Why is Infinite Regress Impossible?

Re: ghollisjr @ YouTube

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Originally Posted by ghollisjr

This is getting tiresome. A time which is infinity ago does not exist in the same way that infinity is not an element of the real numbers. This does not mean that the real numbers have a lower bound, and it does not mean that there was a beginning of time either. I have explained this over and over again, and you keep telling me that I'm confused or delusional. I'm in graduate school working on a PhD in physics, I am not the one who is confused, or delusional as I have provided the demonstration for my arguments in the form of mapping time to the real numbers, which can be and is done every time we perform a time calculation in physics. Physics never says that time nesessarily had to have a beginning, just that our current natural laws started with the big bang. This does not mean that the big bang somehow came from philosophical nothingness, and it doesn't mean that time didn't exist either, just that our current description is incapable of saying what happened before the big bang if there was a "before".

Also, where are you getting this whole "you would have already happened if there was a past eternity of cause and effects"?? I'm pretty sure your reasoning is assuming that there is actually a time which is infinitely far away from any other time. But the idea behind the real numbers is that there is always an element which bigger or smaller (more negative) than any element you choose in the real numbers. So, if infinity belonged to the reals, there would have to be a number bigger than infinity. This type of thing happens in set theory (look up aleph 0 on mathworld.wolfram.com) where there are infinities which are different from other infinities, but is not a part of the real numbers and is thus not a part of my description of time. Your idea of time may in fact disallow an infinite regress, but it is not the one used to describe the universe in the most reliable way we have found to date: science.

If you want to talk about infinity, I suggest studying mathematics on the subject as it is a concept which is best described axiomatically and not using intuitional logic.

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I would be tired too if I was living a lie and trying to rationalize it come hell or high water.

Your infinite regress theory is not bound, for it is an infinite regress of cause and effects. In your infinite regress theory time goes on forever in the past, but again, this is impossible because you would have happened already, having had an eternity to do so. And you would have never existed because a past eternity would still be going on, never to reach this point. Trust me, the most educated person in the world doesn't have an advantage over the most simple-minded person when it comes to accepting or rejecting God because the logic is simple, evidence clear for all to understand, and the additional information only corroborates the finding further rather than overturning it.

Numbers are not causal entities. They are descriptive. You can map them all you want, but if you don't apply them correctly to the real life scenario, you are just doing fuzzy math. A number can't cause anything to happen, but when a ball drops on a ground it is because someone or something released it.

We know what happened before the big bang in that it required a cause because it can't come from non-existence. Why is this so difficult for your to understand? Why shut your mind down? Don't shut your mind down like a zombie for Satan for that is how you are coming across.

I make no assumptions. If you want to bring in your idea of infinite regress to replace God then you must follow its consequences, since you would have had an eternity of cause and effects to come into being before now, so you should have already happened. And you should never have happened because your alleged past eternity would still be going on, never to reach this point. How self-contradictory a past eternity is!

There is nothing bigger than infinity. Infinity is the biggest there is. Practically bigger or smaller infinities are in the domain of your fantasy, not reality. Infinity is infinity. Anything approximating infinity is deemed to be infinity. I first learned that in my grade 12 Calculus class. Basic.

I used science to prove to you through the law of cause and effect (trillions and trillions of them), there can't be an infinite regress, nor something from nothing, so nature needs a cause outside of itself, outside of time and space, being uncreated. The very nature of God is to be uncreated, not bound by time or space.

Pretty simple. We all intuitively know this, but those who are hostile to God shut their minds down like you do which you are free to do so even for eternity in Hell. How sad for you.

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Originally Posted by ghollisjr

Mathematics provides the best description of nature to date, and describes the nature of time perfectly well including causality; x causes y simply means that if x happens then y necessarily must happen at some later time, usually with a predictable time lapse between the two events.

And again, I do not see where you are getting your argument that given an infinite past I must have already happened by now, having had an eternity to do so. Since you are not giving a reason why this is so, and since it does not follow directly from definitions, I am forced to guess at why you think this is the case. What does it mean to say that I've had an eternity to come into existence? An eternity since when? This is an important point in your argument, and like I said, even given an infinite past (i.e., one which has no lower bound), there is never an infinite amount of time between any two moments. To reiterate: Saying that there is no boundary on the previous moments does not mean that there is some moment in the past which is infinitely far away from the present moment. If this were the case, then your argument would seem more reasonable, but like I said earlier, it is the difference between [-infinity,infinity] and (-infinity,infinity).

