The Kalam Cosmological Argument answers three crucial questions:

 

1. Did the universe have a beginning?

 

                Because we can claim with a reasonable degree of certainty that the universe does exist today, we face two alternatives. Either the universe must have had some sort of beginning, or it did not. Carl Sagan, a popular atheist cosmologist, entertains the idea of the universe as eternal and “always was,” equivalently assuming the inclusion of an infinite number of past events in the history of the universe. However, the concept of actual infinity poses unreasonable consequences in reality that raises unsettling doubts. Consider the observation that it is impossible, not to mention wearily tiresome, to count to infinity. To claim the universe never had a beginning is to claim that the beginning of the universe was at negative infinity. However, if this were true, then the past could never have been exhaustively traversed to reach this present moment. In order for Sagan’s conclusion to be true, an infinite number of years must have been counted in order to reach today, but this violates the value of infinity as we know it.

 

               On the other hand, two current scientific theories espouse a beginning for our universe. The big bang theory proposes that the universe sprang into existence from nothing a finite time ago, and in the Bible, this birth is known as Creation. At a lecture I attended on differing worldviews, the speaker’s reply to a question regarding the big bang was, “Yes, I believe in the big bang, and in fact, I believe I know the Big Banger!” Additionally, the second law of thermodynamics states that the universe is irreversibly moving toward a state of maximum disorder and minimum energy known as entropy. Effectively, this means our universe is wearing down, even at this very moment. However, since we can be confident that a maximum state of entropy has not yet been reached, namely that human life is still functioning, the universe cannot have been in existence forever, and thus must have had a beginning.