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Devans99
2.7kBelow I’m discussing the first of St Thomas Aquinas’s 5 ways to prove the existence of God - the argument from motion or the Prime Mover as it is commonly referred to - everything is set in motion by another - this chain cannot stretch back forever in time - so there must be a prime mover, a first cause - God in Thomas’s opinion. I’ve listed the common counter arguments to the prime mover and demonstrated why each counter argument fails - apart from one.
Perhaps I have missed a counter argument? Or maybe you don’t agree with my analysis? I would be interested to hear from folks…
The original text of St Thomas Aquinas is online at: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm
1. We don’t Need a Prime Mover Because of Gravity
Two bodies at rest will move towards each other due to gravity - they can be each other's first mover - so a prime mover is not required. Examine this argument in more detail: imagine a simple universe with two particles only. The particles are currently in orbit due to gravity. Logically the particles cannot always have been in orbit - the universe is big - so the particles would once have been far apart. The particles cannot have ever been infinity far apart else they would never achieve orbit (∞-1=∞ so they could never reach each other). So the particles have always been finitely far apart and must have moved a finite distance closer together until they were in orbit. As they moved closer, their closing speed would increase due to stronger gravity. That means we can trace back a finite period of time till a point where the particles were not moving towards each other.
But that means gravity was not operating at that time - what can have caused gravity to start operating? The only possibility seems to be the start of time - if we imagine gravity started operating due to some other change apart from the start of time, the question is what caused that change? And what caused the change that caused that change, etc… So the start of time is the only possible root explanation that avoids an infinite regress. The start of time then implies a timeless first cause - so this counter argument seems to lead back in, a roundabout way, to the same conclusion as the prime mover.
2. An Infinite Regress of Causes is Possible
This is plainly nonsense / wishful thinking: an example from pool. Imagine a perfect, frictionless pool table. The balls are all wizzing around - the balls will continue wizzing around for a potential infinity of time. We have no idea how long the balls have been wizzing around, but we can infer an initial state where the player set the white ball in motion; else all would be still - an infinite regress of motion is just not possible.
3. If Nothing Moves Without a Mover, Then the Prime Mover Needs a Mover too
If the prime mover / first cause is timeless then there is nothing logically or sequentially prior to the prime mover - so it in itself does not need a mover - it has ‘always’ existed beyond time. Existing ‘forever’ within past time is an impossibility - there would be no start to the period of existence so nothing could exist. So logically we are left with a timeless first cause as the only possibility.
4. Who Created the Prime Mover?
Similar to the previous counter argument, if the prime mover is timeless then it is uncreated. There is nothing logically before something that is timeless - ‘before’ is a temporal term and is not applicable to a timeless entity.
A timeless prime mover / first cause would be eternal and beyond time so beyond the constraints of cause and effect.
5. Virtual Particles Appear all the Time and Effect Each Others Motions
The universe has huge amounts of mass in it - virtual particles are so tiny they can’t move anything of significance. Virtual particles also respect the conservation of energy so they cannot result in the creation of permanent matter/energy - the sort of matter/energy required to cause an significant motion.
6. Time Maybe Circular
In this eternalist conception, the first movement is caused by the last movement - the Big Crunch causing the Big Bang.
But there appears to be something different about ‘now’ - we can tell the difference between past, present and future so ‘now’ must be distinguished in some way. Some sort of cursor or pointer to ‘now’ is required. What set the ‘now’ pointer in motion? It must have been set in motion by the Prime Mover.
7. Why Does the Christian God Correspond to the Prime Mover?
I agree with this counter argument: the prime mover demonstrates the need for something to move of its own accord, it does not demonstrate that the prime mover is the Christian God, is omnipotent (or anything else), merely that it moved of its own accord.
