" As far as I know, all major religions that subscribe to a belief in God—including Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism—believe that the universe was created by God at a finite time in the past. The one major contemporary religious tradition that does not incorporate God, Buddhism, holds that the universe has existed for all of eternity. Looked at another way, a universe with a beginning must have had a creation, either by a divine being or by quantum physics. But a universe that has existed forever needs neither. "

― Alan Lightman , Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine