I did not think conclude correctly. I always knew there would be either infinite movement or a first movement. It makes sense as to why there cannot be infinite movement. You've got me. I can't even debate it. Thanks for converting me. Well done.
The unmoved mover is an excellent demonstration for the existence of God. It did take me a while before I felt like I had a good understanding of it though and could really appreciate the strength of the argument. I found that coming to grips with the distinction between potency and act really helped. I spent time just looking at all the causes in the world and framing them in terms of act and potency. This helped me a great deal. Another point which helped me understand the argument was to understand the differences between an accidentally ordered causal series and and an essentially ordered causal series. Once I understood these two concepts I could appreciate the argument much better.
+MrGrevy God is unmoving, he cannot change, he is pure act with no admixture of potentiality. This is what the arguments shows, that for an essentially ordered causal series to undergo any change there must be something of pure act, something with underived causal power. Something which is able to actualise potentialities in other things and yet have no potency of its own. To give a real world example,, the rock whose potential to move is actualised by a stick which is in turn actualised by a hand which is in turn actualised by the muscles which is then actualised by the nervous system which is then actualised by the neurons in the brain which is then actualised by the bio chemistry in the body which is then actualised by ... There is really only atomic structure and then quantum mechanics before we hit the deepest layer of the physical universe that we know of. Perhaps there are a few more layers we don't know about yet. To say that this type of series will go onto infinity will not explain anything. At this level there must be something which does not need to be actualised by something else but is just pure act itself. Something which is able to act of its own accord but has no potential to be moved by something else. If there is no God then what is the source of change since each item in the series has no power of its own to change the next in line and the line does not go on to infinity. If you take something away then the series stops. There must be something which is able to change other things but is unchangeable itself. This unchangeable changer is what sustains all the essentially ordered causal series we see around us.
+MrGrevy You said...*Problem one - you never demonstrated "god" exists.* The first way demonstrates that a being of pure act exists. On closer analysis as to what it means to be a being of pure act, entails a number of characteristics associated with the God of traditional western belief. You said...*Also begs the question, as your premises include the claim that the conclusion is true or (directly or indirectly) assume that the conclusion is true. So you fail there.* Specifically which premise and conclusion are you talking about? You said...*It shows no such thing, it simply claims it. And of course the special pleading- what caused "god" to move? You're arguing against your own premise.* There is no special pleading, God moving is not part of my argument. Nothing causes God to undergo any change because God has no potency to change, he is pure act. The argument shows, that for an essentially ordered causal series to undergo any change there must be something of pure act sustaining all the other items in the series, since they all have underived causal power. You said...*So therefore, we'll just use "god" to fill in the gap. Got it.* This argument is not 'God of the gaps' arguments at all, I am not attempting to posit a scientific explanation for phenomena that science has not yet accounted for. Regardless of what science finds out about those deeper aspects of matter has no bearing on the argument. The important thing to consider is that no item in the series has causal power of its own, it is derived from the item before it. An essentially ordered causal series, of its nature, must have a first member. Not merely the first that comes before the second and third etc or the first that happens to be at the head of the queue. Rather, a first cause is one having underived causal power in contrast to those which have their causal power in only a derivative way. All the later members of such a series exist at all only insofar as the earlier ones do, and those earlier ones only insofar as yet earlier ones do; but were there finally no first member of the series, there would be no series at all in the first place, because it is only the first member which is in the strict sense really doing or actualising anything. The later members are mere instruments, with no independent, actualising power of their own. You said...*What is a "pure act"?* Pure act means to have act without any potency. All contingent things can be seen as being a composite of act and potency. Act just refers to what the thing is now and potency refers to what it could be. So a rock for example would be hard, abrasive and roundish, this is how it is in act at the moment. But it also has the potential to be something else, it could be crushed into powder, or chiseled into a statue or it could just simply be moved form one place to another, these are its potentialities. One important point I want to make is that the rock can't make itself undergo any change, something else must make it change. In the example I gave of the rock moving because of the stick, the rock can't move itself, the potential to move must be actualised by something else and in this situation it was moved by the stick. This process happens throughout the universe where things undergo change. You said...*How do we know it's a thing and not a group of things?* The argument demonstrates that a being of pure act must exist. This being of pure act can only be one. In order for there to be more than two or more purely actual beings, there would have to be some way of distinguishing them, some feature that one of them had that the other lacked; and there just couldn't be any such feature. For to lack a feature is just to have an unrealised potentiality, and a purely actual being, by definition, has no unrealised potentialities. If we said for example that one purely actual being was more powerful than another, and that is what distinguished him from the other one, then we'd be saying in effect that the other purely actual being had failed to realise his potential for power as fully as the first had - which makes no sense given that we're talking about a purely actual being, with no potentialities of any sort. You said...*How did you conclude it is a "god" and not a magic leprechaun for example?* God is one, has eternal existence and is immaterial. The first way argument demonstrates that a being of pure act must exist. The paragraph above explains why there can only be one being which is pure act or one God. A being of pure actuality, lacking any potentiality whatsoever would also have to be immaterial, since to be a material thing entails changeability in various ways, which a purely actual being cannot be. A being of pure act would not come into existence or go out of existence because both of these things are instances of change and as we know something of pure act has no potentiality therefore cannot change from non existence to existence or existence to non existence but would simply exist always. You said...*Can you demonstrate such a thing exists or could exist?* The first way argument demonstrates that a being of pure act must exist. All of the items I have described in the series are composites of act and potency. No matter how many items you put into the series you still need an item before it to run the series. Therefore an item of an act/potency composition will not sustain the series. The sustaining cause can then only be either something of pure act or something of pure potency. Pure potency is only abstract, you cannot have something which is pure potency therefore the only possibility left is something of pure act. You said...*How did it get around the need for actualisation?* For something to change it must first have the potential for that change. Then something else which has the power to actualise this change must do the actualising. The thing changed, first has the potential to be changed and then, that potential then becomes actualised. The thing changed then has a new way of being in act. What was potential now has become actual. For something to change from potential to actual, it must first have potential, but a being of pure act has no potency so it cannot undergo any change and therefore not need to be actualised or even can be actualised since it already is pure act. To consider your question from another perspective. As I pointed out before, a being of pure act would not come into existence or go out of existence because both of these things are instances of change. Since essence is a type of potency and existence a type of act, a being of pure act cannot have its essence distinct from its act of existence. Therefore its essence must be identical to its existence. It then makes no sense to ask, does existence itself need actualising? I said...*If there is no God then what is the source of change?* You said...*If there's no council of 3 leprechauns, then what is the source of change?* All contingent things are a composite of act and potency. For change to occur a potency must be actualised by something else. This series cannot go on forever therefore the originator of the series must not be a composite of act and potency but some other combination. Pure potency does not exist so it must be, by a process of elimination, something of pure act. Three leprechans have nothing to do with explaining change. In light of this, your question makes no sense. I said...*There must be something which is able to change other things but is unchangeable itself. This unchangeable changer is what sustains all the essentially ordered causal series we see around us.* You said...*Another assertion, which you haven't supported. You do understand that assertions are not evidence, correct?* If the thing were changeable itself then it would be a composite of act and potency and therefore just another item in the whole series. But we already know that the series cannot have an infinite number of items in the series. Even if it did have an infinite number of items it would not explain how change is possible. Since this changer cannot have an act, potency configuration it must have some other configuration. Pure potency cannot exist without act because potency is just a potential for some change and only exists in relation with act. The only other possible configuration is something which is pure act. Something of pure act has no potency therefor is unchangeable. Based on reason, logic and the evidence of change we see around us, it can be said that there must be something of pure act which sustains all the essentially ordered causal series we see around us, if there were no being of pure act then no change would be possible. Change is real in our universe and given the distinction between act and potency, there must be a being of pure act.
