No. of Recommendations: 3
One thing I will point out, the question of what was "before" the Big Bang is a nonsensical question (scientifically speaking). Not that it's a dumb question (any honest question is a good question!!), but given the generally accepted nature of the Big Bang, there was no "before". Space-time commenced existing at Event One. If there was no time until Event One, then there also was no "before".
Also, quarks are NOT the building blocks of electrons or photons (or several other particles). They are the building blocks of protons and neutrons. But not leptons (muons, electrons, etc). Might be nit-picky, but I'm better at the science than the philosophy, so that is what I can contribute. Not picking on you.
There was some talk about the origin being a large vacuum fluctuation, though I would then ask "vacuum fluctuation in what" since we know about vacuum fluctuations within our universe, but if the universe didn't exist then what was the fluctuation in? There may be a bit more to that notion (probably is), but not being a cosmologist I don't know the hairy details. Plus, I'm not sure how that would reconcile with the apparent fact that the MBR was caused by the universe cooling sufficiently that matter and anti-matter were able to annihilate**, but there was an imbalance in favor of matter (so not all matter was converted to energy), which comprises the material universe we see today. To the best of my knowledge, vacuum fluctuations produce symmetry; equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. So why would there be an imbalance/asymmetry if the universe began that way?
I tend to discount any human-based interpretations because, in the grand scheme of the universe, our entire galaxy is nothing. And we're just one species of ape on one world orbiting one unremarkable star in our one galaxy. We experience the universe, but so do chimps, and dolphins, and any alien life in all that vastness out there. Based on observations, we know the laws of physics apply wherever you look in the universe the same as they apply here, so the experience of any being will be similar/identical. At least in terms of interactions with the universe.
**The thought is that there was a quark-gluon plasma while the universe was hot and dense, so matter and anti-matter co-existed. But once the density was low enough, and the temperature cool enough (still really hot by our standards), the universe became transparent as the matter and anti-matter suddenly were able to annihilate one another, and the resulting radiation from that reaction is the MBR.
