Sure, but naturalism is the primary assumption of naturalistic science. To assume “God caused the inflation” is a direct contradiction of naturalism.
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No it’s not, that’s the point.
The Big Bang supports a proposed entity outside the universe that somehow initiated cosmic inflation.
Hence my previous statement:
“In short, Big Bang needed an unexplained period of inflation (which was an EXTREMELY brief period of time - a 32-position decimal fraction of one second), which needed an entity outside of the universe to initiate - an entity that we have known for millennia as God.”
Nothing I wrote was untrue. What you call an entity that is external to the universe doesn’t matter, just like whatever theology you attribute to it doesn’t matter.
It’s science that claims the entity exists. So does Judaism, Christianity, and every other monotheistic religion.
The big deal is that science has claimed this for only 60 years. Monotheism has claimed it for millennia.
Hence Robert Jastrow’s somewhat humorous quote.
Sorry, but your argument is just not logical. Science cannot on the one hand hold to the assumption of naturalism and on the other hand attribute things to supernatural causes. That’s an obvious and direct contradiction.
If science holds to strict naturalism, then a hypothesis like the Big Bang that requires intervention from outside the universe has basically falsified itself. Alternatively, they could hold to that hypothesis and instead declared naturalism to be falsified, but that would undermine everything else they have based on the presumption of naturalism. There’s no alternative third option where they can hold both and be consistent.