Can somebody help me get my feet wet?

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If it had a beginning, it needs a cause.

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Nothing says that everything has to have a cause. In fact, an equal amount of anti-matter and matter are appearing, without cause, all of the time. Almost as soon as they appear they combine and release energy. This is called the Cassimir effect, and it is without cause and random.

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Also, there could not have been an eternal number of moments before today

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Actually, there were. Hint: look at calculus. The area under any curve is defined by an infinite number of slices. If that curve is defined as time, time also has an infinite number of slices.Your assumptions are wrong, therefore the argument fails.

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JThese particles are thought to originate by fluctuations of the energy in the vacuum.

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It is also thought that the Big Bang was just a large one of these quantum fluctuations. With the Casimir effect we are witnessing "Little Bangs". It is thought that a slight imbalance of matter over anti-matter resulted in the mass of the universe we see today. So I guess the creation of universe wasn't from nothing or without cause?

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Quantum theory is able to make meaningful predictions about these very same particles, albeint statistical predictions concerning large numbers of them.

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And that is kind of the point. Let's use the lottery (keep it simple, 5 numbers between 1 and 50) as an analogy. We can model the probabilities of an outcome, but are incapable of predicting a certain outcome ahead of time. That is, we know the odds of getting the following combo:4,6,18,20,45However, we don't know what caused that precise combination. That is, that combination doesn't have a cause other than being a randomly assorted combo. This is the same thing with the Casimir effect. Once in a while, a certain number will come up as an inherent property of nature.Also, you seem to claim that the Big Bang came from nothingness and no cause, yet the Casimir effect is causal and from something. My argument is that they are one in the same, only differentiated by scale not by mechanism. Would you then say that the Big Bang is caused by something and came from something?