The Problem with Christians

[Esquilax]

You have a good point. I seriously considered using something like "a shiny sphere made of an unknown substance" instead of a locked box. Shoulda gone with my instincts.

Which kinda demonstrates what I'm talking about: with your sphere, you've got no way to determine design just from looking, and if the sphere were impenetrable to probes- as is the pre-big bang universe to our current technology- then there are no other means currently available for figuring it out. There's no sense in which you could conclude design there, certainly not just based on the fact that the sphere is there.

As for your final papagraph, my question would simply be: What changed? There was no universe and then there was. What changed?

The second domino to fall does so because of the first. But what caused the first to fall?

So, we've just established that time doesn't necessarily even work at that point: why are you now expecting a progression of events in linear "first thing, second thing" form? If there's no time, there's nothing for events to occur in: there is no "first domino" because there is no "first," prior to the start of time at the point that the big bang had already happened.

The truth is, we don't know yet. Whatever the answer ends up being, there's a strong possibility that it will actively resist attempts to explain it in our current temporal lexicon and physics. We will need an entirely new suite of terminology to describe it, most likely. The point I'm making is that the assertion that the universe had a cause is unjustifiable given everything we currently know in science.