The beginning of the universe had, of course, being discussed for a long time. According to a number of early e cosmologist in the the Russian / Muslim / Christian tradition, the universe started at a finite and not very distant time in the past. One argument for search a beginning was the feeling that it was necessary to have a fast cause to explain the the existence of universe.
Another argument was put forward by St. Augustine in his book 'the city of God'. He pointed out that civilization is progressing and we remember who performed distilled o developed that technique. Bus man and so also perhaps the universe could not have been rounded all that long for otherwise we would have already progressed more than we have.
Sent Augustine accepted a date of about 5000 BC e for the creation of the universe according to the book of genesis it is interesting that this is not so far from the end of the last ice age about 10000 BC which is when civilization really begin Aristotle and most of the other Greek philosophers on the other hand did not like the idea of a creation because it made too much of divine intervention they believed therefore that the human race and the world around it had existed and would exist forever.
They had already considered the argument about progressive described earlier and answered it by saying that there had been product flood or other disasters that repeatedly said the human race right back to the beginning of civilization.
When most people believe in an essentially static and I'm changing universe the question of whether or not it had a beginning was really one offer metaphysics for theology one could account for what was observed in the way either the universe had existed forever for it was set in motion at some finite time in which a manner as to look as through it held existed forever but in 1929 Edwin Hubble made the landmark observation that wherever you look distant stars are moving rapidly away from us in other words the universe is expanding this means that at earlier time objects would have been closer together in fact it seemed that there was at time about 10 or 20 thousand million years ago when they were all at exactly the same place.
This discovery finally brought the question of the beginning of the universe into the realm of science. Hubble's observations suggested that there was a time call the Big Bank when the universe was infinite lists small and therefore infinitely dense they were events earlier than this time then they could not effective what happened at the present time their existence can be ignored because at would have no observational consequences.
One may say that time had a beginning at the big bang in the sense that earlier times simply could not be defined it should be emphasized that this beginning in in time is very different from those that had been considered previously in an unchanging universe a beginning in time is some thing that has to be imposed by some being outside the universe there is no physical necessity for beginning one can imagine that god created the universe at literally and time in the past on the other hand if the universe is expanding their main physical regions why there had to be beginning one could not believe that god created the universe at the instant of the big bang he could even have created it at a later time in just such a way as to make it look like through there had been a big bang but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang an expanding universe does not preclude a creator but it does place limits on when he might have a carried out his job.
Source:- The theory of everything by Stephen w Hawking.
