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Events in the natural world are determined to have temporal cause and a temporal effect.

That may have been tenable pre-quantum mechanics, but we have evidence and supporting theory to suggest that not all events have a cause (e.g., fission of a particular radionuclide) even within time, let alone in the extremely rarefied, completely unrelatable "beginning of time". It's a huge stretch to take classical intuition and move it to a region where none of that holds.

Let's assume for sake of argument that there is no flavor of multiverse and we are not some vacuum fluctuation in a pre-existing, empty spacetime.

The fact that there is a "T=0" means there is no temporal antecedent to the big bang, and we are not allowing ourselves the easy out of "cosmic matryoshka doll"-style models.

So where does that leave us? Science doesn't have a theory for what things were like at T=0. It gets closer and closer but is not quite there. However, if we don't do some kind of embedding argument (multiverse/fluctuation) then we have a situation where all of reality is temporally bounded from below. There truly was a beginning of everything and asking "what happened before this" is just contradictory with "the beginning of time" and the normal use of "before".

One conclusion is that we accept the boundedness of our universe and the concepts we used to describe it. The moment at the beginning is timeless/eternal, and perhaps literally so if we take a block-universe eternalism view. The beginning of an expanding universe is as much a "where" as a "when" if taken to its literal extreme of infinite density (which may not hold up if/when we get a consistent quantum theory of gravity -- or we invent something completely new).

Or....we say that T=0 was an uncaused cause and therefore this moment is God (albeit a very deflationary and unappealing one from a theological viewpoint).

Events in the natural world are determined to have temporal cause and a temporal effect.

That may have been tenable pre-quantum mechanics, but we have evidence and supporting theory to suggest that not all events have a cause (e.g., fission of a particular radionuclide) even within time, let alone in the extremely rarefied, completely unrelatable "beginning of time". It's a huge stretch to take classical intuition and move it to a region where none of that holds.

Let's assume for sake of argument that there is no flavor of multiverse and we are not some vacuum fluctuation in a pre-existing, empty spacetime.

The fact that there is a "T=0" means there is no temporal antecedent to the big bang, and we are not allowing ourselves the easy out of "cosmic matryoshka doll"-style models.

So where does that leave us? Science doesn't have a theory for what things were like at T=0. It gets closer and closer but is not quite there. However, if we don't do some kind of embedding argument (multiverse/fluctuation) then we have a situation where all of reality is temporally bounded from below. There truly was a beginning of everything and asking "what happened before this" is just contradictory with "the beginning of time" and the normal use of "before".

One conclusion is that we accept the boundedness of our universe and the concepts we used to describe it. The moment at the beginning is timeless, and perhaps literally so if we take a block-universe eternalism view. The beginning of an expanding universe is as much a "where" as a "when" if taken to its literal extreme of infinite density (which may not hold up if/when we get a consistent quantum theory of gravity -- or we invent something completely new).

Or....we say that T=0 was an uncaused cause and therefore this moment is God (albeit a very deflationary and unappealing one from a theological viewpoint). It could be that time and reality/existence may be inextricably linked and so one cannot have timeless existence. In such a case, T=0 is a necessary, uncaused event.

Events in the natural world are determined to have temporal cause and a temporal effect.

That may have been tenable pre-quantum mechanics, but we have evidence and supporting theory to suggest that not all events have a cause (e.g., fission of a particular radionuclide) even within time, let alone in the extremely rarefied, completely unrelatable "beginning of time". It's a huge stretch to take classical intuition and move it to a region where none of that holds.

Let's assume for sake of argument that there is no flavor of multiverse and we are not some vacuum fluctuation in a pre-existing, empty spacetime.

The fact that there is a "T=0" means there is no temporal antecedent to the big bang, and we are not allowing ourselves the easy out of "cosmic matryoshka doll"-style models.

So where does that leave us? Science doesn't have a theory for what things were like at T=0. It gets closer and closer but is not quite there. However, if we don't do some kind of embedding argument (multiverse/fluctuation) then we have a situation where all of reality is temporally bounded from below. There truly was a beginning of everything and asking "what happened before this" is just contradictory with "the beginning of time" and the normal use of "before".

One conclusion is that we accept the boundedness of our universe and the concepts we used to describe it. The moment at the beginning is timeless/eternal, and perhaps literally so if we take a block-universe eternalism view. The beginning of an expanding universe is as much a "where" as a "when" if taken to its literal extreme of infinite density (which may not hold up if/when we get a consistent quantum theory of gravity -- or we invent something completely new).

Or....we say that T=0 was an uncaused cause, per Kalam, and therefore this moment is God (albeit a very deflationary and unappealing one from a theological viewpoint).

