Hello Mr. Papageno, thanks for taking the time to respond.

You said:

"Everything we know about the universe is bound by space and time. You can’ t use relationships within space/time («finite things require a beginning») to explain something outside space/time, because you don’t know anything outside of it.

You make the assumption that what we know about this universe also applies outside of it, and that is flawed reasoning."

That's just it -- I'm not using assumptions about the universe to understand what's outside of it.

I'm using what we know about this universe to understand how this universe functions.

All we need to know is that this universe is finite, and therefore, does not extend infinitely into the past.

Once we know that, we know that something infinite from outside this universe is logically necessary in order to explain the rise of this universe.

I'm not inferring how this entity outside the universe operates.

But we can be sure that a finite universe does not extend infinitely in the past, and therefore, requires the existence of something that is infinite to explain where it came from.

You said:

"Now, your conclusion could end up being correct, but your methodology is flawed."

I think the methodology would be flawed if we concluded anything else.

If we looked at our finite universe and said it can explain itself, that would be flawed. There is no logical process leading from that premise to that conclusion.

Likewise, if we said a finite universe doesn't need an explanation, we would be used a flawed methodology, because again, there is no logical process leading from that premise to that conclusion.

Further, if you looked at the finitude of our universe and said we can't conclude anything about it, that would be flawed, because we certainly can infer a great deal from that fact.