I’m fairly convinced of this: While all else may well owe its present state of existence to some degree of evolution, I’m convinced that the beginnings of Stuff, surely the beginning Big Bang, did not evolve. Consider the demands of exactitude required when, about 13.8 billion years ago Matter, at some infinitesimal point somewhere in—in what, space? What space?—began explosively, expansively, becoming Universe; began becoming all that we puny inhabitants of one of its innumerable objects seem to think it is: a center-less, bending, rule-abiding, complex Thing. Nothing located in Nowhere began Something about 13.8 billion years ago. In less than a millionth of a second (but, hey, did time exist?), the Universe expanded from particle to a billion times bigger than the Solar System. You can read yourself about what happened after 100 seconds as things began to cool, and how, after three minutes the temperature dropped to a billion degrees, allowing hydrogen and helium atoms to form. If science is right, a billion years later, the first stars and protons galaxies formed. Let me remind us all—everything had to work perfectly the very first time in order for our universe to exist. There were no do-overs.

We think we know this: at some point there was Nothing located Nowhere and suddenly Something the size of a subatomic particle in a fraction of a second exploded and became pretty much everything. I’ve just taken pains to declare, in my opinion, that the initial event had to occur prior to evolution.

Should I mention? We know now, but no one did know until recently, that among the many absolute, exactingly required occurrences for things to be what they are, is the essential difference in the masses of neutrons and protons; the ratio being 939.56563 to 938.27231. Well, in fairness, while the reality of neutrons and protons is as old as the original explosion of Stuff, and my knowledge of them remains zilch, until quite recently, humans knew nothing about them. But, whew!  . . . neither did we know that, were that mass difference between neutrons and protons miscalculated at all, (did you hear me, “at all”) “the universe as we know it could never have developed.” 

Really now, how can we sentient creatures have remained for so long so unaware and unconcerned about a universe that spreads (nearly as we know) across 546 sextillion miles from end to end? Wait! There is no “end to end” to our universe that would take us—at the speed of light— 93 billion years to cross. That much we think we know.

Play with alternative beginnings if you’d like. Opt for God. Or, “Steady State” or “Eternal Inflation,” or “Oscillating Universe.” Many do, in the effort to understand Stuff. Let me repeat: We think we know that at some point there was Nothing. You know, located Nowhere. But suddenly something the size of a very heavy, small, subatomic particle, in a fraction of a second, exploded and became Something, something I’ve just taken pains to declare as an event that seems to require action prior to evolution. Evolution can make mistakes (we may be one of them). Evolution can take all the time in the world (and isn’t Time itself worth investigation?), evolution can discard along the way. Evolution can explain a lot of things but it can’t explain the beginning.

And, before the Big Bang? Stephen Hawking wisely suggested that events before the Big Bang are “simply not defined, because there’s no way one could measure what happened at them.” Fair enough. All ideas are fair game.

So, on this day, a particularly warm Washington State day in a particularly beautiful place at the north end of Bainbridge Island, I walk along a long, shell-blanketed beach, where my companions are geese, loons, mergansers, scaups, kingfishers, and goldeneyes, and an occasional boat. I search for agate. I’m grateful for much of what has evolved but I am in awe of what seems to have begun and remains, Mystery.