Let's keep this our little secret, but I still consider this ["before the BB"] to be a very open question. As a practical matter (whatever that may mean in this context) Physicist's answer is quite sufficient. But at some level, which is probably more psychological than cosmological, it fails to satisfy.
Oh, I quite agree. If I understand things correctly, we are not privy to any evidence about the state of things prior to the BB. I personally believe that any theory we come up with is equally likely as any other answer, and that's where faith steps in to lend a hand.
But as far as we puny humans are concerned, natural history started at the Big Bang.
It's unsatisfying for a deeper reason. The South Pole isn't a real singularity but the Big Bang is I think. Suppose you've a 1d space plus time with a BB. Draw a cirle in the spacetime around the BB. Time will be pointing "out" all around the circle and space pointing in one direction around (e.g. counterclockwise). You can't extend this to a continuous, non-vanishing coordinate system within the circle.
I don't see an out with higher dimensional spaces but perhaps there would be if the space weren't orientable or were multiply connected or something like that.