Also, your answer that God exists outside of space and time is nonsensical. Perhaps existance outside of space can be contemplated, but outside of time??? Time provides the ability to do things, without time, nothing happens. Therefore, God cannot do anything outside of time, including create time. Saying that something exists outside of time breaks language itself and makes it impossible to describe action. If you allow the thinking of things existing outside of time, you can ask the question: does causality exist outside of time? If so, then you can ask what caused God, and if not, then God could not have caused time to exist. In either case, your God hypothesis is unsatisfactory.

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Nobody here is arguing against math, just your misapplication of it.

Since you contend for an infinite regress of cause and effects to replace God (which is morally bankrupt to say the least without a moral law giver), then you concede by your very definition you have had an eternity of the past as is the nature of eternity to come into being before now. You can't talk out the side of your face and have two contradictory views. That will never do. You don't need an explanation of the explanation. Since you want to believe in a past eternity then by definition you had an eternity to come into being before now. It is illogical to ask "an eternity since when?" You demand a past eternity so there is no when, for it is an infinite regress. It doesn't start at some point. If it did then it wouldn't be infinite regress and you'd be arguing against something from nothing instead. Your interval analysis is irrelevant since in infinite regress there is an infinite number of cause and effects in regress. Who cares how short or long your interval is. Indeed, there are events infinitely far away in your infinite regress theory. Your brackets don't change that.

Time is part of nature without which nature would not exist. But since we have established and well proven that nature can't start up from nothing nor always existed, pure logic tells us nature needs a cause outside of time and space, being uncreated whom we call God. All throughout history based on this reason societies have believed in the uncreated Creator whether intuitively or spelled out as I have done for you here now. God is not constrained by time, for He is the creator of time, since time needs a cause. How silly you take an arbitrary variable of hundreds of variables out of nature and demand it constrain God's actions. How absurd! How arrogant can you be? Language has no problem accepting that which is timeless is firmly in control of all things. As to God's action outside of time, He has full prerogative to bring time into existence without first having to be controlled by time, for then He wouldn't be bringing time into existence then would He? You can't constrain God by nature when God exists outside of nature being uncreated as we proved.

Where does causality come from? God created it. Jesus said nothing exists without Him having created it. It would be illogical to ask what caused God since nothing caused the uncaused--the very meaning of uncaused. All that matters is we proved the uncaused cause. The uncaused cause can create causation to cause things. That there is causation by God doesn't mean God needs to be caused, for that would contradict our find of our proof of the uncaused cause.

What matters here and now is you admit you have no evidence so remain Agnostic, until such time as you can understand this proof that nature can't always have existed nor start up from nothing; therefore, nature needs a cause outside itself, outside of time and space, being uncreated whom we call God. Amen.

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Originally Posted by ghollisjr

You are talking nonsense. Causality requires time to be there in the first place, which means that one cannot cause time to exist. Even apologists such as Dr. William Lane Craig attempt to address this issue. Granted, he usually does so by trying to say that causality in fact does not need time, but then we are playing the definition game. There are a few different senses in which we refer to causality. For example, x=2 causes the expression x+x to have the value of 4, and this does not need the idea of time to make sense. However, if an event x causes an event y, and if x and y are not at the exact same location in space, then it is impossible for y to precede x or even to occur simultaneously with x in any reference frame. Thus there is a temporal kind of causality and an atemporal kind of causality. You are claiming that God, being atemporal, caused the universe to exist. But exist in what sense? There are also two types of existence, temporal and atemporal, the atemporal sense being statements like "There exist infinitely many prime numbers", and the temporal sense being statements like "My cat exists." Saying that God caused the universe to exist, in the past tense, gives away your intended meaning: God caused the universe, specifically the physical universe, to exist in the temporal sense. You are thus assuming a very strong statement: atemporal things can cause things to exist in the temporal sense, and that atemporal things can exhibit temporal causality. This needs to be justified, and I suspect it may actually be self-contradictory. At the very least, it has never been demonstrated that atemporal things can exhibit atemporal causality.

And we have not already established and proven that nature could not have always existed. What we have is your refusal to provide a coherent argument stating WHY it is that an eternity of past events means that the present moment should have already happened. I don't need you to repeat your claim over and over again, I need to see your reason for WHY that is the case. You are probably resorting to some sort of intuitive understanding of infinity, eternity, and time which, as I said before, does not provide rigorous justification for your claims. You need to specify your definitions and axioms since they are not the standard ones used in mathematics which I have been referring to and using to justify my arguments. But I think you will refuse to do this since, as you said before, all you think you need is your simplistic intuitional understanding.