Is autonomous movement possible without intelligence? Automatons require an intelligent agent to create them. To be an uncaused cause clearly requires an internal driving force / self motivation, IE intelligence. If nothing in the universe is self-driven then what would be the result? There is gravity and the other forces but these just dumbly and deterministically attract/repel - long term, these all lead to equilibrium - isolated systems with no internal driver end up in equilibrium - the universe would surely be in equilibrium unless something (the first cause) is self-driven/intelligent. The expansion of the universe maybe an expression of this intelligence; without it we would be in equilibrium (the universe would be one big black hole). -
Possibility
2.8kThe existence of a ‘Prime Mover’ points to the limitations of language structure, not to reality. We cannot have a verb, an action, without something to perform that action. This does not necessarily correspond to reality.
Consider the possibility that this ‘intelligence’ is simply a fundamental capacity to relate: to be aware, to connect and collaborate. -
Devans99
2.7kImagine the prime mover as a marble that has always been sliding down a slide — Gregory
Our experience with reality suggests that all things eventually arrive at equilibrium unless there is some form of intelligent agent to prevent that happening. Even ‘stable’ orbits decay slowly due to gravitational radiation - nature, if left to itself, results in gravitational equilibrium - one big black hole - complete stillness is the only form of indefinite length steady-state existence possible - hence a prime mover seems to be required.
The existence of a ‘Prime Mover’ points to the limitations of language structure, not to reality. We cannot have a verb, an action, without something to perform that action. This does not necessarily correspond to reality. — Possibility
In nature, at the macroscopic level, all things that happen are caused by some agent. At the microscopic level, conservation of energy is respected by the tiny natural fluctuations that occur so nothing of any note can result. So I think that the english language reflects reality - actions require an agent to accomplish them.
Consider the possibility that this ‘intelligence’ is simply a fundamental capacity to relate: to be aware, to connect and collaborate. — Possibility
To be aware, to connect and collaborate are all signs of intelligence. -
Seagully
10One word: Curiosity/questioning.
Although this isn't a scientific answer, kindly consider it.
What lays in front of us, in the "future", always? The unknown.
Life has a will to discover and explore. Curiosity, questioning.
Although this may end up bringing the question, "is this will the prime mover?"
But think about it, the very fact that we're asking this, that we're questioning, that I'm offering my argument, comes from curiosity and questioning, the basic and primal need to learn the unknown.
Every question in life leads to another question. Every answer is followed by more questions. There is no truth, there is only continuity and development, that is based on wonder and curiosity.
What we know now will change with time, because everything, all of reality, is constantly developing, though one mean: Learning the unknown, curiosity, even now, these very moments, we are questioning what we know, and I believe that in a million years from now, we'll still question what we "know". :) -
ovdtogt
667What lays in front of us, in the "future", always? The unknown.
Life has a will to discover and explore. Curiosity, questioning.
Although this may end up bringing the question, "is this will the prime mover?" — Seagully
Yes, fear of the unknown has always been a prime mover.
(Self)consciousness created the fear of not knowing. -
Devans99
2.7kI believe that absolute knowledge is possible in some instances, but I would agree that absolute knowledge on the question of the origin of things, can never be obtained - even if time travel is invented and we travel back to the start of everything and observe what happens, we must still trust the evidence of our own senses and some are loathed to even do this.
The development of human knowledge is interesting to consider. If we travel back a few 1000 years, maybe we could guess that 50% of what we then thought was wrong. Today, thanks largely to science, maybe only 25% (?) of what we believe is wrong. Step forward in time a few 1000 years and maybe only 10% of what we will then know will be wrong. The trend of improving accuracy of our knowledge is clear, but at no point in the future will we ever be able to say 100% of what we know is correct... our knowledge tends to but never reaches perfection, so ultimately we will be frustrated in our quest for absolute knowledge. -
Seagully
10
What you're not considering is that knowledge is based on reality, and reality, along with us, is constantly evolving. Therefor the more time goes on, the more we learn and the more there is to learn.
We can never reach to the extent of absolute knowledge because reality itself, along with us, is constantly evolving.
The only knowledge is questioning what is, for any answer we reach will eventually change and evolve with time.
In other words, in my opinion, there's always the same amount of knowledge to learn, no matter where we are in time, because we, along with reality and life, are evolving at the same pace :) -
Devans99
2.7kThe past is constantly increasing in size so the amount of historical knowledge we can accumulate is constantly increasing.