Events in the natural world are determined to have temporal cause and a temporal effect.

That may have been tenable pre-quantum mechanics, but we have evidence and supporting theory to suggest that not all events have a cause (e.g., fission of a particular radionuclide) even within time, let alone in the extremely rarefied, completely unrelatable "beginning of time". It's a huge stretch to take classical intuition and move it to a region where none of that holds.

Let's assume for sake of argument that there is no flavor of multiverse and we are not some vacuum fluctuation in a pre-existing, empty spacetime.

The fact that there is a "T=0" means there is no temporal antecedent to the big bang, and we are not allowing ourselves the easy out of "cosmic matryoshka doll"-style models.

So where does that leave us? Science doesn't have a theory for what things were like at T=0. It gets closer and closer but is not quite there. However, if we don't do some kind of embedding argument (multiverse/fluctuation) then we have a situation where all of reality is temporally bounded from below. There truly was a beginning of everything and asking "what happened before this" is just contradictory with "the beginning of time" and the normal use of "before".

One conclusion is that we accept the boundedness of our universe and the concepts we used to describe it. The moment at the beginning is timeless/eternal, and perhaps literally so if we take a block-universe eternalism view. The beginning of an expanding universe is as much a "where" as a "when" if taken to its literal extreme of infinite density (which may not hold up if/when we get a consistent quantum theory of gravity -- or we invent something completely new).

Or....we say that T=0 was an uncaused cause and therefore this moment is God (albeit a very deflationary and unappealing one from a theological viewpoint).

Events in the natural world are determined to have temporal cause and a temporal effect.

That may have been tenable pre-quantum mechanics, but we have evidence and supporting theory to suggest that not all events have a cause (e.g., fission of a particular radionuclide) even within time, let alone in the extremely rarefied, completely unrelatable "beginning of time". It's a huge stretch to take classical intuition and move it to a region where none of that holds.

Let's assume for sake of argument that there is no flavor of multiverse and we are not some vacuum fluctuation in a pre-existing, empty spacetime.

The fact that there is a "T=0" means there is no temporal antecedent to the big bang, and we are not allowing ourselves the easy out of "cosmic matryoshka doll"-style models.

So where does that leave us? Science doesn't have a theory for what things were like at T=0. It gets closer and closer but is not quite there. However, if we don't do some kind of embedding argument (multiverse/fluctuation) then we have a situation where all of reality is temporally bounded from below. There truly was a beginning of everything and asking "what happened before this" is just contradictory with "the beginning of time" and the normal use of "before".

One conclusion is that we accept the boundedness of our universe and the concepts we used to describe it. The moment at the beginning is timeless/eternal, and perhaps literally so if we take a block-universe eternalism view. The beginning of an expanding universe is as much a "where" as a "when" if taken to its literal extreme of infinite density (which may not hold up if/when we get a consistent quantum theory of gravity -- or we invent something completely new).

Or....we say that T=0 was an uncaused cause, per Kalam, and therefore this moment is God (albeit a very deflationary and unappealing one from theological viewpoint).

Events in the natural world are determined to have temporal cause and a temporal effect.

That may have been tenable pre-quantum mechanics, but we have evidence and supporting theory to suggest that not all events have a cause (e.g., fission of a particular radionuclide) even within time, let alone in the extremely rarefied, completely unrelatable "beginning of time". It's a huge stretch to take classical intuition and move it to a region where none of that holds.

Let's assume for sake of argument that there is no flavor of multiverse and we are not some vacuum fluctuation in a pre-existing, empty spacetime.

The fact that there is a "T=0" means there is no temporal antecedent to the big bang, and we are not allowing ourselves the easy out of "cosmic matryoshka doll"-style models.

So where does that leave us? Science doesn't have a theory for what things were like at T=0. It gets closer and closer but is not quite there. However, if we don't do some kind of embedding argument (multiverse/fluctuation) then we have a situation where all of reality is temporally bounded from below. There truly was a beginning of everything and asking "what happened before this" is just contradictory with "the beginning of time" and the normal use of "before".

One conclusion is that we accept the boundedness of our universe and the concepts we used to describe it. The moment at the beginning is timeless/eternal, and perhaps literally so if we take a block-universe eternalism view. The beginning of an expanding universe is as much a "where" as a "when" if taken to its literal extreme of infinite density (which may not hold up if/when we get a consistent quantum theory of gravity -- or we invent something completely new).

Or....we say that T=0 was an uncaused cause, per Kalam, and therefore this moment is God (albeit a very deflationary and unappealing one from a theological viewpoint).