Did the Cosmos Have a Beginning?

When the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe was first proposed it met with a lot of resistance from scientists and others who were dismayed by the fact that the Big Bang entailed that the universe had a discrete beginning rather than being infinitely old. If the universe had a beginning then it must have been caused by something outside itself, and since this sounded too much like the Genesis account of the Bible, many scientists resisted the Big Bang until the predicted background radiation left over from the initial "explosion" was serendipitously discovered in 1963 making further resistance seem futile.

Even so, the refuseniks have not given up and have over the years advanced a number of theories that would do away with the unpleasant theological implications of the standard Big Bang model by keeping the Bang, so to speak, but doing away with a cosmic beginning. However, in one way or another all of these theories have come to grief.

An article at New Scientist (subscription required) suggests that hope is fading that a beginningless universe can made to conform to the evidence we have. Here's part of the article:

While many of us may be OK with the idea of the big bang simply starting everything, physicists, including [Stephen] Hawking, tend to shy away from cosmic genesis. "A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God," Hawking told the meeting, at the University of Cambridge, in a pre-recorded speech.

For a while it looked like it might be possible to dodge this problem, by relying on models such as an eternally inflating or cyclic universe, both of which seemed to continue infinitely in the past as well as the future. Perhaps surprisingly, these were also both compatible with the big bang, the idea that the universe most likely burst forth from an extremely dense, hot state about 13.7 billion years ago.

However, as cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston explained last week, that hope has been gradually fading and may now be dead. He showed that all these theories still demand a beginning.

The details of Vilenkin's argument follow in the article, but the important point is that cosmologists are now in a quandary. The data does not support the idea of a beginningless universe, but if the universe had a beginning then the argument for a transcendent, very powerful, very intelligent, personal cause of the universe becomes almost irresistable.

Consider, for example, the following argument that has been popularized by the philosopher William Lane Craig:

1. Everything that comes into being has a cause of its existence.
2. Nothing is the cause of itself.
3. The universe had a beginning and thus came into being.
4. Therefore the universe had a cause.
5. There are only three kinds of causes: abstract (ideas), scientific (physical forces), and personal minds.
6. Abstract objects are causally impotent, and physical forces would only exist after the universe came into being.
7. Therefore, the cause of the universe must be a personal mind.

Thus we have good reason to believe that there is a transcendent personal cause that began the universe. Sound like anyone you know?

See vjtorley's post at Uncommon Descent and William Lane Craig's website for more.