Premise #1 =    The Universe had a beginning. Premise #2 =    Anything having a beginning is finite and limited, and not eternal.  Premise #3 =    Anything having a beginning must have been caused by something else. Conclusion =   Therefore, the universe was caused by something else, and this cause was God.

Robert Jastrow, former Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (PhD Theoretical Physics) explains what we now know, from the data – that the universe is not eternal but actually came into being, from nothing:

“Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. 

That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.” (Christianity Today, Aug. 6, 1982);

“Now three lines of evidence – the motion of the galaxies, the laws of thermodynamics, and the life story of the stars – pointed to one conclusion: all indicated the Universe had a beginning.” (‘God and the Astronomers’, Warner Books, 1978).

George Smoot, 2006 Nobel Prize winner in Physics and Professor of Physics at University of California Berkeley (PhD Particle Physics), puts it this way:

“There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing…“ (‘Wrinkles in Time’, William Morrow and Company, 1993).

For Deeper Study:
Book 2, chapter 1
On-line lessons 30-38
Live classroom 7