Did time, space and matter have a beginning or have they always existed and their fore always will exist?
Well, OUR universe had a beginning, but what STARTED our universe may of been happenings from other universes or dimensions.
At least that’s the way I understand it.
Assuming our universe isn’t an oscillating or cyclical universe in which it has, and will continue to, expand outward from the Big Bang until gravity pulls it back together starting the entire process anew; Time, matter, and space probably had it’s beginning 13.7-13.8 billion years ago. This is the opinion of most astronomers and physicists.
Theorizing, or understanding theories, about what was “before” our universe, or if that is even a valid question, may require an advanced degree in physics.
I’m not convinced that the question isn’t malformed. How would you classify it if time itself was a meaningless concept before the big bang?
The Big Bang is as far back as we can look with current and all likely technology, but before that is speculative.
The Universe has always existed and started 13.7-13.8 billion years ago. These two statements are not contradictory since time is part of the Universe.
Or so they say, I always found it rather amusing that the Universe is supposed to have begun in a massive orgasmic bang. How very human.
What are the theories of what came before the big bang, and where did they come from? You just end up with the same problem, where did the multiverse (that we are supposedly spawned from) come from?
Well, in M-theory, from what I understand, you get a universe such as ours when two 'brains touch. The way one of my physics friends explains it to me, it’s 'brains all the way down (just like those damned turtles). There seems to be some evidence that, I guess echo of what came before or what caused our universe to begin is testable and there is some evidence that it’s actually there, though I don’t think the final word on that is in yet (and might never be).
You are right that it merely pushed back where the ultimate ancestral 'brain or universe came from or how it started, but I’m good with infinite membrane universes on an infinite multiverse sea with no explanation, yet, as to how it all started.
“Branes,” I believe, as formed from the word membrane.
There was no time when the Universe did not exist, because time is part of the Universe. However, according to the best current theories of cosmology, the amount of time that the Universe has existed is finite. Note that this says nothing about whether the time remaining to the Universe is finite, and in fact those same theories say that that’s infinite.
Time is a basic element of the universe. It makes no sense to talk about before the universe since time did not exist. Not what we refer to as time, with a past and a future.
The question makes about as much sense as asking if there was wide before there was long.
It makes no sense to tell people “the question makes no sense” and expect it to then make sense.
It is…but I like 'brains better, since it has cool zombie like connotations. 
As I understand it, the currently-favored idea is a “Big Whoosh” where everything flies away from everything else, leaving us alone in a very big, very empty cosmos. It isn’t exactly an “end” but it certainly leaves a very pointless kind of eternity.
And yet…it does make sense to suggest that our cosmos might have been pinched off from some other cosmos, and this sets up a “parent/child” model that has a kind of “time-like” element to it. The other cosmos has to have existed “before” ours, in some meta-time-like sense, if not in “time” as we measure it.
Grin! There you have me! Can we pressure the astronomical organizations to rename the constellation “Fornax” to “Zombie” instead? Or…what’s Greek for Zombie?
Would you settle for a star named “the ghoul”?
And if you’re talking about our Universe originating from some other universe, then you’re using the term in a different way than I do. When I say “the Universe”, I mean the whole enchilada, everything. What you’re calling the “parent universe” would then just be another part of what I would call the Universe. If that’s not what you mean by “universe”, could you define just what you do mean by it?
But if the question is malformed, then the question is malformed. “Before the big bang” is like saying “absolute value less than 0” - it just doesn’t work.
I thought the universe was just an accident, that had to eventually occur.
Truth be told, I find randomness spontaneously ordering itself in order to understand itself (i.e. the universe organized in such a way that sentient life like us could form and now be speculating on the nature of the universe) to be a far more satisfying concept than any creator-god myth.
I believe our universe is just one of many, many bubbles, like foam. But in the foam that we know, each little bubbles reaches a point at which it bursts, to be replaced by other bubbles.
We cannot see our bubble bursting, because of the speed of light. Perhaps it already has. At some point we, or our descendants, may look at the sky and witness it tearing open. By then, the astronomers may tell us how long before our inevitable imminent demise.
Maybe they’ll have the ability to migrate to another universe. Then when they start to disintegrate because the covalent bond energies are slightly different, they’ll have time to gasp “There’s no place like foam!”