MrGrevy You said...*I was referring to your premise: “God is unmoving, he cannot change, he is pure act with no admixture of potentiality.” It's begging the question.* And the next sentence says...'This is what the arguments shows'.....The above statement was not a premise in the first way argument, it is the conclusion. I was clarifying a point you made about God. You said...'What moved god?' I pointed out that God does not change. You said...*You just stated “God” isn't part of the argument, then go on to refer to God being “pure act” as a result of your reasoning. Special pleading comes into play when one asks “What caused 'God' to move”* I never said 'God' was not part of the first way argument. I said that 'God changing' is not part of the first way argument. The reason why I say this is because God does not change. A God which can change is not part of the first way argument. This is why I don't ask, what caused God to move? You said...*Special pleading again. What caused the god, or prime mover, or the “first member” to move? You're trying to define something into existence.* God does not change or move but is the source of all other change we see around us. You said...*What is a "pure act"? Can you demonstrate this is a valid concept?* Pure act means to have act without any potency. The distinction between act and potency is they key to understanding how change is possible. All physical things can be seen as being a composite of act and potency. Act just refers to what the thing is now and potency refers to what it could be. Change is a real feature of the universe and cannot be coherently denied. Change can only be a real feature of the world if there is a real distinction in things between what they are in act and what they are in potency. To deny act would be to deny that a thing is as it is now and to deny potency would be to deny that there is any possibility of change and more specifically change which is repeatable, as occurs with scientific experiments. We affirm the distinction between act and potency given the success of science. You said...*You are saying “everything must have a cause, except a thing that does not have a cause” that is textbook special pleading.* I've never said everything must have a cause. This is actually a text book straw man argument. Only contingent things have a cause, things which begin to exist. God has no cause because God does not begin to exist. A being of pure act cannot begin to exist because this is a type of change and a being of pure act cannot change. You said...*How do you know “god is one”. What is this based on? Have we observed and tested god? Are you thinking this through?* A God which is limited is no God at all. To have the title 'God' you must have all the attributes of God to the infinite degree. On closer analysis you can see that there can only be one God. If there were more than one then each would be limited by not surpassing the other in power or knowledge or what have you. If God is the most powerful being for example then there cannot be two most powerful beings. There are other beings which are powerful, for example us, but there cannot be two or more most powerful beings. If you were to find two candidates for a possible god each being of equal power then neither would be god because they are limited by the power of the other. For to lack a feature is just to have an unrealised potentiality, and a purely actual being, by definition, has no unrealised potentialities. One must have more power, that is all power to fit the definition of God. This is not an opinion, I think this god and you think that god, it is a rational argument that there cannot be more than one all powerful God. You said...*You're saying “If I don't know what it is, it has to be God.* The conclusion does not claim ignorance so must be God. The conclusion says that a being of pure act is what sustains an essentially ordered causal series in motion. The originator of the series can not be a composite of act and potency, since these things only have derivative power, but must be some other combination. Pure potency does not exist without act so it must be, by a process of elimination, something of pure act.
There is no evidence that you can't have infinite causes. IF true it doesn't even mean a god exists, it could just be a natural phenomenon that has nothing to do with a god, and even if it was a "god" there is no good reason to think it would be the christian god, or even that i would be one god, why not multiple gods ? It's self defeating (what was the cause for god ? If you don't think there should be a cause, why can't you accept that for the universe itself ?), also it assumes things that are true even though they aren't proven to be, and the conclusion has nothing to do with the development. In conclusion the argument even though it was probably mind blowing at the time with the poor education we had and the lack of knowledge compared to today, it is actually weak.
drakkeur if there is an infinite regress into the past, the present moment will never happen. Imagine there is an infinite number of dominos before it hits domino x, when will domino x fall? The answer is never. Therefore an infinite regress is absurd.
"The principal argument used to eliminate such a regress is that in essentially ordered infinite regress of causes, only instrumental causes would exist, and, hence there would be no intrinsic causality in the series to produce the observed effect. The defender of this argument faces, however, this dilemma: if an instrumental cause is defined as a cause lacking intrinsic causal efficacy, one cannot preclude an infinite regress of instrumental causes each receiving its casual efficacy extrinsically from its predecessor but if an instrumental cause is defined as a cause depending ultimately upon a first cause, then it cannot be shown that the causes in an infinite regress are truly instrumental." (289, The cosmological argument from Plato to Leibniz).
I grasped the outer faint glimmer of the argument, but after a couple of glasses of Chardonnay, I'm sure I'll start comprehending it more. Very interesting video, sir.
The "Amazing" Atheist made a 15 minute critique of Thomas Aquinas, in which he mainly used vulgar language and referred to this Doctor as "retarded", and he has 140,000+ hits, as well as loads of subscribers. I didn't even watch that full video, I only made it about a minute into it before I left the page in disgust. How is it that Father Barron, who offers a calm and peaceful approach and appeals to logic through and through, isn't even close to the numbers the other guy gets?
For the harvest is huge but the reapers are few. Let's thank God for allowing us the plentyful grace to be a part of His holy plan. It's only his efforts of grace on us that makes us open to the truth, while the others choose not to. All praise be to God!
5 years after you posted this comment I still feel the need to answer, because the behavior of society hasn't changed in that regard: The majority of people doesn't feel the urge to seek for the truth or logical concepts. Rather it seeks to feel superior to others and in order to be able to do so, they ignore the opposing valuable insight and choose to use vulgar language, thinking their clear distaste regarding the opposition somehow makes their claim true. Their haughty behavior stems from a society that tells them everything they do is great. "Here have a price for just attending the sports event", "here get a better grade because your parents fought over it or the tests get easier" etc. The music, the television program, schools and home life support this vulgar and haughty behavior. So - why don't uneducated and vulgar people watch intellectually challenging videos? Because they don't want to change and actually challenge themselves.
Thank you for the video Father Barron, I've been reading Saint Thomas Aquinas and inquired into the Catholic intellectual tradition largely because of your commentaries. I would love to hear your thoughts regarding the body and the soul, especially in light of Saint Thomas's reflection on matter and form creating a single nature, which is fundamentally different from the general Cartesian understanding that dominates the culture.
Wo oooooooooh every time I watch your videos I end up very impress thanks a lot I wish more people could appreciate them Keep going please thanks a lot I enjoy every word
Just yesterday, I was sitting by my swimming pool on a completely calm windless day. The calmest day I ever remember in fact, and I was sitting there, completely covered by the shade, teaching myself french without the use of any material or help whatsoever, while my skin tanned itself and an 8 foot wave developed itself in my swimming pool, traveled across the length, and drenched me. It was one of those Atheist in Wonderland kind of days.
I have found no better argument for the existence of the Most High than this. You either have an infinite series of causes (which I would describe as dividing by zero, as you can get pretty close to dividing by zero, but to actually do it is impossible. the same as an infinite series of causes. You can have an _almost_ infinite series of causes, but it cannot actually be infinite), or you have the Uncreated Creator edit: PS, love the William Blake painting at 6:57, shout out to him!
Excellent lecture here! For me, reading Plotinus finally illustrated the unmoved mover, the actus purus. I first learned about the idea from Aquinas but Plotinus sealed the deal! 😅 I love this philosophical aspect of Catholicism and wish it was emphasized more.
