They did not emerge. They always were.
"I can readily accept the idea that what we see in our 4D world may well be just a manifestation of a higher-dimensional physics beyond the direct observational ken of human beings. But God is likewise beyond the direct observational ken of human beings."
The higher dimentional physics you're referring to are simply detail that refers to the same 4d, not the physics this world arose from and within which God dwells. The physics of this world are simply a restriction placed on hte beings of this world to exist here only, because their machinery that provides for the functions of the sentience and rationality is limited to this world. See the parable in Gen 3. The physics of this world provide the function of the cherubim waiving the flaming sword.
"Granted, such a thing as absolute nothingness is utterly beyond formulation by the human mind itself."
It is not. It is quite simple and children can comprehend it. Absolute nothingness means exactly what the plain English phrase portrays.
I'll knock out the qualitatives that I didn't imply.
" In effect, your proposal that... people think that "null = something" is to say that folks magically convert nothing into something — which is precisely what I cannot logically do."
It is done by anyone who claims something was created from nothing.
"...there's nothing in your proposal that seeks to answer the question of the origin of energy."
There sure is! Again, it always existed.
"As to something as having been "always existing," it ought to be clearly obvious that there is no way in which you can support that claim on the basis of observation and experience."
The evidence for the conservation of energy is overwhelming. It includes observation of the vacuum interactions in this world. BTW, that vacuum is what this world is seen to arise out of and into which it is returning.
"Temporally situated as we are, we do not see the whole of time. If there was a "beginning," we didn't see it."
It's enough to know there was a beginning and that the beginning can be "seen", IOWs known and understood as a physical process, or transformation.
"Evidently you believe this "higher physics" is eternal."
Yes.
"Still, for the world to be what it is, and not some other way, it must itself have had a cause.
The cause is simply what's required for a phase change. What causes a steam bubble in an infinite pot of 100o water to pop. The world is what it is anyway.
Keep in mind Matthew 12:39, He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
Then essentially you're saying what I already suspected you were saying: That the "higher physics" is, on your view, actually God Himself. Or at least, God as you can conceive Him, according to your "rational" categories."
It's interesting what can happen with "rational categories." Recently I had the pleasure of reviewing how Baruch Spinoza managed to "rationalize" the God of Judeo-Christian theology (see the Ethics). It was a magnificent opus, a cathedral of logical construction, based on definitions, axioms, postulates, lemmas, and so forth, all magnificently, supremely logically done.
But at the end of the day, the acceptance of this completely rationalized God only serves to deracinate human experience, which is based on faith at least as much as on reason, if not more.
Spinoza ends up producing a God of which no human being ever had any experience at all, including Spinoza — a pure abstraction in every sense.
One can rationalize things all day long. But that is not exactly the recipe one would use if what one wanted was something reasonable, in the end.
With your "eternal 'higher physics,'" you make for a very strange theist, spunkets; but welcome to the fold nonetheless!