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

[Neo-Scholastic]

As a Panentheist, I would say that the Totality may indeed satisfy as Necessary Being, however, that is not necssarrily the same as the physical universe. I say that because, the physical universe is a particular thing with particular features which IMHO triggers the princple of sufficient reason.

I'm not sure that you're right there. I believe it was Giordano Bruno who got in hot water for claiming that he thought the universe was infinite. I'm told his thinking was that if the universe didn't go on forever, then it would stop somewhere and then the question is, what is on the other side of that boundary. He could not contemplate that the universe was finite and unbounded spatially because, naturally, he trie to imagine the universe 'within' space rather than the universe being space itself. It's possible that the temporal dimension of spacetime is similar, and that people err in trying to situate the time the universe has existed 'within' a larger timeline. But there is no need to do so for time any more than it is necessary to do so for space. It makes just as much sense that the temporal dimension of spacetime is also finite and unbounded -- rather than being 'in' time, it simply 'is' time.

I do not disagree. If time begins at the big bang then asking what happened before the big bang makes no sense. On the other hand, if there the multiverse theory is correct, then there are infinite space-times nested within...what?...a meta space-time? Maybe, IDK.

I liked your earlier post about asking what is necessary as opposed to contingent. The way I see it, the principle of sufficient reason applies to the particulars of this physical universe and asks what possible reason accounts for universal features that are everywhere always true about all things. IOW to be eternal is not being outside time; but rather, to be manifest in all parts of it...the truthes that transcend time and space. The starting points of the first 3 of the 5 ways seem to be just those kinds of things, i.e. things that evident about the world that seems necessary for there to even be a world at all.

That said, there has been 900+ years of ontological speculation since the Thomistic demonstrations and the 5W look different in light of Kant, Hiedegger, etc. which is why both @Belacqua and I have consistently said the 5W have to be evaluated on their own terms and within the classical philosophy tradition. Given certain classical assumptions they work, absent those foundational assuptions they fall apart. At the same time, one has to wonder what is lost besides belief in the transcendent when those foundational assumptions are gone and what is being offered up to replace them?