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To prove your theory false that you think time is needed to produce causality so causality can't exist without time, just realize that if nature always existed, you would have happened already, having had an eternity to do so; and you would never have existed because a past eternity would still be going on, never to reach this point. This proves God created not just time but also the law of causation.

You want an explanation of the explanation, but you don't need an explanation of the explanation. The explanation will suffice. If you always need an explanation of the explanation to know if God exists then ultimately you need to know all things, but you can't know all things as only God could, so you are claiming you need to be God to know if God exists which is ridiculous. Such is false humility.

You bring in a past eternity so you must abide in that principle and allow me to take your theory and turn it back on you with your infinite regress of cause and effects.

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Originally Posted by ghollisjr

It is, in fact, perfectly acceptable to ask for justification for any statement, and when doing so, you can eventually find the fundamental beliefs which a person is arguing from. From that point on, asking for justification may result in the person admitting that these are their axioms, or they may cease to partipate in the conversation by trying to say that they in fact do not need to provide justification for their claims. Your argument is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the meaning of infinite regress and the undefined notion of a "past eternity". What does a past eternity mean? If you are describing my idea of time, then it most certainly does not imply that there is an infinite amount of time between any two moments in time, which means that eternity is not a measurable interval of time, yet, there is still no limit to how much time has and will transpire.

In addition, infinite regress does not even require an eternity of past events. Consider the following: An event x_1 is caused by some event x_2 which happened 1 second in the past. x_2 was caused by event x_3 which happened 1/2 seconds before x_2, which was caused by event x_4 which happened 1/4 seconds before x_3, etc ad infinitum. How much time did it take for the infinite number of causes, x_2, x_3, x_4, ... to cause x_1 to happen? The answer is 1+1/2+1/4+ 1/8 + 1/16 + ... + 1/2^n + ... = 2 seconds. In this example, none of the causes happens simultaneously with the effects, and there are an infinite number of them, but the process takes a finite amount of time, i.e., not an eternity. Thus, your objections to infinite regress cannot depend on there being an eternity of time in the past, but rather, you must object to the ability of there to be an infinite number of causes to any effect regardless of the amount of time it takes for the effect to take place. So, the response that an eternity of time means that you would have already happened is, even if it were sound (which it's not) would not eliminate the possibility of infinite regress.

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Who said it was not "acceptable to ask for justification for any statement"? What you fail to realize is once an explanation is satisfactory for a proof, you don't need to keep asking for the explanation of the explanation, because you could keep doing so to the point you would need to be God to know all things. Are you God? Your position becomes self-contradictory. Let me give you an example. Someone wants to know why a particular racquet is better than another. The answer may be because it is lighter or has a bigger sweet spot. It wouldn't make much sense for you to come along and ask why is it lighter? You don't need an explanation of the explanation. The explanation was the answer.

You sound like you are confusing yourself. Infinite regress is not a complicated subject. It is simply the idea of an eternity of the past of cause and effects. Since this is not possible, because you would have happened already, having had an eternity to do so, then nature needs a cause outside of itself, outside of time and space being uncreated. Your fuzzy math doesn't change that.

Everything has a cause in nature. You don't need to worry about intervals, how many items contributed to cause something or how many simultaneous things are going on at once. All you need know is each and every event was caused by other objects and events. This is the nature of the law of cause and effect which has an overwhelming preponderance of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt with trillions and trillions of causes and no hard evidence of something from nothing.

What you need to do is not go on your own tangent because I am the one who is providing the proof, so you need to understand what I am saying which is exceedingly simple for anyone to understand, but that you can't understand shows how warped your mind has become.

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Originally Posted by ghollisjr

From your example, what I'm doing is not asking you "why is the racquet lighter?" but rather, "how do you know it is lighter?" Once you say that you weighed them on a scale, or that the manufacturer reported weight is such and such, then I can get a level of confidence for the statement that the racquet is lighter and thus that the racquet is better. What you are doing is claiming that the racquet is better because it is lighter, and then I'm asking how do you know it is lighter? And then you're telling me that you don't need to give an explanation of the explanation.

