Thank you, Paul, for your reply. I appreciate it.

There is no must for models. Models do not demand evidence. But... it is people that do the demanding, and so I do understand where you are coming from.

When scientists declare there is a closed system for energy, then they are not bringing any evidence that there is just one closed system and not a collective of systems, each closed by themselves.

There are areas within science that are considered a given. Models exist at that level (and people like them or not).

Oh, and I do have evidence that zero is a functional number, something I do work into my models. Then again, most scientists close their ears when I say that divergence is the most important observation to make in our universe. Separation (a functional zero) is found at the universal level, while unification is found only at the lower 'local' levels.

As far as I know, there was not a shred of scientific evidence when the Big Bang model went from having an origin of nothing to an origin of something all not that much known about. No one had evidence, but most scientists now agree that there was a prior state (of whatever qualities).

I think it is particularly at the rank&file level that folks are slapping each other with the demands of the scientific model, just to get ahead of the others. I personally do not care about getting ahead; I just want to discuss models because that is where the true interesting stuff can be understood. The scientific realm is larger than the scientific method.

Thank you again for your reply.