[Dimensio]

"The Freeper known as "Physicist" likes to post that there is no "before" the Big Bang any more than there is a point North of the North Pole. Time itself starts at the BB."

I think my question wasn't complete. If there was no "before", then what are the leading non-religious based hypotheses as to how it began?

AFAIK, there aren't any.

ven if the laws of the universe were different, it's still "something from nothing". There appears to be no way around that. (Kind of like the "God just was" explanation.)

If the laws of the universe were different (the best that can be stated from current knowledge is that known laws break down), then we can't hypothesize without knowing what these different rules are. Perhaps it was "something from nothing", or perhaps it was something else that we cannot observe and thus cannot explain.

If there are no good explanations, the Big Bang theory's not very satisfying. It only defers the question and pushes what we don't know back to an earlier point.

The "Big Bang" is just an explanation for the origins for the universe. It isn't supposed to address a cause, at least not in the current form of the theory. When you can come up with a hypothesis based upon physical evidence and observation and testing thereof, and when that hypothesis is sound and stands up to vigourous testing and peer-review then we might have a more satisfying explanation and you can collect a neat Nobel Prize. Until then the only non-religious answer is "Not enough information". It does not mean that there cannot be a naturalistic explanation, it only means that we don't have enough knowledge to formulate an explanation at the time. You may not think that it is "satisfying", but science is in the business of explaining natural phenomenon in terms of natural causes; it isn't supposed to make things up when it runs out of reasons.

[elfman2]

"The "Big Bang" is just an explanation for the origins for the universe. It isn't supposed to address a cause"

I don't think it's even an explanation. An explanation of how babies are made doesn't begin after conception.

The "big bang" theory looks more like an explanation of the universe's development, not of its origin. I may be wrong, but I believe the general theory behind the development of planets and stars long preceded the big bang theory.

I'm sure that the theory details are immensely fascinating to study, but from a layman's perspective, the actual "bang" is no more significant to a full explanation of the universe's origin than cell division is significant to an explanation of a baby's origin.

I think it's a misrepresentation to say that I'm asking for something else, a "cause", if I want to know what preceded either that first cell division or the actual bang.

Peoples' naturally curiosity is what drives us to investigate and reason through the universe. And the inductive part of that reasoning is probably driven by a natural "dissatisfaction" with the unexplained. Some put more faith in God to fill the void, and some put more faith in man's ability to reason since it has explained so much that was unknown for so long. But it still appears that the beginning of the universe is so completely unexplained and cosmologists are so completely without a clue, that God is as good of an explanation as any. And I say that as an atheist ;^)

I think this ambiguity is a place that evolutionists and creationists can come together. After all, what difference should it make to either if God set the world in motion through the big bang 15 billion years ago. If we simply respect each other's faith in the unknown, all we're disagreeing on is the method of creation/evolution. And as time passes, the evidence and clear thinking may put that question to rest.