Time Travel Moral dilemma

[IWantGod]

You have secretly invented time travel. You go back in time and on your travels you come across people who are in deadly situations and only you can help. If you help them you could be changing the time line. Its possible the effects could be small and insignificant. But it is also possible that major changes could occur that completely change the future in a detrimental way (people not being born etc).

Should you leave them to the cold arms of death and perhaps say a prayer. Or should you help them? Should you kill Hitler or save JFK.

 

[1neophyte]

Kill em all.

 

[MT1926]

You have secretly invented time travel. You go back in time and on your travels you come across people who are in deadly situations and only you can help. If you help them you could be changing the time line. Its possible the effects could be small and insignificant. But it is also possible that major changes could occur that completely change the future in a detrimental way (people not being born etc).

Should you leave them to the cold arms of death and perhaps say a prayer. Or should you help them? Should you kill Hitler or save JFK.

The good old Butterfly effect. If you have a great desire to travel back in time it should be for observation purposes only. To get a first hand glimpse of God’s greatness, from a distance. To try to change things in time, would be like trying to be God. Messing with God’s creation will most definitely come back to bite you in the butt. Just imagine you travel back 100 years ago and you are walking down a dirt road and see a woman being pulled out of a river. She isn’t breathing but not dead and you know you can save her… You use you futuristic abilities of mouth to mouth resuscitation to bring her back to life. You are in the middle of back woods no where what harm could you have done to the future of man kind. Most likely none. However, little did you know this woman was pregnant and ended up having a son who moved to your home town and had another son who happened to meet your wife one week before you did. Ooops Your life, your wife and your five kids are no longer yours and you just felt a large chunk taken outa your butt.

Sounds like fun, but we don’t mess with God’s plan.

 

[jediliz]

If i had this ability, i would smuggle a 3D ultrasound machine along with a pregnant woman into roe vs wade trial. After all, they did say in the decision that someday if something could be proven, Roe Vs Wade could be eliminated…

I’d rather eliminate abortion…think of how many doctors, nurses, scientists, teachers and future good government leaders we have been denied since that decision.

 

[1neophyte]

If i had this ability, i would smuggle a 3D ultrasound machine along with a pregnant woman into roe vs wade trial. After all, they did say in the decision that someday if something could be proven, Roe Vs Wade could be eliminated…

I’d rather eliminate abortion…think of how many doctors, nurses, scientists, teachers and future good government leaders we have been denied since that decision.

But the important question is, would you build your own ultrasound machine? What if you spent all your resources building the time machine, and couldn’t afford to buy or build the ultrasound machine? Would it be morally acceptable to “borrow” one without proper authorization, considering all the good you were going to do? But what if you were performing the 3D ultrasound there in the courtroom, and all of the judges were so moved that they made a different decision, and one of the babies who was saved by this turn of events ended up killing the inventor of the 3D ultrasound machine while driving drunk? Then the ultrasound machine would disappear, and you’d be sitting there in the chambers of the Supreme Court with a naked woman, and you would be dragged off to the State nervous hospital for your bizarre behavior. Then you would never be able to get back into your time machine to return to the “present,” and you never would fulfill your true destiny of fathering the child who would grow up to find a cure for cancer. What would be your moral culpability in such a situation?

These are important questions. Maybe we can get a canon lawyer to weigh in.

 

[Mintaka]

If time travel were to be possible, then the effects of time travel would already be present in our universe. Whatever you did in the past would be something that had already happened in your timeline, because the actions of a “time traveler in his past” are no different to the universe than the actions of a “time traveler in his present.” It’s all stuff happening in time. You have the same free will whenever you live and whenever you go, and the actions of other people will continue to constrain your own actions.

The only person who could possibly “tamper” with a timeline is God, because He’s the only being totally beyond the constraints of time/space. And we would call that a miracle, not tampering.

That said, we obviously travel in time every day. It’s just that the only direction we can go is forward, at the exact same pace at all times.

 

[mVitus]

Though personally, I don’t we’ll ever develop time travel (at least not the going back kind). Here’s why: At least one person would’ve gone back to Jesus’ time and seen him face-to-face and I’m guessing that’d be a story we’d see of Jesus or even just from secular accounts telling of “the strange man.”

 

[IWantGod]

Though personally, I don’t we’ll ever develop time travel (at least not the going back kind). Here’s why: At least one person would’ve gone back to Jesus’ time and seen him face-to-face and I’m guessing that’d be a story we’d see of Jesus or even just from secular accounts telling of “the strange man.”

Judas

 

[1believer1]

I have been time traveling for as long as I can remember. I think back to when I was younger and I am back as a child, I think ahead of what might be and I live in that moment even if it does not come to pass. There have been many books written on time travel and the benefits and the consequence of time travel , but I believe that GOD wants us to live in the moment and do HIS will …not what we might think is best. Just my humble opinion.

 

[Don_Ruggero]

These are important questions. Maybe we can get a canon lawyer to weigh in.

Why would you wish to consult a canon lawyer about topics which do not touch remotely upon canon law but do touch upon the field of moral theology?

 

[1neophyte]

Why would you wish to consult a canon lawyer about topics which do not touch remotely upon canon law but do touch upon the field of moral theology?

I thought my sarcasm was obvious, but I see what you mean. If only I had a time machine to go back and correct myself…

 

[Wildgraywolf]

You have secretly invented time travel. You go back in time and on your travels you come across people who are in deadly situations and only you can help. If you help them you could be changing the time line. Its possible the effects could be small and insignificant. But it is also possible that major changes could occur that completely change the future in a detrimental way (people not being born etc).

Should you leave them to the cold arms of death and perhaps say a prayer. Or should you help them? Should you kill Hitler or save JFK.

I can’t talk about it; Temporal Prime Directive you understand.