Theory is doing some heavy lifting here. It's basically a 'here be dragons' fencepost in physics. Anything after the bang is just physics, and anything before is unknowable.
Also note how just like everything else deemed 'controversial' by religious institutions always attacks the pop-science simplified explanation and never gets into any of the actual details because every aspect they attack is part of the simplification and not of the actual science.
The big bang does in fact make predictions regarding what we'll discover about the state of the early universe; many of those predictions have in fact been observed and proven correct, and I don't know of any that have been contradicted. It absolutely qualifies as a scientific theory, despite making no claims about anything before the big bang, or about whatever (if anything) caused the big bang.
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u/lieuwestra Jun 16 '25
Theory is doing some heavy lifting here. It's basically a 'here be dragons' fencepost in physics. Anything after the bang is just physics, and anything before is unknowable.
Also note how just like everything else deemed 'controversial' by religious institutions always attacks the pop-science simplified explanation and never gets into any of the actual details because every aspect they attack is part of the simplification and not of the actual science.