What you said was, "I don't and do not agree there has to be something eternal,"not that we don't currently know how everything started. Those are different things. So what you're saying is that you don't have a counter-proposal, but you don't buy into my logic that the universe had an eternal, timeless, powerful, intelligent, and personal source?

> The Greeks did not understand where thunder came from, so they made the "reasonable choice" that a God named Zeus made thunder.

This is just a demeaning comment. I walked you through the logic of what I said; I didn't just blindly jump to a conclusion of, "Oh, well, it must just be GOD because I can't think of anything else!"

Lawrence Krauss and others have interesting theories, but my argument still is just because we don't currently know how everything started, it does not mean it must have been because of a God.

The Greeks did not understand where thunder came from, so they made the "reasonable choice" that a God named Zeus made thunder.

What I said was, "God is a reasonable choice as to that cause." I haven't jumped past the conclusion, but have posited a reasonable answer to the question.

If you believe that what we see now self-generated from nothing (meaning nothing is eternal), I would be pleased to see your argument to support the logic of that: how that's even possible, and what you propose happened.

I understood your answers before, but you apparently didn't understand my previous responses. The problem is you keep jumping past your conclusion that there is a God and God must have always existed. I don't and do not agree there has to be something eternal, so we are still at the beginning of the conversation.

Its not logical to believe God has always existed. Because we don't currently know how everything came into existence, it is not reason to believe it must be a God that has always existed.

Then either I haven't been clear or you're not getting it. Let me try again. There has to be something that is eternal, that causes all other things, because nothing can cause itself. If something HAD a beginning, something else caused it. Therefore there has to be something that DIDN'T have a beginning, that isn't cause, but always was.

When we look at our universe, we can recognize clues as to what that first cause was like: It as eternal, timeless, purposeful, intelligent, and powerful. We know the first cause was like this because otherwise the result has elements that were never part of the system and therefore not possibilities in the mix. Right? You can't add eggs and milk and expect to get meat. You can only get some version of eggs and milk.

I keep explaining the need for a first cause because you don't seem to catch on to the logic of what I'm saying. Nothing can't come from nothing; it has to come from something, and that "something" is what we call the "first cause." It's necessarily so, or the burden is on you to explain logically and give evidence as to how something can spontaneously generate out of nothing.

Except that you also say God has no first cause. Your claim is unsupported by constantly re-explaining the need for a first cause.

Then I'll go back to my first answer, because I answered your query: It is inferring the most reasonable conclusion. What we see around us had to have come from somewhere, something that made it come into existence. Nothing that we know of self-generates from non-existence. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Scientists are united that the universe began to exist. They postulate it from a non-dimensional singularity, then the Big Bang, and voila, the universe began to exist.

Therefore, the universe has a cause outside of itself, because we know of nothing that is self-caused. Everything that had a beginning was brought into existence by something else that already existed. Therefore there must be at least one entity that is both eternal and self-existent. God is a reasonable choice as to that cause.

> don't apply to God because God didn't "begin to exist" and was never generated nor needed to self-generate.

I go back to my first post—How do you know this is true? Nobody knows that God was always there or has always existed or even if there is a God. This is just a guess, so the rest of your writing really is not applicable. It is not a "reasonable inference" to make the conclusion there is a God that has always existed and created everything.

The statements don't apply to God because God didn't "begin to exist" and was never generated nor needed to self-generate. Something was always there. We know if we have nothing we get nothing. If anything can pop into existence (begin to exist) from nothing, there there is no such thing as science. Generally it is thought that something was either matter or the first cause. But since science is of a consensus that matter didn't always exist, then we are left to find another First Cause that didn't begin to exist. God is a reasonable logical conclusion.

Leibnitz spoke of a "Principle of Sufficient Reason." Everything has to have a reason for existence. There are basically two choices: (1) self, or (2) something outside of self. Therefore the universe has a cause for its existence. What would be a sufficient cause?

There must have always been something, so it must be an eternal cause.

If the past is infinite, we would have no present (Kalam's argument). Only if the past is finite can there be a present, so the sufficient cause must be timeless.

There must be a personal cause. Impersonal causes must have first causes. Only personal causes are capable of being first causes, to cause other things to come about. Kinetic energy is energy is motion; potential energy is energy stored. The only way something begins in motion is if there is a first cause. What puts a system in motion?

What if the universe always existed? For the universe to have eternal existence, it must have been static (potential energy). But what moved the universe into kinetic energy? How did it get in motion? Personal causes are the only things capable of being first causes (though not every personal cause is a first cause.) You can never have an infinite chain of causes—it regresses. Whenever we see a chain of causes, we can always ask, "Who caused it?"

It had to have been a powerful cause. The universe displays immense power and complexity.

It had to have been an intelligent cause because we have informational data. We have no example of informational data that does not come from an intelligent cause.

What we are inferring is an eternal, timeless, personal, intelligent, and powerful cause. If we are inferring the most reasonable conclusion, God is a reasonable answer.

> Nothing that we know of self-generates from non-existence. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

Does this statement include God?