A simple challenge for atheists

[downbeatplumb]

How could we every have a theory of what was before the universe where there was no time and the laws of nature were non-existent?

Because this is no longer the only idea in town.
Scientists are working on what came before the big bang.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130502...e-big-bang

A partial exception to this is a model known as eternal inflation. In this scheme, the observable Universe is part of a “pocket universe”, a bubble in a larger froth of inflation that is ongoing. In our particular bubble, inflation began and ended, but in other pocket universes – unconnected (“parallel”) and thereby unobservable to our pocket universe – inflation might have had different properties. Eternal inflation effectively emptied the regions outside of bubbles of all matter; these would have no stars, galaxies, or other familiar hallmarks.

If eternal inflation is correct, then the Big Bang is the origin of our pocket universe, but not the beginning of the whole Universe, which may have begun much earlier. The evidence for multiverses will be indirect at best, even with confirmation of inflation from Planck or other observations. In other words, eternal inflation could answer the question of what preceded the Big Bang, but still leave the question of ultimate origin out of reach.

Trillion-year cycle

Many cosmologists regard inflation as being the worst model we have, except for all the alternatives. Inflation's generic properties are pretty nice, thanks to its usefulness in solving difficult problems in cosmology, but the specifics are slippery. What caused inflation? How did it begin, and when did it end? If eternal inflation is correct, how many pocket universes could there be with similar properties to our own? Was there a Bigger Bang that started the multiverse going? Finally, since we're scientists and not philosophers, how can we tell all of these options apart: can we test them?

There is one possible alternative to inflation, which bypasses these questions and, along the way, resolves what came before the Big Bang. In Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok’s cyclic universe model, the observable Universe resides in a higher-dimensional void. Coupled to our universe is a parallel shadow universe that we can’t directly observe, but is connected via gravity. The Big Bang was not the beginning, but a moment when the two “branes” (short for “membrane”) collided. The Universe in the cyclic model goes between periods when the branes are moving apart, accelerated expansion, and new Big Bangs when the branes re-collide. While each cycle would take about a trillion years to complete, the whole cosmos could be infinitely old, bypassing the philosophical problems with inflationary models.

But I can see your argument already.
What set this all off (if true)?
It had to be a god right!

So there you have it, you can keep your bronze age delusion in safety.
Phew.