Dr William Lane Craig

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Beyond the Big Bang

0.0 THE FUNDAMENTAL QUESTION

1.1 THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

1.11 The Standard Big Bang Model

If we extrapolate this prediction to its extreme, we reach a point when all distances in the universe have shrunk to zero. An initial cosmological singularity therefore forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity. For this reason most cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe. On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself. (P. C. W. Davies, “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology,” in The Study of Time III, ed. J. T. Fraser (New York: Springer Verlag, 1978), pp. 78-79)

It belongs analytically to the concept of the cosmological singularity that it is not the effect of prior physical events. The definition of a singularity. . . entails that it is impossible to extend the spacetime manifold beyond the singularity . . . . This rules out the idea that the singularity is an effect of some prior natural process. (Quentin Smith, “The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe,” in Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, by William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 120.)

1.12 The Steady State Model

1.13 Oscillating Models

Perhaps the best argument in favor of the thesis that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas, such as continuous creation or an oscillating universe, being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his/her theory. (Christopher Isham, “Creation of the Universe as a Quantum Process,” in Physics, Philosophy and Theology: a Common Quest for Understanding, ed. R. J. Russell, W. R. Stoeger, and G. V. Coyne (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory, 1988), p. 378.)

1.14 Vacuum Fluctuation Models

1.15 Chaotic Inflationary Model

A model in which the inflationary phase has no end . . . naturally leads to this question: Can this model also be extended to the infinite past, avoiding in this way the problem of the initial singularity?

. . . this is in fact not possible in future-eternal inflationary spacetimes as long as they obey some reasonable physical conditions: such models must necessarily possess initial singularities.

. . . the fact that inflationary spacetimes are past incomplete forces one to address the question of what, if anything, came before. (A. Borde and A. Vilenkin, “Eternal Inflation and the Initial Singularity,” Physical Review Letters 72 (1994): 3305, 3307.)

1.15 Quantum Gravity Models

The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary . . . has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe . . . . So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end. What place, then, for a creator? (Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1988), pp. 140-1)

. . . physicists have often carried out this ‘change time into space’ procedure as a useful trick for doing certain problems in ordinary quantum mechanics, although they did not imagine that time was really like space. At the end of the calculation, they just swop back into the usual interpretation of there being one dimension of time and three . . . dimensions of . . . space. (John D. Barrow, Theories of Everything (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 66-7.)

1.16 Ekpyrotic Models

1.17 Summary

1.2 BEYOND THE BIG BANG

1.21 The Alternatives before Us

‘What caused the big bang?’ . . . One might consider some supernatural force, some agency beyond space and time as being responsible for the big bang, or one might prefer to regard the big bang as an event without a cause. It seems to me that we don’t have too much choice. Either . . . something outside of the physical world . . . or . . . an event without a cause. (Paul Davies, “The Birth of the Cosmos,” in God, Cosmos, Nature and Creativity, ed. Jill Gready (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1995), pp. 8-9)

1.22 The Supernaturalist Alternative

1.3 CONCLUSION

1.31 Summary of the argument:

1. Whatever exists has a reason for its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external ground.

2. Whatever begins to exist is not necessary in its existence.

3. If the universe has an external ground of its existence, then there exists a Personal Creator of the universe, who, sans the universe, is timeless, spaceless, beginningless, changeless, uncaused, and enormously powerful.

4. The universe began to exist.

5. Therefore, the universe is not necessary in its existence. (From (2) and (4))

6. Therefore, the universe has an external ground of its existence. (From (1) and (5))

7. Therefore, there exists a Personal Creator of the universe, who, sans the universe, is timeless, spaceless, beginningless, changeless, uncaused, and enormously powerful. (From (3) and (6))