Regardless, all this this conjecture is invariably happening within the boundaries of our minds, which seems to be composed entirely of physical phenomena.
We can’t see objective reality since all we see and sense have to go through our brains. What we can do is to interpret what we see and try to arrive at something that represents a consensus among our different perceptions.
The universe is a cosmic horror, life emerges and with it untold suffering.
The very notion of perfection is also emergent (not to mention self relative), outside of the conceptual framework of the observer's mind perfection does not even exist.
The universe is beautiful, life emerges and with it all understanding, love and joy.
Two sides of the same emergent coin, the nature of all experience was forged by what it took for our ancestors to survive to the next generation.
The belief was primarily based on a deterministic view of it, with the notion that everything comes from something, and becomes something else.
Every moment has two perfectly balanced sides, with perfect knowledge of the laws of the universe giving you a perfect understanding of all the transformations that took place from one moment into the next.
There is of course the debate over whether it is not deterministic, if the Everettian view is false then possibly not, but more to the heart of the matter, this idea that because a greater and greater understanding of the laws of the universe unravels all its dynamics, all its reasons for being and acting the way that it is. This idea that the fact that there is a reason for everything, an order to everything, is what makes it perfect.
The thing is I have a hunch that an inquiry all the way to the bottom will eventually leave us with a bunch of arbitrary laws and constants, which have no further explanation for their being just so, other than the anthropic principle.
It seems hard to me to ascribe such a scenario the quality of generic "perfection" even solely from the perspective of my biased human mind.
I agree with you that perfection is a notion alien to the objective reality, which simply is, without any judgements or qualifications.
So to go back to my original comment, I think it would be more accurate to simply say that I've seen no reason to believe that anything we experience cannot be explained by physical processes.
Maybe consciousness itself will be the most relevant concept left inexplicable? Not the process of sustaining it, but the actual subjective experience of it. Why not have a universe of automatons processing their worlds and inner minds in all the same ways, but without anyone home? Why are we home, and how are we assigned to our homes?
I don't know that these questions are enough to make me believe in the "supermaterial" or supernatural, my hunch is just that our current awe and inability to begin to approach the subject may simply be due to a lack of understanding of the processes at work, but that's admittedly based on faith.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/02/science/end-of-universe.h...
Not that that’s a negative thing at all. The universe is perfect without any need for magic to arbitrarily insert its fingers into the clockwork.