Sensure is after Newton, it was astronomers who ensured the upending of Newtonian physics, when they confirmed Einstein's theory of relativity by observing the predicted gravitational lensing of light passing distant stars. It was astronomers who gave us the key to the age of our universe. Edwin Hubble discovered that ours was not the only galaxy, and by examining the red shift of other galaxies moving in relation to our own, that the universe was expanding. It is remarkable in itself that up until 1925, it was not known that a single other galaxy existed, and after that date, that countless numbers of them did. Hubble's discovery of universal expansion was disturbing to those who, for both scientific and theological reasons, believed the universe to have existed forever, in much the same state. Astronomer Fred Hoyle was among those who developed the steady state theory, which proposed that the expansion of our universe was fueled by a constant infusion of new material from some central point, so that it had always appeared, and would always appear, much as it does today. But this theory was disproved with the discovery of very old quasars and similar very old and very distant structures, not found in the neighborhood of younger galaxies which are farther along from the point of the initial expansion. It is somewhat ironic today that the Big Bang proponents were largely religious, championing the theory in part for its assignment of a point of origin to the universe, which accorded with creation mythology, while the steady state proponents tended to be atheistic. Once the Big Bang theory was confirmed, this knowledge, refined over time, allowed man to at last pinpoint the age of our universe to approximately 13730 million years. Later astronomers like Carl Saden, Paul Davis and Timothy Ferris would continue to do more and more, to not only advance our understanding of our universe and the continuum of physics governing objects within it, but to profoundly affect the validity of theological models as well, making it impossible to rationally believe in a creator for whom human beings were at the center of our universe. I can more remember the professor in my department giving lectures about the early universe, and talking about how on the basis of this heat radiation it was possible to reconstruct some of the events that must have occurred only three minutes after the beginning, and everyone felt about laughing. They thought this was just a wild speculation. Nowadays, of course, it's pretty routine to talk not just about the first three minutes, but even the first three microseconds. As astronomical discoveries have taken us farther and farther away from our initial imagined posture in the center of our universe, theological systems have reacted in different ways. Some have simply shifted the vanity and self-centeredness, that led us to believe ourselves to be the center of a perfectly ordered universe away from the astronomical realm, insisting that even as we are confirmed to occupy an insignificant position in space, we remain the object of adoration for the creator of that vast space, so richly occupied in places beyond our very imagination. Other theological models have strengthened in their grasp of a theology in line with astronomical reality. Pandeyism is one such theory, demanding that any theological explanation must accord with the nature of our observed universe. And so, the astronomers, in their generations of work advancing our understanding of our place within our universe, have provided an inspiration to Pandeyism.