@RexRed,
As I understand it, "nothing" is simply a concept. It is a modification or extension of the concept "thing".
The usefulness of the concept "nothing" lies in evaluating and communicating perception, and in every single place the word "nothing" is used, it refers to "something which is absent" by context.
Space is not nothing, it is space. Relative to things that traditionally occupy space, we might say that there is nothing, but that is more of a figure of speech.
"I opened a drawer to take out my pencils, but there was nothing there."
There was just empty space, but the referral to the pencils makes "nothing" meaningful.
The distinction existence/non-existence is meaningful in a very limited application. If we say, for instance, that unicorns don't exist, that means that there are no such things as unicorns in the animal population of planet. They do exist as mythical beings.
The idea of a pre-big bang universe isn't so much a failing of that theory as it is a matter of human logic extended beyond it's boundaries. The belief in a universal timeline may not be accurate. Linear time is another human concept, useful in our daily lives, but it may be that the universe itself has no such timeline. In quantum physics the concept of time is very different, and so is the concept of location.
It is, for instance, possible for one "object" to be in two places at once.
It is also possible to change the state of a system "in the past" by introducing changes in the present. By altering the current state of the system, the previous state is also altered. If the changes then are made to a system that in a previous state was part of several other systems, those other systems will also react to the change.
So time flows differently on the sub atomic levels of reality, and this might be an indication that the big bang theory isn't entirely accurate.
The big bang theory is a "story of progression" that is assembled from many different facts, and when people say that the theory is true, that is because the facts are correct. That doesn't mean that the relations we establish between them are correct. The theory was created by a Belgian physicist who was also a priest. He used the same model of progression as the biblical genesis, and created a story of how the world came to be. The linear progression of both these stories is necessary for human beings to relate to them. So the big bang theory isn't really objective fact. It is a subjective (for all humans) interpretation of objective facts.
Newer research into unified field theory suggest that in it's most fundamental state, the universe is a singularity. Some might call this singularity, from which everything springs, God.
But what is God? It is a concept, an idea we humans have. To me, debating the existence/non-existence of God is a futile exercise.
The man-in-the-sky interpretation of God is an obvious and foolish anthropomorphism, a children's tale. But the idea of a primal cause, one singular force that is the origin of everything, that idea is not foolish, and it is what both religion and science works towards understanding.
I have a hard shell and do not make enemies often even if I disagree with their thoughts.
