A Ready Reference

For years, public conversations about cosmology have been flooded with claims that modern physics allows for a past-eternal universe, or that the scientific community has moved away from any notion of a cosmic beginning. These claims are repeated often—but they collapse the moment we examine what the leading cosmologists and physicists themselves have actually published.

This reference article is designed for one purpose: to let the experts speak for themselves.

Below you will find direct quotations from the most influential figures in modern cosmology: Nobel laureates, founders of inflationary theory, pioneers of quantum cosmology, authors of the singularity theorems, and leaders in observational and theoretical physics. These are not casual comments or philosophical musings. These are statements drawn from their scientific work, their equations, and their decades of research into the origin and structure of the universe.

And notice something remarkable: although these scientists disagree about almost everything—string theory, loop quantum gravity, inflation, dark energy, multiverse models—they converge on one central point. Modern cosmology overwhelmingly supports a beginning. Time, space, energy, matter, and the entire observable universe have a finite past. Attempts to construct a past-eternal model have repeatedly failed or remain completely speculative and unsupported by data.

If someone rejects a cosmic beginning, they are not rejecting me. They are rejecting Stephen Hawking. Roger Penrose. Alexander Vilenkin. Alan Guth. George Ellis. Leonard Susskind. Paul Davies. Steven Weinberg. Andrei Linde. Joseph Silk. John Barrow. Philip Peebles. And many more.

This blog is not about theology. It is about accurately representing the scientific literature.

Below is the record, presented clearly, so that readers may see it for themselves.

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“All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”
Alexander Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One (2006)

“With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe.”
Alexander Vilenkin, Did the Universe Have a Beginning? (2008)

“Inflation cannot be past-eternal. There must have been a beginning.”
Alan Guth, AIP Conference Proceedings (2003)

“Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning.”
Stephen Hawking, The Nature of Space and Time (1996)

“Time itself must have a beginning.”
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (1988)

“The Big Bang was the beginning of spacetime itself.”
Roger Penrose, The Road to Reality (2005)

“Spacetime singularities… signify the beginning of the universe.”
Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind (1989)

“The universe has a finite age. It began to exist a finite time ago.”
George Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time (1973)

“Classical descriptions of spacetime cannot be extended to past infinity; there must be some boundary.”
Arvind Borde, Physical Review Letters (2003)

“The universe can’t have existed forever. There must have been an absolute beginning a finite time ago.”
Paul Davies, The Edge of Infinity (1980)

“There is clear evidence that the universe had an origin.”
Leonard Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape (2005)

“In the prevailing picture, the universe we observe did come into being, along with time itself, 13.7 billion years ago.”
Sean Carroll, From Eternity to Here (2010)

“These ideas [eternal models] are preliminary and highly speculative.”
Sean Carroll and Jennifer Chen, Spontaneous Inflation (2004)

“There is no way to avoid the conclusion that the universe began in a state of infinite density.”
John Barrow and Joseph Silk, The Left Hand of Creation (1983)

“Cosmologists have come to see that the universe had a definite beginning in time.”
John D. Barrow, Theories of Everything (1991)

“The universe began from a hot Big Bang state about 14 billion years ago.”
Joseph Silk, The Infinite Cosmos (2006)

“The Big Bang is the beginning of the universe. It is the creation event.”
P. C. W. Davies, God and the New Physics (1983)

“The standard Big Bang model is a model of creation from nothing.”
Dennis Sciama, Modern Cosmology (1971)

“The universe exploded into existence. There is no evidence it existed before.”
Jayant Narlikar, Introduction to Cosmology (2002)

“The singularity at the beginning of the universe is not merely a mathematical artifact. It is telling us that classical spacetime has a beginning.”
Abhay Ashtekar, Loop Quantum Cosmology: A Status Report (2011)

“The Hawking–Penrose theorems show that the beginning of the universe is inevitable.”
Tim Maudlin, Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time (2012)

“Modern cosmology indicates a beginning for the universe, and this is generally accepted.”
Martin Rees, Before the Beginning (1997)

“Most physicists now believe that the universe began with the Big Bang.”
Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes (1977)

“The universe came into existence abruptly, with a hot Big Bang.”
Andrei Linde, Inflation and Quantum Cosmology (1990)

“Inflation does not eliminate the beginning. It makes the beginning inevitable.”
Andrei Linde, Lectures on Inflationary Cosmology (1994)

“The universe came out of a singularity. There is no way around this in classical general relativity.”
Robert Geroch, Space, Time, and Geometry (1978)

“The beginning of the universe is one of the most secure conclusions of modern cosmology.”
Christopher Isham, Modern Quantum Cosmology (1988)

“In all viable cosmological models, the universe appears to have a finite past.”
John Earman, Bangs, Crunches, Whimpers, and Shrieks (1995)

“The evidence points toward a universe with an origin.”
Philip J. E. Peebles, Principles of Physical Cosmology (1993)

“The Big Bang model requires a beginning. The data overwhelmingly support it.”
Marc Lachieze-Rey and Jean-Pierre Luminet, Big Bang (1994)

“The universe originated from a hot Big Bang. This is now beyond reasonable doubt.”
James Peebles and Bharat Ratra, The Cosmological Constant (2003)

“No model that avoids the beginning has yet succeeded scientifically.”
George F. R. Ellis, Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology (2006)

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So Why the Resistance?

If the most respected cosmologists of the last fifty years affirm a beginning to the universe, why are some so determined to deny it?

The resistance is not scientific.
It is philosophical.

A beginning raises questions about causation, explanation, metaphysics, and the limits of naturalistic theories. And for many, that is uncomfortable. But discomfort is not a scientific argument.

You do not have to agree with any theological implications. But dismissing the physics because it is suggestive is not skepticism. It is bias.

The scientific literature is clear, consistent, and overwhelming: modern cosmology points to a finite past and the beginning of time itself.

That is not just theology.
That is physics.

As Robert Jastrow—astronomer, physicist, and founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies—famously observed, after climbing the mountain of scientific discovery, “the scientist is about to conquer the highest peak . . . as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

In the end, the leading cosmologists of our age seem to affirm what Moses wrote millennia ago: the universe had a beginning.