TIME, MATTER, AND THE EXISTENCE OF THE CREATOR

Nobel-prize-winning physicist Arno Penzias surmised:

·       Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.

This is the very conclusion many cosmologists wish avoid. However, to accept Big Bang cosmology is to accept the conclusion that the universe - time, space, and matter - had a unified beginning and require a Transcendent, timeless, matter-less, spaceless, uncaused eternal cause.

To bypass this conclusion, many have postulated Big Bang modifications that attempt to avoid a beginning. However, in New Proofs for the Existence of God, cosmologist Robert J. Spitzer has argued that this is highly unlikely because time cannot exist apart from matter:

·       ...the universe and time itself had to have had a beginning at some point, even if that point was not the big bang itself. In some specific scenarios this can be proven. So far, no one has found a completely consistent and satisfactory PBBM [Past-extended Big Bang Model] in which time had no beginning, and there is reason to believe that such a scenario is unlikely to be found in the future.

Spitzer suggests that there are several lines of evidence that the universe had a beginning. He cites the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which maintains that the physical world is subject to entropy, the dissipation of energy and particles. A hot cup of coffee only goes in one direction. Its heat dissipates to match that of its surroundings. If the universe had existed eternally, then all of its energy and particles would have long ago dissipated.

The idea of an infinitely oscillating universe is often offered as an alternative to the widely held theory that the universe had a beginning, since this would require an uncaused Causer. However, it is logically impossible that time had always existed infinitely (eternally). If this was so, then a passing (or accomplishing) of an infinite number of years would be necessary for us ever to arrive in the present (2019) from the infinite past. However, any infinite number defies counting or accomplishing. Consequently, the passing of an infinite number of years would make it impossible for us to now be dialoguing. This is a logical absurdity.

Of course, we are discussing such an esoteric subject that many argue that we cannot place too much stake on our logic or evidences. Yet, we still must go where our logic and evidences point us, and this leads us to the conclusion that the universe – time, space, and matter – had a beginning.

This conclusion is troubling for many, since it strongly implies that the universe requires a sufficient Cause, and only an omniscient and omnipotent God can satisfy this requirement. However, this same Cause is also able to account for many other findings like the fine-tuning of the universe, the existence and maintenance of the elegant and immutable laws of science, a first uncaused Cause, life, freewill, and consciousness.