[Avodah] what G-d can't do

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 10:37:45PM -0400, Stuart Feldhamer wrote:
: Why must it be impossible? Perhaps G-d can change the past, but won't.

Change the past? What does that mean?

WADR to the authors of Back to the Future, the concept is wobbly.

Change is defined by the world having one state and then at another
point in time, a different state. There is a before and after; before,
he was broke, now he is wealthy. The change happened across time/ For
that matter, you can't change the future. You can only make the future
different than expected.

The only way the past could change is if there were a meta-time in which
the meta-old past can be meta-before the meta-new past. In which case,
the past that is also in the meta-past can't be changed, and that's the
only kind of past we're really talking about.

To put it another way:
You can't change the past because it has no future to have another
version in. You can't change the future because it had no past version
to get changed.

A third phrasing, since this topic is inherently hard to imagine: Change
is the state of an object compared across two points in time. You can't
change an object as it is in one point in time, that's not what "change"
means. What would make one version the old one, and the other version
the new one? It's not like they're at different times... You don't mean
to talk about an object simultaneously in two conflicting states but
if you are reffering to a point of time in the past, you are saying
"simultaneously".

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Man is equipped with such far-reaching vision,
micha at aishdas.org        yet the smallest coin can obstruct his view.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
Fax: (270) 514-1507