If we take God out of the equation, then there is nothing in our universe that is eternal. There is always a beginning and an end of everything, no matter how long that takes. It may seem eternal to us, since our lifespans are extraordinarily short compared to stars, or the life cycle of a planet, but there is a beginning and an end. In this way, yes, there is always some sort of creator.
Yes, excellent reasoning.
However, the God that you and Lula are arguing is an eternal God that created the universe. This means that this God would be outside the paradigm of time, as he created it.
Yes, absolutely true.
Whenever he deals with the universe on any level, yes, he would work according to the natural/universal laws. (Did you miss where I said that before?)
Well, God is in complete control of all the natural and universal laws, and occasionally He does things that go outside them, like Noe's Flood and when Christ performed certain miracles, like raising Lazurus from the dead or changing water into wine at the wedding at Cana.
However, being outside the paradigm of time, he is not restricted to having a beginning, because there is no beginning in terms of the eternal.
Yes.
As for the word eternal, alright yes, I give it to you that it can be used as an "infinite" amount, however (per the argument you introduced with Lula) if everything has a creator, then everything, including time, would have a beginning, making it not eternal, as eternity has no beginning or end.
Well said.
So I will stick with my description of eternal in this discussion as being the non-existence of time.
God Who is Infinite First Cause, created all that exists, visible and invisible (angels), including space, matter and time. It is from Genesis that we've come to understand time in terms of 7 days being one week. That's way cool.
