When it comes to our Universe’s origins, scientists discuss the Big Bang, cosmic inflation, and other theories. Why doesn’t “God” come up?
Here in our Universe, the main goal of the scientific endeavor is to make as much sense of all of the phenomena that we can perceive, observe, and measure in some way. We strive to not only describe the nature of reality as comprehensively and accurately as possible, but also to come up with models of reality that enable us to make accurate predictions about what we’re likely to observe given any arbitrary set of initial conditions. In the best-case scenario, we can concoct a fully-formed, logically consistent physical theory that describes our reality, and it will have an enormous range of validity, enabling us to make predictions even about hitherto unforeseen phenomena.
This method has been tremendously successful for science, as we’ve discovered what makes up the Universe, in what proportion, and what the force laws are that govern physical scales ranging from the subatomic to the cosmological. We look to the Universe itself, posing questions to nature directly via scientific experiments, measurements, and observations, in our attempts to reveal what governs reality, including to…