So, How DID We Get Here?

Last week, we joined some friends to discuss the Netflix series Midnight Mass. Among the many questions that came up was do you believe in a supreme being or force that created everything we know (Earth, Sun, stars, galaxies, the Universe, etc.)? As expected, the answers varied. One participant who answered yes said, and I’m paraphrasing based on my limited recollectability [facility to remember things], that he just could not envision or imagine something coming out of nothing, that is, out of the void something suddenly banged bigly and history began.

Scientists, of course, have wrestled with answering the question of what came before or led to the Big Bang. One theory posits that the Big Bounce came before the Big Bang. Here’s some background. Ashley Hunter tells us in “What Came Before the Big Bang” that the BB theory says “our universe began as a point of infinite gravity and density called a singularity. Then, in a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, it exploded outward, doubling and re-doubling and re-doubling in size at a rate faster than the speed of light.”

So, that happened. But what came before? Hunter lists these theories:

• An earlier universe collapsed into the singularity that started our own. This idea is known as the aforementioned Big Bounce.
• The universe was hibernating as “a small, flat, high-pressure space” until something set it in motion.
• There never was a singularity. Instead, all the energy in the universe was bound in the fabric of space and a fluctuation in the all-encompassing “inflaton field” led to a huge swell of energy (the BB) in one patch.
• We’re just one universe in the multiverse, which seems to be a kind of domino theory for what caused the BB.

To all this, the world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking says, “forgettaboutit!” Hawking believes (believed) that nothing was happening before the Big Bang. In short, before the BB, time did not exist. He offers this “simple” (yeah, right) explanation:

One can regard imaginary and real time as beginning at the South Pole, which is a smooth point of space-time where the normal laws of physics hold. There is nothing south of the South Pole, so there was nothing around before the Big Bang.

Chris Matyszczyk, “Stephen Hawking explains what happened before the Big Bang,” CNET.

As you might imagine, cultures, especially their religions, have also worked industriously to explain our existence. Here are a few examples:

• Judeo-Christian: Jehovah created the world and everything else in six days and then went to Disney World.
• China’s Cosmic Egg: The first living being was P’an Ku, who grew for 18,000 years inside a “cosmic egg.” When he hatched, he disintegrated (well, he was, after all, 18,000 years old already) and his parts became the natural world.
• India’s Version of the Big Bounce: Brahma came from nothing (did he know Stephen Hawking?), created the “waters,” and straightaway deposited his semen in them. Things progressed from there. The known world will eventually be destroyed by Shiva and then Brahma comes from nothing…and so on.
• Norse Fire Demons and Ice Giants: Before time existed, Niflheim, a place of fog and ice, and Muspelheim, where fire demons and fire giants lived, existed, separated by a great void. The Muspelheim fires melted the Niflheim ice and the drippings formed a giant cow and the first frost giant. More giants grew from the first giant’s armpit sweat and were breastfed from the cow. (Hmm. I suddenly feeling less enthralled with my Scandinavian heritage.) The giants spawned the gods (Odin and such), who created the natural world and humans.

And then we have Scientology:

75,000,000 years ago, Xenu headed the Galactic Federation, which was an organization of 76 planets that had already existed for 20,000,000 years. The planets were suffering a tremendous problem with overpopulation. Xenu’s draconian solution to the matter was to gather large numbers of people, kill them, freeze their thetans (souls), and transport the frozen thetans to Earth, which they called Teegeeack.

Catherine Beyer, “Scientology’s Galactic Overlord Xenu”

You can’t know what happened after that unless you join the church because “this information is available only to Scientologists of considerable rank, in line with their acceptance of revealing the truth as followers are properly prepared.”

So, all theories and lunavisions [insane imaginings] aside, the question remains: “How DID we get here?” I can offer my own idea here because, well, why not? My concept is called WHAT!, that is, the Waffle House Actuality Theory. In it, pre-Big Bang, the cosmos or void (take your pick) experienced a sudden craving for that well-known Belgian delectability and so had to create, in reverse order, the waffle, the waffle iron, Belgium, Belgians, Europe, Europeans, the Eastern Hemisphere, Eastern Hemispherians, Earth, Earthlings, the Solar System, the Galaxy, and the Universe and then added Waffle Houses as a kind of functional decorative flourish. Works for me.

All I can say about WHAT! is this. It may have happened. It may not have happened but it could have happened. As long as we have waffles, who cares about the rest?

(Image: Charles IX, King of France. He created the first legislation regulating waffle sales. Public Domain.)