The First Cause? Prime Mover Argument

[Faith No More]

You may note that in my original post, I never claimed that everything must have a cause, or must be impermanent. I merely noted that the things we experience seem to all require something further that brings it about, a cause, or mover if you will. It is a contingent observation, rather than a necessary truth. Thus the accusation of special pleading doesn't hold, as all I'm claiming is that there is a self-sufficient supporting thing for the category of things within our universe that seem to require external support. The criticism on the basis of quantum mechanics is fair, my belief is based on causality and time as being conditions for the possibility of human understanding. But I don't see how we can operate any other way. If the universe doesn't operate according to explicable concepts of time and causation then we literally cannot understand why anything is the way it is, or where it would have come from and must therefore remain agnostic about all things, which shoots atheism in the foot just as surely as anything else.

What you're experiencing is the conflict between the macro and micro scales of the universe.   We can understand the macro scale quite well, and clearly, our knowledge of it has to have some validity given how functional it is.  But when we start talking about how the universe arose, we have to get down to the mirco scale, our knowledge starts to fail and things get fuzzy.  Yes, that means that we struggle to understand how the universe operates on that level, but that in no way means that denying a supernatural explanation is on shaky philosophical grounds.

In conclusion, I am probably wrong, but everyone else probably is too. My experience of philosophy has taught me that every belief system has major problems with justifying itself in terms of its fundamental assumptions(including the scientific one), so what you believe is largely a choice. (for example my argument does allow for an infinite universe, or an infinite regress, I just don't think that either of those things are likely, so I don't believe them) To demonstrate, my belief system requires assuming that there is a gap in knowledge between things as they appear to be (colours, sounds, smells, tastes), and as they are independent of experience (????). The scientific world-view has its own irreducible assumptions, such as the assumption that a pattern of correlation can establish causation (I've seen 1 million swans and they were all white, therefore all swans are white). However both world views are consistent, given those axioms, so either can be reasonably chosen as a belief system

Philosophy does have major problems justifying itself, and yes, science does rest upon principles that cannot be philosophically proven.  The problem, however, for those that refuse to accept science's validity as the best source of knowledge is just how functional it is in the real world.  For all the philosophical messiness that comes with justifying knowledge and how empiricism is a valid epistemology, that just can't stop the overwhelming tide of functionality that is science and its ability to parse the cosmos much, much better than anything before it.

Science.  It works.