Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
Stephen Hawking thinks so.
http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-beginning-of-time.html
"All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ..."
Edit: I've copy and pasted this to the thread on "Existence of God" as this discussion is more relevant to that thread. Please respond in that one as it's too confusing otherwise
Thread 170184
Stephen Hawking presents an entropy argument. Essentially entropy always increases and it's possible to show that it has a maximum - subject to some assumptions about the system being closed. However, there is a way round this. In models of eternal inflation, where the universe undergoes periodic eras of incredibly rapid expansion, the entropy density is returned to zero by the immensely fast expansion. So I don't think that he's covered all bases. In the article he mentions that the universe has a start is the simplest assumption, so he is applying Occam's razor. I tend to regard the question as open.
Anyway, what I was hoping for was that you would present some argument so that I could say: "And why does this not apply to God?". I don't think an entropy argument will work in the case of God, since God is not bound by the rules of the universe. A potentially bigger problem is the argument I presented earlier. To get from the end of the inflationary era to now requires 10 billion years to have elapsed. But If the universe is infinitely old then to get from a time infinitely far in the past to now requires an infinite amount of time to have elapsed, which means that the current era can't be reached. I'm in two minds as to whether the argument works or not, but it does seem to apply to God as well.
What I'm getting at overall is that if you base your ontological argument on the necessity of prior cause then you have the problem that the difficulty with the necessity of prior cause seems to apply to God as well. You can insist that God does not require prior cause, but if that is the case then it is hard to see why it should apply to the universe.