Here is my answer. I will try to avoid making it as long and complex as my usual answers, but simply put some preliminary thoughts into words.
The question is, “Have things always been changing/moving, or was there a beginning to change/movement?”
The very question makes reference to time. Has there always been change? Was there a beginning to change? The question thus would seem to assume that time is a pre-existent container of change. But if time is a measure of change, then we cannot make this assumption. That is, the very idea of time without change—that is, without any change at all, including any detectable particle decay, or human beings around to detect it—would thus be incoherent.
So we really cannot get to the bottom of this question unless we have good reasons to think that time either is or is not a measure of change. But I think it is very clear, based on our common experience with time, that time is indeed a measure of change. Our first categories of time, including days, months, and years, made reference to observable changes in the heavens. All later developments in time concepts involved dividing these: a week was any of the four divisions of a month; the day was divided into 24 hours, and so forth with minutes and seconds. When it became possible to measure time with even greater precision, when we discovered that our common divisions were subject to irregularities such as leap years, and when we began to measure isotope decay, scientists were able to refine (not really redefine, but rather to precisify) time concepts in terms of something that had much more regularity. This is the frequency of microwave radiation emitted during a specific electron transition between two hyperfine energy levels of the cesium-133 atom; one second is defined as exactly 9,192,631,770 cycles of that radiation. (It boggles the imagination to think we have any devices so precise that they can count nine billion cycles of anything in one second.)
The point here is not to give the history of time but to show that at every point in that history, time concepts measured regular change or increments. Reasonably reliable measures of passing time, like hourglasses at first and then finely-engineered watches, depended on the predictable regularities with which grains of sand would fall through an aperture and various springs would cause a watch to tick.
I went into this point to persuade you (and myself) that time really is a measure of change. Given this, we might be immediately inclined to conclude that an unchanging universe would be timeless, or rather, concepts of time would not apply to it.
But I would be unwilling to leap to that conclusion, mostly because the idea of an “unchanging universe” is utterly foreign to us. The point here is not that we cannot grasp the idea of a lack of change per se—that seems straightforward and is illustrated in our experience abundantly, even if there are changes occurring that we cannot perceive or understand. Rather, the concept on the table is of a universe that does not change. And that is a thing of which we have no experience. Indeed, our descriptions of nature and of the universe as a whole are absolutely full of references to continuous, time-governed processes.
Thus, we cannot conceive of an “unchanging universe” that would be remotely like our universe. We can speculate, but only by setting aside our best theories of how the universe really does operate. Even with the so-called “heat death” of the universe, unless I am much mistaken, there would be particles with definite locations, moving about, perhaps some particles that continue to interact no matter what, etc.; these would be events that an omniscient observer could measure and apply time categories to.
But is it really inconceivable that there might be a deliberately “frozen” universe with utterly nothing changing in it? Yes, it is “conceivable,” but we can conceive of many absurdities. I would go one further: Throughout the history of science, it has turned out that there were things that seemed inconceivable to us, that turned out to be not only possible, but the actual case. So can we rule out a “frozen universe”? Perhaps not; but what we cannot do is put a time on it. For, if literally nothing is changing at all, then, according to the commonsense notion of time, time is not passing at all. We might even speculate that there are infinite instances of frozen universes between any two microseconds, but because they involve a universe without change, they are of no length. Indeed, insofar as time is the measure of change, and insofar as according to stipulation absolutely nothing does change (not even the thoughts of God) in a frozen universe, it follows that we should not describe a frozen universe as having any duration at all. And then does it really make any sense to say that it exists at all? How can a supposed state of affairs—that is ostensibly physical, made of matter and energy—exist if it has no duration at all? If we can speak of a physical object that lacks any change, I do not see why we cannot with precisely as much coherence speak of a physical object that lacks any spatial location. And then, again, we might ask, how can it exist if it has no place at all? But the fact is that change is “baked in” to the very idea of physical matter, just as spatial extension is.
Thus, when we ask, “Have things always been changing?” then we must answer that insofar as “always” means “at all times,” and insofar as all times are measures of change, then the answer is not just “yes,” but “necessarily yes.”
I don’t mean to dodge the more interesting question—whether the universe had a beginning, or whether it has existed forever. I wanted to dwell on that first question because it is essential.
You might try to argue that the very idea of a first moment is incoherent: to say so, one might argue, is to imply that there was some moment before it. And while a moment before the first change (or before there was any change) would indeed be incoherent, that is not needed to describe the first moment, or the moment of creation. We simply arrange the states of the universe as a series a, b, c… and note that a is the first in the series. Nothing incoherent there.
What might seem incoherent, however, is that there would be a first state of affairs with no prior state in terms of which it is explained. Here we would refer to something like a principle of sufficient reason, something like this: “Every state of affairs needs an adequate explanation of why it is as it is, and not some other thing.” But this can be true, I maintain, even if there is no prior state of affairs. The explanation would not be of the following sort: At time t1, God said, let there be light; at time t2, there was light. For, if there were a time t1, then the appearance of light (or however we should understand the first event in the universe) would not occur at the first moment. Rather, we say that (whatever this means—and there is good reason to think we have no direct concept of what it means) God timelessly willed for light (and the first change, and the first time) to appear. (It is an acceptable bit of anthropomorphism in the creation narrative that places God’s act of creation on the timeline.)
It is possible for all we have said, however, that God was always begetting time, and that there were infinite moments in God’s own nature, and that at some moment (from the divine point of view) he created the universe. In that case, we might well say that “there was light” was not in fact the first moment of creation, but “let there be light” was, since that happened in time. The problem with this suggestion—which I will not get into right now, since we will be returning to it—is that there are excellent reasons to think that the creator of the universe would have to be not just sempiternal (existing at all moments) but atemporal (existing beyond, or independently of, any causal-temporal order). The basic reason is that (as other arguments make clear) the creator of the universe does not change.
All that aside, there are some interesting arguments that suggest the universe must have had a beginning. Namely, if there were no first moment, then there would be an actual infinity of events before the present one. But this seems to be, for a few different reasons, seriously incoherent. The one that is clearest to me is the fact that “infinity” by its very nature means something that has no limit. To say that something (such as the age of the universe) is infinite is not to assign it a very large number, or a number we are ignorant of; rather, it is to deny that its age could be assigned any number. More generally, to say that there is an infinite number of x is to deny that there is a number assignable to x at all; ergo, infinity is not really a kind of number at all, but some other kind of concept.
We can, then, make two arguments on this basis, metaphysical and epistemological.
The metaphysical argument is that a universe of infinite age would be one such that the age has finished being gone through, despite being infinite. In other words, to arrive at the present moment after an infinity of prior moments, we would have to have an “actualized infinity,” but this is simply a contradiction. An infinity is the sort of thing that analytically cannot be actualized; in other words, it is of the nature of infinity that it cannot be gone through.
Now, this argument strikes me as being not quite persuasive. If we can anticipate an infinite future, why can we not speculate about an infinite past? Why is this incoherent? It is true that we cannot go through an infinity, but why think that we must describe all past ages as “gone through”? We can certainly say that all of those we might care to describe and name have been gone through; we then simply add that there were ages before that; any specific quantity was gone through; but, indeed, to say that an infinite was “gone through” does strike me as incoherent.
The rebuttal is simple: How else do we make good on the claim that the universe had no beginning, than to say that every prior event occurred before this one, and the number of such prior events is infinite? It is not my fault that the proposal is incoherent; it just is. As to an infinite future, that has not been gone through; its infinity is just potential, not “actual.” Since the supposition of an infinitely old universe is incoherent, we must conclude that it had a beginning.
Could there be a similar “potential infinity” in the past? I do not think so; we will be returning to this, too.
The epistemological argument is empirical: The best evidence is that the universe had a beginning. As far as we can tell, it began with the Big Bang; the older contrary view, called the “Steady State Theory,” has largely fallen into disrepute. Physicists discuss other theories, but they seem not to be falsifiable (yet, anyway); in recent decades they have increasingly taken to speculative mathematical model building without being able to test their models. Philosophy offers no particularly strong arguments for an infinitely old universe. As I said, the argument from the principle of sufficient reason supposes that the only possible adequate reason would have to be a temporally prior efficient cause. But there are other sorts of sufficient reasons. Therefore, probably, there was a first moment and a beginning of the universe.
Another phrasing is: Was there ever a time with no change, anywhere, at all? Without spending a lot of time defining change I will propose that change is associated with life. Living things change and affect their surroundings. Even stars and planets which are not alive in the same sense as plants and animals, are alive in another sense. They are more alive than nothingness. They move, give out light, heat, and affect other bodies by their gravity. A state of no life is a state of no change. Imagine no universe, no matter, no temperature, no soul, no energy, no change. Did such a state of nothingness ever exist? My answer is no. How can something come from nothing? Physicists are fairly sure the universe had a beginning. So what was there before the universe? It cannot be nothing. How can life come from death, energy from no energy, motion from motionlessness, and change come from no change? That violates Newton’s Laws, it violates our experience and our intuition.
It seems far more likely that there was something before the universe. What might that be? We observe that our universe contains life, motion, change, intelligence, energy and soul, let’s collectively call these attributes. Those attributes did not come from nothing. They must have existed prior to the universe, and have been imparted to the universe. For example, our human intelligence existed prior to computers and we imparted some of our intelligence when we created these machines. In the same way a supreme being existed prior to the universe and imparted some of His attributes when He created the universe. Change is one of many attributes belonging to this supreme being, for argument’s sake, let’s call him God.
Now the question develops into a question about God. If God is eternal, then all his attributes are eternal, including change. This is where I get a little stuck. My intuition says God must be eternal by definition, but not sure how to reason this out. What is the definition of God? A supreme being, creator of all things, who is himself uncreated, the beginning of all things, who is himself without beginning. Only created things have a beginning, so the uncreated being must be eternal. I’ll stop there, this needs further development. By tying change to an attribute of God, I’ve opened up a can of worms about the eternality of God. Feel free to weigh in or I’m sure this will come up in future discussions.
You bring up some great points. ‘Out of nothing, nothing comes,’ as the saying goes. Even if change is not eternal, something with the capacity to cause change still must be.
Dealing with God and change is a tough subject. On the one hand, you have verses like Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17 that describe God as changeless, and if the phrase ‘shadow of turning’ is a reference to sundials, it may even be intended to mean God is atemporal. On the other hand, there are plenty of descriptions of God making choices and relenting, which is hard for us to reconcile with Him being changeless. To a large degree, I think those instances can be explained as anthropomorphic descriptions that God has had to ‘dumb down’ so that we could understand them, but I do think there are things we can learn from them.
Think of the sequence of regular polygons: triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, and so forth. Every time you add an additional vertex and face, you get a shape that’s a closer approximation of a circle. If you had infinitely many, you would have a perfect circle. But it’s equally true to say a circle has no vertices or faces! Or consider a runner in a race. The faster he runs, the shorter the duration of his race. If he were to run infinitely fast, he would reach the finish line without any time passing. But if he’s already at point A and point B and every point in between at the same moment of time, then in a sense, he hasn’t really moved at all.
I think something similar is going on with God and change. A change can be an improvement, it can be a diminishment, or it can be ambivalent. If God could improve, he would not be perfect; if he were diminished, he would no longer be perfect. And if two different attributes are equally good (e.g. just and merciful), then surely true perfection would demand He possess both in equal measure. It isn’t the changelessness of nothingness, but of infinity. Everything God ever was, He still is, and everything He ever could be, He already is.
This probably won’t surprise anyone who’s read any of my previous comments touching on this, but I believe change had a definite beginning and is not eternal. I can’t claim any of my thoughts on this matter are original; I have certainly been influenced by philosophers and theologians and scientists, but since we’ve been instructed not to discuss those here, I will leave them unmentioned for now and just focus on the ideas.
My primary reason for believing change had a beginning is rooted in the physical concept of entropy.1 Entropy is the principle that an isolated system will lose the capacity to transfer usable energy over time. There’s a lot to unpack in that statement, so let me define some of those terms. A system, in this context, is any collection of matter within a region of space. ‘Isolated’ means that no outside matter or energy is meaningfully affecting the system. The only absolutely isolated system would be the entire universe itself, but from a practical standpoint, any system where the effects of outside matter and energy are negligible compared to the effects you’re examining within the system can be considered effectively isolated. Your intuitive understanding of what it means to transfer energy (e.g. moving an object, heating an object, etc.) is probably perfectly adequate, but ‘usable’ is an absolutely necessary qualifier in this definition. The total energy within an isolated system will remain unchanged, but over time, the system will reach a state of equilibrium in which the only transfers of energy are extremely tiny ones in the minute random motions of particles. If you poured boiling water into a perfectly insulated flask of cold water, the hot water would transfer its heat into the cold until all the water in the flask was of uniform temperature. Again, the total thermal energy of all the water would not change, but once it became uniform, there would no longer be any significant transfer of energy from one part of the flask to the other. Separating the water back into hot and cold would require some sort of heat pump, and operating that would require adding energy from outside the system.
It’s important to understand that temperature is fundamentally just a measure of kinetic energy, and that all transfers of energy will behave in exactly the same way as the example above. As friction in the pivot slows and eventually stops a pendulum swinging in a complete vacuum, the energy won’t be destroyed; it will just become more evenly distributed throughout the matter in the pendulum system as the friction raises the temperature. Note that entropy isn’t a fundamental force like gravity or electromagnetism; it’s just a statistical inevitability. It’s perfectly possible for an individual slow moving (i.e. cold) water molecule to strike a fast moving (hot) water molecule in such a way that the slow molecule will slow down even more and the fast molecule will speed up, but it’s far more likely for the collision to result in the opposite effect, so given enough time and collisions, the more probable case will win out and all the molecules in a system will end up having about the same kinetic energy.
The same principle holds true for everything in the universe and for the universe as a whole. According to some physicists, protons themselves will eventually decay, even black holes will shrink and evaporate, and the universe will end up as a homogenous cloud of subatomic particles just above absolute zero. Long before that can happen, though, all the stars will have burnt through their fuel, and there won’t be enough usable energy left in the universe for new ones to form. Most important to the question at hand, all of this will occur within a finite period of time. That the universe is not already in a state of ‘heat death’ therefore implies it and all the changes that have led to its current state cannot be eternal.
As for possible objections to my argument, I would say its principle weakness is that it’s based entirely on current scientific observations, and it’s always conceivable that some new discovery might completely overturn our theories about the universe. If astronomers point their telescopes at a remote corner of the universe tomorrow and spot some cosmic fountain spewing out an endless supply of newly created matter and energy, everything I’ve written above will be instantly made irrelevant. Little more than 60 years ago, defenders of Steady State Theory were still arguing that something not entirely unlike that cosmic fountain actually existed. However, the discovery of the Cosmic Background Radiation and overwhelming evidence that the universe used to be far hotter than it is now have now led to that theory being almost universally rejected. The universe appears to be expanding outward, and it appears to be cooling down as it does so.2 Those who still insist on having material existence be eternal have largely switched to a variety of ‘multiverse’ models. As there’s really no conceivable way to test such hypotheses, I don’t think they have any business being called scientific, but I have to admit I can’t definitively disprove them either. If anyone has a more a priori argument that supports the idea that change had a beginning, I would love to read it. From the standpoint of the tactics of persuasion, though, I have found arguments that start along these lines effective in convincing atheists and agnostics that my theistic beliefs are, at the very least, not completely unreasonable, and that’s a step in the right direction. Granted, the ones I’ve tended to encounter are usually better acquainted with current scientific theories than they are with philosophy, so you may get different results if you run in a different sort of crowd.
1As an aside, I do want to caution people that if you’re going to use entropy in the context of Christian apologetics, it is important to know what you’re talking about. I don’t think it’s wrong to say the theory of random biological evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics, but arriving at that conclusion is more complicated than just asserting that disorder should always naturally increase. If you plan to use that argument, know that atheists will absolutely call you out on it, so you had better have an answer prepared.
2I’m aware, of course, that any mention of the Big Bang Theory can generate controversy in Christian circles, and I’m not looking to start any fights on the subject at this point. If it becomes relevant in the future, I’ll be perfectly happy to share and debate my personal opinions on how to reconcile scientific opinions on the age of the universe with the book of Genesis. I have many very dear brothers and sisters in Christ who disagree with me, and that’s fine. I love them anyway. For now, I suggest we all take the win that the overwhelming scientific consensus today is that the universe did have a definite beginning just as Genesis 1:1 describes. The difference between 13 billion years and six thousand is a lot less than infinity.
Disclosure: I did run the main section of this through Gemini to check for any errors in terminology, and I changed ‘closed’ to ‘isolated’ as a result. I definitely remember Dr. Ouseph at UofL using ‘closed’, but apparently a lot of physicists who specialize in thermodynamics do make the distinction that closed systems block external matter but can allow external energy to enter, whereas isolated systems do not admit external matter or energy. I had not known that, but it does seem to be correct. On the other hand, it also objected to me describing a particular outcome of a single molecular collision as more likely than any other even though it absolutely is. “Hier stehe Ich.”
I would suggest that if change is directed toward a unique event (such as a candle burning out) then it cannot have been changing for eternity. For change to be from eternity it must be cyclical without any unique events. Anything that happens will happen again and has already happened. There can be cyclical change that has not existed from eternity. At there core of this truth about unique events is the proof for what is and is not eternal.
What is change anyway? I understand it only by reference to the physical world.
If I were an atheist , whether change had a beginning would be an interesting question.
But I’m not, so I know that the physical universe had a beginning. And at least since creation , there has always been change.
Freeze any moment in time and space has a particular configuration. Freeze any other moment, the configuration is different. The same goes for any fundamental particle of the universe you might choose. There’s no such thing as a motionless photon, that’s a contradiction. Or electron, it will always be in a different place.
But suppose I had never heard of an electron. What would I think then? I suppose, if I thought of it at all, I would assume that the lights in the sky were always following us around and had always done so, changing position continuously. No moment is ever like the previous or the next, even in the macro world. I’m not sure I would have wondered why something is there and not nothing.
But the interesting question is does change even have a meaning in the absence of physical reality, with physical nothingness. I think yes.
Suppose angels existed before the universe (who knows?). Was there change? There is no such thing as mass, place, or distance. No change in configuration of space, there is nothing to configure.
But spirits are beings, they have thoughts. Thinking necessarily implies change. Nothing physical, but what to call it? There is a different state of mind, call it mental configuration.
Freeze one moment of this thought configuration, it will be different from any other. ( I said moment, so obviously I believe there is such a thing as time in this condition. And come to think of it, change is a meaningless concept without time.)
But what about before the angels? This is the hard part.
God is eternal. But is change eternal? What is it like to be God? We think of God as active and thinking before creation. But what activity is there inside the Trinity? Is something changing? How is it possible to be active without change? What is it like to have a thought eternally, or in fact , every thought that’s ever been thought, eternally? You have had the same thought, or feeling, forever, and will always have it. The mutual love between Father, Son and Spirit is constant in quality and quantity. No change. But somehow, God is active.