Expertly explained Bishop! I have been trying to discern whether this proof depends on the Aristotelian metaphysics that Aquinas followed, but having watched this video, I don’t think that it does. Thank you and God bless!
If I may, I'd like to say that the one mistake in this video was the example about the book. The Argument from Motion involves series of efficient causes per se (instead of per accidens,) which is a distinction made in the video. However, the example of the causal series of the book is per accidens, not per se, and indeed could go on forever, because the book is not dependent on the publisher after it has been moved (or actualized.) Likewise the publisher can continue to be actualized after his parents are deceased, and so on. There's no philosophical reason why this cannot go on forever, which I think may be what some of the comments on this video are talking about. Regardless, it's a great video, and Does contain a proper example of a series of efficient causes per se. Thanks for posting the video!
Those who take refuge in the idea of an "immediate sufficient reason" being present for every integer in a chain of infinite regress should ask themselves if they would feel equally satisfied with a "mediate insufficient reason" for each such integer. The two phrases are equivalent in meaning unless there is a first cause to initiate the chain.
In reading the posts here that attempt to contradict/discredit what this vid and Aquinas say, it becomes clear that the objectors don't even understand their own objections. They're own "arguments" confuse them--but it's nice to see them struggle desperately! Another proof of God. I want to thank them.
On the grounds that his initial premises leads to an infinite regress, he concludes that he can "necessarily" violate his own premise to solve the problem. He essentially restates X as Y, and uses this Y to do something only an X can do, namely: terminate a series of X's. This is special pleading and violates the Law of Identity and thereby the Law of Causality. i.e. He reached a logical dead-end and instead of turning back the way he came, bent reality to fit his contradiction. In the words of the world's greatest philosopher: "To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality."
I know I'm replying 4 years late, but this isn't true. If the original premise was, Everything must be actualised by a prior cause, then that would be a contradiction. That would mean that the first cause, also needs a cause, in which case there can not be a first cause. The actual premise however is that everything that changes from potential to actual, requires a prior actual cause to actualise this change. As the first cause however was not actualised, but just exists as actual, there is no reason to posit a prior cause.
Thank you Bishop. I've found that so many, such as Dawkins, get hung up on the claim that there cannot be an infinite regress. Aquinas doesn't reject the possibility of infinite series as such. If we can consider that we're holding a pan which is burning our hand, Aquinas's claim is not that there cannot be an infinite number of pans heating each other up because infinity is weird, so there must be some first pan. Aquinas's claim is that if there is heat which is burning our hand then there must ultimately be some fire. It is not necessarily the case that there could be no infinite series of pans but it is the case that such a thing could never burn us, as they would only ever be potentially and never actually hot. If they are becoming actually hot, there MUST be a fire.
Richard Dawkins was asked what began The Universe and said "I don't know. nobody knows." Matter is only as malleable as fate decrees. So there is no such thing as potential, only fated and inevitable. No could, only will, is, was, and won't be.
Hello Father Barron! Long-time fan of this and all of your videos. I would consider myself a Deist, in that I believe in an intelligent mind that is the cause of the Big Bang, is the prime mover and is the reason there is something instead of nothing. I think there is a lot of science that backs this up. I have a hard time wrapping my head around Christianity and the God of the Bible. You've mentioned that the Bible should be interpreted like a library, as in multiple genres of writing. How do you know which are stories/lessons and what is to be taken literally?
Motion is absolute without a reference point and relative with a reference point. Time is the illusion. To say nothing moves itself is to ignore the possibility that the thing in question is already in motion. To assume motion is something that must be caused is wrong. A reason and a cause are two different things.
Another way is to say that God is the only thing without potential. He is and always has been purely actualized, and thus unchanging (because without potential to change, something can't change). And this is what allows Him to actualize everything in the universe all at once.
I like this channel. I disagree with many many things, but I appreciate it. Especially when comparing it to what keeps dripping out of anglo-saxon evangelical creationism and some of its knee-jerk atheism. Reminds me a bit of my teacher who was supposed to teach us the usual biblical allgories but quickly turned it into a theological and philosophical tour de force.
Something interesting to think about is that in the modern Big bang model in the paths of space-time come forth from The Big bang and before it terminate So as far as we know time, it did not exist before the universe. So I asked, how did an event change. How did void become creation, the concept of deration, causality, dynamic action didn't exist before the Big bang And yet here we are, to me that says something had to decide ,now, to send it on its way I'm an avid science enthusiast and believe science is the beautiful, complex yet simple, effortless yet difficult to know and impossible to know with certainty And yet, it works. Everything does as it should, time moves at one second per second every second, Mass bends SpaceTime just the right way to keep us, nature in its entirety unfolds at all times and to me that's why science is a quest to ReDiscover gods beautiful work
The sticking point for me is "no one can be mover and moved at the same time", because that's exactly what the concept of the Trinity proposes. But then maybe that's a point in its favor rather than against, I won't pretend to understand it all.
The good Bishop failed to mention that Aquinas does claim that even if the series of efficient causes were infinite, there would still be the necessity of a first cause. Good video though.
Well, in a causal series subordinated per accidens, we just don't know. Thomas thinks there might be a first element in such a series, but we can't know it on purely philosophical grounds.
Thanks for the insightful reply. I think it may have been Anthony Kenny (Or F. Copleston?)I was reading when I found this quotation: "The most efficacious way to prove that God exists is on the supposition that the world is eternal." That, I take it, would yield an even stronger proof than supposing that the world had a beginning in time. I think this quotation is from the Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 13, 30.
Well, I think it's a mistake to separate the ideas in the first place. Science project s merely a process by which we methodically learn about the world around us. It doesn't need to be separate from religion.
Bob C yes, I agree with u because as a catholic I believe that faith and reason are not meant to be separate, they work together to give us a fuller and better understanding of the world around us.
Sure SO i said let's dance and sing yourself. Let's pray and work and fast yourself, let's eat and play and joy all loving yourself i can't do it all alone SO let's be in Peace with all yourself since your own Heart
Great video father. Anyone who is interested in this type of thought, check out Mortimer Adler's "how to think about God: a guide for the 20th-century pagan". He deals, as an Aristotelian, with inertia, big bang (and its opposite), and two quantum theories.
Agreed, great video. Wondering if you know of any videos where Fr. Barron explains more in depth first principles? He references some of them briefly here (contradiction, causality, sufficient reason) but I'd like to hear him treat them specifically. I know he could do it so well.. :)
My biggest reason for believing in God is the fact that morality exists and it is something that is very real. Thinks about it, why do they exists? Why have governments created laws in accordance to morals such as murder, theft and lying etc.? To me the fact that right and wrong exist, whether it's your opinion or not, they're there and we live by it. But why? Why does anyone follow a certain moral code? On the other hand, if God didn't exists, what's stopping anyone, besides being jailed for criminal acts, from committed crimes or doing anything they want?
Russell's criticism of infinite series i.e., it is possible to have infinite series as in the case of Arithmetic, from 1,2,3 ad infinitum---misses the point of Aquinas. The infinite series of numbers is possible but the infinite series of Causality is impossible. St. Thomas in his five ways is talking of the impossibility of the infinite series of Causality...and not about infinite series of numbers. the infinite series of numbers is from 'cause to its effects' from 1, 2 beget 3, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. The infinite series of causality is from 'effects to their causes'----hence Russells's argument against St. Thomas commits a fallacy of false assumption.
