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The best scientific data and analysis that we have today leads to the conclusion that the universe we live in began a finite time ago. That understanding, however, was far from evident just 100 years ago. In fact, most scientists, then, believed the universe always existed (the Steady State Theory).

Evidence that suggested to the contrary, that the universe is expanding (and therefore had a beginning “point”), was not received enthusiastically. Even the people whose discoveries led to that conclusion resisted it. Einstein famously added a cosmological constant to his equations on general relativity to avoid that conclusion.

Such was the commitment in the scientific community to the “Steady State” theory: the theory that the universe always existed infinitely in the past.

Indeed, that evidence unfolded like a “big bang” that blew apart the previous scientific consensus. Thus, the “Big Bang Theory” theory of an expanding universe from a “point” of beginning was coined, perhaps, more for the effect it had on the scientific community than as a descriptor of the occurrence. (See Is the Big Bang finally Over?)

The evidence as it has unfolded since the discovery of the red shift on stars farther away from us (the first big clue that our universe is expanding) has continued to strengthen the so-called Big Bang Theory. The design of the James Webb Telescope is only the latest in a long line of evidence vindicating the “Big Bang Theory” that dramatically changed the paradigm of physics and cosmology.

Though the evidence continues to substantiate the view that our universe is expanding (and therefore had a beginning a finite time ago), I have often been aware that science is provisional. Just when we think we know something, something else comes along to change the paradigm. The recent history of physics and cosmology is a case in point.

A primary reason that the Big Bang Theory landed so hard in the scientific community is because it challenged more than the accepted science. It challenged the prevalent worldview of the scientific community since the Enlightenment.

Since the days of Darwin (and even before Darwin), people in the scientific community had been advocating for separating science from religion. When Darwin proposed evolutionary theory (natural “selection” acting on random changes), the scientific community was more than ready to use that “key” to unlock what they viewed as the “shackles” of religion.

The Steady State Theory, that the universe always existed infinitely in the past, was the natural assumption of scientists based on a worldview with no God and no religion at the center of it. Life was good for the proponents of naturalistic materialism until the specter of a beginning to our universe (and the real possibility of a “Beginner”).

That many people have managed to keep that specter at bay despite the strong evidence that gets stronger as time goes on that our universe is expanding is a testament to the faith some people have in naturalistic materialism. Never since before the Enlightenment, however, has science been so harmonious with the Bible and belief in God.

Even so, I have often wondered: what if the paradigm shifts again? What if new evidence is discovered to upset the apple cart again? What if that new evidence begins to cut against the grain of the Big Bang Theory and reinvigorates the Static State Theory?

What if the new evidence shows what Einstein and most other cosmologists and physicists believed 100 years ago? That our universe is past eternal; that it is not expanding after all; or that the earth is expanding, but that the expansion is not proof of a “singularity” (beginning)?

Indeed, this is what many preeminent scientists have been trying to prove since the scientific world conceded the evidence of the apparent expansion and singularity of our universe.

Would Christians, like myself, and other theists simply cling to faith without evidence? Would we cling to our faith “in the teeth of the evidence”, as Richard Dawkins has charged?

I wasn’t sure before today. As I was listening to Return of the God Hypothesis by Stephen C. Meyer on Audible, an answer to my question began to materialize. I will attempt to summarize it.

In his book, Return of the God Hypothesis, Meyer examines the alternative hypotheses that have been used to explain our universe. Among those alternative hypotheses, are theism and naturalism, being the two most prevalent hypotheses (at least in the west).

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I am aware that I may not be able to explain them with the same clarity as Stephen Meyer (to be less than brutally honest about myself). He has a physics background, and a masters and doctorate in the philosophy of science, among other accolades I don’t posses. I don’t have that background.

He has spent many years wrestling with the scientific evidence and competing worldviews in light of that evidence. He has a strong scientific background and a robust background in philosophy. I don’t, but I am intrigued by these things and seek to understand them.

I often attempt to work out what is in my head by getting it onto to “paper” (figuratively speaking). I have no illusions that I will do a good job of adequately or clearly explaining what I am grasping in my head, so please give some grace (though constructive criticism us welcomed).

Meyer explains with great patience and clarity in his book how naturalism fails to account for the beginning of the universe. Among the many deficits he addresses is the missing catalyst for change to account for the sudden expansion of the universe, the appearance of life, etc.

He posits that, even if the universe is infinite, but contained within it the necessary conditions for the expansion of the universe evident in our observations, those necessary conditions must have always been there, or they must have arisen some finite time ago. In either case, naturalism does not provide a reasonable explanation for the change. (The same can be said for the appearance of life as well.)

If those conditions always existed from an infinite past, why has the universe not been expanding from the infinite past? (Why has life not always existed if those necessary conditions always existed?) If those necessary conditions triggered expansion some finite time ago, what triggered them? (If life began to form only a finite time ago, what triggered it?)

If the universe is static, we are at a loss to identify a causal agent to trigger the change. The universe would have to have “baked into it” the necessary conditions for that expansion to occur, so why didn’t it always occur? And, what caused it suddenly to occur?

Can expansion occur in a universe that is infinite and always existed? Can time exist in a universe that is infinite? An infinite universe has no beginning and no end. The sense of continuum that accompanies time is lost in an infinite universe.

Naturalism is insufficient to provide a causal explanation for that sudden expansion and the appearance of life. How could matter that is inanimate, unconscious, impersonal, and incapable of generating and producing something other than itself cause itself to begin expanding when it wasn’t previously expanding, or to begin to produce sentient life with reasoning capability, conscience, and self-awareness from lifeless substance?

We do have a satisfactory explanation on theism. A “personal”, causal agent (one with capacity to initiate change) that is separate and not part of the matter it creates is sufficient explanation to explain the sudden expansion of the universe with all of the cosmological constants necessary for the formation of solar systems, stars and planets, and the appearance of carbon based sentient, conscious and self-aware life.

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Meyer’s explanation of how a pantheistic view does not make sense sheds some additional light on the subject. In a pantheistic view, the universe and the divine are made of the same “stuff”: they are interrelated and coexistent. The divine is not a “personal agent”: it is an impersonal force (or energy).

To that extent, the pantheistic view is not really different, in substance, than the naturalistic view. No personal, causal agent exists in either view. The laws of physics or the divine forces, whatever you want to call them, do not stand outside the universe; they are part and parcel of it, and they have no location or intentionality that might allow them to trigger an event that was not always occurring and did not always exist.

I have done a very minimal job of summarizing the explanations painstakingly detailed in Meyer’s book. I hope it is, at least, adequate enough to convey some approximation of the reasoning. Meyer covers this topic in chapter 12 or 13 of his book, only after laying extensive foundations for the thesis, something I have no space (or time) to do here.

I only attempt the analysis here, however crude, to get to the question that I have pondered for some time: if new discoveries lead to another shift in our understanding of the universe such that we no longer have reason to believe that it began a finite time ago, what hypothesis would best explain our present universe?

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What change occurred that did not exist from eternity to cause the expansion of our universe and the evolution of life? If The necessary conditions for that change always existed from eternity past, why does expansion and life appear occur some finite time ago, what triggered the expansion and the appearance of life?

If the universe always existed and is self-contained with no outside causal agent, how does any change occur? Whether we are talking about the laws of physics or a force or energy that is one with the basic “stuff” of the universe, they are subject to their inherent qualities, and they cannot be anything other than they are. The substance of the universe has no causal agency to make the universe other than what it is or to create life from non-life.

I realize now that, if the universe is infinite as scientists believed up to about 100 years ago, naturalism has the same explanatory problems to account for an infinite universe with the properties of our universe as they do with a finite universe.

Only theism provides an adequate explanation. An outside, causal agent with the capacity to initiate change is the theistic explanation. Even if the universe was infinite past, such an outside, causal agent with the capacity for initiating change provides an adequate explanation where naturalism fails.

But, don’t stop at my poor attempt at an explanation. Read or listen to Meyer’s book for yourself. I have started in the middle. He starts with much more fundamental analyses and extends them way beyond what I have attempted to do here.