"Many physicists have been fighting a rearguard action against it for decades, largely because of its theological overtones. If you have an instant of creation, don't you need a creator?"
Spirited: Indeed, the rebellion against the supernatural personal God whose living Words created all things ex nihilo broke out during the Renaissance. At that time certain theologians and intellectuals had eagerly embraced a myriad of ancient occultisms (especially the ancient 'sciences' of Hermetic magic and evolutionary Kabalah) flowing into Christendom at that time.
From then till now, Westerners have been traveling a broad, smooth highway---ever seeking, never finding--in search of alternative 'theories of everything,' meaning anti-human neo-pagan evolutionary monist cosmologies bespeaking the mechanical emergence of everything from an impersonal one substance. This way of thinking (systems thinking) has given rise to "modern" scientific animism (i.e., Marx's dialectical materialism, particle theory), multiverse theories, Big Bang speculations; wave and fluctuation theories (ancient emanation-from-one-substance speculations), quantum physics (animism), evolutionary thinking and much else.
Most people do not realize the occult implications of modern 'scientific' systems-thinking.
For example, the seedbed of Big Bang speculations are ancient global cosmic events described by Eastern Advaitans and Greek nature sages as Cosmic Eggs.
The "science" and "psychology" behind the idea that mind evolved from matter can be found in the yogic science of Ayurveda and Hatha Yoga which outlines in both modern and ancient texts the glandular and neurological basis of Enlightenment.
Royal Astronomer Lord Martin Rees champions multiverse conceptions in the hope that in at least one or more of them living beings created themselves from primordial matter who are far more advanced than our own life-forms.
Rees believes that if this is the case, then super-intelligent aliens might be capable of simulating in their brains or in a super-computer the complex history of our universe, meaning the universe we inhabit is a simulation lacking real substance and existing only as a mental construction, a matrix, in the minds of highly evolved aliens who seeded our world with life and travel through time in order to control man's evolutionary progress. (Scientific Mythologies, James A. Herrick, p. 216)
The idea that the universe we inhabit exists only as a mental construction is very similar to Hinduism's Brahman. Brahman is the Great Cosmic Spirit – the Ultimate One Substance, the Void, impersonal Mind, or Essence of material phenomena (God-particles, bosons, and/or prakriti matter), meaning that the universe exists only as a mental construction in the mind of Brahman: brahma satyam jagan mithya, or "Brahman is real, the world is unreal." (swamij.com/mahavakyas)
Rees proposal is also similar to the hypothesis presented by Olaf Stapledon, a scientist who has always kept one foot firmly planted in neo-Gnostic science fiction accounts and imagines our universe to be an artifact of the Star Maker.
Building off of Stapledon's fantasy Carl Sagan suggests that we are "star folk" made of "star stuff." (Herrick, pp. 216-217)
Replace Star Maker with Brahman and "star stuff" with prakriti matter and sarvam khalvidam brahma, or "All is truly Brahman" (swamij.com) and we have ayam atma brahmam: "The Self is Brahman." (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.5)
In other words, the Self is God.
In the caption of his book, "Just Six Numbers," Rees reveals the ancient occult Hermetic basis of his propositions:
"The ouraboros. There are links between the microworld of particles, nuclei and atoms and the cosmos." (Rees M., Just Six Numbers, P. 9)
Framed in the magical formula of Hermes: "as above, so below."
As a powerful occult symbol, the Ouroboros or Uroboros means the seething power, creative and/or evolutionary impulse or energy of the serpent figuratively depicted as either a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The serpent's body is often depicted as the Great Chain of Being, Cosmic Tree of Life, or with Darwin, the Tree of Life.
The occult Tree of Life with its' multiple dimensions and life-giving energy systems not only powers the evolving and/or unfolding universe but reaches into the psyche, (meaning that psychic matter is the source of mind), stirring imagination, bringing psychic powers and even awakening pre-human memories of when the scientifically "enlightened occult elite," the modern Gnostikoi, were fish:
"Remember when you were a fish...." suggested Jean Houston, the prophet of the possible, in a workshop to awaken ancient pre-human memories. Nearly a thousand evolved life-forms (people) dropped to the floor and began moving their 'fins' as if to propel themselves through water. "Notice your perception as you roll like a fish. How does your world look, feel, sound, smell, taste?" Then you crawled up on land said Houston, so now you must, "Allow yourself to fully remember being a reptile....Then some of you flew. Others climbed trees." A zoo of beastly sounds erupted from the herd of pre-human birds, reptiles and apes. (America: The Sorcerer's New Apprentice, Hunt and McMahon, p. 218)
From the time of the ancients serpent power (evolution)has been important to religious and mythological symbolism all around the world. Within the Egyptian mysteries, serpent power was associated with,
..."the elemental forces that were in play before the creation of the world." (Carl Teichrib, Gods of Ancient Egypt, p. 182)
Elemental forces= evolving prakiti matter, bosons, fermions, particles, elements, etc.
Westerners received the Truth, but turned away from it in favor of modern "science magic," thus they ever seek reality but never find it.