I understand the concept of the unactualized actualizer. It is a being or phenomena in itself that has no previous action that befell on it, therefore it always has been in itself eternal. Now i need to understand how an unactualized actualizer would set in motion everything that had potential to be actualized. Does it mean that is finite in its potential to move? Or is it infinite in its potential to move?
Think of your language, Fernando. "potential to move" = "potential to be reduced from potentiality to act". When we're talking about the unactualized actualizer, the word "potential" is not going to appear anywhere. The first mover is fully actualized always which is the perfect state of Being. From that perfect state of Being "proceeds" the creation without any potentiality being found at the creation, in the first mover. How that First Mover creates is something we do not know, but THAT the First Mover both creates and remains without potential is something known by deduction in Thomas' a posteriori argument.
Anybody that says you can just throw away the idea of infinite regress is illogical. Until you provide a logical response that does more than cop-out to this paradox, Aquinas' illogical argument from motion will remain shelved for a lack of evidence or true logical consistency.
That's true, if you ignore this video and Aquinas entirely. He says exactly what I describe in the video. The argument from motion is simply shoving away infinite regress without ACTUALLY addressing it. The fact that Barron thinks this is a logical argument is absurd. There's a reason why we only study these arguments in modern philosophy rather than acknowledging them as being correct or fluid arguments.
cellomon09 And the argument from motion continuously falls, so your point is moot. I have no need to refute that things require a mover, that would be your argument to prove buddy boy.
If Barron felt that way about infinite regresses, he wouldn't use an argument that contains an unwarranted infinite regress. There is ZERO logical recourse to argue that ANY infinite regress should exist in ANY logical sequence.
Father Barron, I am clearly not as perplexed by these concepts as others here. I mean no disrespect to them because they are connecting "ideas" in a way I might not understand. I hope to read and understand portions of the Summa Theologic. I understand that there must be some unmovable essence which set in motion all that has developed- energy, motion, matter, etc. A first essence that unfettered or unchanged from the beginning. It is here I draw in your video on Faith, Hope and Love. Above all reasoning, there is faith. Beyond out capacity to understand it all, there is the hope of a sovereign God. Using those ideas with this recent video tell me to relax, live well, and for others as Jesus asked us to do. All will be seen and understood as we move from this current presence of being to the next. Chill out folks, we will all find out. Thanks Father!!
I think the problem with this argument is that it ultimately boils down into physics: what caused whatever form of matter that existed at the instance of the Big Bang to expand the way it did and give rise to our universe? The reasoning that was eloquently expressed by Bishop Barron is that matter itself is potentiality and thus cannot self-actualize; something else had to bring about that instance of the Big Bang. Here is why I call this a "problem" with the argument: One, it is an argument from ignorance. No one alive today knows what laws, if any, applied to matter at the very instance of the Big Bang. It could very well be that matter at that primordial stage could indeed be self-actualizing. No one knows, and thus it is hasty at best to impose our conventional understanding of the behavior of matter onto matter as it existed at the moment of the Big Bang. Two, and connectedly, there is no reason to suspect that the laws by which matter behaves today (i.e., matter as potentiality requiring an actualizer) applied at the moment of the Big Bang. In fact, some quantum physicists argue that our notions of causality/motion break down at that level of physics. Even though I enjoy Aquinas's argument from a purely aesthetic standpoint as it is very elegant and simple, from an evidence-based perspective, it doesn't hold up to reality.
If matter was self actualizing at the moment of the big bang, all you are really doing is calling it the unmoved mover, which is another word for God. Which, knowing the properties of matter, is inherently incoherent.
I don't think you are quite right about Aquinas' argument. You seen to think he is positing a first cause in order to prevent an infinite regress of causes. God isn't the first cause in a linear series of causes. Rather God is the first cause in that he gives causal power simultaneously to all the causes in the series (irrespective of whether those causes are finite or infinite in time).
I'm Roman Catholic and teach Rel. Ed. to freshmen and thoroughly love Fr. Barron's videos and the use of the new media for evangelizing. A question I would pose is: what answer can be provided for the possibility of an infinite cyclical universe? To rephrase, if the universe were to be an oscillating universe that incorporates the Big Bang, is there the possibility of there being matter/energy and time without the necessary "first action"? A second proposal (also a tangent). Could evolution explain morality (being a favorable trait) among species with higher brain functions? Darwinism is wrong because it assumes a sum total of resources and treats the weak like an appendage with gangrene and immediately goes for the amputation. But that compassion and love are favorable traits as it further propagates the whole of the species. Its not to quantify good deeds or altruism to merely a positive anomaly; but I'm trying to imply that the advantage of positive religion and objective morality benefit society more-so than does the arguments I've heard from those who do not place value on human life. An organism's first best goal is to live, another way to say this is "all life is precious". -Curious Catholic ...with much respect and thanks
1) An oscillating universe (with current evidence, that seems unlikely) still precludes the idea that this oscillation was set in motion. Stephen Hawking attempted an explanation for the universe involving a similar mechanism - called 'Vacuum state fluctuation', but was unable to dismiss the necessity for primordial mover, by his own admission. The argument of Aquinas is that anything that acts has been acted upon and oscillations are no different. Like a oscillating spring, something needs to set it off. 2) Darwinism isn't wrong in that regard because Darwin speaks of Pre-sentient species. It is also quite a dark way of looking at the process of evolution - Darwin suggests that a superior-adapted organism will out-breed an inferior one - the inferior animal, still genetically near-identical at the point of branching, does not suffer any more physical trauma than it normally would. Its legacy is also carried out in the descendant species. I find Darwinism does motivate us to fulfill the call to steward creation, however. Humans have the ideal adaptation - a mind - and with this mind we can discern the intelligibility of the universe, and know God. If another sentient species could arise from nature, one that can know God, then it is our duty to protect all organisms in this hope. If there are no sentient species in the universe, nobody can know good, recognize beauty and so on, and so in that regard Darwinism indeed compels us to protect life.
Could evolution explain morality? Well, there seems to be a Darwinian advantage to altruism in many cases. There's plenty of examples of it in animals (and occationally in humans). Chimps groom each other, warn each other of enemies, hunt collectively. Many creatures will do anything in their power to protect their offspring. Wasps will sacrifice themselves to protect their nest. Darwin gives hundreds of examples in "Origin of Species". Nobody believes that the beasties have our sense of love & compassion but I think it's probable that these behaviors are the precursors of what we call morality.
Tin Man Probable precursors? Maybe. But the "Darwinian advantage" really has no way to bridge the gap between IS and OUGHT. I don't think anyone can really argue that bugs and animals have an obligation to help each other flourish or achieve a maximum state of well-being. As humans, we do (or should; that is why it's so shocking to witness a person getting beat up and yet no one comes to that person's aid).
Dan Rogers Agreed. If we're all busy robbing, raping and killing each other we're less likely to survive and produce offspring. Keep that up and the tribe goes extinct. Thus "Thou shall not murder" and "Thou shall not steal" make good Darwinian sense. Paradoxically, the ultimate source of altruism & morality is good old-fashioned pragmatic self-interest. The Golden Rule sums it up beautifully.
