Last word on the Big Bang.

[hyksos]

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that concerns itself with knowledge claims, and what counts as knowledge. Epistemology is in many cases, a set of agreed-upon criteria that set the ground rules for whether a written or verbal claim constitutes a claim of knowledge.

If our epistemic bar is "Does not make sense to me, personally", then the Big Bang theory is wrong coming in the door. One cannot "make sense" of a spacetime singularity, that up-and-decides that being a singularity is boring so better that it transform itself into a universe. That story does more than slightly give off non-physical vibes. Rather it is just flatly un-physical. That story is an affront to metaphysical sensibilities of all stripes.

ON THE OTHER HAND, if our epistemic bar line is "Accurately predicts the results of telescope observations" then the Big Bang is resoundingly successful. In 40 years of various telescopes measuring various things , from white dwarf cooling times , Thorium-90 abundances in galaxies , globular cluster cut-off ages , redshift Hubble constant measurements , and the CMBR, the evidence that the universe "began" in a Big Bang is piling up to the ceiling and beyond.

Hate the big bang theory with all your might. Hate it to your bones. Speak negatively of it in public. Chastise it on the internet. But do not deny what is honestly measured and innocently observed.

[edy420]

The Big Bang theory is flawed, in the sense that most of our information is based on what we see with the technology at hand.

Our observations may only provide speculation, towards the beginning of the big bang. But we can not speculate before the big bang, based on our observations.

However, Sir Roger Penrose, is working on a Big Bang model, where the universe cycles through Big Bangs, expansions, a freezing period, then back to a new Big Bang. He has a few mathematical problems to resolve with the black holes swallowing the universe again, but it's hard to calculate without observing it in action.

[curiosity]

GR is an incomplete theory, because unless gravitons are actually discovered gravitation remains a mystery!
Dark matter is no more than a fudge factor introduced in an attempt to explain why observations don't match predictions.
The only thing we really know, is that our universe was once much smaller than it is today, but a theory of everything is not likely to be published anytime soon.
Hubris is no substitute for facts!!!

[bangstrom]

Hate the big bang theory with all your might. Hate it to your bones. Speak negatively of it in public. Chastise it on the internet. But do not deny what is honestly measured and innocently observed.

Denying a human interpretation for a set of observations is not the same as denying the observations.
Trustworthy observations and measurements do not guarantee the correctness of our interpretations. There may be better interpretations than those that are the most popular or metaphysically satisfying. Even the best appearing interpretations should be considered suspect if they fail to explain some well-supported observation.

However, Sir Roger Penrose, is working on a Big Bang model, where the universe cycles through Big Bangs, expansions, a freezing period, then back to a new Big Bang. He has a few mathematical problems to resolve with the black holes swallowing the universe again, but it's hard to calculate without observing it in action.

If black holes swallow bits and pieces of our universe and small black holes coalesce into larger black holes until the whole "shebang" is one enormous black hole, we would be back in a full-blown universe again except one where everything is turned inside out. That is, space and time would swap axes.

GR is an incomplete theory, because unless gravitons are actually discovered gravitation remains a mystery!
Dark matter is no more than a fudge factor introduced in an attempt to explain why observations don't match predictions.

GR works perfectly well as a geometry- curved spacetime. I see no need for gravitons.

Dark matter is a fudge factor and dark energy is an even greater fudge factor. That makes the mass of our universe 96 percent fudge factors.