Robert Jastrow, a scientist who calls himself “agnostic” in religious matters, has written in God and the Astronomers (New York: Norton) the following:

A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our Universe, but if it does, science cannot find out what that explanation is. The scientist’s pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the…