Learn evidence for the beginning of the universe to show your work to atheists

Atheists are committed to an eternally existing, static universe. They cannot accept that the natural, material universe has a supernatural, spiritual cause. So it’s very important for Christians to have a stack of evidence ready to show that the universe – matter, space, energy and time itself – all have a beginning. So in this post, we’ll review a list of a half-dozen evidence, and look at one in detail.

First, let’s review what atheists think about the universe.

Here’s a statement from the Secular Humanist Manifesto, which explains what atheists believe about the universe:

Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

For a couple of examples of how atheistic scientists respond to the evidence for a cosmic beginning, you can check out this post, where we get responses from cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, and physical chemist Peter Atkins.

So for today’s post, I’ll start with my fun conversation where I play a game with Grok, to see who has the best list of evidences for a beginning of the universe. Initially, Grok had a mix of assertions  and evidence, instead of all evidence. But I kept pushing for specific observable evidences. Finally, I shared a 6th evidence, and challenged Grok to get a 6th of its own, and it did! Let’s see what we each came up with.

Here were my six evidences:

1. Redshift of distant galaxies: Shows expansion, implying a starting point.
2. Cosmic microwave background radiation: Remnant of the early universe’s hot origin.
3. Second law of thermodynamics: Increasing entropy requires a low-entropy beginning.
4. Abundance of light elements: Hydrogen/helium ratios match early nucleosynthesis.
5. Finite age of stars and galaxies: Stellar evolution points to a definite start.
6. Half-lives of radioactive elements (from Robert Jastrow’s “God and the Astronomers”): Presence of uranium-238 etc. suggests a finite-age universe.

Here are Grok’s six – my five, and the 1 he came up with to try to tie my list:

1. Redshift of distant galaxies: Observed expansion implies a singular start.
2. Cosmic microwave background radiation: Remnant of the early universe.
3. Second law of thermodynamics: Entropy indicates a low-entropy origin.
4. Abundance of light elements: Matches early universe nucleosynthesis.
5. Finite age of stars and galaxies: Stellar evolution shows a finite start.
6. Cosmic homogeneity and isotropy: The universe’s large-scale uniformity suggests a single origin event.

And Grok had references for his 6th one, just like I did for my 6th one.

So, you should at least know the core 5 that we agree on. And these are normal and natural for Christians to talk about. I wish we learned about them in church, from the pulpit, when studying different accounts of Creation in the Bible. Why not? I’m so wild, that I also think that the church should be teaching embryology, natural marriage, and basic economics from the pulpit. Not politics, but evidence related to how we navigate the world.

Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Anyway, here’s an article about one of the core 5 evidences from the J, Warner Wallace, writing at Cold Case Christianity.

He says:

In 1964, two American physicists and radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, made an important discovery. They were unable to eliminate the radio signal “noise” from their large antenna at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, regardless of where in the universe they tried to point their instrument. They consulted with colleagues to determine the cause of this noise. Another physicist suggested the noise might not be coming from the antenna at all. Instead they might be detecting the residual background radiation caused when the universe first came into being. Penzias and Wilson proved this to be correct, winning a Nobel Prize for their discovery in 1978.

Numerous additional experiments and observations have since established the existence of cosmic background radiation, including data from the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite launched in 1989, and the Planck space observatory launched in 2009. For many scientists, this discovery solidified their belief the universe had a beginning.

And of course, Wallace knows all the evidences, and he even has more.

When You’re Ahead, Get More Ahead

Here’s an illustration from his book “God’s Crime Scene”. Have you read it?

So, I hope this is helpful for all of you.

When you are talking to an atheist like a Bart Ehrman or a Bill Nye about evidence for a Creator and Designer, then it’s important that the score be 5-0. You need to win 5-0.

• origin of the universe (list the 5 core evidences)
• fine-tuning (list several examples from different areas)
• habitability (list examples for sun, solar system, earth-moon)
• fossil record (list some of the biological Big Bangs)
• origin of life (explain the building block and information)
• molecular machines (explain machines in the cell)

I guess that’s 6-0, but you get the idea. It needs to be a shut-out. Boys get along better after they have had a good fight, and you need to win that fight. You can be “gentle” and “reverent”, but you need to win that fight, so everyone understands what the truth is. Don’t make a big deal out of changing the person, just make sure that the scoreboard says what the scoreboard should say.