1.4 - The Big Bang
1.4.1 - Religious Dogma pretending to be Science?
The big bang isn't "science", science is a philosophy. The big bang is a theory, one which has many convinced it is the most likely of the current candidates because a great deal of evidence seems to point that way. It is in no way a "certainty", nor would anyone who understands how science actually works be likely to say so. If you want to characterize it, it is a "best estimate", no more than that.
Theories are not "facts." They are intellectual structures built on observation, reproducibility, and the ability to falsify predictions. If we talk about Aristotle's error with the orange, and laud Newton for correcting that mistake... then we have to note that Einstein came along and corrected Newton, and the implication is that someone will very likely come along and correct Einstein (this is made most likely by the current state of quantum theory, btw) and so forth.
The big bang could be what happened. Perhaps. But science isn't saying that. Science is saying that if there was a big bang, we think, given what we know today, that we'd see the following results. And mostly, that's what we're seeing. Could we be missing some important ideas and data? Certainly. Any scientist worth their weight in chicken droppings would admit this. Does that mean we should stop thinking about it, or using it as our best estimate? Of course not. Not until it fails, as a theory, in some repeatable and definitive way that we can explain.
I wish more people really understood how science works. It is not a realm of facts. It's a collection of ideas with varying levels of confidence that were arrived at using a philosophical tool called the scientific method. Understand the method, and you'll understand why science produces results. Misconstrue the collective theories of science as a factual description of the universe and all you've done is turned it into another religion.
Science mutates constantly, refines, etc. That is its strength. Today's reasonably high confidence result can be tomorrow's amusing story at the water cooler. Because these theories are not dogma, they are not fact, they are not "engraved in stone."
Think of science as a confidence building scheme. The highest confidence theories are those that interlock the most with other high confidence theories and which have the most ways they can be reproduced, which give rise to the most testable predictions, and so forth. The big bang happened, if indeed it did, so long ago and so far away that we will probably never have access to anything but very old, very diffuse, and very secondary data. That is adequate cause for caution in assigning a high confidence level to any theory.
There are other ideas out there in the realm of cosmology, some of them quite fascinating. If you have an interest, by all means, go check them out, study them. But don't equate a theory with religion. Science is far more powerful than religion will ever be. It increases our knowledge, and it provides results, both positive and negative. The scientific method is easily the most powerful and effective tool humanity has come up with. Our challenge is to use it well. Our record is pretty mixed, sad to say.
Examining the big bang idea has led to all manner of new information about the universe. That is a more important result than it actually being correct, in my personal opinion. As long as the scientific method is followed, the very people who are looking to bolster the big bang theory will very likely be the ones to disprove it as they continually attempt to use the theory to make predictions and then test those predictions. You can't ask for more than that; and you certainly won't find such behavior in religion. Your pastor isn't likely to wake up one day, waltz up to the pulpit, and inform your congregation that he prayed humbly and honestly and faithfully for X, X didn't occur, and he's now resigning to become a practicing atheist. A scientist can and will turn on a dime when the prediction is X and the result is Y. That's why I'd rather have a scientist in my lifeboat than a priest. :)
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