I am only going to talk about the universe for the time being. The universe is thought to have begun with the big bang. I for one believe that most aspects of the inflationary big bang model are correct. However, our public school system does a piss poor job of explaining it and I feel the need to explicate the subject.
The Inflationary Big Bang Model:
About 15 Billion years ago the Universe was extremely condensed with all mass and energy compressed to some type of singularity. The Big Bang is thought to have been an expanding singularity or it could have been a planer event like an expanding horizon. We cannot possibly observe the state of the universe before the big bang. We can view light far enough away to see about 13.5 Billion years into the past.
We know the universe is expanding, this can easily be tested. Extrapolating backwards from an expanding universe gives us the infinitely condensed start of the universe. The big bang started - possibly due to an instability in the Higgs Field (See Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos"). When the big bang started, the universe was homogeneous. It was a collection of high energy and high temperature exotic particles. The universe rapidly cooled and hydrogen could form. Hydrogen was the only element until the universe cooled further and nuclei could form (this took about 3 minutes). There were small local inhomogeneities which had a slight gravitational pull and started developing the clumpy universe that slowly evolved toward the universe we have today.
There was no space for the universe to expand into, the expanding universe is the space. The inflationary model says that the universe expanded rapidly, all distances increased by a factor of over ten to the ten million! The rapid inflation helped spread energy differences and make the universe more homogeneous overall. It also lowered the energy density of space so high energy particles like gravitons could no longer form. Inflation also gives an explanation for the small inhomogeneities that lead the the first clumping of the universe. Quantum uncertainty principles dictate that there will be small fluctuations in say energy or position. The incredibly rapid inflation essentially stretched the quantum fluctuations to create small inblances in the uniform universe where gas begun to clump.
The clumping gases eventually lead to stars and galaxies etc etc.
Inflation is perhaps the most important part of the big bang and it is not mentioned in school. If you absolutely need a reason for everything and ascribe god to anything science has not yet explained, then all god or gods are needed for is perhaps setting off the big bang and maybe (doubtful) starting life. A god that has only done that is very hands off and does not fit the description of any god(s) praised by humans.
People ask, "what was here before the big bang?" This question is nonsensical as the big bang created our time. Before the big bang there was not time; time's arrow started pointing forward from the big bang. Sorry.
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