(In the IPP Time Code Field Guide dropped to Arthur by the Author in the 4th book of the Arth Series there was a little piece of paper between its pages. It was a partial discussion by an eminent Victorian professor and a Doctor of theology. Here is the text.)
TIME TRAVEL CANNOT EXIST.
"Time travel cannot exist my dear Shaftesbury." said Doctor Elliott.
"Ahh, but you argue from a theological basis and I from a scientific one," said Professor Shaftesbury.
"I believe that they are mutually dependent and that the one backs the other up."
The train swayed steadily towards London, the capital of the Empire.
"Now look here Elliott, I cannot accept the Bible as fact, the way you can. It is alien to my belief in Darwinism. I suppose you could say that I am as diametrically opposed to you as the Devil is to God."
Elliott mused on this for a while then answered, "If God does not exist then how was the universe started?"
"A big bang of course."
"But who started a big bang."
"I don't know."
"Even Darwin believed in God and that He must have created everything but just let it evolve."
"Ok then, let us say hypothetically that you are correct and that God created life the universe and everything. Why does this mean that time travel does or cannot exist?"
"The greatest reason is that if there was time travel then somebody would have travelled back in time to the garden of Eden and stopped Eve eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
"But you are not taking into account the paradox that would create, we simply would not exist."
"Ahh but I know that if the Bible is true then God predestined us to be conformed to the glory of his likeness, meaning that we would still exist but we would not have fallen and that we were known about even before time existed!"
"Fine so if God exists and he is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent then he can create time travel surely."
"You are assuming that time is cyclical and all you have to do is to break out of one side of time into another. That theory means that everything that is created now will end in the great implosion which will again result in another big bang and time starting again. But, this would mean that God would be playing games with us. Even if time were a snake-like tube that could be broken into from other close time scales then there is still an end. In heaven there is no time. Those who have died no longer age."
