For thousands of years, the prevailing scientific view was that the universe was eternal – that it had always been here; that it was static and unchanging. During those thousands of years, the Bible stood in direct opposition to that idea; teaching that the universe had a beginning and that God had existed eternally. Since the 1960’s, the prevailing scientific view has been that the universe did indeed have a beginning; this has been used by Christian apologists as one piece of evidence that God does exist.
This ultimate question of what has existed eternally is discussed by Jeff Zweerink near the end of his book, Escaping The Beginning.[1] The “brute reality” must either be God, the Universe, or a new eternal entity, proposed recently by Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking, the “Laws of Physics.”
Is the Universe Eternal?
This is a popular choice for the brute reality based on the success we have had finding purely natural explanations for phenomena. Since inflation almost certainly happened, the universe is much larger than we can imagine or observe. If our current understanding of the mechanism for inflation is correct, then bubble universes exist and the Big Bang marks the beginning of space, matter, and time in our universe only.[2] Is it possible that inflation has been going on forever creating bubble universes and ours is only one of many universes? According to Arizona State Physicist Paul Davies, for eternal inflation to be the reality, there has to be some sort of universe generating mechanism which itself must to be exceedingly fine-tuned; the level of fine-tuning needed for this requires an explanation. The pre-inflationary patch of space which became our universe had exceedingly low entropy; what is the source of the quantum and gravitation laws that govern this? What is the source of the structure of space-time that allows this? These requirements make it more reasonable that the “brute reality” be something outside of the universe, such as God or the “Laws of Physics”.
Are the Laws of Physics Eternal?
Hawking and Krauss both agree that the universe had a beginning. Both of their proposed mechanisms for the beginning of the universe have theoretical backing and contain ideas anchored in known physics – but both also contain huge extrapolations from the known physics.[3] For Hawking and Krauss to be correct, the laws of physics must exist outside of space and time and must be eternal, and therefore must be self-existent. The laws of physics must exist independently of anything physical and are prescriptive; therefore they have the power to create.[4] On this view, our ability to think and reason must also have emerged through a purely naturalistic process. The laws of physics must then be conscious in order to provide other entities with consciousness. A closer inspection of Hawking and Krauss show that the laws of physics producing the universe have similar attributes to those Christianity ascribes to God.[5] Self-existent, causative, and conscious: If the “Laws of Physics” are the eternal entity they sure sound a lot like the common description of God.
Is God Eternal?
The God of the Bible has all the necessary attributes to explain the existence of the universe. The Biblical description of the universe and its creation matches all the essential features of all the Big Bang models: constant laws of physics, expanding universe, increasing entropy, a beginning.[6] Experience has taught us that laws require a law-giver; if the universe is governed by laws, then it is reasonable to conclude that those laws were prescribed by a mind – especially since the properties of those laws begin to sound exactly like the Biblical God. In support of this premise is modeling work done in an area of theoretical physics called “Causal Dynamical Triangulation.” This work has demonstrated that causality is a necessary component of a stable, four-dimensional universe.[7] In other words, something beyond space and time encoded cause and effect into the very fabric of space-time.[8]
Many other areas of study – not only in science – make the conclusion of God as the eternal entity the most reasonable conclusion. We find information embedded in life. We find that we are conscious and are able to study and understand the universe. We find that mathematics is able to describe nature. We trust in our minds to think rationally and make reasonable conclusions. We have a sense that objective moral laws and duties actually exist. Evidence from philosophy, history, archaeology, and Biblical textual criticism also give support to the reasonable conclusion that the God of the Bible is the “brute reality” that has existed eternally.
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