That 'lack of any one cause to start things going' within the theory (the string theory) actually means that the theory allows a large number of solutions (maybe infinite, I'm not sure), only some of which are compatible with the universe as we know it; and there is no way to choose one of the solutions over the others. That is, nobody can say why 'this' solution happened instead of any other.

But this is a problem with the string theory, not with the universe.

Another big problem with string theory is that it is impossible to verify experimentally in practice now, and will be for the foreseeable future. Because of these and other problems, string theory is losing support as a viable explanation of the universe.

I barely know what I'm talking about here, so whoever is interested may take a look at this book by Lee Smolin, "The Problem with Physics" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_...h_Physics).