Christoid Logic

[Alex K]

1.No, the evidence doesn't really show that. The evidence suggests something like inflation in the early phase, and no one knows what was at the beginning of that.
2. Even if it did have a temporal beginning as seen from inside, it would not present a paradox of creation ex nihilo

That's ad hoc and disingenuous. If I asked how old the universe, I'd get an answer of whatever number of billions of years is currently correct. No one would say we don't know.

That's not disingenuous, that's subtlety: it depends entirely on what you mean by age of the universe.

- 13.7 billion years ago, all the energy in the universe was in a super dense hot plasma and the atoms we consist of were first formed from that energy as everything cooled. It therefore makes sense to say that the universe as we know it got started then.

- If you then ask, "but did time itself begin back then?" every serious scientist should tell you 'Well, I dunno, but do you want to hear my guess? Also, it is not clear what time and space mean in these extreme conditions'