To draw the connection more clearly, you are saying that an eternity of past causes entails that the current moment is not actually the present moment, but must have happened in the past. I ask you not "why?" in the causal sense which you referred to in your racquet example, but "how so?" in the justification sense, as in how do you know that this is the case? Clearly, one can ask this question until one comes to basic assumptions/definitions. We have not arrived at that level because you refuse to provide justification for your claim that an eternity of past events implies that the present moment should have already happened. I then attempted to guess that your reasoning was that there was a time in the past which was infinitely far away from the present time, which would mean that it would take an infinite amount of time to reach the present moment from that infinitely far away moment in time. I then showed that this is not necessary for there to be an unlimited amount of time in the past; i.e., that infinity does not have to be an actual time for there to be no limit to how much time there is. You then say that I'm confused and refuse to provide justification and say that it is somehow improper to ask for an explanation of the explanation.

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The problem is that you are never satisfied with the explanation since you always need an explanation of the explanation, thus you require yourself to be all knowing, but only God could be all knowing, so your approach is fallacious.

Justification has already been given that nature if it had an infinite regress of cause and effects would mean you had an eternity to come into being before now as eternity would entail. No need for an explanation of that.

You are just confusing yourself. Simplify it. Picture an event with its commensurate causes; then take one of those causes and picture it with its causes and so on for an eternity of the past of cause and effects.

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To make the lesson even clearer, consider if I made the following claim: "God cannot exist." You then ask "How so?" I then say "it's because God's existence means he can't be immortal, which contradicts God's definition." You then ask, yet again, "How so?" I then say "I already explained it, God's existence means he can't be immortal, and this means that God does not exist since it contradicts his definition." You then say "But this is not at all obvious, and doesn't follow from the usual definitions of God and immortality. Sure, God is immortal, but how does this imply a contradiction? You need to give justification for your claim." I then respond by playing your game, "I don't need to give an explanation of the explanation, the explanation is the answer." This is a way of shifting the burden of proof, trying to get out of providing justification for one's claims.

And the fact of the matter is that infinite regress does not entail an eternal past. Infinite regress refers to an unlimited number of sequential causes in the past and says nothing about the amount of time which is in the past. My "fuzzy math" example is not fuzzy math at all, just the limit of a geometric series which has infinitely many terms and yet a finite value. I could very well ask for justification as to how my math is flawed, but I'm not sure that would be remotely productive.

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Your example is fallacious, because God is uncreated. What you are describing is a god that is not uncreated. We are discussing the uncreated, not the created. Leave out the word God for the moment, we are talking about the uncreated, so you are using a red herring approach changing the subject. Try to stay on topic. My explanation here is that you are off topic, so that is my satisfactory answer to your misapplication of the word God.

The problem is you keep needing an explanation beyond the satisfactory answer.

You don't need to mention how much time each event takes places, because no matter how big or small, short or long, all that is contained within an eternity is infinite regress of cause and effects. Each event or object or happening is preceeded by another.

Thus, we can render this an impossibility because if there was an infinite regress of cause and effects, you would have had an eternity to come into being before now, so you should have already happened; thus nature needs a cause outside of itself, outside of time and space, being uncreated.

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Originally Posted by ghollisjr

What does God being uncreated have to do with anything I just said?? My example demonstrates the invalidity of your "explanations need no explanation" argument, and your response is that I'm talking about the wrong type of God?? I could have used anything as the argument, and the argument I presented is intentionally incomplete so as to illustrate your approach. Yet you ignore the point of the entire argument and talk about how God is uncreated and that the God I was referring to is not uncreated. Bullshit. I said nothing about whether the God I was referring to was created or uncreated; what I did was present a claim that God's existence implies that he could not be immortal with only a fragment of justification and then claimed that my explanation needed no explanation. You are flatly ignoring everything I just said supporting my claims, you fail to address any of the points I make and claim that it is actually so simple it needs no explanation. I think the conversation is pointless to continue.

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You're avoiding my response which was a good explanation to the issues you raised. I have provided the proof of the uncreated whom we call God so this should be your focus. I am not here to prove or disprove some other god that is not immortal, but the sole uncreated Creator so try to stay on topic. You're off on a red herring. The problem is you keep requiring an explanation of the explanation ad infinitum which is an illogical approach because ultimately you are demanding you must be God in order to know if God exists, but obviously, you are not God. An appropriate explanation will suffice. You need no further explanation of the appropriate explanation.

