Can't seem to get away from that spirituality piece...

Nope. I can't.

Why do I seem to want to either "prove" the singulation process, with some equation, or throw out the spirituality piece?

Sean mentioned the word singulation in class the other day! Wow! He talked about his not believing in the standard concept of "time", because time needed a position and a frame of reference, and physics say that before the Big Bang, there was nothing, so we have no frame in which to place a long time ago, or place something in the future. I think I'm explaining this correctly.
I mentioned that now, due to quantum mechanics, energy did exist before the Big Bang, but it (IMHO) singualted a the moment of the bang, so there was something before, in order to have something after...

I'll have to look up what the physicists say "happened" when the BB occured. So if there was nothing before (like in traditional physics), what came together and what was that thing that happened, called?