dhw: The more you talk of “pure energy”, the more nebulous the concept becomes. How “pure” can it be if it is able to give rise to all these particles? I can understand the argument that matter came from energy, so perhaps we need a definition of “pure”. -I have to admit there is no such thing as pure energy in particle physics. All of us have trouble putting what has been found into words. What I envision to be present before the bb is a nebulous 'energy" which contains the particles we have found and the ones yet to be found. In my belief this is organized as a universal consciousness which went on to create the universe.
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> DAVID: In the aftermath of the bb there was plasma, and the particles fell out later (300,000 years)
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> dhw; But plasma is matter! -Correct, but it is at very high temperature, like a thick hot soup and all the particles are joined together, interacting in many ways all at once, but nothing is separate. This is sort of my concept of God, only much cooler.-> 
> dhw: Why does the first cause logically have to be pure energy? Why can't the first cause have been energy with particles? -Because all we know is energy and matter within the universe. We cannot know its form before the universe, but energy had to exist beforehand in some form, pure plasma with unseparated particles or perhaps separated.-> 
> dhw: QUOTE:“Since plasmas are made of charged particles every particle can interact with every other particle, even over very long distances. This makes plasmas behave very strangely compared to the other states of matter. When every particle “talks” to every other particle the material can form all sorts of waves and move in many complex ways. -Yes, plasma defined as seen in this universe.-> 
> dhw: If plasma is made of charged particles, I don't understand how particles “fell out” 300,000 years after the formation of plasma,-Because the plasma cooled and the particles separated into what we see now.-> dhw: And it doesn't help me to understand why the first cause should not be energy transmuting itself into matter.-And I don't know either. Only that our definitions are confusing. Please review the following from Strassler:-http://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/mass-energy-matter-etc/matter-and-energy-a-false-dichotomy/-He admits the confusion and the terrible terms but I think he makes a good attempt to clarify the issues, and the changing meanings of the terms.
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> dhw: You and I both accept cause and effect, but once again you insist on “timeless” energy being first cause, even though cause and effect depend on time. Following Ockham, why not opt for the simplest scenario: the first cause as energy eternally transmuting itself into matter? Since the only energy/matter we know of is that of our own universe, why assume that the eternal past has been any different?-With my further reviews of Strassler, I'll accept your proposal up to the juncture of when I try to interpret how God must have been formed, noted above. I've made the judgment that intelligence preceded the bb. Trying to imagine how it was formed is impossible, but it had to be energy, or energy-matter as the physicists define it. -> 
> dhw: Since plasma is matter, what is “plasma energy”?-Since the universe went through a plasma phase, at that point it was matter/energy combined. As you can tell I get myself confused, because I started reading this stuff in the 1960's when as Strassler notes particles were particles and not smudges in fields. Now we have bosons that make fields and forces, and fermions which are the main basis of matter. Whew! -But the whole basis of the universe is in a quantum layer. We are not in that layer but are affected by it constantly. And I think Kastner has a good approach to it. Your questions are helping me clarify my own thinking.

dhw; In any case I don't see how current theory about the course of events AFTER the BB can help us understand what happened BEFORE the BB,-http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-the-universe-boot-up-with-a-big-bounce/?WT.mc_id=SA_SPC_20160811-"Under those conditions Turok and Gielen found that the contracting universe would never actually become a singularity—essentially it would “tunnel through” the worrisome point by hopping from a state right before it to a state right after it. Although such sidestepping sounds like cheating, it is a proved phenomenon in quantum mechanics. Because particles do not exist in absolute states but rather hazes of probability there is a small but real chance they can “tunnel” through physical barriers to reach locations seemingly off-limits to them—the equivalent, on a microscopic scale, of walking through walls. -***-"Under those conditions Turok and Gielen found that the contracting universe would never actually become a singularity—essentially it would “tunnel through” the worrisome point by hopping from a state right before it to a state right after it. Although such sidestepping sounds like cheating, it is a proved phenomenon in quantum mechanics. Because particles do not exist in absolute states but rather hazes of probability there is a small but real chance they can “tunnel” through physical barriers to reach locations seemingly off-limits to them—the equivalent, on a microscopic scale, of walking through walls. “The fuzziness in space and time and the matter conspires to make it uncertain where the universe is at a given time,” Turok explains. “This allows the universe to pass through the singularity.”-***-"If the universe bounced once, a natural question is whether it will again. But not all bounce theories suggest we are destined to cycle forever through contractions and expansions—for example, even if our universe bounced before, we have no indication so far that it is heading for another contraction. The dark energy thought to make up the largest chunk of the cosmos' total mass-energy budget seems to be pulling our universe apart at an ever-accelerating rate. What is truly in store for the future is a very open question—about as open, in fact, as the issue of how it all got started.-***- “'I'm not happy that they do not admit that all their earlier papers should be disregarded,” says Stanford University physicist Renata Kallosh, who calculated errors in previously proposed bounce models. “They now make a new claim, and this new claim I don't believe.” Alan Guth, a pioneer of inflation based at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, agrees. “I'm still skeptical whether they have actually achieved a nonsingular solution,” he says. “I would like to wait and see how it develops. If they have succeeded in what they claim they've done, I do agree it's very important—even if it's not the best model for the history of the universe.”-"Some inflation researchers are more forgiving, though. “I think that this is a very intriguing line of research,” says Marc Kamionkowski of Johns Hopkins University. “The bounce scenarios, although not yet developed to the level that inflation has been developed, are promising, and it's imperative to try to develop them further. This paper provides an interesting mathematical result, in a toy model,” he adds, referring to the idealized universe the researchers worked with.-"Kallosh and others object to using quantum cosmology to describe a bounce, because the universe may not have been microscopically small at such a stage. “They have the collapse of a big universe—why should a big universe be different from what general relativity says?” Turok counters that any ultimate theory of the universe will have to incorporate quantum mechanics into general relativity, because the classical theory on its own is known to break down at certain extremes. “Nature is quantum,” he says. “We know that classical theories don't make any sense at a very basic level.”-"Turok and other critics of inflation have their own problems with the dominant theory. They charge that inflation requires unlikely circumstances to get started (a claim proponents disagree with) and that it does not resolve the specter of a singularity at the moment of the big bang itself. Furthermore, “inflation leads to this nightmare scenario of a multiverse,” Turok says, “which for some strange reason is surprisingly popular.”-"He suggests that the heated debate in the field and the heavy scrutiny new ideas receive will help scientists ultimately converge on a better theory of our origins. “People hold very strong opinions,” Turok says. “I freely admit I do and I freely admit my opinions aren't shared by 95 percent of cosmologists. I'm actually critical of all these theories, including the ones I invented. But today we have spectacular observations pointing us at incredible simplicity in the universe. To me that means that all of our existing theories are way too complicated. The observations are pointing at simplicity and it's our job to come up with a simple theory that will hopefully explain those.'”-Comment: Note the theory does not tell us 'how it all started'; back to 'why is there anything'. Only about five percent of cosmologists are in this camp. This model is a very simple universe, but the attempt to get rid of the singularity which is classical physics by using quantum mechanics may be a step in the right direction