The idea of a universe that had no beginning, but which had always existed as it does now, and would always exist in the future as it exists now, was the belief of Albert Einstein. When the Big Bang theory was first formuleted in the 1920's he argued against it, as it did not seem to be aesthetically neat enough for him. It was only after he was presented with evidence showing the 'flying away' of the galaxies contained within the universe that he grudgingly accepted it.
But this posed a problem which Albert Einstein himself recognized earlier than many others. Under his original belief that the universe was permanently fixed in a certain place, always had been in that place, and always would be in that place, there was no need to concern himself with a Prime Mover (he had proclaimed himself to be an atheist). But when he realized that the universe had a definite point in time and space where an initial action started the chain of events which has culminated in our living on this planet today, his own theory of relativity dictated that the action (The Big Bang) must also be seen as a reaction to another action which had preceded it. It is believed that this led in his later years to his saying that he believed in the God of Spinoza.
Recently there were 4 hours of documentaries on The Discovery Channel, all of which supposedly featured Stephen Hawking, a noted physicist and cosmologist. He's suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, and can only communicate through his eye movements 'writing' messages on a special computer. When the documentary 'Last Days on Earth' was being filmed, questions which only required answers of less than 20 words had to be sent to him weeks in advance so that he could answer them. He has also been quoted (supposedly) by evangelical atheists in an effort to give their arguments against the presence of God more authority.
One of the documentaries shown dealt with the universe's being brought into existence by God, and supposedly Stephen Hawking's reply to that. According to the narrator who read most of the documentary, he stated categorically that there was no God as the creator. However, the reason for his saying this has made me suspicious that others may have taken advantage of his physical condition in order to 'put words in his mouth'.
He made an error that even high school students would have caught concerning the nature of the singularity which began the whole process of 'universe making'. He called that singularity a black hole. A black hole is universally accepted as the endresult when a massive star goes into supernova, or even hypernova, and then collapses in on itself. It becomes so dense that its gravity reaches the level where even light cannot escape its pull. The combination of elements that it processed during its lifetime, such as carbon and iron, that it manufactured during its explosion, such as gold and uranium, and that it captured from whatever was nearby when it finally collapsed, all contribute to this incredible density.
But the singularity is accepted by scientists as not only a single point in time and space, but also a single element, namely, hydrogen. When the Big Bang occurred, mainstream science teaches that this element, the lightest atomic weight known to us, was the only element in existence. Following shortly after the Big Bang stars formed that were so massive that even the present-day monsters such as Betelgeuse would have seemed to be ping pong balls next to them. These stars lasted only a few million years, but their fusion furnaces manufactured heavier elements, and their resultant explosions added still more elements to the universe. This very gradual process led to the manufacturing of the elements we recognize today.
It is also why science teaches that there was an intervening timeline of 10 billion years between the time of the Big Bang and the beginning of this solar system's formation. It took that long for the preceding stars to 'cook' the elements necessary in order to form our sun and planetary system. However, whoever wrote the script and tried to claim it as being Stephen Hawking's work would have us believe that as of the very beginning of the universe's coming into existence, every element needed for our solar system's formation was already present.
