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I could be wrong, but I think there are different views of the dimensions, beginning and end (is there an end?). The most recent concensus is that we are speeding up, not slowing down, from the big bang. Everything is moving farther apart at an increasing rate of speed, if I understand this correctly. Here's an interesting bit I just read. Check out the attached videos:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_ ... 136415.stm

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Behold, now is "THE ACCEPTABLE TIME,"
behold, now is "THE DAY OF SALVATION" --
The apostle Paul, NASB

I would say here, the words scientist and create as in the above caption from the the suggested site says everything for itself. A computer took pictures and scientists created the image. Beautiful to look at, but all the same, man made.
Remember Deuteronomy 4:15-19

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Jesus
K L Aghijlar
neither friend nor foe

some things can not be seen with the unaided eye,



sorry can't seem to shrink the sun down

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Kola,

Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

It would have been a shame to shrink that photo, kola! Wow!! I love those SOHO pictures.

Karaleigh — don't you think you might be over-egging it just a little bit by equating the graphic at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10136415.stm with idolatry?

_________________
Jesus
K L Aghijlar
neither friend nor foe

I beg your pardon?

So, where are we with this? Is the universe round with a center from which we are moving away? Or, is it something else?

It's not that we're moving through space away from a well-defined centre, but that space itself is stretching. Everything is therefore moving away from everything else, and from wherever you are, everything else will appear to be moving away evenly in all directions.

I have asked this question before (not here) but no answer is ever given. If space is stretching then what is space made of? Only physical entities can accomplish physical actions. Stretching is a physical action. What qualities does space have that allows it to sretch?

And how can we measure that space is stretching? Or is stretching space simply a conjecture with no hard data to support it?

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We find that space is expanding by the fact that as we look in every direction we see the galaxies moving away from us with the exception of a very few that are gravitationally connected to us.

When we look at the light from the galaxies we see that the light is "red shifted". That is that the wavelength is stretched out. That tells us that the emitting object is moving away from us. The further away the galaxy is, the faster it is moving away.

Note that as a Firetruck with its siren blaring passes you and moves off the pitch of the siren sound goes down.

This effect with galaxies was documented for the first time by Edwin Hubble in the mid to late 20s. I am not unsure of the dates. The work occurred over several years. It is now called Hubble's Law.

Two separate studies in two separate institutions at about the same time confirmed and expanded on the research in 1998. They found that the universe is not only expanding, but that it is expanding faster and faster over time.

For a long time scientists were able to use the notion that the universe expands and collapses over and over to get around the need for a creator. The studies in 1998, with their ever faster expansion, cut that off. There is not enough mass in the universe to allow for an oscillating universe.

Check out Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. In the original edition look at pp. 127 and then 141. On 127 he talks about how "This means that the initial state of the universe must have been very carefully chosen indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the beginning of time. It would be difficult to explain why the universe would have begun just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us."

Some argue that it does not go back to the beginning of time, but the difference they are talking about is trillionths of a trillionth of a second.

One page 141 of the same book Hawking says "What place then for a creator?", but he bases that on the notion of a universe that collapses and re-expands. He wrote this book in 1988. That was taken from him in 1998. He is then left with p. 127.

The page numbers here are from the first edition. Later editions have these comments on different pages.

I can give you footnotes on all this and scans of textbook pages if you want them.

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Thank you, John. I'm familiar with all the points you've made, except that I haven't read Hawking's book. But none of that answers my question of how we can measure that space itself is stretching. We can measure the distance from earth of objects in space, but can we measure the distance from earth to the edge of space? It seems to me that the "expansion of space" must be a theory based on observations of objects in space and not space itself, which is to say we cannot measure the expansion of space; we can only infer it.

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Cris,

Here's a start. Try google, so much is best understood in mathematical terms. If you are like me, we have to rely on non-mathematical analogies.

http://www.physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/ph ... iverse.pdf

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Behold, now is "THE ACCEPTABLE TIME,"
behold, now is "THE DAY OF SALVATION" --
The apostle Paul, NASB

I don't think that we can understand it. When we get into such things there get to be things so far out that we have to just understand the best we can.

I have spent a lot of time with professional astronomers and they can't describe space except in such terms.

That is the nice thing about being being the children of the One who created space. We don't have to understand it all because He does. Nothing that we need to do requires that we do.

One thing that we are called to do does require us to understand enough to be able to give a defense of our faith. Not because it is put at risk in any way, but so that we can bring people to Christ. I wish Christians, and especially pastors understood the scientific notion of the origin of the universe better. I have seen too many Christians in general, including pastors, say some pretty silly things because they did not know better.

Some day we will understand -- after space and time are no more --

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That is a good piece. Thanks

The author makes a good point about the idea of the multiverse being untestable.

Skeptics of the Gospel often like to to trot it out and think that they have buried us. We can then ask them for their evidence.There is none.

"The English physicist Stephen Hawking, whose work is said to have contributed to the formation of the principle, nevertheless called it "a counsel of despair."
From: Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Timothy Ferris, Morrow, New York, 1988, p. 356

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