: You asked me:: "Allow me to ask you a causal question along the same logical lines as you are using; if you believe that God caused the Universe, then what caused God?"
: I've certainly pondered that, but the answer would be that God, being God, is eternal; otherwise, why bother with the concept of God?
: The light bulb has finally gone off, and now I understand you. Because I have started with the assumption that something cannot come from nothing (and not a first principle) I cannot deduce an answer using logic. Fair enough. But if I may, let me ask you this: are not all your (and science's) first principles nothing more than assumptions themselves?
Yes, totally so, which is why falsifiability is crucial to science.
Science only attempts to address the physical world; the world that can be measured using physical tools. If there were no falsifiability, this would be as any other system of belief; a religion of science.
However, if you take a scientific theory and use physical data to prove that it is not the case, you have proven that the axiom under question is false. You can never prove what is true in science; but you can prove what is not true. Since science has no place in imponderables and the non-physical, there are only a limited number of possible axioms; by elimination, you can reach a scientific model that approaches Ockham's Razor; the most simple explanation that adequately explains the observed data.
Science and logic don't try to explain intangibles; any conclusions reached using science and logic can only be applied to the scientific and logical world; that it, the world according to scientific and logical axioms; the physical "here-and-now".
: After all, when you get right down to it, it is impossible to really be sure about anything; all first principles might derive from an elaborate illusion. You yourself may be a brain in a jar.
Quite correct; so you build a model based on self-consistent principles as your theory for explaining the observed world. The logical model is not holier or more important than the others; but it *is* self-consistent and it *is* possible to disprove axioms within the logical framework; the logical framework is open to logical criticism.
: Ultimately, reliance on first principles comes down to a matter of faith.
Which is why falsifiability is the defining point of science and logic.
While logic is an edifice like any belief system, you can disprove logical postulates - by conducting experiments in what appears to you to be the real world; since logic only deals with what can or cannot be proved, the logical worldview is not dependant on undetectable imponderables.
Of course, you can't actually say that "this is the truth"; but the logical and scientific approach to the observed world explains the observed data without having to fall back on an immaterial and unprovable axiom (i.e. God); it is entirely self-consistent - and that is the difference between religion and science.
: As a concluding aside, I don't necessarily have faith in God; if I did, I'd be a religious man. I simply cannot come up with a better explanation for the origin of the universe than God. It's not a belief so much as an exasperated shrug.
Each to their own; I don't feel there is any need to tie yourself into knots asking a question you can never answer. We appear to ourselves to exist; this is all you can ever say.
Gideon.
