/sci/ - Science & Math

Either the universe has always existed, or it originated from nothing. This is atleast my understanding of it.

After thinking about this for a while, it dawned on me that... Maybe these two are, in a literal sense, the exact same thing? The standard response when asking a physicist what happened before the big bang is that the question is meaningless. Time did not exist prior to the universe appearing. And so, my thought is that, with this being true, a universe coming into being from nothing is essentially a universe that has always existed, since its creation necessarily was the beginning of time itself. It does not make sense to ask what came before, and so in the same sense it does not make sense to say that the universe did not exist prior to its existence, because when there is nothing, there is also not a lack of something (I'm not sure I'm wording this properly, but I hope you get what I'm trying to say)...

I'm a pleb law student whose understanding of science/math is superficial at best; I'd just like some actual science people to weigh in on this. Am I being retarded or does this actually make sense? I feel that I didn't really capture my thoughts properly in the words that I wrote, but I did the best I could (English is my second language) so if there's something you want me to expound on, tell me and I'll give it a try.