Think about this. Up a ways in this thread, we mentioned that black holes might be rotating, like the Earth is turning. And that because of the turn (or spin), light might only reach escape velocity at the equator of the spinning BH, but be dragged in at the poles - centrifugal force acting on the light at the equator.
What if there weren't many stars? What if almost everything that we call a star is a spinning BH that we are viewing at the equator?
What if dark matter and dark energy are really black holes seen on end, at the poles, where light wouldn't have any equatorial spin to help it escape?
What if dim stars were slower spinning black holes, where the light barely escaped at the equator?
What if red shift had to do with the way the black holes spun - the way light escaped the BH - rather than with how fast stars were traveling away from us? Or maybe seen on "edge," neither from the equator or the pole?
What if the universe is way less than a billion light years in diameter, and we have applied the wrong theories to judge its size?