Your question, let’s call it the problem of beginning, intrigues philosophers and scientists since time immemorial.

The problem of beginning exists

• in a local version each time when one decides to initiate a chain of actions
• and in a global version when one asks for the beginning of the word.

Kant in his “Critique of pure Peason (CpR)” names the local version the human capability “to initiate causal chains of itself without prior grounds”. Then he deals with the follower problem to make compatible the two domains of natural causality and human freedom. The problem is related to the problem of Free Will.

Kant also deals with the global problem. He dismisses the alternative “Either the world has a beginning or the world does not have a beginning” as the first antinomy of pure reason (CpR B 452). He shows that the antinomy cannot be resolved. Hence one has to dismiss the question. More precisely, one has to finish with statements about the world as a whole. Here we reach, according to Kant, a limit of human reason.

IMO the local question, the question of Free Will, can be solved. One has to show how to make compatible objective causality and the subjective feeling of free will. But that’s a whole different problem. Referring to this you find several questions in this blog.

IMO the global question is presently unsolved. Science, in particular astrophysics, has no explanation of the beginning. I would even question that we already have the right concepts to pose the question.

Nevertheless, science gives a good explanation for the time after the first fractions of a second after the beginning - if there exists a beginning. On the other hand, the religious attempt to answer the global question by a “deus ex machina” seems to be no more than to explain the obscure by the more obscure.

Also for the global problem there are several questions in this blog.

Your question, let’s call it the problem of beginning, intrigues philosophers and scientists since time immemorial.

The problem of beginning exists

• in a local version each time when one decides to initiate a chain of actions
• and in a global version when one asks for the beginning of the whole world.

Kant in his “Critique of pure Peason (CpR)” names the local version the human capability “to initiate causal chains of itself without prior grounds”. Then he deals with the follower problem to make compatible the two domains of natural causality and human freedom. The problem is related to the problem of Free Will.

Kant also deals with the global problem. He dismisses the alternative “Either the world has a beginning or the world does not have a beginning” as the first antinomy of pure reason (CpR B 452). He shows that the antinomy cannot be resolved. Hence one has to dismiss the question. More precisely, one has to finish with statements about the world as a whole. Here we reach, according to Kant, a limit of human reason.

IMO the local question, the question of Free Will, can be solved. One has to show how to make compatible objective causality and the subjective feeling of free will. But that’s a whole different problem. Referring to this you find several questions in this blog.

IMO the global question is presently unsolved. Science, in particular astrophysics, has no explanation of the beginning. I would even question that we already have the right concepts to pose the question.

Nevertheless, science gives a good explanation for the time after the first fractions of a second after the beginning - if there exists a beginning. On the other hand, the religious attempt to answer the global question by a “deus ex machina” seems to be no more than to explain the obscure by the more obscure.

Also for the global problem there are several questions in this blog.