Fundi-christian StG survives. Its narrow in its outlook because it loves The Lord and doesnt want to wander. You cant come into Jesus and allow a wandering over to other things. If you do the flesh fails and satan takes you away.
Youre as christian StG as I am pro-Pope or pro-traditional dry churches.
You have to be born again to be christian (John3:3). Confess the sin and invite Jesus Christ in and mean it StG. Come alive lad and invite Him in and be sincere.

"You have to be born again to be christian (John3:3)."

Sheesh, I was born ok the first time Gibo, so if you
need another birth, speak for yourself :)

DB, that's one of the chief reasons why the 'god' explanation of creation simply doesn't cut it.

If god is the explanation for how the universe was created, then what created god? The answer then becomes, 'god has always been.'

On the other hand, that hasn't explained anything. I may as well follow Occam's Razor and go with the simpler explanation - that the universe has always been.

Essentially, this points out the fact that some things can't be explained.
We can either run around in circles creating more mysteries that create just as many conundrums, or we can learn to live with the fact that regardless of what happens, there will be no definitive conclusions to some questions.

Man created religion to explain certain mysteries, but it was a futile exercise.

Sorry to spoil such an erudite discussion by questioning a 'fundamental' assumption, but why is it a given that you can't make something out of nothing?
A reasonable starting point could be to work from current knowledge, i.e. we can't know anything about pre-big bang. If so, then we don't know any of the 'rules' pre-big bang, so there is nothing to say whether or not you could make something out of nothing.
Even in our own universe, that 'rule' breaks down at the quantum level--Hawking radiation; pairs of complementary virtual particles arise spontaneously all the time and just as spontaneously annihilate each other (ALMOST always).
StG, I believe the doctrine of almost every religion is that god is unknowable. If so, then god, like the pre-big bang, could exist outside the rules of 'our' universe, and could be in other forms than matter (or energy, same thing) that we can't conceive.
And please, someone explain to me the segue from start of the universe + or - god) to the evolution of organic life on a minor (albeit exceptional to us) satellite of a minor second generation star only 3-4 billion years old, in the outer suburbs of one very ordinary galaxy.
I almost got into responding to Gibo there, but I do realise that time spent applying logic or even plain commonsense to the products of a closed mind, is wasted. I could almost second Yabby's comment. My suggestion is, if you want to convert anyone to your worldview, you take Demos's advice, go to a library, and at least get to know your enemy's take on it. It sure as hell doesn't involve fish growing tails and climbing out of trees

We'll never know, but the cyclic version postulated here with black holes collapsing together until one singularity is reached the blowing out in a 'big bang' is a good contender.

Also, the theory that a pre big bang universe had completely different properties and parameters is just as probable.

No, we'll never know.

Maybe the god thing is true. Maybe the universe is a round ball that hangs off gods key ring that starts his or her intergalactic commdore.
I will stick to science\evolution. One of the biggest questions is, how big is big. Out side the universe, we could be quite small.
But the fact of the matter is, we just dont know.

Thank you STG for your pondering question. I beleve if one does not ponder,
one will not find the answer.