Because as long as we rely on light, or other sources of radiation to detect far away objects, we won't be able to detect those that don't emit any. I bet there's a huge portion of the universe that we don't know about because of this.
This is basically how my thought process started many years ago, combine that with a thought of experiment that I also thought of many years ago as a teen, in which my friends were quite blown away by: "let's take a rocket that hypothetically has endless fuel, and a robot that hypothetically never dies and always has a fuel source, and we let them go and go and go... will they the rocket eventually hit a brick wall, or a barrier of some kind (lets hypothetically say it doesn't run into any natural obstacles like asteroids, planets, etc), and if the rocket does hit an obstacle; who built it, what is the barrier made of, etc. It seems self-evident to me the Cosmos must be infinite, the idea of multi-verse theory I still disagree with, infinite is just something we will never be able to comprehend, but it doesn't necessarily mean everything will happen an infinite amount of times. Brian Cox's argument doesn't work for me, for many reasons of which I will not go into here. This concept for me was largely influenced by watching Carl Sagan as a teenager. I'm aware it's a fairly common train of thought now, but it wasn't when I was a teen many years ago.
It also does not make them correct either. That's why they are called "Theories".
I think we all agree on this thread now, it was largely just a misunderstanding of etymology and the need to describe the way those at the top of their field in astrophysics have historically let their ego influence the way they belittle others thoughts. I do understand the idea of you can only help people some much though, in regards to the flat earthers comment a few posts ago, etc. That being said however, there is no need to belittle them, if we appeal to the ancient philosophers for guidance they would simply tell us to ignore them, not out of spite though. Flat Earthers are not a part of this this discussion and not remotely related to the 13.8 billion years discussion though, so why that comment was even made is beyond me, it is not such an easily compared discussion in my eyes.
The discern of the value of various conversations, then equating them is one of the great weaknesses of our species in the current era, as we have seen with modern politics in recent years and whatbaoutism phenomena. Another reason I value ancient philosophy so highly, for they also had this problem in their time, and countered it with the highest virtue: reason. The problem is, most are no longer reasonable, and have turned to their animal side of the brain, for which the ancient philosophers also have answers to.
