Before the Big Bang

Yes, since we don't know enough about it to say that isn't so.However, that is a god of the gaps approach. Is your belief destroyed if M-theory turns out to be well supported?

No it doesn't make it a fact as you say.What makes it very, very likely that the universe started in a state near to a singularity is GR and a host of observations all of which support that idea very strongly.It is the most accepted theory because of that strong support.Do you have a suggestion for another one or for modifications to this one? That is how science progresses. It does nothing to say that one idea might be wrong; that is how science operates. It is necessary to decide how likely that it is to be wrong and what one should do next.

No one is saying that the singularity was the case. What we are saying, yet again, is that the theory that explains the big bang and it's behavior does NOT explain the point of origin of the big bang. The singularity means exactly that. It means that GR breaks down and gives no answers at that point. That is, it means that it does not explain the origin.The big bang itself deals with after that. It is most definitely not taken on faith. As I mentioned before it is currently accepted because of the large number of observations and the agreement with the math. That is definitely NOT faith.The current answer to where all that came from is : "We don't know."You are happy to follow the historic course of putting God into the "we don't know". Others are not. We all await the outcome.I asked you before what happens to your faith if we do start to "know". Do you wish to follow the followers of Vulcan at his forge under the volcano?If your God (or some other) did start the universe at point of the GR singularity or started it with n-dimensional branes bumping around in an infinite n-spacetime all we do is learn how your God did it all. (well, "how"to a point only. The details of how to create an n-spacetime might elude us for a bit ).Right now it appears pretty darn certain that some god (if any)definitely chose (for whatever reasons) to set the universe in motion at a point of extremely high density and let it expand from there. It seems we are all in agreement on that and we do not have to take that on faith. We see good solid evidence for it.What has to be taken on faith right now is that either a god had something to do with it or that we will learn enough to explain it all without one being needed. Neither of us is in any position to be terribly sure of which answer is right or even that we will ever get to an answer.All I think I have on my side is history: over and over the god of the gaps argument has been used. To date it has always proved to be a mistake. No Vulcan at his forge, no Jupiter with his thunder bolts, no Apollo and his chariot, no disease causing demons, no geological layers from a single flood etc.That sure doesn't guarantee that the trend will extrapolate onward. But...

I'm going to try an help too. Of course, that may only make things worse but I'm not sure anyone has noted one problem.You are told that spacetime originated with the big bang. Since spacetime is everything there is that we know you conclude from this that the big bang came from "nothing". As nonsensical as it sounds this is not a correct conclusion.Spacetime is a very well defined thing in general relativity. Space and time as we use the terms in English are not really all that well defined. We kind of take them as obvious. What Einstein showed us is that what we take as obvious is wrong.Since the definition of spacetime is a GR concept and GR breaks down (becomes meaningless; does not apply) at the point we have been calling T=0 (or the singularity) there is no spacetime definable at that point. Our English words of "before", "after", "from" etc. no longer have a proper meaning.However, that doesn't mean that there isn't an "anything" for all this to come from. That "anything" simply won't be something defined by GR. It won't be space or time as we bumble about trying to use those terms.Maybe it will be a umpteen dimensional hypertime thingymabob; Something barely graspable outside of mathematics defining it but not "nothing". Though you should note that even defining "nothing" can be tricky in this context.That may or may not leave a gap for a god to sit in. We simply don't know what it will look like.

As Sagan said:
"Believing is seeing."Since that is true I would like to know how I can "know"? I am happy to consider solid reasoning based on objective data. We asked for that and got almost nothing.

Because I am waiting for you to explain why living things are the wrong kind of design.