Did the Universe Have a Beginning?

Did the universe have a beginning?, is both simple and profoundly important.

In the Beginning was God and God created the world in 6 days and on the seventh day rested. As Christians we all are founded on the story of creation however we are bombarded in middle school about the Big Bang Theory. Then there are those who argue that the universe is eternal and the rest of creation is by happenstance...by chance.

As Natasha Crain says in her book Talking with Your Kids about God, Either it had a beginning or it did not. It's profoundly important because, if it did, the theological implications are glaring: something or someone had to have caused it to begin. If however the universe is eternal - it's just always existed - there's no logical need for a Creator. The universe wasn't created.

Alexander Vilenkin

In the 1990s scientific evidence began to mount that the universe couldn't have existed forever and that, instead, it began to exist at a specific point in the past. Many scientists agree with respected cosmologists Alexander Vilenkin who says, "With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.

The Expansion of the Universe

1917

Albert Eistein

Created a cosmological model of the entire universe. His equation predicted the universe could not be static. It had to either be expanding or contracting. He and other scientists understood that an expanding universe would imply s beginning (rewinding the process of expansion must always take you back to a beginning point for that expansion.) And beginnings require a cause - an implication Einstein clearly understood. 

1920s

Edwin Hubble

Found direct observational evidence that the universe was, indeed, expanding. Using the world's largest telescope at the time, Hubble detected that galaxies are moving away from us, like spots on an inflating balloon.

Cosmic Background Radiation

The predominant theory (both then and now) was that the universe started out much hotter and denser than it is today and expanded and cooled over time, It had a beginning. In the 1940s, scientists predicted that if the universe did emerge from such conditions - and hadn't always existed in an eternal, steady state - there would be lasting effects in the form of cosmic background radiation (residual heat in the universe). * In 1965, that prediction of a beginning starting out hot and continually cooling, was confirmed through an accidental discovery by radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

The second law of thermodynamics sats that the amount of energy within a closed system (such as the universe) will always stay the same, but the amount of unusable energy in a system will continually decrease. There is still plenty of usable energy in the universe today, so that implies the universe hasn't been around forever. If the universe were eternal, there would be no usable energy left.

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Where did the law of gravity come from? It too must have come from somewhere. Furthermore, laws themselves don't create anything. They simply describe what happens under certain conditions. So even if a law could exist without cause, that still wouldn't explain how the universe emerged. 

Nothing in the universe comes into existence on its own, so it defies
 our experience to suppose the universe itself did.

Something or someone supernatural must have caused the universe to exist. In order to create space, time, and matter, the cause would have to be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and uncaused itself. This doesn't tell us that the supernatural cause is synonymous with the God of the Bible, but it's certainly consistent with him.

STRIKE UP THE CONVERSATION

Genesis 1:1
                    In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

(It had a beginning and the cause was GOD.)

• It's not only the Bible that tells us the universe had a beginning and hasn't always existed. Scientific findings point to the fact that the universe had a beginning as well. 
  Why do you think the question of whether the universe had a beginning is important in the discussion of the evidence for God's existence? (If the universe were eternal, there would be no logical need for a Creator)
  
  
• If something begins to exist in the world, something else caused it to exist. We've never seen something come into existence by itself! For example, think about a car, a flower, and a puddle of water. What was the cause of each one that brought it into existence?
  (Have your child trace the causes all the way back to the beginning.)
  
  
• If we know the universe had a beginning, and everything that begins to exist was caused to exist by something else, what do you think could have caused the universe to exist? To answer the question, think about what the cause would have to be like in order to be able to create everything in the world.
  (Discuss the fact that in order to create time, space, and matter, the course itself would have to be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. Explain that the Bible tells us much more about God but that this is consistent, supporting evidence for his existence.)
  
  
  
  
• REAL LIFE SCENARIO - How would you respond to an atheist who says this based on what you learned above?
  " Personally I do not claim that the universe ' came from' anything at all and it did not 'appear.' The universe just is ... it needs to creation story."
  
  
  

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