Please allow me to shed some light on this "beginning" issue, and explain why we don't know, we may never know, and why we may be intellectually incapable of understanding anyway. This is a continuation of stuff I've said before that I'm not going to go back and explain, so this post is actually intended for those who remember that discussion.
Our human brains evolved to see reality as it presents itself to us in its more relevent forms. The brain evolved to help organisms survive in this reality, on earth, in 4 dimensional space-time with time being constant and linear, and space appearing smooth and flat.
Although this is how reality appears to us, nothing could be further from the "truth" (whatever "truth" is).
In our subjective/interpretive reality (which exists as mental images which *reflect* very particular aspects of the reality we filter through our bio-chemical processes) we have a little thing (intepretation/explanation) called cause-effect (newtonian physics). To us, something happens because something else happened which caused it. Think about it, everything that has occured on this planet seems to have been the direct result of cause and effect. It's so prevalent that we even think that this is how things actually are, it's certainly how it appears, so how could we be "wrong"? Well, we aren't "wrong", we are just viewing the universe from our very particular and refined point of view as primates on this little planet. The universe appears this way to us because we have evolved to see it this way, but this doesn't at all imply that the universe exists as we see it. There's much much more going on than meets the eye, and much of what appears to be going on appears strange and impossible by the standards of our human psyches.
Our macro world, seen by us in relation to mental maps which have been with us since the beginnings of life itself, is actually a very fucked up place - it just appears "normal" to us cuz we have become used to it over billions of years of intellectual evolution. What I'm saying is this: there is no such thing as "normal" or "strange", these are just labels we primates place on things to denote our level of comprehension of them. If we existed in a universal realm where the laws of quantum physics prevailed over newtonian physics, we would think cause-effect is strange and unbelievable. Therefore, when I say that the fabric of the universe is bizarre, I don't mean it's actually bizarre, I mean it simply *seems* bizarre to us from our reference point because we have evolved to view the universe in the way that it is most relevent to us. Point of view is everything, it shapes what we see.
Keeping in mind that nothing is either normal or bizarre (these are just labels), there is much going on in the universe that we don't understand and much of it does not obey the laws ("laws", heheh, humans are so full of themselves) of newtonian physics. On the atomic scale there's a whole different reality so "strange" to us that we can't even grasp it for what it truly is, the only way we can understand this reality is by filtering it through our brain tissue till it comes out as a bunch of impossibilities and contradictions which confuses the shit out of us. Such reality doesn't make much sense to primates, but we do what we can to interpret it in a way that is meaningful to us (since what we see is as much a product of our own minds and evolution as it is of what we are interpreting). The reason why quantum physics doesn't make "sense" to us is cuz we were never intended to understand it.
So, if we have such trouble grasping reality on the atomic scale (because of our own biological design), what bloody hope do we have of successfully grasping the beginnings of the universe itself? And why do we cling to these archaic notions of cause-effect and purpose (human-made concepts) when the fabric of the universe obviously doesn't exist in this very limited context?
Here are some common questions, and some uncommon answers for them.
Where did the universe come from?
This question is flawed, it presumes the universe came from something else (cause-effect) and we don't know that it did or didn't.
What was there before the beginning?
This question is flawed, it presumes there was something before the beginning (cause-effect) and we don't know if there was or not.
What is the point of the universe?
This question is flawed, it presumes existence has a point/purpose, and we have no reason to assume that it does.
Each of these questions illustrates how humans ask stupid human questions of metaphysical matters of a universe which doesn't conform to our limited perceptions of it and by doing so we are attempting personify ultimate reality, we are attempting to put reality in a little box so that it makes sense to us. Reality cannot be put into this little box. Reality does not conform to humanistic interpretations.
The problem with these questions above is not the lack of an answer, it's our presumption that 1. there is an answer and 2. that we can understand it in primate terms.
Like I've said before: we don't see reality, we see our own personal reflections of reality, and we are the mirror.
Satori
