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Circles. It's circles all the way down.

No my dear, it's "turtles all the way down" — a jocular expression for the infinite regress problem in cosmology, which is what one gets when one posits an "eternal universe." Such a model excludes both First and Final Causes. Yet without First Cause, how could the universe even get started (so to speak)? Without Final Cause, how could it have any meaning, reason, or purpose?

And this is the very situation we find ourselves in, when it's "turtles all the way down."

Anyhoot, I am not a "turtles all the way down," circular, "horizontally-bound" thinker like the little old lady who confronted Bertrand Russell (a great mathematician and thorough rogue! LOLOL!). From Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time, 1988):

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

To say that the universe or anything else in it "evolves" logically implies a "starting point" from which the evolution began. And even though it may give most modern biologists the Heebie-Jeebies to say so, the foundational principle of Darwinism — survival of the fittest — clearly implies a Final Cause (albeit a pretty puny one....).

Yet BOTH the First and Final Aristotelian causes have been effectively abolished from modern science. So we're not supposed to talk about them.... (Too "politically incorrect," you see....)

I daresay you have never read the Holy Scriptures on the presupposition that what they are trying to convey to you involves the very Truth of Reality. I infer you only bother to read them (if you do at all) in order demolish what appear to you to be "lies" — having first set yourself up as the "sole criterion of Truth" in the matter. Because you see only "with the eye," you categorically deny the existence of all not-directly-observable phenomena in Nature. Strictly speaking, you deny all non-local causation in Nature.

Yet quantum physics verifies that non-local causation is a very real phenomenon.

I start with the presupposition that God has given us four Revelations: (1) the Revelation of Himself and His Will for us (i.e., the Holy Bible); (2) the Revelation of His Word, the Logos of God in the Beginning, in later salvational history as the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ, at once "fully God and fully human," Who suffered a scandalously ignoble death on the Cross in order to release God's children, Christ's brothers, from the devastating eternal effects of sin and death; (3) the "Book of Creation," that is, of the physical/material universe itself (understood as the instantiation of universal law); and (4) the revelation of the Holy Spirit with us....

Then I realized that none of these revelations, being all divinely ordained, can possibly contradict one another in any way.

And so I am just so thrilled to see how findings in modern science actually seem to dovetail with what a proper reading/understanding of the Holy Scriptures tells us to expect in the natural world.

As the great evangelist Francis Schaeffer pointed out, in the Holy Scriptures: "God reveals Himself to us truly, but not exhaustively." Likewise, God tells us about the world of His Creation, truly, but not exhaustively. In the discovery of universal Truth, He's left Man with "plenty to do."

Which is why we have scientists; and philosophers; and theologians.

His Guideposts (so to speak) are both universal and eternal. They are there for "helps" to us, ever-reliable spiritual landmarks in the search for the Truth of Reality.

Just some thoughts, dear a_perfect_lady, FWTW. Don't know if they help you at all. Just to say I think you're in a bit of a cognitive rut, and I hope you can work your way out of it. May Godspeed you!

Here's wishing you and all your dear ones a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

I've been waiting for someone to say that.

Given the analogies between the tortoise, and Atlas of classical cosmology / theology...

and that our disputant here is a Randian...

Is it too much to quip that Aeschylus' death was the earliest known example of "going Galt"?

...think it through, it's a tripartite pun.

Cheers!