If the laws of nature allow events in the future to alter events in the past. They will be altered. And they will be altered in a manner that benefits some unless you've seen a dramatic change in human behaviour since I turned off the news.
Sure. But when they are, the changes will be completely undetectable to anybody living in the timeline. Completely and totally undetectable. So who's to say they ever happened? Eventhe people who benefit from it will never know that they have benefactors in a no-longer existing universe who set things up to make them the richest person in the world. Perhaps Bill Gates is, in some alternity, a wildly intelligent but completely impoverished person. So he creates his time-tailoring machine and changes things so that he becomes wildly successful. To us, Bill Gates is just wildly successful. Nobody changed a thing. Or did they? Or does it matter? No.
Except that the bible, the basic tenant of your religion specifically states otherwise. It says he makes floods, he kills first born, he knocks down walls, he heals, he turns people into pillars of salt. These are not the actions of someone content to let nature run its course.
Now if you want to say he was an activist up until 21 centuries ago and now only dabbles in the occasional piece of toast or road sign ok but I don't think most Catholics or Protestants would receive much pleasure considering that possibility.
Nature doesn't run a course. It exists. It happens to incorporate a dimension we experience as time. He created it, and decided that at certain parts of it he would astound the intelligent creations within it. At other coordinates along the time dimension he would let them wonder. He didn't lose interest, because that implies he was interested at one time and not another. The whole thing exists at once - there is no "time" for him to lose interest. Instead, there are places where he makes amazing things and other places where his very existence is open to debate.
It strikes me that you believe what you wish to believe, disregard the rest, and struggle in the middle. This may work for you, it certainly worked for me for awhile, but I suspect a certain German cleric would take umbrage. [...] you accept that you have a religion not based upon the supporting pillars of your faith but rather on those few remaining pillars not yet torn down by science to your satisfaction.
Nothing in science has ever torn down anything in Catholicism. That's part of why I was drawn to that particular faith. Interpretations may need to be adjusted to make way for fact, but those adjustments can only further purify the faith.
You ask me how to know what parts of the Bible are factual and which are allegory. I say that you must err on the side of learning, and as long as you are learning from the lessons therein then it doesn't matter. Of course it matters to you because you live in a binary life where everything must be perfectly defined. It makes you uneasy to consider that there might be things to be learned that can't be measured with a graduated stick.
Statements such as "it took as long to create the universe as it took" should, I think, be no more satisfying to you than they are to a physicist. For example: I'm not happy with the square root of minus one.
I'm having a hard time understanding why that statement of mine gave rise to so much ire. Can you tell me how long it should have taken to create the universe? No matter what your answer is I can still ask, "Why did it take so long?" Or, alternatively, I could ask, "What was the rush?" Of COURSE it took as long as it took. That's how long it would have taken, no matter how long it took! So what's the problem? Are you in such a hurry for the Universe to be created? Is the long timeframe of evolution going to make you miss a dentist appointment?
I really don't understand the response I've gotten to pointing out that the anthropic principal applies to the question of why it took so long. It took that long because that's how long it had to take for us to sit here asking why it took that amount of time. Had it taken some other amount of time then we'd be sitting here asking why it took that other amount of time.
Besides, if time is just another dimension as reverse-causality implies, then the universe is a static contruct. How long did it take to build? That question is exactly the same as "What happened before the Big Bang?" or "How long does it take an electron to get from one side of the nucleus to the other?" If something happens outside of time, like the "orbit" of an electron or the goings-on before the Big Bang, or the establishment of the contruct we call the Universe, then how can you answer the question of how long it took? It took zero time, or it took an eternity. Whichever you like. But if you don't like the fact that you and your planet were inserted on the time axis a little too far to the right, then you should take a look at the living conditions further to the left and be glad you didn't have to deal with hot Universe before matter began to form. And be glad you weren't inserted further to the right in a part of the Universe where everything is cold and all the stars have burnt out. Be glad, in fact, that you were inserted into the time axis exactly where you were so that you could sit and complain about it taking so long to come into existence.
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