The concepts of "beginning" and "creation" in cosmology

Abstract

The paper is inspired by the arguments raised recently by Grunbaum criticizing the current approaches of many cosmologists to the problem of spacetime singularity, matter creation and the origin of the universe. While agreeing with him that the currently favored cosmological ideas do not indicate the bibical notion of divine creation ex nihilo, I present my viewpoint on the same issues, which differs considerably from Grunbaum's. Frist I show that the symmery principle which leads to the conservation law of energy is violated when the time axis is terminated at (t= 0) is more a mathematical artifact whose supposed singificance may disappear when one goes beyond the classical relativistic cosmology. This is illustrated by the example of quantum cosmology.