+don q "A question I would pose is: what answer can be provided for the possibility of an infinite cyclical universe?" Infinite cyclical universes probably can't exist. This is due to the second law of thermodynamics which says that the entropy, or disorder, of an energetically closed system will inevitably increase over time. For example, an ornate brick mansion is highly ordered, whereas a pile of bricks strewn across the ground is more disordered. And brick dust, scattered by wind and water after the bricks themselves have deteriorated, is even more disordered. Left on its own, a system - even a bubble universe - will naturally become more disordered. We don’t often see a brick mansion spontaneously reassembling itself from dispersed dust. If our universe has been here forever and is a single size, it would have succumbed to the second law and the universe would be a disordered blur instead of the structure we have today. For more check this out: discovermagazine.com/2013/september/13-starting-point
Good video. There was someone in this comment section disputing the premise nothing can move itself. I am not highly educated but upon slightly closer examination of the objections for that premise I think I might actually agree with them. Again, I’m very uneducated. Still a good video. Btw I liked the music.
Is there a potentiality beyond the universe? Where there's no time nor the position. A potential vs kinetic energy. In that sense God's omnipotence is special and beyond standard understanding of power.
Grown ups understand that Platonic realism requires no creator, no first cause - and that what we call reality IS Platonic. That species of reality (and it’s hard to imagine another kind of reality) does not require a maker or an executive (mover). The root dilemma here is confusion regarding the meaning and nature of ‘real’. Reality in these conversations is tacitly promoted from Platonic to material - a difference of no or little meaning or consequence to the inhabitants (us) of a Platonic universe.
These forms of motion or change that Aquinas talks about are temporal processes in the universe. The rules that apply to them do not apply outside of the universe, so you can't use them to argue the universe itself needed a first cause or prime mover. So neither God or the universe require a first cause. It's therefore far more parsimonious to assume the universe is itself uncaused than to posit a personal being outside of it that is uncaused, but caused the universe. It may violate our common sense, but we just have no intuition about the way things work outside the context of time. In primitive times, gods were explanations for lightning and earthquakes before we could understand them. It's really no different now when it comes to our inability to understand nontemporal stuff.
Causes are not limited in the temporal/time axis. Time itself must have a cause. It's wrapped up with matter, energy, and space. They have a complicated interactions, the whole of science is dedicated to studying those interactions at various scales. The complicated nature is another way of saying it has potential, thus it requires actualization. Further, the universe is composite, it is made of different parts that must be assembled or knit together, a trait that requires an outside cause. If you read the first part of the Summa, St. Aquinas talks about how God must be purely simple(non-composite). There is no axis about which to change or delineate a different entity to disturb equilibrium. You have no string and no one to pluck it, you have nothing. But as there is something, we can see the divine will made the string, plucked it, and continues to give being to the whole length.
"...but we just have no intuition about the way things work outside the context of time." This is probably true; that why we actually have to think about it. Although a thing lacking intuition requires reasoning, it does not make it impossible and you have given us no reason to think it does. Regarding that, what do you mean by "outside" the universe and time? Nontemporal stuff? Great, then we agree. This "stuff" we call God. Thomas Aquinas goes on to describe exactly what the implications of nontemporal being are. Second "the universe" is the collection of all things, not a thing itself. It is not parsimonious to assume the universe is uncaused; it is irrational. Listen to the video again.
Thomas's proof from universal "motion" concerns the ontological movement from potency to act - and not solely the physical movement in space, or "local motion". There also is a scholastic distinction between primary and secondary causality - Thomas's talk of a "first cause" does not refer to the initial temporal causal agency in a continuous temporal series of discrete causes. Thomas's logic does not therefore require the universe to have had a temporal beginning, which he explicitly and repeatedly made clear is not the case.
buffgbob You think God is a person, not just stuff. There's nothing in this argument that implies such a person is necessary or even remotely plausible. The universe is a thing. It's the set of all things. That set is also a thing. The laws of causation apply to things in the set, not the set itself. At least, we have no reason to think they do.
Thomas Aquinas never argues that the universe needs a cause at all. It is a common mistake to think this. All the argument needs is, for example, a single tree blowing in the wind.
@@jacksonforck2705 That's more deistic-sounding: god sets it going and then doesn't need to do anything. Aristotelians hold that the mover is acting all the time, at every moment of motion. And it is from this which all motion derives its action. So they'd say, look at a hand moving a ball and trace back the actualization of potentials. The first thing in this series is god, they say. Ok, but what's the second? What is he moving?
Causality two kinds: 1. of real things, 2. of logical entities as numbers. Thomas is speaking of causality of the first order while Russell was talking of the second. The infinite series of causality of the first order is impossible I..e. 'from effects to their cause' is regressive. For Russell of the second order infinite series of numbers is possible i.e., 'from cause to effects' ad infinitum.
When you say it's impossible, do you mean logically impossible or physically impossible? Would you agree that in order for an infinite causal chain to be logically impossible, it would need to entail some kind of contradiction?
Whait, my comment didn't change the number of comments?!?
8 років тому+7
*Intention* My intention here is to demonstrate that the argument from motion is fallacious because it is an argument from ignorance. The base assumptions I will use are - Our universe is around 13.7 billion years old. - Physics largely reflects reality: gravity, etc., work as we think they do. - For the purpose of this argument I am going to grant that God exists and created the universe. A simplified version of the argument from motion as originally proposed by Aquinas is: - P1 Things are in motion. - P2 Everything that is in motion was set in motion by something else. - P3 The series of things that cause motion and things that are set in motion cannot be infinitely long. - C1 There must be a first cause of all motion which we call God. *Rebuttal* P1 and P2 are not disputed. Aquinas' reason for telling us that a causal chain cannot be infinitely long in P3 was an argument from personal incredulity. Nevertheless causal chains cannot be infinitely long because they cannot stretch back more than 13.7 billion years because the universe has only existed that long. For that reason we can accept P3, What does that mean for C1? We run into a problem because we have no idea what happened in the Planck epoch: the very first moment of the universe. Any hypothesis as to what happened during the Planck epoch cannot be proven wrong and so we find ourselves in an argument from ignorance. Can we get out of this mess? I anticipate three objections: 1/ We might claim that some or all causal chains are initiated by a supernatural force - a miracle by any other name. Since we know at least some causal chains extend back to the beginning of time, miracles are not only an extraordinary claim but an unnecessary one. So demonstrate one! 2/ We might claim that "God is directly sustaining the motion of things at every moment". But this would directly contradict P2 as it would mean that there is no such thing as a causal chain and the argument from motion collapses. 3/ Finally we might claim that some causal chains do not extend back in time. Aquinas uses a hand-lever-stone example in which all three appear to move at the same time. Today we know that this is not the case. The speed of light is the speed of causality and nothing can move faster. In the example the hand moves first, the movement travels down through the lever and eventually moves the stone. To Aquinas it looked like they all moved together but we understand they don't. All causal chains are temporal. *Conclusion* In conclusion, causal chains extend back into the Planck epoch of which we are ignorant. There is no evidence to support recently initiated causal chains exist and certainly no possibility to prove otherwise. The argument from motion is therefore an argument from ignorance.
