Today’s New Reason To Believe

Did the Universe Have a Beginning?

Air date: 7-10-07
Jeff Zweerink, Dave Rogstad, and Joe Aguirre

• Discussion
  • Analysis of the Kalam cosmological argument and other theories
    • What is the Kalam argument?
    • What is the cosmological argument?
  • Scholars referred to a presentation by James Sinclair
    • James D. Sinclair, “The Physical Substantiation of the Kalam Argument,” ppt presentation at Evangelical Philosophical Society, New Orleans Meeting, February 23, 2007.
      • Resources
        • The Creator and the Cosmos,, 3rd ed., by Hugh Ross
        • Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, “The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, 314 (1970), 529-48.
• Call-in questions
  • Ronnie from Naples, FL:
    • Is there a way to resolve OE/YE debates over the first three days of creation given that these events took place during “nontime”?
  • Roger from Portland, ME:
    • Several questions on the multiverse, and a comment on young-Earth arguments
• Email questions
  • Mark B.:
    • Could information arise accidentally in a type-I multiverse?
  • Robert Knox:
    • Are there any proposed time-frames for when the universe achieved infinite size?
      • Article referenced:
        • Martin A. Bucher and David N. Spergel, “Inflation in a Low-Density Universe,” Scientific American January 1999, 62-69.
  • Dan Morris from Ovid, MI:
    • Can you reconcile how we know that space dust, clouds, or whatever, aren’t a reason for any given standard candle’s light to appear dimmer to us, therefore giving a false estimate of its distance from Earth?
  • Blake from Dallas:
    • Given that the chances of a universe existing with a cosmological constant that permits life are only 1 in 10¹²⁰, could these values have been any other way given that we have a sample size of one?