When did the big bang become accepted?

Answer 1

It is difficult to identify a precise date that the Catholic Church accepted the Big Bang theory, but sometime during the late 1920s would be seem to be a plausible time. The Big Bang theory is a comparatively recent development in the history of science. Interestingly, it was a Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor Joseph Lemaître (1894 - 1966), who was also a professor of astronomy and physics at the Catholic Unviersity of Leuven in Belgium, who first published his proposal of what is now called the "Big Bang theory" in 1927. He was elected President of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences a few years before his death. Monsignor Lemaître's suggestion met with some skepticism at first, not so much from the Church, but from the scientific community, which, however, accepted his views within a few years.

Answer 2

Till about 1965, there was still some support for a Steady State model of the universe. In that year, the cosmological microwave background was detected, and found to correspond closely to predictions following from the Big Bang model. Consensus accordingly swayed massively to support of the Big Bang model, and has since become the single accepted model explaining the large scale structure of the universe.

Answer 3

Probably like the Jesuit priest, George LeMaitre, who first proposed the idea of the Big Bang-- he'd think it was a pretty good scientific effortl.