Okay. Your argument is very well structured. It's well stated, and it seems solid. But when I read it over a few times, I could tell there was something wrong with it, and I put together a few good refutations which didn't have any problem showing that your conclusion was false, but no matter what I did I couldn't get it to sound quite right in driving the point home.... At first I couldn't tell why, but then I noticed it, and I think you're gonna feel pretty silly when I tell you what it is. I'm going to take this slow, not because I'm insulting your intelligence or because I think you won't grasp it, I just want to take time to verbally appreciate how uniquely your argument has failed. I don't mean that to say that it's just an awful argument or that "you're an idiot" or anything, but it is a truly unique way in which it failed. Hear me out: Your assumptions are valid, your understanding of the initial position seems accurate. Now, that being said, there are a few *minor* holes in your rebuttal, that when addressed, might make you go "Oh, okay, but my point still stands...." but there's still that one big elephant in the room, and I'm getting to that. So I started in on those little holes. The first is that "P3" was an argument from personal incredulity. Never mind the fact that this is what needed to be demonstrated. (Argument from Incredulity is the same as argument from ignorance; so in this you assumed your conclusion, later to excuse this by something which was never part of the inition position, but we'll get to that too.) P3 was not an argument from incredulity to begin with. If you read the Summa, Aquinas gives a better explaination of what Bishop Barron was asserting with the "french" analogy. Which is to say that because of the "potential" nature of Matter and Energy, "actual" change can only be given to them by something else which already possesses "actuality": You can only learn French from somone who knows french or a book that contains it. Heat transfer is another good example of this; things do not heat up without the influence of things that are *already* hot, or exposure to reactions which have *already* generated heat, and such reactions do not take place without the influence of other objects that *already* possess the form and properties necessary to create such reactions, and so forth all the way back until... when? This is where P3 comes in. If things cannot be "actualized" except by some extrinsic force which has been actualized already, then without a "First unmoved mover", -- which intrinsically possesses all "actuality", and is complete in its actualization without needing to first be "actualized" by any extrinsic force -- nothing would change or move (that is, move from potential to actualization) at all. Since we know things do change and move, such an unmoved mover must exist. This alone would refute your argument, even if it had not assumed its conclusion, but it goes yet deeper, so bear with me. And please stifle the urge to argue what I've said until you've read to the end, had a breath, and let it fully sink in. You did excuse this "argument from incredulity" that you assumed it to be, by later saying that because the universe is only 13.7 billion years old, we must conclude that he was right in saying there is a first cause (the beginning of the universe), even if he was wrong in assuming *why* it must be there. I'll refute this now as well. The Argument from Motion actually goes beyond the beginnings of our universe. As a thought experiment you can include this to better understand the point: if you were to assume, (not that we do assume this, but even if we did assume), that our universe is a simulation inside another universe, and that universe was a simulation inside *another* universe, and trace such levels of entropy back infinitely, the Argument from Motion posits that even this chain must have begun with one, unchanged, ultimate first mover that is not dependant upon any other extrinsic force, or any other higher universe. Somewhere, as far back as all existence goes, that chain ends with the First Mover, unchaged, possessing all actuality and realization, which it imparts in turn to all other things either directly or through causal chains as described. And this is what we call God. So that renders both the Planck Epoch, and the beginning of our universe irrelevant to the Argument from Motion all together, but even *this* does not fully show the unique way in which your argument failed... Are you ready for it? Before you read this... I want you to put out of your head everything else I just said. Assume that I'm an idiot, that nothing I said is valid, and that your point still completely stands in spite of it. Assume you're right. I say this to put out all other arguments, and all other refutes which are swirling in your head to give you a clear and unbiased platform to look at the massive problem I'm about to show you. Whatever you just imagined saying to me. Okay, assume you're right, and I concede. Now let's take this back to your main crux, which is that the Argument from Motion is an Argument from ignorance, because anything which took place before the Planck Epoch simply cannot be proven or disproven, so it assumes too much at all. Correct? Okay... now are you ready to feel really dumb?.... Your entire argument is structured backwards. An argument from ignorance is one based on an assumption that is held as true only because it cannot be proven false. (e.g.: I posit that the wierd noise I heard was caused by a ghost, because I assume ghosts exist, and I assume that because you cannot prove otherwise.) So your position that the unprovability of the events in the Planck Epoch have anything to do with the Argument From Motion, immediately collapses when you realize that the argument from motion makes no assumptions about the past at all, much less any that only hold credibility because of one's inability to *disprove* them. It is the polar opposite in fact. The only assumption taken for granted in the Argument From Motion is entirely based in the present, which all people can observe and is universally proven beyond the slightest doubt. Namely: "Things move and change". Please take a moment to settle your cognitive dissonance.... So, if your only rebuttal was that the Argument from Motion makes an assumption only because the negative cannot be proven, and you see that such is not the case at all, then you must concede that the Argument from Motion is true in light of your rebuttal being so blatantly false. I'm not sure how you got the argument so perfectly turned around in your head after demonstrating a nearly perfect understanding of the initial position. But when I realized what the big flaw in your argument was, it was as though I had been staring at an airplane, with the distict knowledge that there was no way it could fly, but I was unable to make out why... The wings were there, the engines were there, the tail-fin, the cockpit, etc..... everything seemed to be in place..... Then I took a step back and realized that the engines were mounted backwards.
Earl Minime You could have saved yourself a lot of time and effort by looking up the difference between per se causal series and per accidens causal series. Nothing about a per se causal chain requires forces to propagate instantaneously. It only requires that there exists no time when the rock is moved by the hand, but the hand isn't moving the rock.
the big bang is by this definition god, the big bang is provable, therefore the theistic classical god is a creator of a creator and once again hints at an infinite causal chain
So he's basically saying - you gotta start somewhere to avoid infinite regress; but doesn't show why that starting point cannot be arbitrary/convenient. Are we to conclude that we will never be able to scientifically explain what was before the Big Bang? But if we do, we'd have created a new starting point; then endeavor to learn what caused that.
No problem, you can start from a place of arbitrary, but you have to realize it starts acquiring attributes real fast because it must contain what it produces forth. Just like you see a child and realize the source of that child contains everything that constituted to the making of that child. Another analogy is as you read this (my thoughts), the information that you receive from it comes from a source - me. This information is you're reading is like a sign post telling you "this information has a source that contains this information", even though you don't know what that source looks like or if that source has any other attributes. "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20).
Lerian V Except that the convenience of making the starting point arbitrary and immaterial, doesn't really get you out of the infinite regress dilemma. Does it? Unless you conclude that intelligence is not a required attribute to produce/cause intelligence. But if it is…, where did this immaterial, first cause/prime mover existence, get it’s intelligence from? We know that nothing immaterial/intangible has ever shown a stand alone intelligent attribute. So to imply that this - convenient starting point has it, by necessity/default - is what some people call philosophical mumbo jumbo and others call, faith. Not demonstrable evidence or objective reality. Regardless of what the bible says - Faith doesn't get to redefine what evidence is. Anything - true or not true - can be believed; using faith as the justification. Therefore faith cannot be a reliable path to truth. Just saying... If you see - written in the sand on a beach - Jane was here - you don't have to see the author. You immediately infer intent/intelligence. But when you see sine wave patterns designed in the sand, you don't think some intelligent, immaterial mind, intentionally did that- No, it was random/undirected. Cherry- picking bible verses is not an exclusive privilege -The bible also states - “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the son of man coming in his kingdom." Matthew 16 : 28 Tantamount to Luke 9 : 27 **Where are these people?** Or are you gonna tell me how I'm - "taking it out of context" and give me your opinion of the correct context.
So, IF we suppose that everything that changes (changes from what it was, to what it is now - per accidens or per substance), changes not solely by its own power, but with the help and power of other stuff, THEN very quickly we have 2 options: 1) Unchanging changer 2) infinite regress of causes I don't know if I fully get why 2 is not a live option. Is it that, when we are asked, "Whence the power of this infinite series of changes? Whence the potesta of this motion from potency to act?" We must either say, "It had the power all along within itself," which seems false cuz we just admitted things don't have sufficient causal power within themselves -- or we must admit 1. I don't know if that is a good answer either though.
