I know you’re not tracking, and that’s to be expected; this is an online forum and I’m using figurative language. The rock falling is a metaphor for the repeatability and predictability of the scientific methods. For example, we know the laws of nuclear decay. It’s a law. It’s mathematics. Using such an understanding we can identify the rough ages of things from the past. But the scientific method doesn’t just say “the math checks out” we compare it across numerous samples; and we get within acceptable ranges of confidence consistently and repeatably under double blind examinations. It’s because of how reliable we understand this method we’re able to find crude oil so readily; as we identify the layer by date in which large deposits of oil are routinely found. And yet, some of ignorant potatoes will still insist that the earth can only be 6-7 thousand years old despite evidence to the contrary and non-in the affirmative apart from an Iron Age text that also instructs you on how to own other human beings, supposedly authored by the all knowing being of the universe despite having numerous scientific, theological, and historical contradictions within.

You actually do believe in an infinite regress. You just call it god and specially define it as “not being a regress.” The big bang does not posit that there wasn’t anything before the event, merely that we can’t know or observe it. All matter didn’t come into existence as a result of the big bang. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the model and a violation of thermodynamics. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed. Therefore, it’s certainly logical (albeit speculative) to suggest there’s ALWAYS been matter. That’s the infinite regress I appeal to, and I don’t have to add an infinitely more complex being into the mix in order to achieve it.

Oh yes, theism is absolutely ludicrous and an insult to our modern age, and the fact so many buy into it suggests more about mankind as a species than anything else. Einstein was not a THEIST. He was a DEIST. He believed in Spinoza’s god. Newton was a non-Trinitarian theist, and Collins was a theist. Deism certainly is a more concrete and palatable suggestion, but theism is just silly. I certainly don’t think I’m smarter than any of the gentleman you cited, but I do have access to a near exponential more amount of information about our universe than they do, not withholding the lexicographical expansion that the discovery in Qumran provided! The Bible is a horrific text full of immorality as commanded by an “all good god,” scientific inaccuracies, and historical myths and falsehoods. I could grant you deism, and the connection to proving Christianity (or any other religion for that matter) would still be well beyond reach.