No, you do not see what he is saying.<br /><br />To use your "she is half pregnant" analogy, science can say when the embryo has implanted, but not when conception has occured because there is presently no way of sensing that event when it occurs inside the human body. (Thus, the curious fact that a woman is said to be four weeks pregnant when she only ovulated two weeks ago; it is dated from the first date of last menstrual period, because that's the last reliable date available.) Science can't detect conception; it can only detect pregancy, which isn't actually the same thing; there's a short window of time between conception and the beginning of a pregnancy which is beyond the capabilities of medical science to detect in most cases. (The <i>only</i> time it can be detected is with in vitro fertilization, where conception occurs outside the human body, in a controlled laboratory environment.)<br /><br />It's a crude analogy, but the point is that the Big Bang theory does not tell us where the super-dense initial universe came from, or what occured in the very earliest days of the universe. It only describes what happened from that point to now. Detection capabilities cannot penetrate beyond the cosmic dark ages, and the equations worked out so far to describe the universe don't apply in such an extreme environment. They need to be refined, and that will take a long time. It will probably be the work of several generations.<br /><br />I don't think it's fair, or honest, to equate that to a "cop out". Basically, you are criticizing scientists for being honest and precise in what they are saying. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em> -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>