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Originally Posted by ghollisjr

No, you presented an argument for a first cause. I then pointed out a problem with your argument, namely, that an unlimited number of past causes does not imply the contradiction you alluded to, and even that an unlimited number of past causes does not imply that the past contains unlimited time. You then failed to address my argument and said that you had already given an explanation, and that an explanation of the explanation is unnecessary. So, I provided an analogous situation in which I put forward an argument which was not justified and then appealed to your explanation of the explanation trick. Instead of realizing the fallacy of using such tactics, you accused me of talking about the wrong type of God, and here you are still doing the same thing.

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If time did not always exist in your infinite regress theory then you have a contradiction because nature exists in time and naturally abides in causation. If you want to compare your timeless nature to the timelessness of God, who wins out? Obviously God since a mind is needed to create a mind, and the source can't have standards below our own. As we are personal and accessible so would the source need to be. Your timeless nature is impersonal and inaccessible.

I never argued for infinite time as you think but that under your theory of an infinite regress of cause and effects, you would have had an eternity to have come into being before now, so obviously, you should have already happened. And you should never have existed, because a past eternity would still be going on never reaching this point.

Even in your analogous situation, you admit that you stop at a satisfactory explanation, so why possess a doublestandard where you always need an explanation of the explanation when talking about your infinite regress theory?

Your red herring to want to discuss non-immortal gods when our discussion is about the sole uncreated Creator seems a bit disingenuous to me.

You're still making the same mistakes.

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Originally Posted by ghollisjr

We need to ask the question: what does "always existing" mean? If something always exists, then it exists for all time. Time necessarily "always exists," even if the domain of time is finite.

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Why assume time must always exist? If God exists, He would have created time so time did not always exist.

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I say nothing of a timeless nature. On the contrary, nature as we know it exists in time.

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You said "past causes does not imply that the past contains unlimited time". An infinite regress without unlimited time is timeless nature.

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I am however puzzled at your it takes a mind to create a mind claim. This is a flat assertion and needs justification. Same for your personal source claim.

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It's not an assertion. We have never seen in nature mindlessness can produce a mind, but in all cases a mind is needed to create a mind.

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What else does "a past eternity" mean other than an infinite amount of time? You are saying that an infinite number of sequential causes implies that there is a past eternity of time, and then that if there is a past eternity of time then I could not be here, since the past eternity would still be going on. I have already shot this down, so I will do it again.

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An infinite number of cause and effects could be outside of time if, like God, could create these causations. I am glad now you agree a "past eternity" would be an "infinite amount of time" since before you said it would not: "unlimited number of past causes does not imply that the past contains unlimited time." You're confusing yourself with your doubletongue. You can keep avoiding the fact that in your infinite regress theory there would be an eternity of the past of cause and effects, that if it were true, you would have happened already, having had an eternity to do so. Since you can't shoot this down and only say you did, but unable to recreate your argument, obviously you are blowing smoke.

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When you say that a past eternity should still be going on, I then ask the question "Since when?" What point in time are you measuring the current time relative to? It seems to me that you are trying to choose a reference time which is infinitely far away. You are trying to say that since there is no limit to the amount of past time, I can choose a reference time which is literally infinitely far away. If you could in fact do this, then a past eternity might very well prohibit my present existence. But you are assuming a fallacy. You cannot actually choose as a reference time a moment which is infinitely far away from the present. At least, not in any consistent model of time. But, as I've said before, an infinite amount of past time DOES NOT IMPLY that there is a moment in time which is infinitely far away from the present moment, which means that any time you can actually measure is never infinitely far away from the present moment. This is exactly the same as the real numbers: though the real numbers have no limit to their value, there is not an actual infinity in the set of real numbers.

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There is no reference point. In your infinite regress theory, it is endless regress of cause and effects which, if you really think about it, is just mindless rhetoric. We are not talking about there is no point that is infinitely away from this point now, but we are talking about an eternity of the past of cause and effects. You're off topic.

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In my analogy I was pretending to be you!!! That was the entire point of the analogy. I do not for one second think that the argument I put forward in the analogy had actually justified the claim put forward that God's existence implied that he was necessarily mortal. Ultimately, justification comes in two forms: a tautology or an observation. If you can set up a logical tautology proving your case, then you are done, as tautologies are always true by definition. If you come to an observation, you can disect the observation to see what it implies, and if it does imply the claim being made, it is justified. However, observations carry with them uncertainty, so one can never "absolutely" know anything based on observation without modifying the language. What one can do is establish likelihoods using a Bayesian statistical approach for example. So: asking for an explanation is always possible; i.e., it is never acceptible to say "I already explained it, you can't ask me to explain my explanation" since tautologies are true by definition, meaning that it's justification is it's definition, and since observations never actually establish an absolute truth.

