The Problem with Christians

[Esquilax]

In the case of the sphere, scientists would analyze its chemical composition, no? What elements it is made of? They could measure its weight, temperature, attempt carbon dating, etc. Kinda like we might do with the universe itself: they would study it to determine all they could about it. In the case of creation, however, there is NOTHING pre-Big Bang. So, why is there something rather than nothing?

Nothing, pre-big bang? Wherever did you get that idea? It can't be from scientists, because as I've been pointing out, the science on this is that we aren't yet equipped even to discuss the pre-expansion universe, let alone analyze it. I will point out that the general big bang model shows the universe as a singularity prior to its rapid expansion in the big bang, so you aren't talking about "nothing," there, you're actually talking about "everything," just in a form unlike anything we've ever seen before. A form we don't even really have the words to talk about it accurately, yet.

If there was nothing and then there was something (or better yet, then there was everything), what changed? And why?

Something CAUSED everything to come into existence. Things don't simply pop into existence uncaused.

I know it's difficult, but try to follow me on this: causality does not apply at the moment of the big bang and before. When you begin a question with "and then," you've already missed the point, because you're applying a linear causality to a region of spacetime that doesn't necessarily share it. Time does not work the way it does here, before there was a here: it's possible that nothing changed, and yet the big bang happened. It's possible that the event that caused the universe hasn't happened yet because of weird time shenanigans, or that it doesn't require a cause, or that the actual answer is something that, right now, defies human imagining and the language we'd use to discuss it. We don't know yet, but what we do know is that there's no use insisting that things beyond the universe, or even within the universe as a singularity, work the same way as they do inside the universe now. The one thing we can ascertain is that every fundamental constant within our universe stops working at the point where our universe stops being our universe, prior to the big bang. You need to let go of the presumptions inherent in the language you're using.

When you say "things don't simply pop into existence uncaused," my answer is that no, that's not true. Not at a quantum level, and not prior to the big bang. You don't get to assume that outside of our universe merely because it seems to be true within it.