Dr Peter J Bussey

(University of Glasgow)

Monday 23rd September, 7.30pm

The Meeting Place, Holy Trinity Church NR2 2BJ

All are welcome and no booking is required.

“In the beginning was the Word”. One very old argument for the existence of God states that everything that comes into being has a cause. Our universe has come into being. Therefore it must have had a cause, and the obvious candidate for this is God. The Big Bang model of the universe has provided a new impetus for this argument. However, there are a number of recent theories that see our universe as having had an earlier existence, prior to the Big Bang, which could possibly be infinite.

In his talk Dr Bussey's talk will consider the plausibility of these scenarios and their impact, if any, on the argument for God as the first cause, known as the “Kalam argument”. The Kalam argument relies on the universe not being infinitely old. Quantum physics enables a causal ‘arrow of time’ to be more clearly identified than in classical physics, making better sense of the idea of a First Cause. There are serious problems with physical infinities and this requires that an argument for an infinitely old universe has to be rigorously stated.

Considerations involving increase in entropy production, stability and the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem suggest that the universe (or any time-extended cosmos) is very likely to have had a start in time. From this it follows that the Kalam argument holds, but the argument should also be seen in the context of wider theological viewpoints.

Dr Bussey (who lives in Norwich) is Emeritus Reader in Physics and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow.