My contention that the big bang was the origin of time (Letters, 23 September) seems to have provoked fury and bemusement, although it has been the standard scientific picture for many years. Indeed, the idea that time began with the physical Universe dates back at least to Augustine in the 5th century. I have often puzzled why this straightforward, if counter-intuitive, notion excites so much negative emotion, especially among atheists.
In their desperation to rubbish the notion, some curious arguments are deployed by its detractors. Thus John Enderby (Letters, 6 January) asserts that the time symmetry of the laws of gravity rule out an origin of time. He surely confuses the equations of gravitation with their solutions. Alexander Friedmann's 1922 solutions of Einstein's gravitational equations contain both symmetric and asymmetric solutions describing universes expanding from singular temporal origins.
Enderby dislikes the notion of a temporal origin because it offends common ...
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