We think of our scientific accounts of the universe as well-founded and value-free. The Big Bang theory is surely one of those. But critics argue this is not the case. The origin of the theory is not so neutral. It was first proposed by a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaître, who was also a theoretical physicist. He initially called it the ""hypothesis of the primeval atom"" – the primeval atom being created by God. Unsurprising, as the father of cosmic inflation Alan Guth put it, the Big Bang “says nothing about what banged, why it banged, or what happened before it banged."" Increasingly, critics claim, there are challenges to the theory as the religious origins and miraculous character of the Big Bang result in ever more convoluted cosmological theories to account for our observations.
Will the future be one where we see all ideas, even scientific, as motivated by the perspective of the author? Should the fact the Big Bang was proposed by a religious thinker lead us to question its validity? Or is it possible to see past personal bias, and reach objective truth?
