If Event A is the cause of Event B, then Event A must occur before Event B. I don’t see how you can have cause-and-effect without time.
The Big Bang cannot have a cause, because that would imply the cause was before the Big Bang, and “before the Big Bang” is a meaningless expression.
It is highly conceivable to think that something can exist outside Space/Time, and is not subject to the laws within this universe. At some point, we know that there were no laws of thermodynamics in place. Now, if there was no “before big bang”, then, at what point, or perhaps more accurately, where, are these laws not present?
Nah. Granted entropy of a singularity is a peculiar thing (according to Hawking and Bekenstein), but you can’t tell me that it is forever extant if you yourself and therefore the observable universe are contained within the singularity.
Or can you? If you can convince me that entropy need not be zero (maybe that the microstates are not necessarily 1 and only 1 at the point of the big bang), then I’ll grant you your “entropy” quip.
But they are created from a vacuum, not nothing.
It may be a meaningless expression, but the soul of the question is perfectly valid. Event A is the Big Bang, which is the cause of The Universe: Event B. Event A didn’t just come out of nowhere. Something has to cause the bang, the chemical reactions, molecular activity, the release of energy. Energy, molecules, electrons, etc. didn’t just poof appear and explode. It all came from something. Where did the something come from? Event A has to have an origin
Yes it did.
And it’s the only event that has ever occurred. (Everything else is a subset of it).
Everything, therefore, has no cause. (Until you break it up artificially into causes and effects).
The Big Bang does not have to have an origin. It’s like jawdirk said. Saying “Event A is the cause of Event B” is like saying “Point A is north of Point B.” Every where I’ve ever been, I could always point north. And for as long as I’ve been around, there was always an event prior. But, there is one point on the planet where you can’t point north. Simarily, there is one event, the Big Bang that has no cause and no past. If you try to make a flat map with parallel longitude lines, the north pole would be a singularity. The Big Bang is also a singularity for a time coordinate.
The only place where there were no laws of thermodynamics would have to be outside of space-time. I see no reason to suppose there is anything outside of space-time. Just because it’s conceivable, does not mean it must exist.
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Not quite. To continue your analogy, at some point. the pencil comes down and starts to draw the map. All lines may start from the north pole, but that doesn’t mean the north pole doesn’t itself have an origin. There are currently a number of fascinating theories as to what “caused” the big bang. The ekpyrotic model, aka brane theory, suggests that the observable universe was formed by a periodic collision between two three-dimensional membranes imbedded in a five dimensional universe. This theory explains things as well as inflation does and produces some interesting, testable predictions. In some cases it explains things better as it does not require the big bang to have been a singularity
Of course, if this leaves us wondering where the five space came from so we’re really right back were we started from. It’ll probably turn out to be turtles all the way down after all. 
Unless I scan you wrong I postulate that entropy approaches zero, but it need not and may not ever reach it. As two examples I stipulate:
An infinite universe shrinking.
The diminishing effect of gravity on mass at ever greater distances.
Both are in a constant approach towards zero sum, but will never actually reach an absolute zero. It’s the old “half the distance between object A and object B” parable. If you base any idea within the parameters of an infinite universe then entropy can exist from infinite beginning to infinite end as it deals only in diminishing something which cannot be exhausted. Of course I’ll admit that at this point it becomes more philosophy than mathematics, but I picture a Klein bottle when I think of it.
How can something arise from nothing when nothingness implies the lack of any mechanism by which something may arise?
My first reaction was the fruit cake that gets passed around Christmas after Christmas. Then I saw “Dick Clark” and realized that “fruit cake” could apply in either case. 
My entry for the serious answer is the radiation from the big bang. The big bang is when time began.
The quote I like is “the reason there is something rather than nothing is that nothing is unstable” , by John Barrow. Ibet we don’t get a handle on any of this until the dark matter/energy thing is figgered out.
Last I heard, a vacuum was nothing. Unless they’ve gone and changed definitions on me.