But there is only one set of facts to learn about the origin of all things - it is a closed set of facts that does not grow with time - so I hope you can see the argument that we will get successively more certain but never reach absolute certainty on these sorts of questions. -
Athena
3.2kYour subject is fascinating and let me begin by saying I know almost nothing about it. So out of my ignorance, I must ask why a photon appears to have movement? This is not orbiting around something but a line of motion. Where does it come from and where is it going? Why is it moving if it is not orbiting because of gravity? -
Gregory
4.7kIn the summa theologica Aquinas refuted th kalam cosmological argument but goes out on Aristotle's limb and says the eternal series needs a spiritual being to be there along with the series, parallel. I would like to see him debate modern physicists.
Aquinas, as Bertrand Russell pointed out, never tired of writing arguments for every aspects of his Catholic God, no matter how weak -
Devans99
2.7kThanks Athena! I am afraid I'm not much of a physicist and photons are a mighty mysterious particle, but below are my thoughts.
I understand that photons are tiny packets of energy that are emitted by energised atoms when an election in a high energy orbit falls back into a normal orbit. This happens during various sorts of reactions (chemical, nuclear, etc).
A photon is a massless particle so is not effected by gravity according to Newton. Einstein's work however indicates that gravity is actually due to distortions in spacetime and as such photons are effected by gravity as well. This is why a black hole is possible, the curvature of spacetime is so extreme that not even photons can escape. But under less extreme scenarios, photons appear to be unaffected by gravity and travel in straight lines.
Photons are strange because they travel at the speed of light because they have no mass and so do not experience the passage of time. They also experience another relativistic effect call length contraction - at the speed of light distances are compressed down to zero. Photons appear to have motion from our perspective but if it were possible to see things from a photon's perspective, it might seem as if it can travel anywhere in the universe in no time whilst covering no distance.
The prime mover argument is all about massive objects so how do photons fit in? Well they do have some momentum so they can interact with massive objects to cause their motion. And their production is caused some sort of reaction involving matter. Einstein says E=mc^2 so energy is equivalent to matter, so maybe we could think of the prime mover argument as being about matter and energy rather than just matter only and being about momentum rather than movement.
So maybe the prime mover argument could be restated so as to include photons:
We look around us, we see matter/energy with momentum, but matter/energy must have a source of its momentum and the source must itself have another source of its momentum. But these chains of sources cannot proceed out to infinity else there would be no first/ultimate source of momentum in the universe and all would be still, so there must be a prime momentum that is the ultimate cause of all momentum in the universe.
The Big Bang obviously is a candidate for this ‘prime momentum’. -
Devans99
2.7kAquinas, as Bertrand Russell pointed out, never tired of writing arguments for every aspects of his Catholic God, no matter how weak — Gregory
Russell's counter argument against Aquinas was surprisingly weak for such a clever guy, he said the five ways:
"depend on the supposed impossibility of a series having no first term. Every mathematician knows that there is no such impossibility: the series of negative integers ending with minus one is an instance to the contrary.” (Russell 1969, 453)
That's lame. Aquinas was talking about cause and effect and as everyone know, the effect depends on its cause to give it existence. If we look at the series of negative integers:
{ ..., -5, -4, -3, -2, -1 }
We can see it is possible to write these out if we start at -1 and work backwards. It is however impossible to start writing at '...' and generate the rest of the series - that is because there is no first term in the series and the following terms depend upon the previous terms in the same way the effects are dependant on the causes. If there is no first term, there is nothing. -
Devans99
2.7kLike I say the first term is gravity, which is outside the series — GregoryThe marble is the series. The infinite slide is the gravity. — Gregory
If we imagine a universe with no start of time and just gravity, then though the mechanism of gravity (and orbital decay), a huge black hole is the only possible result - gravitational equilibrium - leading to thermodynamic equilibrium eventually due to the working of Hawking Radiation. We do not live in such a universe, so we can conclude that one of the following must hold for our universe:
- There is a start of time
or
- Some permanent, self-driven entity has always existed that has kept us out of equilibrium.
