The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.

[The Grand Nudger]

@The Grand Nudger : Well, as for personal experience, I know God exists from my experience of Him, not least because I've received from Him answered prayers (not just my college and job, which are His Blessings, but many other things too), and witnessed healing miracles in His Name. For those who doubt such miracles happen in Jesus Christ's Name even today, as I've done before, I would refer you to CFAN's Ministry in Africa. Led by Pastor Reinhard Bonnke (may he rest in Peace) and now Pastor Daniel Kolenda, they've led/witnessed nearly 100 MN Souls come to Christ, from multiple denominations, across roughly 50 years, on that Continent. As St. Thomas says about the Resurrection, and indeed in general, sometimes effects are known to us better than the cause. Therefore, we can proceed backward, from knowledge of the effects to knowledge of the cause. Whether you'd believe my personal testimony or not is up to you; probably not. But the facts of Christianity's growth in Africa anyone can investigate, and try to deduce the causes/reasons for that growth. It was mainly by miracles, in response to the faith of the good African people, as well as those like Bonnke etc. There are now some 700 MN Christians in Africa, not long ago it was 10 MN. Like the Resurrection, or Creation, or this event, the effects of that event are known to us better than the cause of the event. Investigate the event with an open mind, and you will find the cause.

So there you go.  It doesn't really matter to you whether your god is or even qualifies as a candidate for a first cause.  Answered prayers, miracles, these are the things which you believe establish the existence of your god.  I'd probably believe in gods too if I thought I had prayers answered or witnessed miracles.  

I do see alot of christians, so we have that experience in common, but it doesn't leave me with the same impression that it leaves you.  I'm not sure I'd point at africa as an example of christian growth - not, mind you, because christianity hasn't grown there.....but I suspect that if you think the explanation for that is miracles..we aren't going to be having the same conversation when we discuss christian colonization.

1. History of Monotheism: I glanced at Wiki's article on Monotheism, and among other things, with some historical Truth and some liberal errors, it says: "Post-exilic Judaism, after the late 6th century BCE, was the first religion to conceive the notion of a personal monotheistic God within a monist context." It's true that a Personal Monotheistic God - especially One Whose First Commandment is that there is Only One Almighty God, and we are to recognize no other gods but Him - was first revealed in Judaism, but that was to Moses, who lived in 1500 BC. And around 500 years before the Prophet Moses, so around 2000 BC counting backward, God had already revealed to Abraham clearly that He was Almighty God. 

As the Bible records, God appeared to Abraham around 2000 BC, and said: "When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless." (Gen 17:1). 

Wiki also says, "Quasi-monotheistic claims of the existence of a universal deity date to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenaten's Great Hymn to the Aten from the 14th century BCE." and of course they neglect to mention this was because the Egyptians had experience with the Hebrews. Indeed, the 14th century "BCE", BC, is the time of the Exodus from Egypt. It was the Hebrews/Jews who consistently taught the world that there was only One God in Pre-Christian times. This fact is so clear in history that Wiki's revisionist history is amazing to me. God had to make it the First Commandment partly because nearly the whole world was in error at that time. Of course, there were Monotheists before Abraham here and there, but hardly any consistent ones before Abraham and Moses. But after Abraham, his descendants, the Hebrews, and especially after Moses, and with the 10 Commandments given to Him by Almighty God, Judaism becomes the first consistently Monotheistic religion set apart from Paganism/Polytheism, which nearly all the world practiced at the time, including e.g. Greece, Rome, Britain etc, where Christianity would later spread Monotheism and the knowledge of the One True God. Can you give me an example of another consistently monotheistic religion at this time, from 2000 BC to Christ's time

Is this one of those times were we get to laugh and point out that history does have a well known liberal bias™?  No one here is going to take anything that follows seriously.  Least of which religiously convenient historical revisionism.  As to the question..no.  I can't give you an example of any consistently monotheistic religion from 2000bc to christ time™...but I don't think that means much, since I can't give you any consistently monotheistic religion in that period or any other - christianity included, up to the very present day?  

2. How the Church Fathers, especially Greek Fathers, became Christian: We also know this because many of the Early Church Fathers, especially Greek Church Fathers, who were also masters in philosophy apart from loving Jesus Christ, came to Christ in this way: (1) first, they deduced, as those Wise Men Aristotle and Plato (whom some Christians so appreciated/venerated that they called Anonymous Christians), had already shown, that there was a First Cause. They came to the understanding that God was All-Powerful and Supremely Good. (2) secondly, they noticed that, of all the religions in the world (this was before Islam), only 2 Religions consistently taught that God was One, Christianity and Judaism. They thus recognized one of these religions must be true, since God had revealed this to the Hebrews a Millenia before Greek Philosophy had proved it rationally, which couldn't have come about naturally. (3) Thirdly, they easily decided between Christianity and Judaism, as St. Justin Martyr explains, by studying the Messianic Prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures (like Isaiah 53) and realized they were fulfilled in Jesus Christ. They therefore chose the Church over the Synagogue and became Christians, after already having arrived at Monotheism as explained above.

A minority-few Christians, like Tertullian, were of the opinion "what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem", i.e. Philosophy has nothing to do with Religion. But the decided majority were of the other true view, and thankfully the majority prevailed. Fast forward centuries, and Martin Luther was also against the Summa Theologica, and burned it. He held to a kind of anti-rationalism, that faith and reason are mutually opposed. But most later Protestants abandoned this and shortly thereafter went back to something approaching the role Reason played in medieval scholasticism. But the damage was done. And quite predictably, because errors mostly come in pairs, errors by excess and errors by defect, the reaction to Anti-Rationalism was Naturalistic "rationalism". Soon after, as the Thomistic Argument for the Resurrection was lost sight of, but some memory of the First Cause Argument and the Moral Argument still remained, many fell into Deism rather than become Christians. And it's been downhill ever since, especially in most of the West, which shows how foolish the abandonment and forgetfulness of Thomistic Philosophy was. Anyway, there are signs now, thankfully, that's its experience a renaissance/resurgence. We will see how things go in the next 20 or 30 years, but I am confident, as these arguments begin to be more widely studied and better understood, and built on and developed, Theism will prevail over Atheism in time.

I doubt that - not just the outcome you hope for...but that anyone's faith or lack of faith hinges on thomism.  

3. As for the Universe allegedly being the Necessary Being, GN, the Universe cannot be because (1) it began to exist and (2) can cease to exist. Do you deny (1) the Big Bang or (2) the Big Crunch? Not to mention doesnt demonstrate (3) non potentiality and therefore is contingent.

Myself and others have already pointed out that a misunderstanding of big bang cosmology appears to be the only thing that leads you to this conclusion - but, if we were to run with it anyway, your god also appears to have begun to exist..and not long ago?   If this rules out the universe, it would also rule out your god, no? As to whether or not gods can cease to exist - I would point you in the direction of a mountain of dead gods in mans history, and nowhere else. You describe a sense of hopefulness that theism will prevail over atheism....and by that I take it you mean more people will believe in future than in present, and that trends such as the one observed in developed nations will reverse and not repeat themselves as underdeveloped nations reach the same or similar circumstances. If this doesn't happen, will this actually shake your faith? Or is this, like any argument or assertion to a first cause, not actually important to you? If some other god ends up with better representation..for example, will you be switching teams?