Universe, beliefs and salads

Belief is a good thing, though sometimes I think it can be carried too far.

"At the beginning of everything, there was nothing. No space, no time, no salad bars. All that nothing was something. It was a singularity. One that boldly decided to go where nothing had gone before - literally as there was no where to go to. And it went. It created the how, the what, the where and the when.

There were particles. These primal particles coalesced to form complex particles which in turn formed the atoms to create the first elements. And molecules and suchlike. The primordial world was creating a place to be as it expanded. There was no place outside of it. It was all that there was. There was no time before it. It created time as well as it went along. It created immense clouds of dust. These clouds of dust coalesced to form galaxies and stars and planets and solar systems.

This took billions of years. All this tumult also created in itself a small dot at the edge of a galaxy. Over time this small dot went through immense changes of its own - till it became a small blue dot.

This blueness led to the creation of more and more things joining together to give rise to very complex particles. Somehow, sometime in the distant past, some of these complex particles, became alive.

From here the story becomes much more interesting directly - since it has a bearing on all of us living things on this little blue dot called Earth.

The pace of things really picks up. We start to talk in millions of years rather than billions. I know for you or me there is not much difference - after a certain level of prettiness, one pretty girl is as pretty as the other - but in the cosmic sense, we can say the plot thickens. I still do not have much by way of personal involvement with the world today. Millions of years went by and these blobs that were alive were content to be so till some of them got together and became the first colonies of primal cells to become the first complex 'beings'. Slowly the various components evolved different functions to become a uniform 'whole'. Then the first of these beings decided to move out of water and inhabit land. They started moving about. They started eating each other. The salad bar that was the earth was changing now. It was a cell-eat-cell world. Living creatures now started taking the paths we can recognize: plants, animals; flowers, fruits, leaves; fish, frog, lizard, bird, mouse.

One specific line evolved a mechanism for keeping itself warm, but shunned feathers. These mammals as we know them today possibly started off as something resembling rats and shrews. They evolved into many-many shapes and sizes, one of these being primates. One set of these primates came off trees and started living on the ground. They started walking upright. A bigger brain evolved and so did social structures; acquired the ability to use tools; developed language and the ability to solve problems. Also, mastered, as Sher Khan said, Fire.

This mastery of fire changed a lot of stuff. It gave warmth. It afforded protection. It allowed one to cook.

Fire must really have had a tremendous impact on the wear on proto-human teeth in those early years. Food was tender now. Gathering fruits and roots was good, but now one could make stuff out of it. no longer would one be stuck with greens alone.

Fire made agriculture possible. Earlier, if one grew wheat, one would have to be a cow to eat it. Now one could cook into any number of things.

As they say today, fire, was a game changer. And it is in respect for this most stellar of human achievements it is that I DO NOT EAT SALAD. I do not want to negate the grandest achievement of mankind. I am the culmination of billions years of evolution. I am human and proud of it."

I had only asked the guy if he'd like some salad.