Complicated mathematics doesn't make the singularity more understandable. It just makes more people give up trying to understand. I don't think any physicist would claim that modern physics understands time=1.

Neoplatonist thought holds the belief that the structure of the physical world is based on fundamentally basic mathematical patterns -- which is completely commensurable with modern physics. That they viewed the one as the origin of reality seems to provide a reasonable and human-readable perspective on how the entire universe of 100B+ galaxies could once exist in a volume smaller than the nucleus of an atom.

Math =! understanding. I have faith that the world is fundamentally reasonable and understandable. All models are Wong, some are useful, that sort of thing. So I appreciate the perspective of very smart ancient philosophers on this origin issue.

> Complicated mathematics doesn't make the singularity more understandable.

What do you mean it does not? Limit theory does that in great depths. Some cases are unaccounted for, but that might actually be due to the incompleteness theorem.

I don't mean to be dismissive of complex math, but it can be seen as an excuse by people who expect the universe to NOT make intuitive sense. Usually, powerful mathematical explanations are quite simple (Maxwell's equations, Boltzmann's, etc)

I, for one, don't expect the universe not to make intuitive sense. I just think average folk intuition is waaay to weak for that. Actually, I think the same applies to nearly all people, mathematicians the least of all.