My daughter wants to know....

[c172]

There's always wikipedia. 

So much for elbows with chicken and spinach in a light marinara.

[SteelCurtain]

She thinks drugs are nasty, along with cigarettes and alcohol.

Well, I was an Honor Roll student too. I was in All AP classes, student council, sports, etc.

I told my parents the same thing.

---

As for the questions, seriously, I would congratulate her on being skeptical. Questioning things honestly is the path to truth, but the thing is you cannot forget the honest part.

Turn it into a conversation where you only tackle one thing at a time.

So if the question is, where is the evidence for the Big Bang, learn about it together. See if the evidence available is convincing. Not to appeal to authority, but there are plenty of astrophysicists out there that have forgotten more than I understand about the cosmos, and they are pretty convinced that this is the best explanation we have.

I would start with the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Here's a pretty cool explanation in layman's terms.
https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/bb_tests_cmb.html

ETA: Actually a better place to start is to learn what scientists think the Big Bang actually is. Start from there and build outward.

[Catholic_Lady]

Like I always say... whether you believe that some sort of supernatural force "created" the big bang, or that it somehow created itself from nothing/has always existed, you're still putting your faith in something. Because there is no proof for either option.

[Minimalist]

There are scads of "evidence" for the Big Bang.  Science does not deal in proof.

What have you got?  A bible?

[Catholic_Lady]

There are scads of "evidence" for the Big Bang.  Science does not deal in proof.

What have you got?  A bible?

I'm not saying there isn't evidence for the big bang. 

I'm referring to beyond the big bang. Where did it (the stuff the big bang was made up of) come from in the first place. Where did the first thing that ever exist come from? We have no proof that anything in nature could either A. always have existed, of B. have materialized out of nothing. As far as we know, in nature, everything comes from something, and everything has a cause.

[Minimalist]

Let's get something straight, shall we? 

The initial singularity was the gravitational singularity of infinite density thought to have contained all of the mass and space-time of the Universe[1] before quantum fluctuations caused it to rapidly expand in the Big Bang and subsequent inflation, creating the present-day Universe.[2] The initial singularity is part of the Planck epoch, the earliest period of time in the history of the universe.

Wiki

So, not "nothing" but rather "EVERYTHING."

Now let's see what you guys have to offer.

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Gen. 1

Talk about poofing everything from nothing.  That's exactly the magic trick you assert that your invisible sky-daddy pulled.

Sorry.  It's a load of crap.

[Joods]

She thinks drugs are nasty, along with cigarettes and alcohol.

You sure she hasn't fallen in with mormons?  Those fuckers are pretty bad, too.

Yes, I'm sure lol

[ignoramus]

Min! I'm with CL!
Go blow science out your ass!       (High5 with CL)

[DarkerEnergy]

It is not appropriate whatsoever to draw the early universe to an 'explosion' by analogy. The 'Big Bang' was a moment in time when the universe was infinitely hot and dense, As the universe expanded, it cooled thermodynamically, then the elementary forces and particles separated to their current ratios. Cosmic inflation occurred at 10^-37 after the BB, and expanded the quantum fluctuations in the early universe, that would come into play later in galaxy and star formation. These frameworks have predicted everything from the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the anisotropy in the universe -- see the WMAP results.

That's the gist anyways.

[vorlon13]