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I simply pointed out that if every effect must have a cause, the only logical conclusion that would not violate that premise is that the universe is eternal.

Well I never signed on to the idea that every effect has a cause. It was not a premise we agreed to, it was one you were arguing for. You stated the premise twice. The first time it sounded in line with both our world views. The second it was only in line with yours. You equivocated to get to that "premise".

But I am more interested in knowing how you think an eternal universe can have nothing infinite in it. Are you thinking of time as a part of the universe, or of something that transcends the universe and need not be considered part of it?

"Well I never signed on to the idea that every effect has a cause. It was not a premise we agreed to, it was one you were arguing for. You stated the premise twice. The first time it sounded in line with both our world views. The second it was only in line with yours. You equivocated to get to that "premise"." Actually, you did sign up to that idea. In fact you were the first in this thread to propose that "nothing comes from nothing." Or did you forget?

Now... I am perfectly cool with you abandoning that idea now and deciding, well, okay, things do come from nothing after all, and there are effects with no causes. Is that the premise you are embracing here? Because, if is, then we'll work from there.

But you still are showing zero equivocation on my part. The objection you posed to what you call the second statement of the premise had nothing to do with the resulting logical conclusions. Miracles were neither a major or minor premise, and never presented themselves as a conclusion either.

"But I am more interested in knowing how you think an eternal universe can have nothing infinite in it. Are you thinking of time as a part of the universe, or of something that transcends the universe and need not be considered part of it?"

The universe is a chain of causality. (Well... it's actually a web of causality, but let's keep it simple.) It consists entirely of discrete entities and events, none of which are infinite. All of them are limited in dimension and ephemeral in existence. Without exception.

Time however is not an entity at all. It cannot be reified into a discrete thing as it bears none of the characteristics of either matter or energy. In point of fact, time does not exist at all.

There is no past or future. There is only now. The immediate instance of the universe is all that exists. What we conceive of as "past" is simply the artifact of previous "nows" that we retain in memory, but we still retain that artifact now. What we conceive of as the "future" is simply the recognition that now does not stay the same, and the instance we are immediately experiencing is different from other instances that we will eventually experience as "now" but have not yet.

Once an instance of "now" becomes "past," it doesn't go to some other place where it is filed away for reference. It ceases to exist completely. And instances of "future" are not waiting in a vestibule to eventually make their entrance onto the stage. They do not exist until "now" becomes them.

I suspect that you will make the same pointless complaint you made a couple posts ago about how this is not "intuitive." That's merely damning with faint praise. There is a reason why intuition should not be trusted... it is too often wrong. An eternal universe is certainly counter intuitive, but so what? It is still the only logical conclusion that can be reached from a premise of "all effects have causes" or "nothing comes out of nothing."

The intuitive leap that religionists make when confronting the eternal chain of causality is to "call it God," but that requires the contradiction of the premise, and is therefore not justifiable logically.

So... is it intuitive? No. But it is perfectly and unforgivingly logical.