Your questions are important ones, and I can tell you my personal beliefs and HOW I believe them, but they don't satisfactorily explain the birth of the universe any more than the most recent physical theories (which don't even come close).
The problem is people use words that have no meaning other than in their heads. They are called floating abstractions. I agree with you about the “birth of the Universe.” I don’t think anyone, anyone, anyone, can explain that. I, personally, don’t think there was a birth to the Universe. It has always existed in one form or another. I don’t accept the “Big Bang” and even if I did, that doesn’t explain anything. What went BANG?! I know that's abstract, but I can tell you why I believe in something at all. I have been conscious and completely aware outside my body.
I don’t accept this. You “believe” you have been outside your body, but that doesn’t mean you were. I have had all kinds of experiences. I can become fully aware of myself inside a dream, know that is a dream, and go anywhere I wish. It doesn’t mean I have actually done so. Now, if I could get the Swiss bank account of Saddam and transfer all his money to my bank account, I might consider this valid. But until your “OBE” experiences have practical, real, results, they must be considered nothing more than fantasy. When this happens to you, you pass the point of BELIEVING to the point of KNOWING that there is existence outside the purely material body.
Only if you decide so. Until you no longer have a material body, you can’t make this claim since your consciousness is still rooted in your material body, it could merely be a body/mind projection. Actually, from a Hindu point of view, it is just your higher material body in which your consciousness is lodged. You still have a material body, just a different material than this plane. And you can’t prove this theory wrong, because there is no basis by which to judge. There is no evidence either way. On a side note, I am a research scientist by profession, so no stranger to scientific atheism.
I have a really big problem with this statement. So what? You are a research scientist. Doesn’t mean you have superb logic skills, otherwise you wouldn’t equate this with “scientific atheism.” You couldn’t define “God” so I doubt you’d define “atheism.” The errors here abound, and no one ever addresses them. But I often note with irony some of my colleagues' fervent belief that nothing exists after death based on a lack of evidence, even though not a shred of evidence exists to support their own strong faith (in nothing).
As I said, these are logically invalid conclusions, by both you and your colleagues. The very wording here hurts to contemplate. I have made this point many times, the word “faith” has a specific meaning. To conflate the different connotations is the favorite pastime of religionists. One cannot have a “faith” in nothing, in the religious sense. But one can in the “confidence” sense, which is not the same.
In my estimation, logically, both are wrong.