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The Big Bang Theory does not propose 'something coming out of nothing'. Indeed, it does not presently suggest any conditions prior to the 'Planck Epoch' at 10^-43 seconds. Step 1 is a question mark. There are separate hypotheses as to what that question mark might be, but in science, it's an unanswered question.
"Something from nothing", meanwhile, is an elegant description of the various creation myths. Also, you shouldn't capitalize 'atheist'. It's not a proper noun.
"Something from nothing", meanwhile, is an elegant description of the various creation myths. Also, you shouldn't capitalize 'atheist'. It's not a proper noun.
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First of all let me clear up a common misconception. The Big Bang isn't the creation story of the atheist "religion," it is a valid scientific model that applies to all people and is accepted fact in the scientific community whether any individual wants to believe it or not. Atheists and the religious can and do accept the Big Bang theory. Another misconception is that the Big Bang was everything coming out of nothing. We don't know that the Universe came from nothing. What we do know is that the Universe existed as a singularity (which can be counted as "something"), and that the Big Bang was the expansion of spacetime from this singularity and that it accounts for the current expansion of the Universe today.
To get to your actual question: No we don't actually know what existed or what occurred "before" the Big Bang, or the existence of this singularity, which was "something." To humans and our very limited perceptions, the Big Bang was the beginning of all known existence, and the question of what caused it or what might have existed before it is extremely difficult to answer as it lies outside the realm of observable science. The Big Bang theory explains the earliest development of the Universe from Planck time moving forward, not the origin of the Universe itself.
Despite these limitations, speculation abounds within the scientific community. Many of these speculations employ string theory and M-theory, which is related to but at the same time detached from the Big Bang theory. We may never know the answer to this question and it continues to be an active research topic.
To get to your actual question: No we don't actually know what existed or what occurred "before" the Big Bang, or the existence of this singularity, which was "something." To humans and our very limited perceptions, the Big Bang was the beginning of all known existence, and the question of what caused it or what might have existed before it is extremely difficult to answer as it lies outside the realm of observable science. The Big Bang theory explains the earliest development of the Universe from Planck time moving forward, not the origin of the Universe itself.
Despite these limitations, speculation abounds within the scientific community. Many of these speculations employ string theory and M-theory, which is related to but at the same time detached from the Big Bang theory. We may never know the answer to this question and it continues to be an active research topic.