Is not the essence of life to debate the uncertainty therein?
interesting question…we seem to exist in
some sort of a paradigm. Maybe we will do better than post temeritous questions for the world to try to reconnoiter.
Quite a bit less sophisticated. Also incorrect, but I am sure that won’t trouble you.
The sum of any number with zero is the number itself. And it isn’t algebra it’s arithmetic.
Tris
Never make simple arithmetic errors in a logic slam.
Imagine my signature begins five spaces to the right of center.
Well, like you said, it’s just a theory. Also, just because we consider it the beginning of our universe doesn’t mean that the energy that created the big bang didn’t exist before.
Ah, but where did that come from? Spawned from another universe? The hand of God? Or was it just always here? Perhaps our entire universe is a speck of dust on the stomach of a turtle in another universe. Unless God comes down and reveals the answer or we rip through the fabric of space and see who the “man behind the curtain” is, I don’t think the question is conclusively answerable.
My personal preference is, “In the beginning, God created…” I’m not saying it’s provable or even logical, but, by all means, theorize all you like.
While I’m no expert, I DO know that the 1st LofT is among the best-verified rules of physics. We know of nothing that even seems to imply the possibility of violating it. Of course, part of that is probably our bias, but hey.
One serious and semi-popular theory (I think I remember seeing it mentioned in one of Hawking’s books) suggests that the universe is constantly collapsing and expanding. Big Bang, then expansion, then collapse, then Big Crunch, and we’re back where we started. Of course, this begs the question how did that all start to begin with. But remember, the concept of time probably has no real meaning in the conditions around the Big Bang, so asking about “before” is really meaningless.
And to end this ramble, a word about what is thought happened. Although energy and matter cannot be created or destroyed, they can and do interchange all the time. At the Big Bang, it was all energy. As it expanded and cooled, it gradually turned into matter.
That’s it. Back to work.
You see, the First Law was still just the First Bill back then…but then again, I never studied law! 
“They’re coming to take me away ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee, to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time… :)” - Napoleon IV