It's my understanding that scientists and mathematicians consider that before the Big Bang, all there was was a dimensionless singularity where no physical forces existed. If that is the case, that's why I used the word "from nothing" to describe it. I know there are speculations (and, of course, they are speculations) that possibly time existed, and Hawking has speculated that the universe "would have been on top of itself" and "the density would have been infinite," though this is hard to grasp. If the density were infinite, rather than limited, I presume that the density of the universe now would be infinite, which I don't think is the case. As far as I know, there is nothing about general relativity that gives any clue as to what was prior to the starting point of the Big Bang. As far as I know, there was no preexisting mass-energy, spacetime, or anything else. I'm just not well-versed enough to know.
> To expand on this point, in order to come "from" something, there needs to be a place that you come "from" in the first place.
And yet as far we know, "space" was being created as the universe expanded. So where did it come from (as you are asking), and into what was it going. My head is spinning.
> I do believe this. I was of the understanding that you did as well to some degree, and thus didn't see it as ridiculous. Sorry if I misunderstood.
Oh, I do believe that biology "adapted itself," but with help: guided and purposed by an intelligent providence.
> Could you be a bit more specific? What kind of data are you referring to? Do you mean DNA codes and that like?
The process by which biological information (DNA codes and that like) arose remains an open question. Could it have come about on its own, or did it fortuitously happen in the course of time? Even the most popular scientific theory about RNA (leading to the informational data of DNA) is mostly a matter of scientific imagination and desperate obstacles. Scientists admit the implausibility of the emergence of an RNA replicator from a pool of polynucleotides by a purely random process. Joyce and Orgel believe that the de novo appearance of oligonucleotides on the abiotic Earth would have been a near miracle.
All data seem to point in the same direction. Scientists struggle to find a purely physical and biological way that this could have happened (granted, it's close to impossible to peer back into the authentic beginning-of-life scenario), but for theists, the explanation of an existing and purposeful intelligence is a very reasonable and logical solution.
> I also don't see why not believing in hard atomism leaves only God as an explanatory source.
It doesn't, but it leaves God as a plausible explanation.
> Our ability to reason is an emergent property possible only through experience, and through the outcomes of trial and error, which occur in natural processes.
The problem with this is that if our ability to reason came about through the somewhat haphazard and "random" processes of natural selection and genetic mutation, "truth" is not part of that picture. Survival is.
Thomas Nagel: "If we came to believe that our capacity for objective theory (e.g., true beliefs) were the product of natural selection, that would warrant serious skepticism about its results."
Barry Stroud: "There is an embarrassing absurdity in [naturalism] that is revealed as soon as the naturalist reflects and acknowledges that he believes his naturalistic theory of the world. … I mean he cannot it and consistently regard it as true."
Patricia Churchland: "Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four Fs: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing. The principle chore of nervous systems it to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. … Improvements in sensorimotor control confer an evolutionary advantage: a fancier style of representing is advantageous so long as it is geared to the organism’s way of life and enhances the organism’s chances of survival. Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost."
Plantinga writes that what they are all saying is, "The principal function or purpose, then, of our cognitive faculties is not that of producing true or near true beliefs, but instead that of contributing to survival by getting the body parts in the right place. What evolution underwrites is only (at most) that our behavior is reasonably adaptive to the circumstances in which our ancestors found themselves; hence it doesn’t guarantee true or mostly true beliefs. Our beliefs might be mostly true, but there is no particular reason to think they would be: natural selection is not interested in truth, but in appropriate behavior. What Churchland therefore suggests is that naturalistic evolution—that is, the conjunction of metaphysical naturalism with the view that we and our cognitive faculties have arisen by way of the mechanisms and processes proposed by contemporary evolutionary theory—gives us reason to doubt two things: (a) that a purpose of our cognitive systems is that of serving us with true beliefs, and (b) that they do, in fact, furnish us with mostly true beliefs."
> but would this show that this is not the only universe that life could inhabit? Would this show that fine tuning is suspect after all?
We have no idea if there are other universes, and we dare not assume such until there is a shred of evidence. We can't be suspicious of fine-tuning of this universe on an unsubstantiated assumption.