Star Trek & Time Travel

There's not a lot of Chi Alpha news during the middle of the summer, but I'll have some soon enough. In the meantime, how about something random?

I had the opportunity to see the new Star Trek film last week, and was quite pleased. I enjoyed myself the whole time, and recommend it heartily.

The movie involves time travel, as does my one TV show: LOST (I still haven't seen the season finale!). The idea of time travel is wild, when one really thinks about it. I thought I'd share some thoughts on why I hope time travel is impossible. (I'm thinking primarily of travel back into time, though forward travel would fit into my ramblings as well, unless one was simply going to travel forward into time and stay there.)

Let's assume that free will does exist in the universe - human choices change the course of history.

Ok, first silly problem would be that we don't want anyone going back in time and killing our ancestors so we never exist, right? Well, that's a concern of sorts, but the concern I'm thinking about is a little different. I'm not a fan of the idea of an infinite number of worlds, many of which include you and me, many of which include you but not me, and many of which include me but not you. Where am I coming from? Let me show you.

i. Bob and Pam exist in our universe in 2007.
ii. Timmy the time traveler pops into our time from a future time. He knows Bob & Pam's grandchildren, and dislikes them very much for some odd reason. (Maybe they get better scores in physics courses than even he does.)
iii. Timmy doesn't know that his father was actually Bob's son, from a moral lapse with a young woman in 2008 who then gave up her son for adoption. For whatever reasons, Timmy's father either never finds out he was adopted, or never tells his wife and children that he was adopted, hence Timmy's ignorance. (I've got some interesting stories in mind for how this happened, but will spare you for the sake of brevity.)
iv. Timmy runs over Bob with his time travel ship to make sure his children and grandchildren are never born, and takes care of Pam in some similar violent fashion.
v. Timmy pops back to the future to what?

Well, if we take it that only one real universe exists, then Timmy has wiped himself out of existence. But, if his existence has been cancelled, then he never did the dirty deeds, and so he does still exist...

So, you can't change the past?

Here's how it looks to me. If Timmy really could travel back in time, then he really does exist in a potential future. The future that he is traveling from is a future with a past where Bob lives long enough to commit adultery and father Timmy's father.
However, by killing Bob with his time travel ship, Timmy has created an alternate future where there is no Timmy, and there are no descendants of Bob and Pam.
This alternate future is vastly different from Timmy's future, not just because of a dozen or fewer missing people, but because of the hundreds of thousands or millions (or more?) of actions and personal interactions Bob, Pam, their children and grandchildren would have made apart from Timmy's murderous doings.

This is a simple illustration. My point is made without resorting to such wild extremes as murder. For, we are all products of the experiences we have. Every choice is forming us into who we will be. I don't believe this is some kind of fixed process where our wills are chained to our experience (that would be fatalism), but I do believe that what we experience changes us, changes our available options and potentialities. If Timmy comes back to 2007 and interacts with other humans in kind and generous ways, then Timmy is producing an alternate future from that which he came from, same as if Timmy came back to knock off a few folk. Otherwise, Timmy is coming back to do what fate already decided he would do, for he had already come back and done those actions to create the future from which he came... It becomes an unending circle of fatalism.

The point is that every choice and action and response we make is forming our destiny and the destinies of those around us (to lesser or greater degrees). If time travelers come into our time and interact with us, they are creating new destinies for us and those who will come after us. These destinies may be minutely different from those we are currently headed toward, or drastically different (as in the case of Bob and Pam's progeny).

LOST and Star Trek take opposing perspectives on this (unless things do change in LOST). This whole idea of changing destinies is, so far, rejected by LOST, which has been enacting the endless fatalistic circle, while Star Trek's whole premise for building a new franchise of movies is based on the premise of altered destinies.

I don't like the idea of people from an infinite number of potential futures traveling through time to arrive in my present and mucking things up. Worse, I dislike the idea of these time geeks arriving in my past and changing things, for now they have created multiple Matt's. There is this one sitting here typing, and the others that have experienced time travelers sitting on my flowers and stealing books from my library. This one is happily enjoying flowers and favorite books, while the 'new' me is in an alternate universe stewing.

So, I don't like the idea of time travel, and think it is unlikely to be possible, beyond maybe skipping ahead a little ways, or slowing down time for yourself while others speed up. But in these scenarios, the timeline of the universe is not affected.

And, I believe we are making our destinies today, and affecting the destinies of those around us with every choice and action and interpersonal interaction. God is watching over the whole process, to be sure, and is intimately involved with every permutation, but He has given us will and responsibility.

As Ben Parker said, "With great power comes great responsibility."