The Problem of the Affirmation of the Ontological Priority of an Infinite Number of Creatures in an Infinite Series Associated with Atheism.

Atheism may posit an infinite series of causes to account for the existence of any single contingent substance. Yet such a series is a series of causes that are chronologically simultaneous and ontologically prior and posterior. The series is chronologically simultaneous, for all the causes must exist to cause the existence of the one creature, which exists at any one moment. The being received by the creature must then continue to be received from one moment to the next, for as long as the creature continues to have being. As the creature exists now, all the causes in the series must also cause now. 

The series also involves the causation which has ontologically priority. For causes in the series must all act within the series as causes which act prior to the effect, which in turn acts also as a cause. Such a series of causes and effects, (which are also causes) is a series of ontologically prior and posterior causes. The creatures acting as causes in the series must then be ordered according to ontological priority and posteriority, whereby one creature receives being as an effect ontologically prior to that same creature causing the being of another creature. 

Yet because creatures in the concrete are composed of nature and being, no creature can be ontologically prior to another creature according to one creature causing the being of another creature. One creature may be prior to another creature as cause to effect, whereby a creature is a cause of another creature, such as a father causes a son. One creature 1 as cause can be prior to another creature 2 as effect, but the being of creature 2 is not caused by creature 1. For only that which is being can be ontologically prior to all other things which have being. And that which is being is God. 

Conclusion - The assumed infinite series of creatures that require an ontological priority of creatures that cause the being of another creature concludes to both the invalidation of the series, and provides evidence for the inferred God which is itself being.