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Well, this depends on your conception of simplicity. It certainly makes for a shorter explanatory sentence, but at the cost of undermining our ability to truly explain anything at all, since we cannot know whether a given result is due to the laws of nature or is a miracle--or both. And if it's a miracle, we have no reliable access to its reasons for occurring.



When physicists (and you guys know who you are!) say things like "the universe arose from an infinite multiverse", they are bullshitting, because structure does not come from "infinity", structure comes from rules (which may generate some structure that is infinite), and if you can't say anything about the rules then the answer is simply "I don't know".


> structure does not come from "infinity", structure comes from rules

I can't say I understand this statement, but I'll venture this friendly amendment: explanations come from rules, or at least a method of description that allows us to say why result A obtained and not result B. (Or maybe an explanation that the process was random, and therefore that this part of the process cannot be explained.) So I think the problem--if there really is one--is with the word "arose" in your sentence, not "infinite." I can see no problem with invoking the infinite in a useful explanation (note that theists do this all the time!), but I can see a problem with having no account of why our universe "arose" and not some other one.

Of course, I think that just about every physicist would be happy to admit this! (Those that don't think they have an answer, that is--possibly involving the anthropic principle.) After all, answering questions is their job, so acknowledging an unknown is just the beginning of a research agenda, not an admission of defeat.




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