I know, I know, never start a post with "To quote wikipedia..." Nonetheless, I felt it appropriate to inject Occam's Razor at this juncture.

"... The principle is often expressed in Latin as the lex parsimoniae (law of succinctness):

entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem

which translates to:

entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."

Or to put it more simply: "... when multiple competing theories have equal predictive powers, the principle recommends selecting those that introduce the fewest assumptions and postulate the fewest hypothetical entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood."

So, if we were to, for example (with bias) take the big bang model versus, say, the Electric Universe model. And we were to say, okay, on what principles are the these based?

EU model would basically say: Electrical interactions, charged particles, electrical interactions in stellar plasma (said charged particles), formations/concretions (galaxies, stars, planets, asteroids) caused by electrical interaction in stellar plasma and with standard "matter".

Big bang model might say: The force of gravity, matter, mass. But wait, those don't quite explain how gravity holds the matter together over distances. So, we'll add black holes in the middle of the galaxy to hold it together. But wait, the interactinos between galaxies and nebulas still isn't right, so we'll add dark matter and dark energy to make it "work"... But we can't find the dark matter directly, so.. What's next?

Which model is simpler? They both seem at first blush to have explanatory power based on observations (despite mainstream reluctance to look at models outside the BB dogma).

Okay, maybe I'm over simplifying the EU model (though not by much, since really the main force in that model is simply electricity/magnetism, all other considerations are fairly secondary effects of how electricity and magnetism work on charged particles), and playing up the number of weird things in BB model. But still. It seems like the BB model has to keep getting propped up by more and more "exotic" theories to keep up with the problems it faces.

At what point does Occam take over and "shave" the model or supplant it with a simpler more explanative model? At what point can we consider the BB model sufficiently falsified? I mean we've already found thing after thing after thing that the model DIDN'T expect or predict AT ALL. Even after accounting for those things in a "new" BB model, there are yet mroe anomales that AREN'T accounted for nor predicted... So, at what point do the accumulated inconsistencies and the lack of directly "finding" what we're looking for add up to "failure" of the model? Or are we destined to patch an ailing model forever and still have it be insufficiently explanatory?

Not to say I complete disbelieve the BB model, since it's so engrained in our current culture. BUT, I can still see lots of unresolved issues that either need explanation or need a new model that sufficiently explains them.

Know what I mean?