Thanks GJ for your post, but it really isn't what I'm after. From the lack of any other response, maybe my original post was misconstrued, or possibly it should have been in the Astronomy Science section, but without any reference to Genesis. The Genesis bit was purely "tongue-in-cheek" on my part, as I had expected someone with a sense of humour to point me in that direction, and I wanted to get in first, as it were.
Mine is not a frivolous question, I seriously want to try to understand, comprehend, get-my-head-around, a purely scientific explanation of how our universe came into being. So far, all the explanations I have looked at have been too complex for my 65 year old brain, and I suspect that I'm not alone, even in this excellent forum.
Over the years I have noticed that some people are able to give clear and concise answers to the most difficult questions, whereas others can rabbit on for ever, and leave me more confused at the end of the explanation than I was before I asked the question. I'm looking for a (relatively) simple explanation to this most complex of problems, set out in an elegant manner, so that even a red wine drinking retired builder can have a better understanding of our universe. I'm sure that there are such explanations, but I just need some help in finding them.
I recently read an article in the New Scientist that concluded with the words
"Indeed, the quest to understand the origin of the universe seems destined to continue until we can answer a deeper question: why is there anything at all instead of nothing?"
I must say that those words satisfied something within my mind, but I need a bit more.
Regards,
Mike