A lot of strong arguments for God are based on the idea that the universe had a beginning. Two of these ideas were explained in the blog “Why Does Anything Exist?” They are: something must have caused the universe, and the existence of the universe must have an explanation outside of itself. These points make sense, but only if the universe actually had a beginning. If it didn’t, both ideas fall apart, and that’s a big deal for Christian apologists! To explore this further, we need to think like both philosophers and scientists and ask the big question: Did the universe have a beginning, or has it always existed?
After looking into this together, I believe you’ll find yourself (at least somewhat) convinced the universe had a beginning after all. We will examine this idea using three tools: infinite regress, the law of entropy, and the Big Bang theory. If none of these are familiar to you, don’t be intimidated! You’ll begin to learn in these next few paragraphs!
First, we’ll tackle infinite regress.
In a universe that has always existed, it would be impossible to get to today. This is because time moves forward one moment at a time. In other words, we get to the present moment by getting through all the moments before it. It would be impossible to get through all the moments before the present they were an infinite number of moments. If the past is an infinite series of events with no starting point, then today could never arrive. But today must have arrived, because we’re in it!
Next, let’s talk about the law of entropy.
Entropy is how scientists measure how spread-out energy is, or how much disorder there is, in a closed space.
Entropy is like shaking a box of LEGOs. When they’re sorted by color, it’s easy to find the pieces you need to build, and that’s low entropy. When they’re all mixed up, that’s high entropy. The more mixed-up the pieces are, the harder it is to do something useful with them just like energy in a high-entropy system. High entropy = high disorder.
This is the law of entropy: if things are left alone, entropy tends to increase.
When we look at our universe, we see the law of entropy in effect, because everything is increasing in entropy. You might not notice this in your daily life, but the universe is always becoming more disordered! One example is the stars: they are all burning out, and many have burnt out already. If the universe was eternal, it would have already reached the highest entropy; ALL the stars would have burnt out, no life or structure would exist, and there would be no usable energy. However, the stars have not all burnt out, life and structures (like galaxies and ecosystems) do exist, and we still have usable energy. This evidence points to a beginning of the universe where the entropy was low, and everything was highly ordered.
Finally, let’s talk about the Big Bang Theory. In 1929, Edwin Hubble made a scientifically groundbreaking discovery. While observing colors of light emitted by galaxies outside the Milky Way, he noticed all galaxies appeared more red over time. The redder a galaxy was, the farther away from the earth it was, meaning all galaxies were quickly moving away from earth. This discovery showed us the universe is expanding. This means galaxies have been closer in the past, and at one time, all galaxies were so close together that it was infinitely dense and tiny. This moment, known as the Big Bang, was the moment the universe began to exist.
After going through these ideas together, I hope you can see it’s reasonable to believe the universe had a beginning. If this is the case, we should then ask the questions: what caused the universe, and why does it exist? Take a look at our blog “Why Does Anything Exist” if you haven’t already, and follow truth wherever it leads!
Written by Abbey Harley