defies cohesion limits - it doesn’t collapse into a black hole, etc.

So now we have our “heaviest rock”

The next barrier is a logical one. What does it mean to “pick up” or “lift” something?

We can comprehend taking hold of an object and elevating it, but if we consider the full extent of that action, it involves a person standing on Earth (or an equivalent object) and lifting/picking up another object.

If we consider for example that the “heaviest” object in our vicinity is the planet Earth itself, aside from the obvious constraints we humans would have lifting the planet due to its weight, if one were to put their hands on the earth and try to “lift” or “pick it up”, they would just be pushing themselves away from the Earth - i.e., a handstand or similar.

Therein lies the logical constraint - even if we imagine a being standing on another planet with a greater gravitational mass that would allow them to then lift a rock with the mass of Earth (and again, overriding the physical constraints with the tidal forces tearing both objects apart), they’re still only lifting the second heaviest object/rock while standing on the heaviest.

Logically, the heaviest “rock” is the one you stand on while lifting something less heavy. You make the one to lift/pick up heavier and you’re no longer lifting it, you’re lifting the thing you were standing on with your feet.

As for time travel generally (or specifically travelling back in time, as technically we’re all travelling through time in a forward direction :smiley:), I don’t see it as possible for the same reasons you give - any number of paradoxes occur when a future action invalidates a necessary dependency of that future, preventing that future from existing to effect the action that eliminated it.

My view of time is that everything happened at once, however one views space-time and its origins, the first moments of the universe and the last (meaningful) change in the universe exist concurrently - we humans - comprehending existence as a linear passage of time are merely experiencing that reality moment by moment.

At any point in the past where we exist, we exist in the perspective of that moment, considering the present a future yet to be, with choices yet made. There is no reason to consider that the future is any different, merely the present from another perspective, or the past from another perspective still.

We exist in each moment our existence spans, and we contribute to change/time in each moment, with the knowledge available to us in those moments being a summation of knowledge gained in past moments.

We can’t travel back in time because all moments have already happened, there was never a “moment” when they were “happening”, that’s simply how we experience it, so we can’t return to a happening or a “happened” - all moments are complete, locked from “change”, as they are permanent/static.

It’s like a stack of photos - time doesn’t exist in the “photos”, but is the act of flipping from one to the next.

Time travel into the past isn’t possible because there’s no “past” time, there is only the differences (change) between the static “snapshot” moments - it’s a metaphysical error (within the logical model of eternalism at least, it seems).

At least that’s my view on it (not a truth claim :stuck_out_tongue:)

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Yep, my point was that these hypotheticals are kind of meaningless and contrived.

No one knows how time works or if it could be short circuited or the past (or future) visited in some way. Or if tachyons are real, or any number of things. My guess is the answer to all those things is “no” and my certainty is that if I’m wrong I’ll die before anyone proves it :wink:

–Bob

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If I traveled back in time and killed the baby that would one day become me, how would there be a me to go back in time to kill myself? It’s the ultimate time travel paradox. You go back in time, get into a fight with your grandfather and kill him before he meets your grandmother, you would never have been born. There’s a lot of paradoxes along those lines. What if you went back and stopped the Titanic from sinking or killed Adolph Hitler before he became a teenager? How would the world be different when you got back to your own time?

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I think the OP tried to set it up with qualifications and limitations that would elide that paradox but I tend to agree with you, it can’t really be hand-waved away.

Sometimes I think people like Hitler or Trump or Stalin are conjured by society and that if you went back and, say, strangled Hitler in the crib, some other asshole would have met the same moment. What I’d want to do is go back to the late 19th century and try to influence the politics that led to the overbearing terms of the WW1 armistice which led to the humiliation of Germany that made it ripe for someone hawking politics of resentment. Hitler wouldn’t have gotten the time of day unless the German people afforded it to him, and they wouldn’t have done that if they hadn’t been in penury from hyperinflation and, generally speaking, the loss of all hope.

Although I might also strangle Baby Hitler just for good measure :wink:

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I admit… you guys are deep! It’s a simple thought experiment merely for the fun of it. Don’t get so heavy, dude!

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I have an answer for the rock paradox.

If God can do anything at all and has no limitations, could God create a rock that is so heavy that it would be impossible for Him to lift it?

Well . . . if God has no limitations, then God could stand in front of you and provide a valid answer to this question that satisfies the paradox.

Of course these points are little more than word play, as I don’t believe that God can be defined into existence.

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Lets go old school catholic, and say unbaptised babies go to hell. And the future you is an atheist, god created you that way, so baby you is also an atheist, so goes to hell.

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Getting “heavy” as you put it, or critically examining the minutiae of claims, and semantics is fun to many people. What can I say, I am a geek when it comes to this stuff.

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Others have already covered that base, but my first thought on seeing the thread title, was that you would be too busy oscillating between existing and non-existing in the relevant temporal paradox hysteresis loop. The whole business of whether or not you were lined up to meed the imaginary horned Kommandant of the equally imaginary cartoon lava Auschwitz, would be irrelevant.

Indeed, at this point, I think a certain Rowan Atkinson should join the party:

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You should watch the movie Primer (it is kind of about the ethics of time travel). It’s a low budget independent film, and by far the best time travel film as the director deliberately choose to not dumb it down. The director also posted it free for anyone to watch on Youtube:

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So, back to the OP. It’s a thought experiment. It’s not real, nor does it propose the science behind its scenario…sounds familiar…

Will you go to Hell? To my knowledge, only the Buddhists give a pass on suicide (which is what we’re talking about) by an enlightened being. You’re going to Hell.

Do you get two souls? Assuming you are killing yourself, I would put my money on you having just one soul. You, the baby, grew up into you, the one who commited suicide.

