Tom Wetzel tries to rule out the possibility that the universe had necessary initial conditions, based on his basic account of scientific explanation, involving dispositions and triggering events. What he seems not to have seen is that the same argument that rules out that the initial conditions were necessary also, if sound, rules out that the initial conditions were contingent. That is because contingent events, according to Wetzel, are events manifesting extrinsic necessity. So the fact that initial conditions do not easily fall under the necessary or the contingent should be a signal that the matter is not settled as simply as Tom Wetzel thinks. However, I see no reason why the initial state of the universe could not have been necessary.
Natural law limits events that can occur in response to triggering events.
There is no good reason why the laws of physics might not be found to dictate a unique initial state. The applicable natural law would, if univocal determinism of the initial state were true, allow the deduction that the initial state of the universe could be none other than what it was. That answer turns an observation about how science has explained phenomena into an iron law about how it can explain phenomena, where the initial state of the universe obviously requires an explanatory form that differs from the usual. All rights reserved.