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You're confusing yourself again missing the point. There is an overwhelming preponderance of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt there are trillions of causes in nature, and no hard evidence of something from nothing, so it is unreasonable to always have an excuse you need yet another explanation of the explanation. The explanation does just fine; that is, if there was an eternity of the past of cause and effects then you would have had an eternity to come into being before now, so you should have already happened, having had an eternity to do so. And you should never have existed because a past eternity would still be going on now, thus, never reaching this point.

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The nature of God was not part of the analogy; I intentionally picked a claim which would annoy you so that you would pay attention to the analogy. The analogy shows that your "explanation of explanation" argument is asinine, and you completely ignore the analogy and think I'm being serious about God needing to be mortal. Please.

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What is asinine is to always need an explanation of an explanation to the point where you have to be all-knowing, yet only God could be all knowing, and you never could be. It's like you are saying you won't accept any proof of God unless you are God. And ultimately, isn't that what sends a person to Hell because of his own egotistical contradictory self that places himself as the center of all things acting as though he is God?

You don't even see the flaw in your own analogy that you settled on an explanation of an explanation that you felt was satisfactory, yet you don't want to behave the same way when talking about God's existence and why it is impossible for infinite regress to be true.

All your words flow from your hostility towards God, so you really don't care how illogical you sound. What matters to you is expressing that hostility on your way to Hell. You're just expressing what a bad person you are. Ultimatley your immoral decrepit nature produces the fantasy world of infinite regress in order to debase yourself and justify your flesh-sin of your body and selfishness of your soul-without any moral imperative since according to you, you will just cease to exist so nothing really matters anyway.

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Originally Posted by ghollisjr

Time always exists because of the definition of "always." Something "always existing" means it exists for all time, so saying that time does not always exist means that time does not exist for all time, which means that there was a time when there was no time, which is a contradiction, which means that there is never a time when there is no time, which means that time always exists.

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Time doesn't always exist just because someone says time always exists. You're confusing yourself. The argument remains as follows: If there was an infinite regress of cause and effects in nature, then you had an eternity to come into being before now, so you should have already happened, having had an eternity to do so; and you should never have existed because a past eternity would still be going on for eternity, thus, never reaching this point. You keep going off on your red herrings avoiding the point of the proof.

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The example I gave where the time between causes is always half the proceeding time yields an infinite number of causes with a finite amount of time. You can call this timeless if you want, but it's not the same thing as existing outside of time.

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Your intervals are irrelevant. It is still subject to the law of cause and effect, no matter how long or short your intervals are.

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Evolutionary biology, anyone?

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This is a mind creating a mind. Nowhere do we see a non-mind producing a mind. Since you can't recreate it where's your evidence?

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WHAT??? I NEVER agreed that an infinite number of sequential causes ACTUALLY implies that there is a past eternity of time; I was restating your own argument.

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You were questioning when you said, "What else does a 'past eternity' mean other than an infinite amount of time?" I couldn't agree more!

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What I shot down was the second part of your argument, namely, when you said that a past eternity implies that the present moment cannot exist.

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Saying you shot down something doesn't make it so. Reproduce it! The problem remains for you, if there was this infinite regress of past cause and effects, then you would have had an eternity to come into being before now, so you should have already happened, having had an eternity to do so. And you should never have happened because a past eternity would still be going on, thus, never reaching this point. Since you introduce your theory of a past eternity you must abide in its eternal nature otherwise you contradict yourself. Think about it!

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I had already shot down your claim that an infinite number of causes implies an eternity of past time with my geometric series example (look up "geometric series" if you want to see that it is, in fact, not fuzzy math at all). I'm really trying to be patient with you, but I don't think it is worth my time to keep spelling out my position just to have you misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm done.

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Your geometric series doesn't shoot down anything, nor do your intervals, for cause and effect remain in place. Cause and effect don't cease to exist, nor does time just because you shorten or lengthen the times between each cause or change the meaning of eternity. Eternity is eternity with eternal consequences if you want to incorporate eternity into your theory to reject God.

You're not ready to come to the truth to search it out with all you heart an soul, so you won't find it as you are now.

"For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse" (Rom. 1.20).