For most of history, scientists assumed the universe had always existed. No beginning, no end — just eternal matter doing its thing. That was the default view.
Then the 20th century happened and everything changed.
The Discovery Nobody Wanted
In 1927, a Belgian and physicist named Georges Lemaitre (yes, a PRIEST) proposed that the universe was expanding from an initial point. Most scientists thought he was nuts. Einstein himself told Lemaitre: "Your calculations are correct, but your physics is atrocious."
Then in 1929, Edwin Hubble confirmed it — galaxies ARE moving away from each other. The universe is expanding. And if you rewind that expansion like a movie, everything converges to a single point. A beginning.
This was a MASSIVE problem for a lot of scientists. Astronomer Robert Jastrow (agnostic) wrote: "For the scientist who has lived by his in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
What the Big Bang Actually Tells Us
The Big Bang isn't just about an explosion. It's about the beginning of EVERYTHING:
- Space itself began
- Time itself began
- Matter and energy began
- of physics began
This isn't stuff expanding into existing space. Space itself came into existence. There was no "before" the Big Bang because time didn't exist yet.
The Kalam Argument
This leads to one of the oldest and most powerful philosophical arguments:
- Everything that begins to exist has a cause
- The universe began to exist
- Therefore, the universe has a cause
Premise 1 is basic logic that literally everyone operates by. Premise 2 is now confirmed by modern cosmology. The conclusion follows necessarily.
And whatever caused space, time, matter, and energy to exist must itself be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and incredibly powerful. Philosopher William Lane Craig has pointed out that this sounds an awful lot like... God.
"But What Caused God?"
This is the most common pushback and it's actually pretty easy to answer. The argument says everything that BEGINS TO EXIST has a cause. If God is eternal — never began to exist — then he doesn't need a cause.
"But that's special pleading!" Not really. SOMETHING has to be eternal. Either the universe is eternal (disproven) or something beyond the universe is eternal. The question isn't whether something is eternal — it's WHAT is eternal.
The Cosmic Microwave Background
In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation — the afterglow of the Big Bang, still detectable everywhere in the universe. They won the Nobel Prize for it.
Penzias later said: "The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted had I nothing to go on but the first five books of , the Psalms, and the Bible as a whole."
The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem
In 2003, three physicists proved mathematically that ANY universe that has been, on average, expanding throughout its history MUST have had a beginning. This applies even to multiverse models. Physicist Alexander Vilenkin said: "All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning."
So Yeah
The universe had a beginning. Modern science confirmed what Genesis 1:1 said thousands of years ago: "In the beginning..."
The real question isn't whether the universe started. It's who — or what — started it.