[Metric]

I often see threads concerned with the existence of the universe, how physics plays into it, and how God relates to "first cause" arguments. Here I'd like to put forth my own thoughts on the matter...

The main issue as I see it is that the laws of physics cannot explain their own existence -- their own manifestation in reality. Often times I see people invoke "quantum fluctuations" to explain the existence of the universe, but this is in some sense misguided as a fundamental explanation -- for quantum fluctuations to take place, you first need a universe operating according to the rules of quantum mechanics. This is likely to be the case for ANY physical theory useful for describing what happens within the universe -- in order to invoke such a theory as an explanation for the existence of things, you first need a universe where "theory X" is already established and functioning.

As an analogy, consider your car. Suppose you go into the glove compartment and find a rough blueprint for the car. If you want, you can improve on this blueprint through exploration. With time, you can gain a better and better understanding of the car through a process vaguely similar to science. However, the question of "why is my car a Honda and not a Porsche" is not to be answered by this process. In fact, there may be some excellent reasons that the blueprints you have tend to converge more and more over time to something known as a "Honda Civic." Something dictates that Honda blueprints describe the physical reality inside your garage, while Porsche blueprints (as far as you are concerned) remain an abstract concept existing on paper only -- but that something is not on the blueprints!

So here we are in our universe, gaining better information over time about the laws of physics. This is a profound and worthwhile endeavor, but my feeling is that it is not going to be terribly useful for understanding what gives the universe its physical reality. I certainly believe that something gives the universe physical reality -- I don't see much of an alternative. But I don't think understanding that something is going to be accomplished by finding the "next order correction" to our understanding of the laws of physics. By its nature, it is likely to be a qualitatively different enterprise.

Now some definitions from this point of view: Virtually everyone believes that there is a something which grants our particular set of physical laws reality. If you believe (or assume) that this something has some properties vaguely similar to what we would call consciousness or self-awareness or personality, then you call this something God, and people call you a theist or deist. If you believe (or assume) that this something does not have consciousness or personality associated with it, then I'm not sure what you call it -- maybe just "something" for now, but in any case other people call you an atheist. But my contention is that whatever this "something" is, it is almost certainly not described by physics in the usual sense of the word, though we all believe in "it" in one way or another.