But surely in this case what is being tested are the patterns of outworking of the Big Bang, not the event itself - and since the outworking is the entire universe, there are a good number of data points (10^80 or whatever it is). The properties being accounted for are regularities (aka constants and constant properties). Or from another angle, the Bang itself is an ongoing process, not a contingent event… the blind spot then becomes the unique origin of the event.
My point, and my intention entirely. Science is being properly limited, on my model, to the realm of the measurable. It has the same methods and results if there is no God, or if God produces every effect directly. You don’t even need to embrace the metaphysical belief in primary and secondary causes, so long as you accept causality itself.
I’m not sure, though, how one could ever “measure”, or understand, an individual event in isolation. One can only deal with a contingency scientifically by assigning it to a class of similar events (like the class of asteroid impacts, or the class of changes occurring after the Big Bang).
Identical, or mathematically predictable, events are no problem. Classes of events with a statistical distribution can be understood statistically, though the individual causes of each event may not be fully understood: we may assume that molecules in a gas always move by Newtonian collisons, but would have to accept that God or goblins or human influences on quantum wave collapse may be at work when we aren’t actually able to measure those collisions.
Take an example from another thread - suppose that one found that the octopus, and the octopus alone, really did have a completely different system of life from all other organisms. Perhaps it comes from an otherwise extinct tree of life, or an alien world, or was created by God or an alien race or unsuspected intelligent dinosaurs…
Measurement, explanation and understanding all depend on finding something to compare it with, or it’s like trying to steer a stationary boat. There is no pattern on which to theorise. As soon as you found a comparable fossil on Mars, however, you could change mere speculation into an hypothesis - based on the observations you had made on octopus biology already.
I’ve forgotten what point was being made by Russell in 1952 about a teapot orbiting the sun, but if one had been found at the dawn of space travel, and remained a unique anomaly, what useful science could be done on its cause?