The fact that the universe had a beginning is one of several arguments for God’s existence. I would like to offer a brief overview of the three most powerful ones. I will include links to video and other resources that have helped me understand this point. Readers can pursue whichever ones they would like to know more about.

I’ll be succinct. Beginnings need beginners. Effects require causes. Events don’t just occur on their own. Something makes them happen. The universe is not exempt from this facts.

If the universe had a beginning, something outside the universe must have caused it.

With that in mind, the three most powerful and simple arguments you should be familiar with are:

• The Cosmological Argument (The Big Bang)
• The Second Law of Thermodynamics
• Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover

The first two are scientific; the third is philosophical. Don’t get scared off by “Aristotle” or “philosophical.” The concept is simple to comprehend and actually the most indisputable of the three. If you are serious about being able to talk about the existence of God, you should be able to discuss each of these. They should become second nature to you.

I will discuss each argument in a separate post to avoid being cumbersome. The first is the Cosmological Argument.

The “Big Bang”

For thousands of years, the consensus view was that the universe was “static and eternal.”

• “Static” – Mankind has always observed things moving around in the heavens. But for thousands of years, the common assumption was that the universe itself was not moving. We just thought it was a giant “blob” of space that contained all the heavenly objects within it. The blob didn’t move or change; the stuff we could see just swirled around inside it.
• “Eternal” – the universe had always been here. It had no beginning or end. It just “was.”

General Relativity

There was not much reason to question this view until Albert Einstein came along. When he published his Theory of General Relativity (GR), everything changed. GR was his attempt to find an explanation for gravity. He thought he found it in mathematics. He summarized it in a brilliant, elegant expression that most of us have seen:

E = mc²

[ E = energy     m = Mass     c = the speed of light ]

Einstein’s claim was that there was a connection between matter, energy, space, and time. Gravity held each of them together (pun intended). His equations made sense of everything. There was only one exception. The equations only worked if the physical universe was expanding.

Everyone knew that couldn’t be true. After all, everyone “knew” the universe was “static and eternal.” That was the paradigm. Einstein was so certain this paradigm was true he fudged his math. He inserted a term he called the “cosmological constant” into his equations. The only reason he put it there was to cancel out the idea that the universe was expanding.

Why would he do that?

The Primacy of a Paradigm

The answer is simple but profound. Einstein was an atheist, and he knew the implications of an expanding universe. If the universe was expanding, it couldn’t have been expanding forever. If you run the clock backward, you can only go so far (think of an expanding balloon). In other words, there had to be a point where the expansion began. And if the expansion began at some point, that implied that something must have started it. Something outside the physical universe.

Something like God.

Einstein would not accept the implications of his own equations. He added the cosmological constant to his equations. And he did it because he could not countenance the idea that there was a God. He left his “cosmological constant” in place until he met an astronomer named Edwin Hubble in 1929.

Expansion Confirmed

Hubble had been pointing his telescopes at stars and galaxies for years. What he found astounded him. He also believed that the universe was static and eternal. But everything he looked at in every direction was moving. And it was all moving away from us. Objects further away from us were moving faster.¹

Hubble had confirmed that the universe was expanding. And an expanding universe meant that his cosmological constant was superfluous. The implication Einstein wanted to avoid was unavoidable.

The universe had a beginning, and that meant it needed a Beginner.

The Cosmological Argument

The formal Cosmological Argument is as follows:

• Premise 1: Anything that begins to exist must have a cause.
• Premise 2: The universe began to exist
• Conclusion: The universe must have a cause.

Albert Einstein later admitted that inserting the “cosmological constant” into his equations was “the greatest blunder” of his life. And that is exactly why the cosmological argument is foundational to the case for theism.

The universe shows us that it must have begun at some moment in the finite past. Cosmologists call that event “The Big Bang.” Atheists deny its implications. Some theists vilify it because they misunderstand its nature.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Big Bad Bang

If you believe in God but don’t like the “Big Bang” please read more about it in these two posts:

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bang (Part 1)?

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bang (Part 2)?

Don’t be fooled. The Big Bang has been repeatedly verified. It is one of the most robust scientific theories in human history. Every time scientists test it the case for theism gets stronger.

Anyone interested in defending the existence of God needs to understand the basics of Big Bang cosmology. is a must for anyone who is interested in defending the case for Christian theism. And there’s plenty more where it came from.

 

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FOOTNOTES

¹ This phenomenon is called “red shift.” The phenomenon is similar to the sound you hear when a train approaches you. As it comes toward you, sound waves compress. The pitch you hear is high. When the train goes by, the sound wave lengthens and the pitch gets lower. You can hear it shift as the train passes.

Light does the same thing. The light from objects moving toward us appears to be of a shorter wavelength. Objects moving away from us appear to have a longer wavelength. Longer wavelength light is on the “red end” of the electromagnetic spectrum. So, scientists say that the light from those objects has “red shift.” The point is that everything Hubble observed was moving away from the Earth. The universe is expanding in every direction.