Both are IMO indicative of an intelligent, timeless, prime mover. -
Devans99
2.7kI think my marble example applies to a meta universe and the Hawking stuff doesnt. — Gregory
What makes you believe:
- Gravity applies to a meta universe / multiverse
- Hawking radiation does not
The 2nd is an inevitable result of the first? Besides, even if there is no such thing as Hawking radiation, infinite time + gravity = gravitational equilibrium, which we are not experiencing, so my argument above still seems to hold.
Michio kaku says you can't prove from the universe there is a god — Gregory
"My point of view is different. My own point of view is that you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. Science is based on what is testable, reproducible, and falsifiable. That’s called science. However, there are certain things that are not testable, not reproducible, and not falsifiable. And that would include the existence of God ... I don’t think there’s any one experiment that you can create to prove or disprove the existence of God. Therefore, it’s not a falsifiable statement. You cannot create an experiment that disproves the existence of God. Therefore, it’s a non-falsifiable statement." - Michio Kaku
https://innotechtoday.com/michio-kaku-clears-god-discovery/
I would agree with the above that belief in God is a non-scientific belief if you use the traditional definition of God (infinite, omnipotent, omniscience, etc...). I personally use a more limited, deist, definition of God - just some form of intelligent agent that was responsible for the creation of the universe - no wild claims of infinite powers.
Is it possible to ever formulate an experiment that would prove or disprove the existence of such an entity? Maybe you can do so at home: take a hamster cage, note that with a hamster in it, the cage stays out of equilibrium. Remove the hamster from the cage, the cage enters equilibrium. The cage is of course a metaphor for the universe and the hamster a metaphor for God. But I doubt this meets scientific standards of rigour so I'd agree the existence of even a deist God is likely to remain a non-scientific question.
Those who try to prove the existence of God are weak in faith. Edward feser comes to mind — Gregory
I have no faith; I'm agnostic leaning towards deist. -
Devans99
2.7kExactly. General physics laws can be used to show how a meta-universe might work. They are speculation, but show an alternative to theism or deism — Gregory
The only meta-universe / multiuniverse theory I have any familiarity with is ‘Eternal Inflation’ - the current favoured model amongst cosmologists. It’s a sort of misleading name, because it sounds like it’s been going on forever - it should actually be called ‘Future Eternal Inflation’ - all the models they have come up with so far have a definite start to them (pre Big Bang obviously) I believe.
The theory starts off with no universes at all, just a small amount of repulsive gravity material which expands very rapidly due to its own gravitational repulsion whilst retaining a constant density. Conservation of energy is respected as the increasing negative energy of the gravitational field is exactly offset by the increase in mass (=positive energy). This expanding patch generates all of the universes in the multiverse.
But Eternal Inflation theory does not explain how the initial patch of anti-gravity material comes about. Speculative ideas about this are that quantum fluctuations somehow created the anti-gravity material. Most of the leading theorists like Guth also believe that time has no start.
To my mind this is not satisfactory - if natural mechanisms like quantum fluctuations can be the cause of eternal inflation and past time is infinite then we should expect an infinite number of instances of eternal inflation - an infinite number of overlapping multiverses - and an infinite matter density to go with that - which is not what is observed. -
Devans99
2.7kI think that these two questions are quite distinct:
1. 'Is there a God?'
2. 'Was the universe created by an intelligent agent?'
The first, bearing mind the received/traditional definition of God, cannot be said to be subject of science. The second, however, does seem to fall within the remit of science. But science (cosmology) seems to ignore the 2nd possibility... the models and theories I read about are purely mechanistic. That seems a mistake on the part of science. On the face of it, there is quite a high probability that the answer to the 2nd question is yes so it would seem prudent for science to invest quite a high percentage of its efforts in developing models that are compatible with an affirmative answer to the 2nd question. -
Siti
732. An Infinite Regress of Causes is Possible
This is plainly nonsense — Devans99
Is it? Apart from imaginary billiard tables, why? And also - think of it the other way round - if at some future point, all the particles in the universe were to stop moving there were no further change - what could possibly set it going again? So absent the assumption of a "Prime Mover", is there actually any compelling reason to imagine that reality has ever done anything other than continually change...forever before?
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