Cosmos without end, Amen

July 20, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

I need to further clarify why a cosmos with a beginning and an ending is such a big deal: Ever since Epicurus first proposed the eternality of matter as fundamental to hedonism, people have sought to defend that the universe has always existed. In the 20th century Stephen Hawking could not deny the expanding universe or its implications for a beginning, so in his Brief History of Time he attempted to justify the concept that there has perpetually been an exploding universe that eventually collapses back onto itself to explode again and again into life, like the mythical Phoenix. He pictured time as circular, not linear. The discovery of accelerating expansion ends that hypothesis with devastating religious consequences. If the particles are not slowing down, then they will never fall back on themselves. The only way that there could possibly be no Creator is for the universe to have always existed. If it has always been there, then it never came into existence; and if it never came into existence, then there never could have been a time when it was created. The punch line is, no creator means no accountability. Epicurus began with a desire to explain the universe in a way that eradicates accountability. That is what is fundamentally behind efforts to explain an endless (and thus beginningless) universe.

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