Seriously jem, what is the problem here. What are you trying to say? You are referring to the standard Big Bang cosmological model . It includes something called a causal singularity where time = 0 or time = zero. What are you struggling with? If you look backward from now to the Big Bang, you reach the tiniest, minutest, infinitesimal, microsecond of time measurement where you can look no further to understand (yet)..... then there's the singularity where time = 0. There is no past where there is no time. What on earth is there profound in stating thought about cause and effect is going to be deficient. Unless of course you start trying to squeeze God into that smallest of all possible time gaps as a cause? Most theologians have stopped that nonsense by now anyway. However it appears that time shifting God into an absurdity of no time is sometimes preferred. You have virtual particles right down to that point which do not show any requirement for cause, or for a Creator God in any case, as they come into existence out of nothing.
This whole nonsense of something from nothing, just absurd. Whether something appears that is virtual or actual, it is always the case that something came from the potential to become something. Potential to be something actual or virtual always exists prior to actual or virtual existence. What always exists, this pure potential that some ignoramus calls nothing, is of course something, something very great indeed... A field perhaps unknown to scientists obviously exists and is where everything that scientists can measure comes from...that is not nothing, it is something infinite in scope.
Nothing is something, an unknown field obviously exists, but known stuff that does come from nothing doesn't because you just think it's absurd. Thanks Einstein. That's most useful.
quantum physics is counter-intuitive. you can't deduce it by thought alone, you need to intimate with the MATH. why do you assume your ordinary senses evolved for survival of your insignificant carcass is sufficient? you are here to spread your DNA, after that you are expendable. you are not here to figure anything out. and if you ever do get anything "right" it's a goddamn miracle. the MATHn underlies it all, and those results are beyond ordinary "CONCEPTION" if you are not intimate with the MATH, then you are NOT privy to REALITY!
The need for humans to feel safe and secure is the reason for faith and hence bible book sales. Many humans would rather believe that if they act a certain way, everything will be OK for them for eternity. It is much easier than believing that each of us is responsible for their own fate, and that we all simply end up in a hole in the ground and that's it. Bible sales means absolutely nothing.
Perhaps you haven't noticed I already argued legitimately that virtual particles come from nothing, from the vacuum of empty space. Can you argue how they don't do that with even some small part of the quality and substantial evidence available to everyone that shows they do? No. So what do you do? Make up your own sophomoric insult in the form of "pure potential that some ignoramus calls nothing". Why? Because your imaginary friend suddenly looks more like a cosmic burp than anything else. Obviously you would do that.
Oh, I noticed how you claimed that virtual particles come from nothing. The just "magically" appear from nothing is your "argument." For no reason, by no plan, by no power, the virtual particles having no mind, no will, no power, no intelligence just mysteriously appear, again as if by magic. You really don't know how absurd your position is, do you? It is an axiom that everything that can come into existence, like a virtual particle, was preceded by the potential to come into existence. This potential to come into existence is not nothing. Potential is there before virtual, before actual...and you call this unlimited potential nothing... What an odd duck you are... Repeatedly over the course of the history of science, previous so called "scientific conclusions of nothing" or "void" have been replaced with a deeper understanding that in fact there wasn't "noting" or a "void" there was something that was simply not understood yet. Did radio waves exist before we were able to measure them? Did sub atomic particles exist before we discovered them? Yet, a scientist of hundreds of years ago would have said there was nothing smaller than the atom, and nothing like invisible rays. There is something that these particles are appearing from, the fact that you can't see it, or measure it, doesn't not detract from the simple fact that something does not come from nothing... Even if there is a field of nothingness from which all these particles manifest, both virtual and actual, that field of nothingness would be something...