Think of an infinite regress of causation like asking your boss for a raise, who in turn must ask his boss for approval, who in turn must ask his, who in turn must ask his, and so on. No matter how long this goes, you will never get your raise, as no one in the chain actually has the power to grant you the raise. If all causes are themselves insufficient causes, and instead rely on prior causes, necessarily nothing can change as nothing actually possesses the ability to cause the potentiality to come into being. There are things which exist, though, which implies that at some point on the causal chain there is a cause who is uncaused, or rather causation itself. This is the heart of a theistic conception of God. Sorry if that doesn't really make sense haha.
In creation myths we oftentimes hear about the Earth being laid on something (like pillars). Early humans extrapolated from their daily experiences to describe the cosmos. Would posterity react to the discussion that Aquinas started the same way we react to creation myths? Is it possible that we are extrapolating the universe from its contain the way our ancestors thought that the Earth must be on something? Must the universe absolutely have the same properties as its composition? Can we have cause and effect without spacetime?
Cause and effect are theorized to break down once you pass the speed of light. So, if I were traveling at 2c and observed an arrow being fired at a target and hitting the bull's-eye, I would see the arrow hit the bull's-eye, and then be fired. Cause and effect, or causality, is linked to the speed of light. Real mind-breaking stuff.
Whether God is infinite? Objection 1. It seems that God is not infinite. For everything infinite is imperfect, as the Philosopher says; because it has parts and matter, as is said in Phys. iii. But God is most perfect; therefore He is not infinite. Objection 2. Further, according to the Philosopher (Phys. i), finite and infinite belong to quantity. But there is no quantity in God, for He is not a body, as was shown above (I:3:1). Therefore it does not belong to Him to be infinite. Objection 3. Further, what is here in such a way as not to be elsewhere, is finite according to place. Therefore that which is a thing in such a way as not to be another thing, is finite according to substance. But God is this, and not another; for He is not a stone or wood. Therefore God is not infinite in substance. On the contrary, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. i, 4) that "God is infinite and eternal, and boundless." I answer that, All the ancient philosophers attribute infinitude to the first principle, as is said (Phys. iii), and with reason; for they considered that things flow forth infinitely from the first principle. But because some erred concerning the nature of the first principle, as a consequence they erred also concerning its infinity; forasmuch as they asserted that matter was the first principle; consequently they attributed to the first principle a material infinity to the effect that some infinite body was the first principle of things. We must consider therefore that a thing is called infinite because it is not finite. Now matter is in a way made finite by form, and the form by matter. Matter indeed is made finite by form, inasmuch as matter, before it receives its form, is in potentiality to many forms; but on receiving a form, it is terminated by that one. Again, form is made finite by matter, inasmuch as form, considered in itself, is common to many; but when received in matter, the form is determined to this one particular thing. Now matter is perfected by the form by which it is made finite; therefore infinite as attributed to matter, has the nature of something imperfect; for it is as it were formless matter. On the other hand, form is not made perfect by matter, but rather is contracted by matter; and hence the infinite, regarded on the part of the form not determined by matter, has the nature of something perfect. Now being is the most formal of all things, as appears from what is shown above (I:4:1 Objection 3). Since therefore the divine being is not a being received in anything, but He is His own subsistent being as was shown above (I:3:4), it is clear that God Himself is infinite and perfect. From this appears the Reply to the First Objection. Reply to Objection 2. Quantity is terminated by its form, which can be seen in the fact that a figure which consists in quantity terminated, is a kind of quantitative form. Hence the infinite of quantity is the infinite of matter; such a kind of infinite cannot be attributed to God; as was said above, in this article. Reply to Objection 3. The fact that the being of God is self-subsisting, not received in any other, and is thus called infinite, shows Him to be distinguished from all other beings, and all others to be apart from Him. Even so, were there such a thing as a self-subsisting whiteness, the very fact that it did not exist in anything else, would make it distinct from every other whiteness existing in a subject.
Smart guy. To play amateur psychoanalyst, in my experience, people who throw up arguments intended to defend a materialistic worldview or whatever, tend to be those who are actually terrified by the persuasiveness of the arguments in favor of the "spiritual dimension," or more particularly the implications of its existence on how they live their lives. So, if Freud was right and religiosity is an immature defense against death anxiety (I think that's what he said), then I would at least claim that the intellectual cowardice of avoiding religious apologia or whatever, is an immature defense against moral responsibility. If I'm right, one practical implication of this for evangelizing is to seem non-threatening.
Does it make sense that the end of the causal chain is a being, It would have to be a being without components or movement. Can anyone here define such a being.
You just defined it. I think as what you mean to say is "I don't understand it"? That's immaterial to being able to infer that it exists. I can't even fathom what a "singularity" is, neither can physicists, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist, or I can't understand quantum superpositions, nor can scientists, but that doesn't mean they dont' exist. By logical rules of inference, we can infer that there was a being, that has no components, and cannot be changed.
"Nothing moves itself". So if you separate a human being from his environment, the human will stop changing, i.e. live forever? Doesn't make sense. In fact, seems there are many processes in the human body that go on changing the human being even without outside influences.
One question. Is men an um-moved mover? Can a man's will start a motion or change outside nature? If not, our consiousness is merely a membrane through witch the motions of the universe can be observed, without having any power to change what has already been determined.
Which actually doesn't in any way prove god exists though. It, at most, proves an effect exists, which in effect, now creates an infinite regress. Not an answer, but a paradox.
I am a believing Catholic, but I'm having doubt about one thing: the afterlife. If different aspects of our consciousness and personality can be changed by brain damage, then are we simply the product of brain activity? and once the brain dies, wouldn't we die too? I understand the resurrection of the body and God becoming flesh, etc, which helps the belief that the brain is a part of who we are, but I'm really struggling with this one. Any feedback from fellow Catholics would be appreciated.
Good question. As humans our spirits are intrinsically linked to our bodies. We experience the world through our senses, which are affected by our bodies. A sound brain experiences the senses lucidly. An unsound brain does so in a confused manner. The brain's activity doesn't cause us, but it does affect our ability to function well on the physical level. Death is the separation of the spirit from the body. If the brain is truly dead (and therefore, the body too), the spirit has left the brain (and the body). After that, the spirit goes to its final place: Heaven (and for most people Purgatory on the way) or Hell. When Jesus returns, He will re-compose our bodies as glorified versions--that is the Resurrection of the Body. After this each person will either be in Heaven or Hell as body and soul for eternity.
Dear friend, search for this William Lane Craig video on UA-cam, please: "William Lane Craig: Materialistic Reductionism, Mind & Consciousness". It seems to me it effectively addresses your doubts, showing the distinction between brain and consciousness. Peace be with you
This intrinsic relationship between our body and soul is a truth that everyone recognizes at least to some extent. This is what makes the thought of death so unnerving, and at times so confusing to us. Because of emotional highs and lows, we can sometimes error into believing that the physical deterioration of our bodies means our souls cease to exist - but this is not true, and we can see this with sound logic starting with morality. Here is an example: A moral truth states that raping someone is wrong. This is a fact, and we know it to be true. But this cannot be proven in a physical way, so we don't know this because of a physical brain. This tells us that there is more to our intellect and will than what a physical brain offers. From a philosophical point, we can look at Aristotle stating "The soul is the cause and source of the living body" and go from there. now because you are catholic (so I assume you believe in what the Bible teaches), it may be more helpful for you to start with divine revelation, which states that humans are made in God's image and likeness (see Genesis). The life God gives us is forever - He never takes back what He's given. Death is only a temporary separation of the body (our physical substance) and our soul (our intellect and will).
