Chris,
Keep in mind Big Bang cosmology is based on the fabric of spacetime being physically real, not just a mathematical model. This is a bit like thinking epicycles are due to giant cosmic gear wheels turning in the heavens, in a literally clockwork universe.
Without time as an actual physical vector(blocktime) in that geometry, the concept falls apart.
A point I've frequently made and which no one refutes(Tom dropped the discussion) is that it is contradictory to assume both that space expands and a stable speed of light can otherwise exist, against which to measure it. For example, if two galaxies x lightyears apart were to expand to 2x lightyears apart, that is not expanding space, as measured in lightyears, but an increased distance. The only rational explanation for redshift is as an optical effect, likely due to light traveling as an expanding wave, not point particles and redshift being a consequence of receiving the resulting signal as a quantum of that wave.
In reality, any clock is subject to creative and destructive forces. I think the most stable clocks are galaxies themselves. They are the most spatially stable and least deflected by outside action. I think the whole notion that a galaxy could form from intergalactic gases in 14 billion years is about as possible as the earth forming in a few days, 6 thousand years ago. Presumably the inflation stage distributed the initial energy fairly broadly. Then it would have to start gravitationally coalescing out of this radiation, then forming structure. Zeeya put up a blog post, questioning BBT and I've provided various links. one of which shows a star in this galaxy to be older than 14 billion years and a second generation one at that!
Beside redshift, the only real concluding proof for BBT is cosmic background radiation, but in a spatially stable universe, in which redshift is due to distance, this radiation would also be the solution to Olber's paradox, redshifted off the visible spectrum.
One thing to keep in mind is that the light from distant galaxies gets here by passing between all the intervening ones. If we think of gravity as curving space inward, the mathematical opposite(cosmological constant) would be that it curves outward in those intervening spaces. So the light would have to be "walking up the down escalator." That's why overall space appears flat, as these balance out. Those ripples in the background radiation are the shadows of ever more distant galaxies.
"Is the fastest of all of the clocks closest to the "true" aging of the universe,"
If time were a vector from past to future, one would think the fastest clock moves into the future more rapidly, but the opposite is true, as it ages quicker and thus moves into the past more rapidly.
