devans99 wrote:Imagine an eternal god who has always been counting - what number would he be on? Forever has no start, so the god could not have even started counting...
Correct. If this counting (event) never "started", then the counting never happened. This God can't be counting if he never started counting.
devans99 wrote:...the lack of an initial state invalidates all subsequent states - a system’s initial state determines all subsequent states.
This only applies to events within an
already existing deterministic universe. It does not apply to the existence of the universe itself.
It is one thing to say that events require "starts", and quite another to say that the existence of matter-time-space (the universe) require a start.
For it is this universe that makes "starts" possible, NOT the other way around! Without matter-time-space there can be no "starts" at all. Nothing to start. No time to start. No where to start.
Therefore, "starts" are only possible within a "
non-started" pre-existing universe. If this universe exists, then it has never not existed.