Obi Wan: You’re going to find, Luke, that a lot of things depend on your point of view.
Luke Skywalker: You mean like the way you’re backpedaling so that there aren’t any inconsistencies in these three movies?
Obi Wam: (smackes Luke on the back of his head with a deactivated light saber) Don’t get wise! You are not yet acquainted with the subtleties of the Force! It’s like differeing frames of reference. To us, something travelling at the speed of light may have existed for all time, but to something travelling at the speed of light, zero time has passed.
Luke: I would’ve thought that substituting “c” for “v” really meant that in a frame of reference moving at the speed of light, that meant that time was meaningless.
Obi Wan: (Bashes Luke over the head with light saber)
Chronos: It’s not clear to my why protons should be any older than photons in the Big Bang. Certainly there is re-absorption in the initial ball of wildly interacting matter, but some photons were undoubtedly created in the initial blip, and some of these would propagate outwards.
Zen101, good try, but you’re going in the wrong direction. I want you to tell me why there was entropy at the point of the singularity at the big bang.
FWIW, the CMB radiation actually occurred well into the existence of this universe… there was time before it where it didn’t exist as it does today.
Also, any of the particles that were mentioned at some point were created, but not until some amount of time after the “initial event” (if there can indeed be such a thing). So, they aren’t “forever” existing either.
No, indeed the only thing that can be said to exist forever is space-time. Even with the initiation point it has always existed because there was never a time nor place in which it didn’t.
I asked myself that when I first came across inflation-theory.
“This explains everything!” Well, no. Where do quantum fluctuations come from?
I suspect we’re simply dealing with a limitation of the human mind. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to imagine something being infinite. And yet, it’s also impossible to imagine that the universe ends somewhere – either physically or temporally. The first question is, automatically, “What happens if I go just past that border?”
Welcome to the chicken-and-the-egg game. Of course, it doesn’t just apply to science. You can play it with all the world’s religions, too 
I, for one, find the concept that something can be created from nothing very comforting.
I’m no physicist, but I see some holes here.
There are laws present in this universe that prevent us from doing certain things. The law of thermodynamics is a good example. Now, if there was no ‘before big bang’, what you’re trying to say is that the laws of thermodynamics were violated when the universe was created. Of course, you can’t violate the laws of thermodynamics, meaning there are only 2 possibilities:
a) There was a ‘before the big bang’.
b) The universe was created by a force not bound by the laws of thermodynamics, existing outside of space time.
Again, I am no phsyicist, if there are holes here, please show them to me.
That’s nice. Seriously. However, that wasn’t the question. How can something arise from nothing when nothingness implies the absence of any mechanism by which something can arise? What is the falsifiable test that something arises from nothing?
“It is not empty. Even when all matter and heat radiation have been removed from a region of space, the vacuum of classical physics remains filled with a distinctive pattern of electromagnetic fields.” — Scientific American, August 1985, pp 70-78
Check “zero point energy” on Google.
Two holes, actually:
Since there was no “before the big bang,” there were no laws of thermodynamics to violate.
Who says the big bang violates thermodynamics?
Since Chronos hasn’t yet responded, let me try to explain why the protons are older. Basically it has to do with the fact that photons are easily created and destroyed. The background radiation you see right now is basically from a time when the universe finally became transparent… that is a time when photons were no longer running the risk of being destroyed after being created. Thus the photons of the CMB are younger than the protons that formed after the Big Bang’s initiation.
The Big Bang is a singularity. There are some laws that do not apply to singular points. It’s not so much that the laws were violated, but that they do not apply. I maintain:
a) There was no before the Big Bang.
b) To say “The universe was created by …” implies there was a before the Big Bang.
The difference between the nothing of a vacuum and the nothing outside the universe is that a vacuum has extent in space and a duration in time. That is it takes up space and exists for a time. Space and time are only well-defined withinin the universe. To say there was nothing before the Big Bang means Nothing – no matter, no energy, no space, no time.