The multiverse isn’t an ad hoc invention to avoid God. It falls out of inflationary cosmology and string theory for independent reasons. Doesn’t “a step beyond the evidence” ignore that?

Fair. Eternal inflation and the string landscape are the reasons physicists take the multiverse seriously, not a wish to avoid design, and that should be said. The design proponent’s reply is that those theories are themselves unconfirmed, that eternal inflation requires its own fine-tuned initial conditions, and that a multiverse generator would have to be fine-tuned to produce varied universes at all. The debate is real. Trades one unseen thing for countless others is a fair summary of the cost; the physics that motivates the trade is a fair summary of the reason.