“Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”
—Psalm 90:2
“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape. They have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.”
—Alexander Vilenkin, theoretical physicist (2012 presentation at the State of the Universe conference at Cambridge University)
Why the Universe’s Beginning Still Matters
We live in a universe that had a beginning. That single fact—so often assumed and so rarely reflected upon—is one of the most staggering revelations in the history of thought. If the universe began, it means it once was not. Something, therefore, must have brought it into existence. And if that something is not the universe itself, not physical matter or energy, not space or time, then it points necessarily to a cause outside or beyond nature itself. In a word, it points to the supernatural (above or beyond the natural).
This blog explores that conclusion—not through ancient religious texts or theological declarations, but through the implications of contemporary science, philosophy, and logic. This is not the Kalam Cosmological Argument, but an independent and reinforcing line of reasoning: a universe with a beginning is, in itself, evidence that the natural order is not all there is.
I. The Scientific Evidence: The Universe Had a Beginning
It is now an overwhelming consensus among cosmologists that the universe is not eternal in the past but had a beginning. As physicist Alexander Vilenkin famously stated:
“All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”¹
This includes not only the standard Big Bang cosmology but also most speculative models attempting to replace it. Even theories like the quantum tunneling model or the inflationary multiverse do not escape a cosmic genesis.
“All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”
—Alexander Vilenkin, theoretical physicist
In 2003, Vilenkin, Arvind Borde, and Alan Guth proved what is now known as the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem, which shows that any universe that has been, on average, expanding must have a past spacetime boundary—a beginning.² This applies even to “bubble universes” in the multiverse or hypothetical cyclic models.
“A multiverse that expands eternally must have a beginning . . . It can’t be past-eternal.”³
Stephen Hawking—who long resisted the idea of a beginning—conceded in later years that classical general relativity strongly suggests that time itself had a starting point:
“Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.”⁴
This consensus collapses the idea of an eternal physical universe and leaves us with a striking reality: everything that physically exists began.
II. Why This Beginning Points Beyond Nature
The implications are monumental. If the universe had a beginning, then it began from a state in which physical matter, energy, space, and time did not exist. By definition, then, its cause cannot be physical, spatial, or temporal.
That cause must be:
Spaceless (since space began),
Timeless (since time began),
Immaterial (since matter began),
Powerful (to bring the universe into being),
Purposeful (since the universe is finely ordered and intelligible).
This is not mythology. It is philosophical deduction.
Philosopher Richard Swinburne makes the point clearly:
“If there is a God, we should expect a universe to exist; but if there is no God, it is surprising that there is a universe at all.”⁵
A cause that brings being out of non-being must transcend the natural order. That is what we mean by supernatural—not spooky, but above and beyond the natural.
“If everything that exists has a reason for its existence, then the universe itself must have a reason—and that reason cannot be found within the universe.”
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, philosopher
III. Materialist Explanations Are Inadequate
Some naturalists attempt to argue that the universe could emerge from “nothing.” But when pressed, their “nothing” is often a semantic game.
The so-called “quantum vacuum” is not nothing. It is a sea of energy governed by physical laws. As theoretical physicist David Z. Albert critiqued Lawrence Krauss’s infamous book A Universe from Nothing:
“The laws . . . are not ‘nothing.’ Nothingness cannot have laws.”⁶
Even if a quantum fluctuation could produce a universe, it would presuppose a framework—quantum fields, energy states, potentialities. These are not nothing.
Nor does invoking a multiverse help. At most, it just pushes the problem back a step. The multiverse—if it exists—would itself require an origin and a meta-framework.
As philosopher William Lane Craig notes:
“Postulating a multiverse does nothing to eliminate the need for a transcendent origin; it merely multiplies the effect that needs explaining.”⁷
“It’s not that the laws of physics explain why there’s something rather than nothing—they presuppose something.”
—David Z. Albert, philosopher of science
IV. Philosophical Support for a Transcendent Cause
Philosophically, the concept of a contingent universe—a universe that could have not existed—requires a necessary explanation. A contingent effect cannot arise from pure contingency. Something necessary must underlie all contingent realities.
Thomas Aquinas, centuries before modern science, wrote:
“If everything is contingent, then at one time nothing would have existed. But then, nothing could ever have come into existence. Therefore, not everything is contingent.”⁸
Contingent beings (like the universe) depend on something else. If that “something” is itself contingent, we push the question back indefinitely, creating an infinite regress. But an infinite regress of explanations never explains anything. The chain must terminate in something that exists necessarily—something that explains itself.
Modern philosopher Robert Koons adds:
“A cosmos that begins to exist cannot explain its own existence. The explanation must lie in something ontologically prior—something necessary and eternal.”⁹
V. The Moral of the Story: The Universe Is Not All There Is
We now reach a startling conclusion. The beginning of the universe, supported by contemporary cosmology and reinforced by philosophical reasoning, points to a transcendent cause—beyond space, time, matter, and energy. We call that the supernatural.
And if the supernatural exists, then it is no longer credible to assert, “God is impossible.” On the contrary, the existence of a supernatural realm makes the idea of God not only possible, but plausible.
To deny this is to arbitrarily declare that the supernatural exists but that a supernatural mind cannot. This is intellectually inconsistent. If you accept the reality of something beyond nature, you must remain open to the possibility of a supernatural being.
As philosopher Alvin Plantinga notes:
“The idea that belief in God is irrational is itself irrational if one is willing to admit any supernatural reality.”¹⁰
“The fact that we can speak of a ‘beginning’ at all implies something outside the physical universe was responsible for it.”
—John Lennox, mathematician and philosopher of science
VI. The Beginning Is Just the Beginning
The implications of a beginning universe are not minor. They are world-shaking. This is not just physics—it is metaphysics. This is not just about space-time—it is about the nature of reality itself.
If the universe had a beginning, it demands a cause. And the cause of nature cannot be natural. It must be beyond. If we open the door to anything beyond the natural, we have opened the door to God.
Not just any God—but at the very least, a timeless, immaterial, spaceless, powerful, and purposive source of all things. That is what classical theism has always proposed.
We have not yet proven Christianity true, but we have removed a major objection to belief: the claim that God is impossible. The beginning of the universe points beyond itself—toward transcendence, toward purpose, and, possibly, toward God.
Final Challenge
Major Premise: A physical system that begins to exist cannot account for its own origin from absolute non-being.
Minor Premise: The universe is a physical system that began to exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, the origin of the universe must be explained by something beyond the physical system—something non-physical, non-temporal, and transcendent of nature.
To reject the conclusion presented here—that the beginning of the universe points to a supernatural cause—one must do more than dismiss it out of hand. One would need to dismantle the argument’s logical structure, challenge the scientific consensus with equal or greater empirical evidence, and offer a more compelling philosophical alternative to the notion of a transcendent cause. Until such a case is made, the reasoning stands: the universe itself is evidence that nature is not all there is—and that opens the door to the possibility of God.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”
—Werner Heisenberg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Notes
Alexander Vilenkin, quoted in Lisa Grossman, “Death of the Eternal Cosmos,” New Scientist, January 11, 2012.
Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin, “Inflationary Spacetimes Are Not Past-Complete,” Physical Review Letters 90, no. 15 (2003): 151301.
Ibid.
Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 20.
Richard Swinburne, Is There a God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 2.
David Z. Albert, “On the Origin of Everything,” The New York Times, March 23, 2012.
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008), 157.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q2, Article 3.
Robert Koons, “A New Look at the Cosmological Argument,” American Philosophical Quarterly 34, no. 2 (1997): 193–211.
Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 263.
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