I'm not Christian and time travel is still inconsistent with my worldview.  To me, it implies that all realities have to exist simultaneously and completely removes the concept of duration.

It depends on how you view time.  Does killing your grandfather as a child make you cease to exist, or does it simply spawn a new timeline where you don't exist (leaving the one where you do exist still intact)?

I'd be more worried about religious zealots using time travel to further their causes.  Like bringing Jesus into the 21st century just so they can say, "See?  He does exist!"  Poor Jesus would think he was going insane...

Then again, a lot of people who are that zealous don't believe in science, so they'd think a time machine was a tool of Satan, put on earth to trick us into doing something sinful.

yes, time is only an illusion.

If we understand "eternal" as meaning "outside of time" rather than "time going on forever..."

Then God is outside of time.  Thus, God sees all of time from Creation to its final Unmaking as one single continuous moment.  From a God's-eye perspective, the future has already begun and the past is still ongoing--that God has no concept of hours and days "passing" as humans do.

So let's run with this theory, and say that Timelessness is a quality of the Eternal--specifically God.

We as humans are temporal beings, not yet eternal.  Paul says that one day, when we are resurrected, we will have "celestial" bodies, incorruptible--and perhaps then we will share in God's quality of Timelessness.  (Of course "one day" "yet" "then" all being human time-concepts that may or may not actually apply.)
  But as we are now, I think that time-travel is beyond us simply because in order to move through time we would have to, for a moment, leave the timestream--in essence, to transcend time--which is currently a quality not given to finite humanity.  When we are transfigured, perhaps then it will be possible for us.

In short: I believe time travel is possible, but not for humans.  I believe time travel is possible--and even part of the nature of--God.

See, God--who is intrinsically timeless, atemporal--allowed himself to be incarnated as a temporal human.  For thirty-some-odd years he experienced hours, weeks, minutes, just as any human does.  But see, if he started out timeless and then left his state of timelessness to enter time, he simultaneously still would have been present in timelessness--because to once be present and then be not-present would be a function of the time that God does not experience.  Jesus, in leaving heaven, didn't leave behind a vacancy--God was still on the throne.

If I'm not bordering on heresy, that might go towards explaining how God and Jesus, though the same person, could speak to one another and how one could know things the other didn't.  It's almost like in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure where Bill and Ted see themselves-from-one-day-in-the-future--same dudes, but with different experiences.

Then, when Jesus ascended and returned to a state of timelessness, you have two disctinct personas of the same person--the one who experience time, experienced incarnation-as-a-human, experienced pain and death and temptation--and one who had not, who (in a sense) had never left.

There's more.  If a once-temporal God re-enters atemporality, yet with all the experiences of his time as a human, then those experiences would exist all throughout the timestream.  That is, that Jesus would be able to assist with Creation millenia before he himself was born, or to physically appear to people with the same body he had ascended with.  Remember when it says that Enoch "walked with God"?  Did Enoch walk with God-the-father-wearing-a-temporary-body, or did Jesus walk with him?  If Joshua had gone up to the "Captain of the LORD's Army" and checked his hands, would he have seen nail-prints from nails that hadn't even been forged yet?

Think about it.  If you believe in pre-incarnate "Theophany," does that not make Jesus a chrononaut?

A few final points:  in the Old Testament, there's a passage where God stops the sun from moving.  Where Israel needed more time before nightfall to win a battle, so Joshua prayed, and the sun didn't move for a whole day.  We moderns of course scoff at such legends, saying that if the Earth had really stopped rotating, it would have been a disaster.

Perhaps a localized temporal disturbance (what our Dungeons and Dragons friends would call a Time Stop) occured instead?  Perhaps time continued to pass for the rest of the world while in this one valley the sun still shone--or perhaps the entire battle took place in between ticks of a clock?  If God truly is atemporal and thus can control Time, it wouldn't be a stretch.

...

We humans are four-dimensional creatures: we exist in height, width, depth, and time.  It stands to reason that God is a fifth-dimensional (or more!) creature.  If that's the case, he would be able to step in and out of time as easily as you or I can step on or off a dance floor.  He would be able to leave the timestream whereever he wanted and re-enter at any place he wanted.  And that, from our perspective, would appear like time-travel.

But I don't think we humans, unaided, will be able to do such a thing, at least not until we are resurrected.

Oh boy. I don't think there are alternate dimensions, so I don't think there is time travel (because that would result in alternate dimensions -- well.. harry potter vs. back to the future time travel theories i guess.. but moving on...). Like it was said up there ^^^, God is outside the dimension of time, of course. But here, as we are now on Earth, I don't see any reason to believe in alternate dimensions or time travel. Especially when looking at scripture.

@LadyLibellule@xanga - I'd be worried about atheistic time-travellers who'd go back to put locks on Jesus' tomb. @QuantumStorm@xanga - @yet_still_learning@xanga -  Why is it an illusion?

It's like the theory of parallel universes. The universe was once as small as an electron which moves so fast it could be in two places at once...meaning there could be parallel universes where different periods of time exist...say milestones in the history of the universe.

moving a person to a parallel universe is not possible, only small particles could travel through wormholes (assuming parallel universes exist). you don't know where you would end up, either. you could end up on a different planet or lightyears away from earth. you could end up inside a planet and die immediately. you wouldn't know exactly which period of the universe you would end up in in earths history if you land on earth. the earth was once toxic to modern life (no oxygen). so it would be very risky and there would be a 1 in a trillion chance of landing where you would want to go.

@LadyLibellule@xanga - i'm a Christian, but i believe in science. people who don't believe in science are ignorant.

@Pass_the_Aura@xanga - very interesting. i remember having a discussion about that in geophysical science (that class asked lots of questions). It's deffinately fun to think about, but it hurts my brain :D. Going in a black hole must be similar to time travel, then!

@QuantumStorm@xanga - I think I understand what you mean. Time is a construct, as language is a construct. But certainly language represents something, and when I mean going back in time, I really mean "Can one change something that happened in the past?" Whether time is relative or not is somewhat related but not to the point; it's the question of "Can we manipulate time?

I enjoyed the read. It sort of left me puzzled and hungry for a cookie. It seems then that time is in the same quandry as consciousness and the validity of mathematics are in.

@ChrisRusso@xanga - I liked especially your point about God stopping time for a day. that was an interesting way of looking at it; perhaps God did have the battle proceed between two ticks of a second!

But much of what you said will require multiple readings for me to grasp it.

@LadyLibellule@xanga - Point taken. In your example, it's not worry about Jesus; Jesus exists or doesn't whatever we say; and in mine it's the same. I'm worried about those particular atheists who'd go back to put locks on Jesus' tomb, partly for the futility of locking the tomb, and partly that they won't have their citizen passes for the Roman guard.

@squanto_07@xanga - really? haha i didn't know that.

@QuantumStorm@xanga - @yet_still_learning@xanga - @harmonyminusmelody@xanga - 

If time is an illusion why does time slow down to a crawl as a traveler approaches the speed of light?

This effect was predicted by Einstein and later proved by modern technology.