- Thu Jul 29, 2021 11:36 am
#89164
bn,
It's true that no one could observe the Big Bang, but does that mean that no conceivable observation could refute the Big Bang? Nothing in the stimulus says what the object of the observation has to be. In fact, scientifically, we think there are plenty of observations we can make in the present that are relevant to the Big Bang theory, although none of those observations has the Big Bang directly as its object.
Consider: I'm outside a baseball stadium and a ball falls from the sky, with a direction that indicates it probably came from someone hitting that ball very hard from home plate. In other words, I made an observation relevant to determining whether the batter hit a home run, even though I'm not in the stadium, so I couldn't see the batter. To make this even more relevant to the stimulus, it's conceivable that I could observe the ball leaving the stadium with a trajectory indicating it's likely to have been hit by the batter as a home run. Isn't it then fair to say that there's a conceivable observation I could make that would refute the claim that the pitcher struck the batter out? I don't have to be "present" in the stadium to conceivably make an observation that could refute a claim.
What answer choice (A) is making you think is that the conceivable observation has to be of the Big Bang. No observer could have been around then, so no one could observe it. But that's not the requirement of the stimulus - any observation made at any time, if conceivable and able to refute the Big Bang theory, would suffice. That's why answer choice (A) is incorrect. That no observer was around at the birth of the universe does nothing to show that no conceivable observation can refute the Big Bang. Maybe the Big Bang theory posit that, if the Big Bang happened, it would have aftereffects extending to the present day that should be observable. So the relevant observations could be from anywhere or any time.
Robert Carroll
