I am going to cross post this to the other list also.
You wrote:
>A friend on another list group (Society of Christian
> Philosophers) posted the following message. I requested
>to post it here since Ithought one or two of
>you may have some thoughts on the subject...
>
>Steve Anonsen
>
>
>On 4/10/96 Scott wrote to scp@calvin.edu:
>
>Friends and acquaintances,
>
>As you know, the Hubble telescope is up and running, and
> giving us some interesting pictures. How will these new
considerations be taken into account in dealing with
cosmology, especially from a Christian perspective?
>
>Note:
>
>Hubble shoots empty spot in space (about 2.6 x 2.2 arc
> seconds) and finds 1,500 (approx) new galaxies. To make a
>rough approximation of what that might mean, that is
>1/29363160839th of the celestial sphere.
> Do a little rough math, and you can see there's a brand
>new mass problem looming its ugly head.
> On top of which, only about 40% of the galaxies
> seen could be described as normal.
> On top of which, size relationships vis a vis red
> shift are reaaaallly screwy, which means either (a) some
>things are so big out there minds must blow, or (b) the
>red shift don't mean what a lot of folks think it means.
>Most folks are betting on (b) which means, dump all
> current cosmologies.
Before people decide to go dump modern cosmology and create
an embarassment for Christianity, there are a few things
they need to know. First, it is predicted by most
cosmological models that extremely distant galaxies SHOULD
appear larger even with a larger redshift. I quote
Thornton, Misener and Wheeler, _Gravitation_, Freeman, 1973
p. 795
"Curved space should act as a lens of great focal length.
The curving of light rays has little effect on the apparent
size of nearby objects. However, distant galaxies--
galaxies from a quarter of the way up to halfway around the
universe-- are expected to have greatly magnified angular
diameters."
They continue with the mathematical discussion of this. You
can also find discussions of this in Michael
Rowan-Robinson, Cosmology, Oxford Univ. Press, 1977, p.
102-103. This is mathematical so I will not quote.
Another source is Raychaudhuri, _Theoretical Cosmology_,
Oxford Univ. Press, 1979), p. 65-68
I have not read in detail the reports of this Hubble
experiment and I was unaware that they had measured many
redshifts yet, assuming that the size-redshift relation
follows a particular pattern, then this data will tell you
which model of the universe is correct.
As to the extra mass, there is a better candidate. Low
luminosity galaxies which have just recently been
discovered. Apparently there are quite a number of them
relatively nearby. They have a lot of mass but not a lot
of luminosity so they were not seen. Christian arguments
against the age of the universe based on missing mass are
quite flimsy.
> Meanwhile, large scopes on earth and the hubble
> have used an internal interferometric technique to
>resolve the stars to the point that features of
>the stars themselves can be logged and measured (notably
>Betelgeuse, which is huge as stars go) and they don't
>look the way they were supposed to.
Can Scott Scurrah give a reference for the statement that
they "don't look like they were supposed to? This is the
first stellar surface to have been resolved other than the
sun's. The star type is quite different from the sun.
Considering we had quite a small sample of surfaces to base
any predictions on, I am not surprised that we learned
something new.
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm