Chapter Text
For as long as the human race has been in possession of both curiosity and observation skills, there has been the question of how exactly the world came into being. Though commonly starting with the planet that mankind resides on, eventually that branches out to the stars and other such features that are past the sight of the collective people. For this however, we are mostly going to focus on what Carl Sagan named the Blue Dot, Romans named Terra and we all call home. That is to say, Earth.
Science says the universe came into being during an event dubbed by committee the 'Big Bang'. It was billions of years ago and there isn't much word on what was around before that, if anything. There are claims that it was nothing, yet this nothing somehow spawned the universe into infinity and said infinity is always on the move and will probably burn up some time long past today.
Various different religions have put forth that the world was not some accident, as if it was an explosion caused by no fuse, but instead was crafted lovingly by a creator or creators that made our precious planet and cosmos with the express purpose of giving us a home to care for or wreck as we saw fit.
It can be noted that these two sides do not really agree with one another and have been known to throw each other dirty looks and comments that should not be repeated in polite society.
Amusingly enough, that is all correct (for the most part) and shows humanity is very clever at figuring out something when they put their minds to it. Sadly, it also shows they have a tendency to have a hard time getting along when they think they're right because they're all under the illusion only one thing can be true at any one time.
Thus making them entirely like the gods who created them, because the gods all act the exact same way.
At least one religion states that the cosmos was born due to a single word. That is not entirely correct. There were in fact many words. A group of them, the collective term for it being called bickering.
No one knows who started the project anymore. No one can remember, and those who recall have a tendency to be fond of stealing credit so their word only goes so far when they claim to know the truth and that it was them who got the ball rolling. What everyone can agree on, even if it is not out loud, was that very powerful beings pulled things into existence because being immortal and having nothing better to do with your time makes it pressing that you at least do something to occupy yourself with.
Perhaps before the Big Bang there were massive orgies and no one is talking about it because they simply were all too hungover from it later on, or someone accidentally broke the code that implicitly states you're not supposed to touch your best friend's sister and the silence is induced by embarrassment. Perhaps the beings were asleep and woke up from their nap. Perhaps there indeed was a game of dice concerning the universe.
However it all started, the universe was dreamed up by the will of very old and very powerful beings but it was not over the course of a short period of mere days. Again, we must remember these beings are immortal and have plenty of time to kill. A project is something to sink your time into, not to rush as if it were an errand that needed to simply be finished promptly.
Rocks flying through space and heat surging forth, stars bursting to life, dimming and exploding, all of this was giving the loving care and attention that any chef would give to a well-crafted dinner party. However, as we say too many cooks can ruin the soup, too many gods can also be… testy about what should be put where, what collisions should happen or be close calls, and just how many volcanoes really deserve to be on one planet and maybe they should be spread out through the entire solar system. After all, the one in question did have 42 planets. Surely 1,979 didn't need to be put onto just one of them.
Jehovah has been quoted to insist that once the telescopes found that one it would be bloody hilarious, and then went on to reclaim the name of his first human created and lock himself away with a bottle of suspiciously brown liquid and a typewriter, thus leading to evidence that he enjoys the written word more than he ever has wanted to tend to the universe's ongoing care.
While the arguments over the creation ranged from screaming matches to just general disagreements, bickering was the safe middle ground to which it could all be rounded. For the most part, like all projects, it started with many plans that quickly fell into chaos when things went wrong but eventually was sorted out to be a beautiful and wondrous thing that those involved could be proud of. Well, some of them were anyway. Some went back to sleep, some waited for the humans to evolve so some proper worship could be started, some went on to have too many kids and suddenly had to deal with several cases of family wars within their own pantheons. However neat or hectic it was though, our little planet Earth proved to be a sturdy little thing and seemed fit enough for the gods who still wanted to stick around to meet and converge while promising to largely leave the others alone.
Work was divided up between them, several sun and moon gods taking shifts to move their promised objects through space, the seas and fields tended to, drugs and alcohol granting the proper mind-altering visions. Plenty of work to be sure, but between these many and powerful beings, it was a manageable chore. And of course, when the work was being handled by someone else, this left time for the god's favorite pastime, actually being thanked for their project by those that had benefited from it.
Basking in the love and worship of humans who chose to think you're hot stuff can be quite time-consuming after all. Which, if you will recall, killing time was sort of the whole point in the first place. Competitions over the love of the people were inevitable though, so to avoid the headaches everyone was still getting over in the whole creation project, it was largely decided to allow the worshipers to pick their own teams and besides the gentle nudge to convert (though sadly what we as small humans think is gentle is not to the same standard as the gods', to wit they either do not realize or do not care) the deities would not interfere in the choices made by the masses. It should also be noted that humanity's decision to forcefully convert each other was a move that was only considered in poor taste if it was happening to your group of followers and thus gained no sympathy with anyone else. A move that, to the scoreboard, everyone involved has eventually found very ill-conceived and idiotic, and no one seems to want to take credit for thinking up.
This little bit proves that the saying, 'What fools these mortals be,' is indeed hypocritical but pointing that out to beings who can create volcanoes, storms, and rocks hurtling through space is largely self-defeating.
Though in conclusion, it is comforting to know that in all our flaws and strengths as a species, both cooperation to do something impressive and fussing about it the whole way, at least it came from somewhere and was not in fact a metaphorical bomb that went off with no fuse.