They may be answered as follows:

Nothing in this shows that an effect can be beginningless and eternal, not preceded by nonexistence. Rather, your statement, “In that case, there is no difference between an effect whose existence is preceded by nonexistence and one whose existence is not,” is a mere assertion.

It thus becomes clear that the argument presented by al-Āmidī and others—that a cause and its effect cannot be separated in time and must coexist in time—is among the weakest arguments. Indeed, what he has stated does not establish even the possibility of their temporal coincidence, let alone its necessity. At most, he has stated that prior nonexistence is not a condition for a cause to bring something into existence. Yet its not being a condition does not entail that temporal coincidence is necessary. Rather, one might maintain that both coincidence and delay are possible.

Someone could then say:

What you have stated, although false—as has been explained at length elsewhere, where it was shown that people hold three views on this matter:

One view is that an effect may coexist with its cause in time, so that the effect coincides