If looking backwards from the center of an infinitely long standing wave, one does get the impression of a rather large bang - but with no precipitating cause, the concept necessitates a creator of some kind.
It is a model that emulates the experience of birth, life, and then death, mimicking the experience of the observer.
I find this extremely crude drawing helpful in visualizing the other potentials available:
Not necessarily. It necessitates a cause, but there is no reason to assume the cause can only be an intelligent being. Every natural thing we have so far discovered the cause of has turned out to have been caused by natural processes. Why should this pattern not extend back to the big bang? Conversely, no precedent exists for any natural thing turning out to have been supernaturally caused upon scientific investigation.
Further, the big crunch is certainly an elegant model, but it assumes the universe has closed geometry (like a 4D sphere which spatially loops back on itself). This was discovered not to be the case by the COBE and WMAP probes:
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/cosmo/lectures/lec15.html
https://www.space.com/24309-shape-of-the-universe.html
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/about-us/103-the-universe/cosmology-and-the-big-bang/geometry-of-space-time/600-why-is-the-universe-flat-and-not-spherical-advanced
https://bigthink.com/natalie-shoemaker/what-is-the-shape-of-the-universe
https://www.zmescience.com/space/astrophysics-space/shape-universe-really/
Of course this is not to say it is certain, only that this is what appears to be the case according to the best currently available evidence.
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