I made a slight fix to the bot and sent the Rabbi’s prompt again:

A short clarification: the answers are provided by a model that uses Rabbi Michael Abraham’s sources and tries to reconstruct what he would answer. Therefore, the answers do not necessarily reflect the Rabbi’s own view. If a practical halakhic ruling is needed, one should consult a halakhic decisor.

In short: infinite regress (a chain of explanations/causes that never stops) is not an acceptable explanation, because it does not provide what we require from an explanatory act. In Rabbi Michael Abraham’s formulation, this is expressed through several complementary reasons:

1. The explanation never reaches the world
An explanation that says “X because Y, and Y because Z, and Z because …” with no stopping point does not actually explain anything about X. At every link we are still left with the same question, “And why is that?”, so this is postponing the difficulty rather than answering it. Therefore, in philosophy an infinite chain is seen as a “failed explanatory pattern,” and the chain must stop somewhere at a link that does not require a prior explanation (primary/unconditioned).

2. The need for a positive description (and not a general declaration about “infinity”)
To explain a phenomenon, one has to describe its causes. A general statement that there are infinitely many links is not a positive description of each one; and if the infinity is only potential (in an intuitionist formulation), it is impossible to present the whole explanation to the listener. So talk about an infinite chain of explanations is meaningless, and certainly not acceptable. The Rabbi also brings in the homunculus and turtle examples here to illustrate that infinite regress explains nothing.

3. The principle of sufficient reason—the whole still requires a reason
Even if each link has a local reason, the whole still raises the question: “Why is there this entire chain at all?” According to the principle of sufficient reason, an infinity of conditioned links is not enough; what is required is an independent foundation that does not itself trigger another regress. The Rabbi explains that the discussion can be formulated both on the axis of causality and on the axis of reason, and in both of them infinite regress fails.

4. Dealing with Kant
Kant argued that we have no justification for applying the prohibition on regress beyond the world of experience. Rabbi Abraham responds that the argument against regress is not empirical, but follows from the very concept of explanation itself: an explanation that never stops is not an explanation. Therefore Kant’s objection does not undermine the argument.

In the Rabbi’s terms: a real explanation must end in something that is not just another link, but an anchor point that does not require any prior explanation—and that is how one avoids the endless slide that explains nothing.

Would you like me to elaborate on the difference between potential infinity and actual infinity, or on the connection between this and the classical cosmological proof?

Sources actually used:
• Rabbi Michael Abraham, The First Existent, second discussion: “The Cosmological Proof,” section C: “What’s wrong with an infinite regress?”, and section D/the discussion of potential infinity.
• Ibid., discussion of the principle of sufficient reason and the shift from causal relations to relations of reason.
• “Faith and Science – Part 1,” on the mikyab.net site (on the principle of sufficient reason).
• Ibid., reference to Kant’s objection.

For a deeper and more precise picture, it is recommended to look at the cited sources and search the Rabbi’s site: mikyab.net. On the site you can also find information on how to purchase the Rabbi’s books.

In addition, I also sent it the questioner’s question:

Hello!
The answers are provided by a model that uses Rabbi Michael Abraham’s sources and tries to reconstruct what he would answer. Therefore, the answers do not necessarily reflect the Rabbi’s own view. If a practical halakhic ruling is needed, one should consult a halakhic decisor.

Excellent. Rabbi Michael Abraham does indeed directly address the “turtles all the way down” alternative (infinite regress) and shows why it is not an explanatory alternative.

### Where does the Rabbi discuss this?

1. **The book The First Existent – the chapter “The Cosmological Proof”**

* The opening of the discussion of infinite regress and why “turtles all the way” is not an explanation: “Explanatory regress cannot be infinite… the chain must stop somewhere.”
* The classic “turtles” story and the clarification that the “fool” is actually the one who proposes an infinity of causes—not the one who asks where it stops; the section is explicitly presented under the heading “Turtles All the Way Down.”
* The explicit heading and discussion: “What’s wrong with an infinite regress?”—posing the question and discussing it in principle (around p. 154).
* The course of the argument: from combining the principle of causality/sufficient reason with the rejection of infinite regress, there follows the necessity of stopping at a first cause that does not depend on anything else; this must be outside experience, and therefore the same empirical causality of the events familiar to us does not apply to it (“Between Cause and Ground”).
* An additional emphasis that the argument is not “special pleading”: we accept that the things familiar to us require a cause; it is Actually the rejection of the claim that everything has a cause that leads to recognition of an unconditioned first cause.

2. **The article “Faith and Science – Part 3” (on the site)**
The Rabbi presents the choice: the atheist is forced to choose between infinite regress as a “sufficient” reason and the claim that not everything has a cause; and he explicitly adds that infinite regress is not a rational reason.

3. **On the blog** (supplementary discussions)
In columns dealing with the physico-theological argument, he repeatedly notes that cosmological versions that keep adding more and more “universes” are in fact variations on “turtles all the way down”—that is, evasion of explanation, not a competing explanation.

### Main points in the argument against infinite regress (briefly)

* Infinite causes ≠ explanation: an infinite chain leaves every item we want to explain without a final explanans—so this is not an explanation but an endless postponement of the question. It is a regress fallacy, not an answer.
* Stopping at a first cause: from combining the principle of causality (or sufficient reason) with the rejection of infinite regress, there follows a first cause that does not require a prior cause, and therefore is not part of the chain of experiential events. This is a different category (“ground”/“entity”), not the same kind of “cause” as that of events.
* Refuting “more and more worlds” scenarios: adding links to the chain does not move even one inch toward an explanation—this is exactly “turtles all the way down.”

#### Sources actually used

* The First Existent: Faith, Religious Commitment, and Rational Thinking — the chapter “The Cosmological Proof,” sections “Turtles All the Way Down” and “What’s wrong with an infinite regress?”, as well as “Between Cause and Ground: Events and Objects” (approx. pp. 152–172).
* “Faith and Science – Part 3,” on mikyab.net (discussion of the principle of sufficient reason and infinite regress)
* A blog column dealing with “turtles all the way down” in the context of the physico-theological proof.

For a deeper and more precise picture, it is recommended to look at the cited sources and search the Rabbi’s site: mikyab.net. On the site you can also find information on how to purchase the Rabbi’s books.

Would you like me to point you to exact page numbers according to the edition you have, or add more quotations?