So to start with, biological molecules are made up of six different elements — carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur. The clue that leads to this new way of thinking is that the process of evolution selects just a tiny fraction of all possible biological configurations. So biological molecules like proteins that we see on Earth, and the way they combine to form complex living things, are a tiny fraction of the number that could exist. For cosmologists, that implies the universe will gradually cool to become a cold, stagnant bath of dead matter.

It is therefore susceptible to the masked man fallacy, which shows that we can conceive of the impossible. Yet, if it was their father, then it is impossible that it is not their father. When Hume argues that our ability to conceive of God not existing shows that it is possible for God to not exist and that God therefore cannot be necessary, he assumes that conceivability entails possibility. Conceiving of God’s non-existence could be conceiving of something impossible because God is necessary. “The words, therefore, necessary existence, have no meaning.” – Hume. A being whose existence is logically necessary is an absurdity to Hume.

This energy is not transferred to any other system, so seems to be permanently lost. On the other hand, some cosmologists insist that energy is conserved in some sense; this follows the law of conservation of energy. Given the cosmological principle, Hubble’s law suggested that the universe was expanding. One was Lemaître’s Big Bang theory, advocated and developed by George Gamow. The other explanation was Fred Hoyle’s steady state model in which new matter is created as the galaxies move away from each other. In this model, the universe is roughly the same at any point in time. Subsequent modelling of the universe explored the possibility that the cosmological constant, introduced by Einstein in his 1917 paper, may result in an expanding universe, depending on its value.

How imaginary universes advanced the field of cosmology

While experimentalists strive for new levels of precision, some theorists have turned away from inflation to seek other ways to squash the universe flat. Steinhardt, for instance, is working on a “big bounce” model, which pushes the starting clock back even further, to an earlier period of contraction that smoothed space-time and set the stage for an explosive expansion.

Modern science’s rejection of the cosmological argument

Einstein published his first paper on relativistic cosmology in 1917, in which he added this cosmological constant to his field equations in order to force them to model a static universe. The Einstein model describes a static universe; space is finite and unbounded .

Physical cosmology

Most American Indigenous cultures understood their world from the perspective of animism, and the Maya were no exception. Looking up, they saw a world of stars, planets and clouds that lived and moved through the sky and were manifestations of their ancestors, who they believed were playing a major role in the operation of their universe.

Some 6,000 years ago, they erected watch towers to scan the night sky, mapped the stars and visible planets and recorded their observations on clay tablets. Their meticulously compiled data provided the foundation to create the first calendars, used to organize the growing and harvesting of crops and the timing of religious ceremonies.

The meta point of these three examples is that we know very little about what time and infinity are and how they work, so claims about the impossibility of an infinite series are unjustified. It seems Hume would say we should admit that we are not in a position to conclude that their either is or is not an infinite regress. If there was an infinite regress, there would be an infinite amount of time before the present moment. That means to get to the present moment, an infinite amount of time must have passed. No matter how long you wait, even if you never stop waiting, the amount of time passed can never reach infinity. So, there cannot be an infinite amount of time before the present moment and therefore there cannot be an infinite regress. Hume’s argument depends on conceivability entailing possibility.

In 1929, Edwin Hubble provided an observational basis for Lemaître’s theory. Hubble showed that the spiral nebulae were galaxies by determining their distances using measurements of the brightness of Cepheid variable stars. He discovered a relationship between the redshift of a galaxy and its distance. He interpreted this as evidence that the galaxies are receding from Earth in every direction at speeds proportional to their distance.

Read more about Cosmology here.

It is the accepted orthodoxy of most denominations of Judaism and Christianity. Most denominations of Christianity and Judaism believe that a single, uncreated God was responsible for the creation of the cosmos. It had various meanings, such as to dispose and prepare, but especially to order and arrange or to establish. The famous philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras used the term to describe the order of the universe. Initially, the cosmos was viewed as divinely created, finite, and bifurcated, divided into sublunary and superlunary realms. These ideas were based on a supernatural understanding of the world.