the Job of the "accelerating universe"

"Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? 
Can you establish their rule on the earth?" (Job 38:33)

"It almost feels like we're taking our first baby steps as a species, as a civilization, towards actually having a model of the universe that will hold up over the next 500,000 years," proclaimed Perlmutter shortly after discovering the acceleration. He may be right -- the present model certainly paints a coherent picture of the universe we see around us -- but if there is one lesson to be drawn from history, it is that time is a harsh judge. Many theories have had their day in the limelight, only to disappear into the wings when another one appeared. Over the centuries each new generation felt it had found, or was close to finding, the right answer, and it is worth remembering that Ussher was not alone in drawing the wrong conclusion about the age of the universe. Many of the greatest minds in science were equally blinkered, trapped by their own beliefs, or the prevailing assumptions of their day. Newton was every bit as religiously dogmatic as Ussher and fought to reconcile his science with the Bible; Darwin exaggerated the Earth's age to allow enough time for species to evolve; while Einstein was forced to concede that the universe was not static, but expanding -- his "greatest blunder." Given this track record, it seems all too likely that our present picture of the universe is flawed in some way."

-- Measuring Eternity: The Search for the Beginning of Time, Martin Gorst, 2001, p. 291.