——One of the problems I have with theism is the argument that nothing can exist without being created, so therefore there must be a God, who wasn’t created, who created everything else.-——
The opposite is impossible, because it would mean that an infinite series of causal events, or moments in time, would have had to have been realized for us to exist now.
And an infinite series cannot exist in actuality, because any actual series must be finite.
I had written this earlier:
"... the simple will never produce the complex... "
In that case, for God to be able to do all the wondrous things God does, God must be complex and intelligent. Who designed God? How can God's complexity arise from nothing?
If God is eternal, how does God choose a moment to begin Creation? The Infinite Regress becomes a problem, if it truly is a problem.
Another poster mentioned: “Since we cannot describe the past or the future using a finite number of causal events going backwards or forwards in time from the PRESENT, then the past and future must be eternal. You cannot traverse the past in a finite number of cause/effects to show Existence as VANISHING into nothingness. You cannot traverse the past and ever hope to find a point of Creation. Nope! No freakin’ way! Therefore the Universe is eternal - it had no beginning and will have no end. There is no "beginning" of time because to have a beginning would mean to have a universal reference point which would destroy the idea of relativity. In fact, we perceive the expansion of time as the passage of time.”
If God is outside Time, then how could God produce a change in the circumstances, given that change requires Time to pre-exist and elapse, in order to allow the change in the circumstances? If Time were a "created" thing, then the situation changes from one without Time to one with Time operating it. How can a demarcation exist to separate the two situations, if Time were yet to be "created"? In other words, without Time, the situation without Time and the situation with Time running in it would be super-imposed, in other words, the two situations would be simultaneous, which is a self-contradiction. You cannot do something and not do the same thing, simultaneously. Likewise.
Points to ponder, no doubt.