Dear Pierre
First I would like to make very clear something about my proposal. I shall try to be as clear as possible and I hope we do not have semantical problems. In the last part of the introduction of my essay I say:
...And I think that another way of growing our understanding of the universe cannot only be attained by abstract theories and experimental observations but by philosophical reasoning as well.
I must warn the reader that the proposal to be developed in the following pages does not stand somewhat allied to the established corpus of physics,but, however, it can be of great aid to get to the bottom of some of the most
fundamental puzzles in physics.
So, what I did was essentially based on "common sense" and my own experience in life and physics, but no more. Unfortunately, the size of the essay is limited and I had to fit this requirement, so many other important things were not published. I did a very deep reflexion of the universe and the essay was developed to be independent of any of theory (i.e. Newtonian dynamics, quantum mechanics, general relativity, string theory, electrodynamics, etc.) and any assumed or established experimental result. In this sense, I got rid of some of the prejudices that some of these theories create in our minds. Like for instance, the idea of the existence of atoms, the principle of energy conservation, the principle of relativity, the principle of equivalence, etc. So I started analyzing what I feel and observe from real life. What has been written there is pure philosophy that I expect most of the readers agree with. I am not being bias following a particular principle or approach from an established physical theory but by following only the laws of logic (the principle of no contradiction, induction, etc.).So, based on this, my reasonings led me to conclude that the universe has no beginning and no end in time and that space must be made up of something. If these conclusions contradict the Big Bang theory or the principles of Quantum Mechanics or General relativity. Then we only have two options, or my reasonings and principles are wrong or some of the principles of these theories are wrong. I believe that if we really want to make a revolution in physics we have to make a radical change, this is why I proceeded like this.
Therefore when you speak of the beginning of time and the Big Bang you are basing your arguments not on your own conception of the universe but on the conception imposed by the cosmological models which are essentially based on the general relativity. This being said, I would like to make a comment about the following paragraphs you wrote and that I believe they suffer from the same pathology:
Astronomers discovered a remarkable fact: When galactic light was passed through a prism, the light waves were seen to be stretched, indicating motion away from us at great speed. The more distant a galaxy, the faster it appeared to be receding. That points to an expanding universe!
Even if we are neither professional astronomers nor amateurs, we can see that an expanding universe would have profound implications about our past--and perhaps our personal future too. Something must have started the process--a force powerful enough to overcome the immense gravity of the entire universe. You have good reason to ask, 'What could be the source of such dynamic energy?'
These two paragraphs are essentially based on the general relativity and the astronomical observations based on the constancy of the speed of light and therefore in the red shift. The red shift can be caused by the receding of light sources but under other theories can only be caused by the presence of a material medium concentrated between the source and the observer. Therefore under the current accepted theories (accepted does not mean they are correct) the universe appears to be expanding and accelerating. Under other theories, which most probably you do not know because they are not widely known, the universe appears to be static (see for instance the steady model of the universe of Fred Hoyle, there are more approaches which I can provide you if you are interested, or you can check them yourself at wikipedia in cosmological models).
So, if you have gotten my view, I think you should reconsider your own conception of the universe letting aside any theory and any external influence. Thus, in the case of the Big Bang, it is senseless to ask: What happened before the singularity? Because under the cosmological model there was no time before the singularity. But it would be legitimate to ask: What caused the explosion? In this question, if we believe in the principle of causality (or the principle of sufficient reason, the cause precedes the effect), it is implicit that there must have existed something before the singularity to cause the explosion, because it is a common belief that something cannot happen by chance, if this were the case, then the principle of causality would be wrong.
I hope you have understood these points. Please feel free to make a comment.