Your body ceases life functions…both versions. Considering no major theology looks kindly on suicide, my guess is your soul isn’t going to be “one” with any Gods currently in business.

Free will is a social construct. You probably never really had it anyway.

I found it ironic that our resident theist spent so many words shooting holes in a fantasy. No insult or derision intended…just noting the irony…

Happy Trails

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The stance of Buddhism is more nuanced than simply “giving it a pass” and I don’t think any modern religion would do be that cavalier about it as the surrounding society would find even the possibility of “encouraging” people to off themselves to be problematic.

I recall reading that in the very seminal days of Christianity, the taboo on suicide was quickly added to prevent it from becoming a death cult. Think about it: if you really believe that all problems are solved in the afterlife, why wouldn’t you just go directly there, particularly if you’re in great pain and have no one dependent upon you? Additionally, very early Christianity had the widespread belief that the End of Days was very near, thanks to Jesus stating quite clearly that some of those present when he left this earth would see his return. There are only two responses to that – to want to be a part of and witness to Jesus’ return, or, again if you’re in enough pain or want, to see little point in hanging around waiting for it.

Of course now, 2,000+ years later, we know that Jesus has been supposed to return any day now for all that time and hasn’t, so different equivocations are deployed around that, but the point is, no one seriously believes his return is imminent in a way that would impact their cost/benefit analysis of suicide.

At any rate there is nothing in the scripture, old or new testaments that I’m aware of that unambiguously and simply forbids suicide, just as there’s nothing about, for example, the “age of accountability” such that children below a certain age would not go to hell. Doctrines like that or the suicide prohibition are post hoc inferred teachings to address specific problems created by actual doctrines taught in the holy book.

Most of the justifications in Christianity for forbidding suicide or even making it a sin are at bottom sour grapes arguments – you can’t take the easy way out and leave this mess to the rest of us. You can’t “play god”. You have responsibilities (or god’s will) to fulfill. For a long time the prohibition was essentially that suicide is self-murder, a mortal sin and “you durst not off yourself or you will burn in hell” (for example the Catholic Church would not officiate the burial of a suicide until a few decades ago, when a more “compassionate” default stance was adopted).

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Want to know what Hell is like?

Sure, go jump in a really toxic relationship & find out :face_savoring_food::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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That is a good assumption on your part.

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Okay.

Okay.

This is where you lose me. Every quantum event splits the universe into branches, each representing a different outcome. In principle, this produces a vast infinite set of timelines.

This is where we begin to touch of the true nature of the soul. The you as you experience you is only a small fraction of the soul. In branching multiverse theories, there is no paradox. There is no contradiction because the traveler didn’t truly kill their own past self: only the past self of a different version in a different branch which will transmigrate to the host. The original timeline remains unchanged. A new timeline is created in which the younger individual is gone. Your causal action created another timeline (howbeit, one in which you acted against that fraction of your existence).

Assuming you rejoin your timeline and you expire, upon your transmigration to the host and your subsequent recall to the spiritual realm, your fate would be determinate upon whether you repented of your nature (the nature of moral error) and joined in faith to God to your ability. If you did, you go to Heaven. If you didn’t, you go to Hell.

Keep in mind… Heaven and Hell proper aren’t “created” so much as manifestations of their hive mind. Hell is only Hell as we know it to those who are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Powerful demons in the Hellspace can live out great fantasies, but do so from harvesting the energy of others in the same space: bringing themselves up to vainglory while causing other great suffering.

Not two souls. You have one soul. However, parts of your soul join each condition.

You never truly cease to exist. You just “create” (better to say discover) an extension of the soul that you gain consciousnesses of through causality.

Who said that you’re truly apart from God?

Think about it… God is supposedly omnipresent. God is also supposedly omniscience. This means that God experiences everything. A thing that experiences all things and is present in all things is all things. You are, therefore, a small suffering piece of God with limited knowledge and power seeking the absolution of suffering.

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I suspect i know the answer but can you demonstrate in any remotely objective way that a “soul” exists? Only you might as well be arguing about the qualities of Superman’s cape otherwise.

Pure unadulterated unevidenced gibberish, with a liberal sprinkling of woo woo.

Except they absolutely are human creations, and can’t be evidenced to exist outside of the human imagination.

Well the word fantasy has seldom seemed more apropos.

Yes yes, but what is Superman’s cape made of, how come it never tears or gets dirty?

In every single case without one exception ever being evidenced, people cease to exist when they die, unless you’re redefining exist so that it does not mean “the fact or state of living or having objective reality”.

…and Superman’s cape can’t ever tear or get dirty.

I don’t use this word often enough, as it’s a UK colloquial term, but that post is pure codswallop.

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From the prospective of an omniscience observer, you have always existed in some form a priori (or else the being could not perceive your existence: no essence = no existence). That premortal essence is your soul: a state of possibility which God (being) either directly or indirectly perceives as a theistic being or as a non-theistic being.

That’s your point of view. But, please… We are discussing the question posited by the OP.

Why do you expect that it’s any different from what we are made of: only that it presents as different via different environmental conditions/spatial conditions? And what to say that systems under different environmental conditions/spatial conditions cannot suffer lost of integrity or fall into entropy?

You’re entitled to your opinion. However, I’m addressing the OP under the metaphysical model that the OP presented. You can disagree with the metaphysical model, but I don’t believe that’s why the thread was created.

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So no then, you have nothing remotely like objective evidence that a soul exist.

Whose view should I be expressing?

I have no expectations of imaginary things, that’s rather the point.

With codswallop.

Why are you telling me what I’m entitled to say in a public debate forum? Your claims were entirely unevidenced, your arguments wooly gibberish.