I think it was Michael Morris who asked:

What was there before the Big Bang?

That's not a meaningful question. "Before" depends on time, and the concept of "Big Bang" is that spacetime was begun by it. There wasn't a "before", because there was no time for "before" to exist in.

Yes, this sounds contrary to all our everyday experience, but so is all of quantum theory, and string theory too. And those concepts, although not "common sense" and not fully understood, are useful, operable concepts.

Dave Oesterreich