As an atheist who is a critical thinker but not per se a "skeptic" I am continually baffled when more skeptical friends say "That can't be right because we don't know how it works."
My problem is there is no all knowing God and we sure as hell aren't one, so why do we have to understand something before it can be true.
So my question is "Does the universe have to make sense?"
I think atheists are more often people who accept that we cannot know everything and don’t have to have all the answers. People invented gods to explain things that they couldn’t understand. I’m Ok with not having all the answers.
Love that!
No because it is an inherent human desire to make sense/find regular or recognisable patterns, etc, in everything around them.
Take clouds for example, How many of us, even as adults, often stare at clouds and think we see familiar or fantastically mythical shapes/forms in the cloud shapes, the shapes that are not there in reality but only because our minds simply expect them to be there?
The vast majority of us have a need to adhere to a regular schedule/pattern within our daily lives and to ever so many, even the slightest deviation from the regularity can often be a cause for great concern/upset to them.
Nature, which makes up everything around and within us, knows no such thing as sense/regularity in my opinion, nature simply does what Nature has always done and always will do regardless of what we humans think/deem/decide should be its 'rules/laws' of behaviour.
There is a human condition called curiosity. For some when a question is asked they search for methods that will help lead to an answer. Often an answer will lead to more questions and you have the makings of scientific research.
So to answer your question, for some "yes" for some "no".
If we understood the universe, there would be no need for curiosity. Everything would be boring, dull, uninteresting.
We as humans can't comprehend the universe or space! If it did make sense to us we wouldn't be stuck on this rock with so many other species! When we do understand it or enough anyway we will be leaving "earth"! If we already haven't already and the government is LIEing to all of us!! There is so much more than the common human knows and maybe ever will!!
The universe makes sense (except for quantum mechanics) but people don't.
What you are asking is actually unanswerable with yes or no. We don't know enough about the universe to make a judgment. And make sense to whom? My grandmother (and I am a grandmother)? My young grandson? My friend who is not very scientific? Who is wise and educated and all-knowing enough to even begin to make a logical statement about this? The universe and possibly more - universes - as far as we know (which is, not really) is infinite - was here in the beginning, and will be here till the end, if there is one. There is no such thing or person ever who could answer this question.
But the question is does it have to not whether it does. It arises because of more day to day things than cosmology things like "To stop a wound bleeding you can use the herb Yarrow." It's an old folkloric thing that many skeptics I know dismiss out of hand because nobody has done a clinical trial, well nobody is going to spend half a mil to prove something you can grow in your garden works, the economics aren't in favour.
So it's not only about the big questions but also about how much traditional knowledge gets dismissed out of hand because either we can't figure out how it works or we can't be bothered looking. Of course a lot of the old traditional stuff is bollocks but not all of it.
Why? Math and logic assume that reality works according to their rules. That’s an assumption built into the human psyche. But we finding more and more that assumption is wrong.