Theories about before the Big Bang and about many aspects of string theory are on an equal footing with religion in terms of the ability to be tested or "proved."

If you mean they are immature and so they cannot be properly tested yet I agree; on the other hand they do make predictions and some of those predictions are testable, so I don't think those models are on an equal footing with religion. For example, only some dimensionalities are feasible, precisely because the others do not fit with the known facts.