GameOver22 said:

It seems like everybody ignored your post, but I think you raise a number of good points. The one thing I always found ironic about the scientific method is that it actually utilizes an invalid argument form (affirming the consequent). The way the scientific method is structured, it says,

1. If hypothesis A is true, B will be observed.

2. B is observed.

3. Therefore, hypothesis A is true. 

This is an invalid argument form. As a counterexample:

1. If there is fire, then there is oxygen.

2. There is oxygen

3. Therefore, there is fire.

Obviously, this is false because the presence of oxygen does not mean there is fire. In the same way, the first argument is false because the presence of B does not mean hypothesis A is true. This is why there is such an emphasis on repeatability in science, and scientists are always quick to point out they don't prove theories. The best they can do is repeatably confirm them, and they argue that repeated confirmation allows theories to become knowledge.

Overall, I agree with you that the scientific method is the best system we have for gaining knowledge about the empirical world, but it is still a flawed system.

That is nothing like the scientific method, the scientific method requires testing all known controlable variables to insure a hypothisis is correct.

1. If there is fire, then there is oxygen.

2. There is oxygen

3. Therefore, there is fire.

4. Test whether there is fire.

would be the scientific method which is at it's most basic:

1. Use your experience: Consider the problem and try to make sense of it. Look for previous explanations. If this is a new problem to you, then move to step 2.

2. Form a conjecture: When nothing else is yet known, try to state an explanation, to someone else, or to your notebook.

3. Deduce a prediction from that explanation: If you assume 2 is true, what consequences follow?

4. Test: Look for the opposite of each consequence in order to disprove 2. It is a logical error to seek 3 directly as proof of 2. This error is called affirming the consequent.

What you proposed would have failed the 4th step let alone the more complete method:

1. Define a question

2. Gather information and resources (observe)

3. Form an explanatory hypothesis

4. Perform an experiment and collect data, testing the hypothesis

5. Analyze the data

6. Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis

7. Publish results

8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)

1. If you wish to believe in the Big Bang Theory or other creation theories that don't rely on a devine being, explain to me where the very first object in the universe came from. They say the Big Bang started from a very small amount of elements that began moving extremely rapidly in a dense state. Well, what about where those elements came from? They had to come from somewhere, correct? Just a little philosophical conundrum.

Sorry, but that's simply not how the scientific method works. Your A-> B example would be a logical fallacy and no scientist would ever commit that, but the point is that the method works by temptative falsification, not by absolute confirmation.

In your terms:

1 If hypothesis A is true, B will be observed.

2 B is observed.

therefore

3 A is currently compatible with observations, ie currently not falsified

if NOT(B) were positively observed (maybe at a past point in time with better experimental apparata) then strict logic would imply NOT(B)-> NOT(A) and A would be a falsified hypothesis

Obviously, you can make up a lot of theories that are hardly falsifiable, but they are simply not good scientific theories: a good theory should both 1) have explainative/predictive power 2) be falsifiable.

String theory seems to have a lot of (1), because it seems to explain mathematically a lot of what emerges in several other more mundane physics theory. And yet it has, currently, basically zero in the way of experimental falsification. That is why most theoretical physics don't consider it a "good" theory notwithstanding all the explaining and semplification it seems to bring.

On the other hand special and general relativity or quantum mechanics not only did explain a lot, but have been tested against, literally millions of times in thousands of different experiments over the last century.

A scientist will never tell you that they are "true" in an absolute sense, but will rely on the fact that they survived falsification in those thousands of experiments and thus that they are likely to correctly predict the behaviour of the world in real cases similar to those tested. If one day a single experiment will - say - falsify general relativity, then scientists will look for a theory that a) predicts world behaviour at least as well as relativity in the previous N cases b) is compatible with that last (N+1)th result.

The method provides a ladder of increasingly accurately predictive theories, not logic absolutes based on faulty induction. Google for Popper.

I don't know how the universe came into being, nobody knows. I also don't have to believe anything, I just see it as something that we will never know (at least not in my life-time).

There is an infinite amount of possibilities, it's not only "Big Bang" or "God", but theories like the Big Bang are way more likely than the outdated and evidence-less theory of God.

I'm still waiting for someone to explain why the universe needs a creator, but God does not.  I mean, if we came from something, and it has to be some divine being that's pulling the strings, who's to say that God, the almighty puppetmaster himself doesn't need to have been created.  If the universe can't be infinite, why can god?  

The argument comes from the claim that there cannot be an infinite chain of causes, hence, there needs to be a necessary first cause that terminates the causal chain. As to why God does not need a creator in the same way as the universe, that is the whole idea of a necessary being. It is not contingent and does not rely on something else for its existence. It is meant to supply the ultimate foundation upon which everything else is based. This is why you see many religious debates center around the concept of a necessary being and whether it is a meaningful term. In many cases, the gulf between atheists and theists comes down to whether they find a necessary being to be a reasonable proposition.