That's just our own minds applying their own adaptive heuristics to the universe, though. We're used to dealing with systems that have a history, because that's what allows us to avoid the tiger lurking in the dark. But there's no particular reason to think that kind of evolved thinking should be scale free, through time and space.

Why is a universe that has always been in existence, cycling through different states, any more sensible than one that pops into existence only to ultimately fizzle out? Both require the presupposition of some kind of uncaused system. Gathering evidence pointing toward one or the other is key.

I do think that the Big Bang maps better to Western religious cosmogony (matter was created ex nihilo) and Big Bounce to philosophical materialism (matter is the fundamental substrate of the world), but that shouldn't bias a scientist against the Big Bang.

In this territory, a lot of arguments of the form "This does seem to be the obvious conclusion based on our human thought ,but that is a mere delusion/illusion" - the implication is that someone has an ultra-insightful way to see through the illusion. They don't ; they just seek a little bit of self-edification and ego-stroking by suggesting as much. Arguments of that style are incredibly weak "It only VERY POWERFULLY SEEMS SO" is actually an admission that an unbiased person would reach the conclusion being rejected. The scientific community clung to the steady-state model of cosmology for nearly a century before embracing Big-Bang theory - this was due to philosophical attachments rather than any sort of evidence - these sorts of motivations are still at play today. They mocked and derided those who advanced alternatives until the evidence became so overwhelming that it could no longer be denied.

Kept scrolling, not sure what I was looking for. This was it, thanks for a great comment.

The way I'm put together, both ideas makes me uneasy when I _really_ think about them. There used to be no universe? Ugh :( There's always been an universe? How's that possible? Ugh :(

> For all the crap that religions get for believing in nonsense

Curiously, Latter Day Saints (aka Mormons) have taught for over a century that essentially the Big Bang theory is incorrect and that matter has always existed and that when the Earth was created God simply "organized" existing matter rather than conjuring something out of nothing.

Putting aside their other beliefs I thought this was an interesting curiosity in this context.

Yep- there is a reason there are so many Mormon sci-fi authors and why Mormons are one of the few religions where engagement increases with education.

Growing up LDS there was never any existential angst as I became more educated and there was never a need to overcome any cognitive dissonance as I learned evolution or cosmology- the baseline belief is a very sci-fi one of the first super-consciousness (God) taking upon itself the shaping of spiritual (dark matter?) and then physical matter and making pathways for other intelligences to master the same. No ex-nihilo involved.

Even if the LDS specific conceptions have all the details wrong, the overarching idea is completely plausible.

As Terence McKenna said: "Modern science is based on the principle: ‘Give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest.’"

Religion simply starts with the idea that what we observe is not meaningless. Reality is often stranger and more incomprehensible than fiction.

Does it change anything in your perception of “coming into existence from nothing” if the total energy of this universe is 0?