Dennis_Murphy said:
From my understanding I was under the impression that the laws of physics were supposed to be universal laws for our universe and that they would remain such even as the Universe tore itself asunder as some theories claim will happen in the distant future?
Sure, it is true that physical laws are supposedly universal. However it's hard to define universal. What physicists usually talk about is called the symmetry of physical law.
If I drop a ball in China and a ball in the US then we would expect the same result. This is translational symmetry. If we do the same experiment a week apart, we would expect the same result, etc..
There are many symmetries in physics and they have interesting consequences. In using quantum mechanics physicists were able to discover that symmetries correspond to conservation laws.
Translational symmetry -> Linear momentum conservation
Temporal symmetry -> Energy conservation
Just to name two. However at the same time it is very interesting to consider time as symmetrical forwards/backwards. A basic understanding of thermodynamics will tell you that while time is symmetrical it is biased if we take into account entropy. It's rather easy to see this if you consider a ball laying on the ground.
If you didn't have the concept of entropy you might reasonably suggest that the ball might absorb heat energy and change it into kinetic energy and then the ball might start bouncing up and down. It seems quite absurd however there is nothing that would suggest it wouldn't happen if you don't consider entropy. If this scenario could happen then we reasonably could say that time is not biased.
Back to the question you posed, it's not really possible to answer your question. Physicists don't really know why before the big bang the entropy was really low.
The reason it's hard to figure out why entropy was supposedly real low is that physical laws are essentially approximations and we don't have an approximation that works well for the conditions of the big bang. Physics is based in empirical roots, so our "laws" are just theories that hold to a great approximation. Newton's laws work for speed much slower than the speed of light and objects in size of the order of meters.
If we have a single atom Newton's laws won't hold, we need quantum mechanics.
If a ball is thrown to almost the speed of light Newton's laws won't hold, we need relativity.
There are tons of scenario's in which certain theories don't hold and we need to resort to other theories. A problem with the big bang is that we don't really know what happens when you mix extremely large masses on extremely small scales, which would presumably be the conditions of the big bang.
My point is that while it is true the physical laws exhibit symmetries it's hard to say why the big bang would have a low entropy because we don't have a good understanding of the big bang. It's not to say we never will, but at the present time that's just the way it is.
I hope that in reading all of this a part of your question was cleared up. It would be impossible to completely explain it to you, but the whole concept of the big bang really is fascinating. Just from this post you can see that what you've asked is a thought that people are currently researching.