Perhaps this is something literally unthinkable for created beings.
Obviously this is not much of an argument. Just a preliminary sketch.
I know that God transcends his creation and His true nature must be incomprehensible to me in my present state, but in one sense, the angels are almost more of a mystery. God created them, so they’re not eternal in the same way that He is, but what is their relationship to space, time, matter, and energy? I can only speculate.
After reading your comment, I realize I do need to qualify mine a bit. I think change in this cosmos had a definite beginning, but I have no idea what other wonders God may have created apart from it. If He has created other changing worlds in addition to ours (and perhaps some not subject to the same physical laws as ours) then change could be eternal in that sense. It’s interesting to think about.
Agree that: change in this cosmos had a beginning, the key phrase being “this cosmos.” Without going into other universes or angels I’m focusing on God Himself. Since those things will eventually lead back to God anyway. A few of us have wrestled with the fact that God does not change but as David said “thinking necessarily implies change.” I think these are not mutually exclusive. The difficulty arises from the word “change,” which is hard to define, and it can be used in many senses. Such as:
1. God does not change in his essential attributes. He is Being not becoming. He does not grow from potentiality to actuality.
2. However God does have thoughts, actions and emotions, these are a type of change.
3. Aristotle has said change is associated with time but is not the same thing as time.
4. I have said change is associated with life but is not the same thing as life.
5. Change as motion within our universe is the most visible type of change.
In all this I still find “change” hard to pin down with a concise definition. Perhaps that’s why we have a variety of answers to the question “is change eternal or did it have a beginning?” We may each be focusing on one particular type or subset of change. As we cannot get a full grasp on “change” in its most general sense.
Is change eternal, or did it have a beginning?
Here’s my raw, unedited take on this (its quality will make it clear that no AI or any other sources were used 🙂 )
At first look, we see in the universe a number of cyclical movements/changes: planets circling around the sun, seasons repeating every year, the sun rising every morning. It does seem like this has been like this forever and will continue to be like this into eternity. So, based on this alone, it does appear like change is eternal.
But, as we learn in school, we do know that our sun will cease to shine, the universe itself will end. We also talk about the initial singularity and learn that time didn’t really exist prior to that. That is still hard to wrap my mind around. Based on this, it does appear that maybe change has a beginning. However, what was there before the Big Bang?
The Bible does talk about a “beginning” as well. And in that sense, it does seem to align with the more scientific take. But, what about God? Is God just outside of time, and as such change had a beginning when God created the universe? In one sense God is unchangeable, but is there a sense where God acts and as such there is a “change”?
Leaving aside for a second the special revelation, and even the scientific discoveries and theories, I would list this as what would be my answer and argument:
1. Change exists
2. Something/Someone initiates that change
3. The something/someone can be created or uncreated.
4. If created, then the change originated from another something/someone
5. Nothing created can self-create (as that would require for it to exist before it creates itself)
6. So, the original change had to be initiated by someone/something uncreated/eternal
7. The someone/something uncreated could be either in eternal change or had a state where change started.
C: Since someone/something uncreated can’t be in eternal change, then there was a state where change started. Change had a beginning.
It does feel like this is a bit of a circular argument, but for now these are my thoughts on it. Looking forward to seeing other’s replies.
Don’t expect me to post any answer of my own to this until at least five of you answer it.
Might I also suggest you hold off on approving the answers we write until after you’ve received a few? That way you’re guaranteed to get some independent perspectives. I’ve been in Bible study groups where the most thought provoking answer turned out to be the dissenting one, and I can’t help wondering how many we missed due to the natural pressure to conform.
I know what my answer will be, more or less, but I probably won’t get a chance to start writing it until tomorrow.
It’s a deal!
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