[baudrunner]

Our experiences of the past have demonstrated a thorough willingness to attach our beliefs to the untenable. Perhaps this is because so long as their is some inexplicable component to our perceptions then we may be satisfied that there will always be a search for answers. To heck with Ocam's razor.

I personally find it pompous and irresponsible for anyone to even attempt to estimate the age of the Universe. If we compare the entire Universe to this balloon of Eddington's, and it is a valid analogy to explain the relationship of stars in the expansion process, then scale the balloon to the size of this earth, then it might very well be that the entire observable Universe which the Hubble telescope allows us might occupy no more than a cubic inch deep in where would be located the earth's crust in this comparison.

Those who believe in a creator no doubt willingly accept that it is entirely possible that everything can just pop into existence everywhere all at once and begin expanding. But the currently accepted cosmological theory seems to be too much an accommodation to both science and religion, and that is just plain unscientific.

In earlier posts I have suggested that there is a creation front at the periphery which continues for perpetuity. Nothing in observaton or scientific theory refutes that, rather it supports it. I have also written that space is as much a creation as the matter which occupies it. Philip Gibbs says as much in his paper, but he does not pretend to understand it, which is why I consider his contribution to be integral.

An expanding Universe which had a beginning and which continues creating at its periphery and which can only be observed from within, as supported by Gibbs, is naturally one which must have had a starting point. That is logical. But since there was nothing before the beginning it cannot have had an isolated starting point because it could not have had a location, no reference point of origin, otherwise that would describe nothing as having had a place and that can't be.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. This three dimensional reality is strange and in order for it to exist there have to be strange accommodations like relativity, space/time, QM, and a starting point with no location. When it comes down to it, I would rather we blended science with the pragmatic than with the untenable so long as we understand that all those strange accommodations have their place in our practical understanding of reality.