It's Just A Theory

hat tip = X-Christian (commenter) at Moyers & Company

Denying the Big Bang:

In the first episode of Cosmos, titled “Standing Up in the Milky Way,” Tyson dons shades just before witnessing the Big Bang. You know, the start of everything. Some creationists, though, don’t like the Big Bang; at Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis, a critique of Cosmos asserts that “the big bang model is unable to explain many scientific observations, but this is of course not mentioned.”

"Not mentioned"?

Ya mean like on the gazillion other occasions when Tyson has said, "I don't know" in response to questions like:
What came before the big bang?
--and--
What does the big bang have to do with dark matter and dark energy?

When he doesn't know something, Tyson admits it, and he doesn't pretend that his imaginary friend has the answer, but conveniently left it out of that one stoopid book.  C'mon, Ken - we all know you're a douche, but it's important for you not to let the rubes see you actually being a douche out in public like that.

Anyway:

Alas, this creationist critique seems very poorly timed: A major new scientific discovery, just described in detail in the New York Times, has now provided “smoking gun” evidence for “inflation,” a crucial component of our understanding of the stunning happenings just after the Big Bang. Using a special telescope to examine the cosmic microwave background radiation (which has been dubbed the “afterglow” of the Big Bang), researchers at the South Pole detected “direct evidence” of the previously theoretical gravitational waves that are believed to have originated in the Big Bang and caused an incredibly sudden and dramatic inflation of the universe. (For an easy-to-digest discussion, Phil Plait has more.)

Pushing back against the Denialists when they inevitably try to pull the False Equivalence  crap:

First - there're some big differences between the use of "theory" when we're talking about science, and the use of "theory" when we're indulging ourselves in conversational conjecture and speculation and such like that there.

Conflation of the two meanings is a very useful rhetorical trick, but it's a fucking trick. Please stop using it; please stop falling for it.

Second - here's a handy, and (I'm fairly certain) incomplete list of some other minor items that are also "just theories":

1. Atomic Theory
2. Theory of Matter and Energy, also Conservation of Matter and Energy
3. Cell Theory
4. Germ Theory
5. Theory of Plate Tectonics
6. Theory of Evolution
7. Big Bang Theory
8. Chaos Theory
9. The “Gaia” Theory of a Sustainable Earth, which is illustrated with the idea of Spaceship Earth
10. Theory of Quantum Mechanics
11. Theory of Special Relativity, which subsumes The Theory of General Relativity which subsumes Newtonian theories of motion
12. Photon Theory of Light Energy and its speed of light
13. Theory of Electromagnetism as begun by Maxwell and continued with the work of others
14. Theory of Radioactivity or Nuclear Theory
15. Theory of Molecular Bonds
16. Theory of States of Matter - or is this part of Atomic Theory and Molecular Bond Theory?
17. Theory of Thermodynamics—hey, I guess this theory takes care of the States of Matter and the Molecular Bond theories.
18. Theory of Homeostasis within Living Organisms
19. Constructivist Theory of Learning
20. Theories of Self and Development - mental processes in the brain.
21. Theory of Gravity

I realize pointing these thingies out should be tres obvioso by now, but repetition is the surrogate mother of political success (aka: the brood bitch of propaganda).  Turn-about's fair play, muthuh fuckuh.

And just to put the cherry on top - your eyes may have been opened by the Lord's eternal awesomeness, but if you've got your head up your ass, all you're gonna see is your own shit.