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Ernie and me were walking to pick up Phoebe from football practice tonight. As he pressed the button for the pelican crossing he said "Imagine if Phoebe scores a goal at the exact moment I press this button!" It was 6.19pm and we noted the time, but I told him it would be unlikely that Phoebe would be able to tell us the time of any goal she scored because a) it's not the kind of thing that anyone bothers to note and b) because she didn't have a watch on. Also even if she knew she'd scored a goal at nineteen minutes past six how would we ascertain that it had been at the precise instant of the button push.
However, I think that's a cool and sophisticated thought to have. As long as you don't start believing that you have the power to affect unconnected events by your own actions. There will be no way to ever find out if Ernie was right or wrong, unless Phoebe didn't score at all (unlikely), unless when we get to Heaven God is prepared to rewind the tape to show us this exact moment in both place and see if Ernie's hunch was right. Would God be prepared to do that? If he does it for one person then he has to do it for everyone? And sure maybe he'd be prepared to do it if it was for a really big argument or an important FA Cup goal, but just for the idle speculation of a 7 year-old?
Unlikely. Though there is a lot of time to fill up there in Heaven, what with it being infinite, so maybe he's glad of the distraction. Perhaps he just edits together a highlight reel for every person (and animal and insect and bacterium?) that ever lived so they can get all those questions answered in the afterlife. Is it simpler for God just to do this as it happens, or would he want to put it together later? Then he'd have to remember every single instance of any kind of question or argument and go back and find the tape. But it might save him some time, because then he could probably just do the conflicts and issues that people remember. Will Ernie recall this button pushing/football goal in U10's practice game when he dies at the age of 153? Probably not. He might be confused if God shows him a video of him asking that and then showing him that Phoebe didn't score at the precise second.
I can't imagine we forget about all arguments and queries though and I would want to spend a lot of time discovering it I was right or wrong about stuff - I'd have a lot of scores to settle. Just with my wife for starters - the number of arguments that I'd like to play back to prove I was definitely right. Then she'll have the whole of the afterlife to stew on how right I was and how wrong she was. There's got to be quite the bad atmosphere in Heaven either way, right? You're not telling me we just rise above this stuff just cos we're dead. No way.
We got to football and Phoebe had scored something like a triple hat-trick. So there was a better chance than I'd expected for one of those goals to have gone in when Ernie pressed the button. Can't wait until I'm dead to find out. And until Ernie is dead so I can tell him. Hope it's sooner rather than later. This kind of anticipation could kill you.
I've put up another cool load of stuff on ebay including my exclusive, never-available-in-the-shops Radio 4 hoodie that I got when
I did Richard Herring's Objective, a snooker ball signed by sexy Me11, my final copy of the Oh Frig I'm 50! DVD and a complete set of Self-Playing Snooker Punani stickers (not many of these in existence).
Bid here. All profits go to making more podcasts!
