Robert Morein said:

Physicists have a saying: "The truth is in the numbers."
They consider it bad form to attempt verbal explanations when the equations
speak for themselves.

However, as the question of ultimate origin does not at present have an
answer, we simply respond to it with our own Gestalt.
This is what Mike McKelvy is doing, and it is very difficult to avoid,
unless one has received the indoctrination into physical reasoning that is
given to all first-year physics graduate students.

I would simply point out to Mike that his intuition, as with all intuition,
is useless in these matters.
Our brains were designed to think in three dimensions so we could find our
way out of the woods, not fall off cliffs, and not get burned by fires. The
addition of frontal lobes capable of formal operations, as per Piaget, is a
very recent evolution, and very incomplete.

Mike, this is not meant to be a putdown, but if there is any hope in
understanding the nature of ultimate origins, it lies in careful
mathematical study of cosmic background radiation, vacuum physics, dark
matter, "brane theory", and "string theory."
We are all free to speculate, and it's very entertaining to do so, but man's
gestalt is useless in this pursuit. If there is a truth to be found, there
is no reason to assume that it will be intuitively satisfying.

I know you've been educated, Bob. It says so on your dossier.

Boon