Richard Swinburne - Did the Universe Begin?

Some scientists claim that the universe did not have a beginning. Some theologians contend that the universe did not need a beginning. Yet the universe is expanding, and so run the movie in reverse and there seems to be a beginning. What stakes are riding on whether the universe had a beginning?

Richard Swinburne is an English philosopher and Fellow of the British Academy. He is currently Emeritus Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[darkknightsds]

This is one of your best topics with Swinburne! Thanks for surfacing it after all these years.

[autopilotairborne]

The conversation was very enlightening. Gave me some food for thought about why the complex objects in the universe are separate.

[dennistucker]

People sometimes speak about infinity as a value that is so large(or small) that it might as well be considered as infinite. I feel the same way about space and time. As for time, mathematically and logically time cannot change states from none to something. Time is required for all changes.

[francesco]

We need to start to think that before and after there is just a "no-time" environment (the Now) from which all is born and where all will return

[patientson]

There is nothing I love most than a mature man speaking facts that will eventually save lives now and in the future.

[fearitselfpinball]

“I do object to the notion that ‘time began’ because I don’t think you can understand the notion of the universe beginning except in therms of, first there was an empty time, then there was a Universe.”

I agree. I think for some scientists the idea of asking, “what was ‘before’ the Big Bang”? Or asking, in essence “what was the ‘cause of’ the Big Bang?”… for some scientists these questions are effectively rendered meaningless by the idea that the Big Bang marks, not an event in time, but the beginning of time itself. On their view it is meaningless to ask about _causes_ that predate what is essentially “the beginning time”. In reality though this hard stopping point creates more problems then it solves. Instead of just asking how something could come from nothing (or rather, why something and not nothing) we are now forced to ask, ‘how does time itself emerge from non-time’ (in which no causes are possible)? What’s meant to close mouths and forbid inquiry requires that time and space both begin and emerge (uncaused) from no time and no space.

Ran into a Jordan Peterson interview in which he says, “When you say the laws of physics—the beginning of space and time even are unknowable prior to the Big Bang you’re basically positing a miracle at the beginning of existence”.

Point being, the idea that it’s unscientific to ask what “began time” is a reversal—it’s unscientific to demand time began uncaused with time’s first unexplainable and uncaused instant leading smoothly into every subsequent moment,

[dongshengdi]

If you would just, in this room, just twist time and space the right way, you might create an entirely new universe. It's not clear you could get into that universe, but you would create it."
"So it could be that this universe is merely the science fair project of a kid in another universe, " Shostak added. "I don't know how that affects your theological leanings, but it is something to consider."
Filippenko stressed that such statements are not attacks on the existence of God. Saying the Big Bang — a massive expansion 13.7 billion years ago that blew space up like a gigantic balloon — could have occurred without God is a far cry from saying that God doesn't exist, he said.
"I don't think you can use science to either prove or disprove the existence of God, " Filippenko said.
'Why are there laws of physics?'" he said. "And you could say, 'Well, that required a divine creator, who created these laws of physics and the spark that led from the laws of physics to these universes, maybe more than one.'"
.
The solution to the never-ending Chain or the problem of infinite regress :
The solution is Aristotle's UNmoved Mover called the Actus Purus.

[duncanwallace]

Time seems to be change. Without change time doesn’t seem to have any meaning.

[micronda]

There is no chaos in absolute time Absolute time is the interval between events. There is no going backwards in absolute time. Events occur in order for the observer. This is not the case in space-time because all observers clock an event depending on their speed, which will be less than C.
In absolute time, there is absolute space (not space-time), where speed is not limited by C. In absolute time, space-time inflates at 42 and ends at 42 + x. Job done.

[pesilaratnayake]

Gravity is a strange example. In order to say that all particle obey the law of gravity, it seems you would have to accept an Einsteinian view of gravity as the curvature of space-time. But then, the motion of all objects just follows the shape of the universe. The same would be true if there was no gravity. It seems to add nothing. You might as well argue that the conservation of momentum is evidence for God.

[tomdaniels]

As always we must ask "Who or what created God?" An infinite regress begins.

[NothingMaster]

The question of “God” is totally irrelevant for the argument, because: If the faithfuls’ God is so powerful that he doesn’t even have to exist, then it follows that he’s also omnipotent and powerful enough that he could have created the Universe without a beginning. You see, the whole faithful notion of God is so conceptually tortuous and anomalously malleable that it doesn’t leave room for intellectual dismissal. Something that is totally baseless could fit into any logically meaningless scenario.

[indiason]

Time scales are a fundamental reality. As an extreme example: Time on the surface of a Neutron Star, "runs" at a different rate than elsewhere. Time is not a constant everywhere. What if the universe always existed but the LAWS change based upon tipping point events. What if the big bang was one such tipping point event that didn't create the universe but that ALTERED some of the laws governing our universe? Another tipping point could occur next year or in 10 billion years sidereal time. What if the next tipping point causes deflation rather than inflation? What if this cycle of deflation/inflation has been happening forever? Each cycle different than the next in it's expression of the fundamental laws we see and measure now?

[CMVMic]

The Universe demands no answer. It is a brute fact. There is a beginning of change but not of substance.

[-by-_Publishing_LLC]

*There are **_three factors_** that support a universe with a beginning: (1)* the CMB, *(2)* evolutionary patterns, and *(3)* special pleading. ... The *CMB* takes the universe back to a singularity and nothing more. Just because one's "vivid imagination" can picture a previous universe doesn't mean that's what happened. Every *evolutionary pattern* we've observed demonstrates an _origin point._ And lastly, for someone to claim that the universe has no origin point requires *special pleading* (yes, the same _"special pleading"_ that's required to support the existence of God).

... If you actually believe that the universe has no beginning (infinite origin), then you'd better be prepared to address these three contraindications.

[wagfinpis]

The deepest questions scientific theories ask have answers this species doesn't want to hear. We want science to reveal a reality that can be dominated and wielded by our ego's and be made to serve us. The prime reality that is waiting for you has been hiding under your nose the whole time and when our ego's as a species are ready to submit to reality then we will be worthy of making use of scientific knowledge on the other side of this paradigm of reality.

[keithraney]

Magnetism in a vacuum cannot be mere coincidence; And surely negative charges oscillate with positive charges indefinitely. Where did this fundamental positive incursion originate? Something had to have set it all in motion.

[lrvogt]

What the heck is "empty time?" If nothing is happening there is no time. Time has a before and after... something happening. Time isn't static because it changes with speed and gravity. I though Swinburne's ideas were well thought out but it sounded more like rationalizations to me.

[questor]

Order out of Chaos seems entirely plausible, and Infinite Time equally plausible, regardless of whether you're a Creationist or an Evolutionist. Thank you gentlemen for this most enlightening conversation.

[leonardgibney]

Werner Heisenberg said once that the Universe isn't as strange as we can imagine but it is far stranger. In England the BBC science unit conducted an experiment using the microwave background radiation to see whether the universe is unbounded or bounded in the four dimensions. The result was indeed a cosmos unbounded in the three dimensions of space and one of time. It did not begin and has no edge they said. Then there is the concept of quantum fluctuation. This is the strange appearance of energy coming into and going out of existence everywhere where there is space. This adds to the idea of the infinity of the cosmos. However you look at it, something didn't begin.