The stars and galaxies we see today didn’t always exist, and the farther back we go, the closer to an apparent singularity the Universe gets, as we go to hotter, denser, and more uniform states. However, there is a limit to that extrapolation, as going all the way back to a singularity creates puzzles we cannot answer. (Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI))

Does modern cosmology prove the existence of God?

The Kalam cosmological argument asserts that everything that exists has a cause, and what caused the Universe? It’s got to be God.

We know that everything in the Universe, as it exists today, arose from some pre-existing state that was different from how it is at present. Billions of years ago, there were no humans and no planet Earth, as our solar system, along with the ingredients necessary for life, first needed to form. The atoms and molecules essential to Earth also needed a cosmic origin: from the lives and deaths of stars, stellar corpses, and their constituent particles. The very stars themselves needed to form: from the primeval atoms left over from the Big Bang. At every step, as we trace our cosmic history back farther and farther, we find that everything that exists or existed had a cause that brought about its existence.

Can we apply this logical structure to the Universe itself? Since the late 1970s, philosophers and religious scholars — along with a few scientists who also dabble in those arenas — have asserted that we can. Known as the Kalam cosmological argument, it asserts that

• whatever begins to exist has a cause,
• the Universe began to exist,