Ric wrote:
"So logically one would assume that there would have been SOMETHING around to "Start" it... things don't just appear from nothingness..."
Not necessarily. Let me give you an example. There is every reason to believe that our universe is fractal. In other words created by recursion just as miles of beach can be created from individual grains of sand.
Now take a good look at those grains of sand. What's there? Well if you strip the space out between the nucleus and the electrons essentially nothing. Then remove the space between the quarks and you really do have essentially nothing. At least when compared with the volume you thought you understood. And what is left? Mass? That is now believed to just be an interaction between the point-like strings that compose the electrons and quarks and a field known as a Higgs Field. So remove that interaction and you are even closer to nothing.
This is not all that different from looking at what appears to be a chessboard and then discovering it is really just the thin film of a holographic projection. Another version of the appearance of something when in fact there is next to nothing.
So while it is true that there may have been something, in some manner of thinking, that something may have been remarkably close to nothing. Or even, if one considers quantum mechanics, nothing but the inevitability of change.
