WLC debated Sean M. Carroll a few weeks ago on origins and Kalam Argument

[Mudhammam]

I just mean why did the "big bang" happen (as Carroll said, "the first moment in time") if there was nothing but eternal quantum fluctuations or whatever before (?) then. I didn't hear Carroll address that question. Maybe the answer is "we don't know." I'd be okay with that. There's a lot of shit we don't know, much less the creation of the structure of reality.

I know Carroll has addressed this point in other talks and I'm certain I recall him addressing it a couple of times in the debate. The answer he gives - which I would tend to agree with - is this: If you have a very well corroborated, self-contained cosmological model that fit the data, then there is nothing else to explain. If you, like religious apologist do, ask the question "Why that model?", then all you're really doing is presupposing the ontological truth of a controversial philosophical principle called the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which has many problems. Further, it really seems that all asking that question implies is that one does not want to accept that there may be brute facts.

Ah, yeah okay I do remember that bit. I don't think it's ultimately a satisfactory answer but at this point it works. Even if a model eventually develops that explains all aspects of the Universe's internal structure, I still think the question "But why THAT? Why THIS?" is worth pursuing and something humans will inevitably seek to understand further.