The arguments of Aquinas make sense, but it seems to me to be a non sequitur to move from a definition of God as the essence or act of motus or Being itself to a claim that His son was a certain historical person, or any other specific claim about the particular instances or "contents" of existence. It also seems that to define him additionally as a "person" or personal god would contradict the definition Aquinas puts forth. In short, I think Aquinas makes a good case for a God of Manifestation, but not a God of Proclamation, so I'm wondering what grounds there could be for religious claims about specific things in the world, rather than metaphysical abstractions? Is there only faith for that?
I would suggest looking into the rest of Aquinas' work, because he delves in to those topics as well and has very good explanations. He uses not Only faith, but faith and reason together. The Summa Theologica is great, but It can be a bit difficult to understand.
Muslims have thousands adjectives for Allah. It appears that Thomas Aquinas had added another one “unmoved mover”. It doesn’t really matter who was an unmoved mover, but what happens every day. What is the Mighty One doing now?
This is an excellent video, and explains (partially) why I believe in God. I find the philosophical arguments for God's existence, especially those from Aquinas, Leibniz, and Kant, to be cogent and defensible.
This argument presupposes that time as we know it, is linear and not circular as has also been postulated. If we do go ahead and work off of that assumption however, that time is linear (because that's what we can observe easily in this realm), then yes, nothing starts moving on its own. I would suppose then, that even if the Big bang has been exploding and then the universe collapsing in on itself over and over again, could have happened a million times by now with trillions of different civilizations arising in different parts of the universe... Even if that were to happen something still needed to push the first explosion forward. I think it's a big leap from this argument however, to the Christian God that is thinking and knowing and guiding things intentionally. It may be a gap that will never be solved, we can't time travel to see what happened at the very beginning, but trying to shoehorn some type of starting point or energy into what humans have written down in largely fictionalized stories... Eh. That's still a huge leap. This argument helps to point towards a starting push of energy or something to get things going, but once that happens chemical reactions and everything else take over for the remainder of the development.
Yes argument is fine. I don't care if there is a First mover or not and how you call it. My problem everything else like kosher, halal, sacred cow etc. Because you can't get to Son of First mover or First mover wants you to pray from that argument.
I don't quite agree with his interpretation. It is too much of a stress. Thomas Aquinas was merely speaking of motion, that there was a time when things were NOT in motion, but eventually Newton pointed out that everything is in motion unless something stops it. I would suggest that Fr. Barron concentrates on the 3rd argument. It is the third and fifth arguments that are the most metaphysical. I would suggest he concentrates on that.
Roman Catholic dogmas and the simplicity of the teachings of Jesus and Moses and the prophets. Church fathers unscriptural Notions and Greek metaphysics.
I did not think conclude correctly. I always knew there would be either infinite movement or a first movement. It makes sense as to why there cannot be infinite movement. You've got me. I can't even debate it. Thanks for converting me. Well done.
Father Barron, you bring tears of joy to my eyes. God bless you!
Dear father Barron, you are filled with the holy spirit and have helped me tremendously on my way to god over the years. so thank you everlastingly 🙏
Wow, perfectly explained!
Thanks Father. Love these topics! Keep em coming
Thank you Father. May the Lord bless you and your good works
The unmoved mover is an excellent demonstration for the existence of God. It did take me a while before I felt like I had a good understanding of it though and could really appreciate the strength of the argument.
I found that coming to grips with the distinction between potency and act really helped. I spent time just looking at all the causes in the world and framing them in terms of act and potency. This helped me a great deal.
Another point which helped me understand the argument was to understand the differences between an accidentally ordered causal series and and an essentially ordered causal series.
Once I understood these two concepts I could appreciate the argument much better.
+MrGrevy
God is unmoving, he cannot change, he is pure act with no admixture of potentiality. This is what the arguments shows, that for an essentially ordered causal series to undergo any change there must be something of pure act, something with underived causal power. Something which is able to actualise potentialities in other things and yet have no potency of its own.
To give a real world example,, the rock whose potential to move is actualised by a stick which is in turn actualised by a hand which is in turn actualised by the muscles which is then actualised by the nervous system which is then actualised by the neurons in the brain which is then actualised by the bio chemistry in the body which is then actualised by ... There is really only atomic structure and then quantum mechanics before we hit the deepest layer of the physical universe that we know of. Perhaps there are a few more layers we don't know about yet. To say that this type of series will go onto infinity will not explain anything. At this level there must be something which does not need to be actualised by something else but is just pure act itself. Something which is able to act of its own accord but has no potential to be moved by something else. If there is no God then what is the source of change since each item in the series has no power of its own to change the next in line and the line does not go on to infinity. If you take something away then the series stops. There must be something which is able to change other things but is unchangeable itself. This unchangeable changer is what sustains all the essentially ordered causal series we see around us.
+MrGrevy
You said...*Problem one - you never demonstrated "god" exists.*
The first way demonstrates that a being of pure act exists. On closer analysis as to what it means to be a being of pure act, entails a number of characteristics associated with the God of traditional western belief.
You said...*Also begs the question, as your premises include the claim that the conclusion is true or (directly or indirectly) assume that the conclusion is true. So you fail there.*
Specifically which premise and conclusion are you talking about?
You said...*It shows no such thing, it simply claims it. And of course the special pleading- what caused "god" to move? You're arguing against your own premise.*
There is no special pleading, God moving is not part of my argument. Nothing causes God to undergo any change because God has no potency to change, he is pure act. The argument shows, that for an essentially ordered causal series to undergo any change there must be something of pure act sustaining all the other items in the series, since they all have underived causal power.
You said...*So therefore, we'll just use "god" to fill in the gap. Got it.*
This argument is not 'God of the gaps' arguments at all, I am not attempting to posit a scientific explanation for phenomena that science has not yet accounted for. Regardless of what science finds out about those deeper aspects of matter has no bearing on the argument. The important thing to consider is that no item in the series has causal power of its own, it is derived from the item before it. An essentially ordered causal series, of its nature, must have a first member. Not merely the first that comes before the second and third etc or the first that happens to be at the head of the queue. Rather, a first cause is one having underived causal power in contrast to those which have their causal power in only a derivative way. All the later members of such a series exist at all only insofar as the earlier ones do, and those earlier ones only insofar as yet earlier ones do; but were there finally no first member of the series, there would be no series at all in the first place, because it is only the first member which is in the strict sense really doing or actualising anything. The later members are mere instruments, with no independent, actualising power of their own.
You said...*What is a "pure act"?*
Pure act means to have act without any potency. All contingent things can be seen as being a composite of act and potency. Act just refers to what the thing is now and potency refers to what it could be. So a rock for example would be hard, abrasive and roundish, this is how it is in act at the moment. But it also has the potential to be something else, it could be crushed into powder, or chiseled into a statue or it could just simply be moved form one place to another, these are its potentialities. One important point I want to make is that the rock can't make itself undergo any change, something else must make it change. In the example I gave of the rock moving because of the stick, the rock can't move itself, the potential to move must be actualised by something else and in this situation it was moved by the stick. This process happens throughout the universe where things undergo change.
You said...*How do we know it's a thing and not a group of things?*
The argument demonstrates that a being of pure act must exist. This being of pure act can only be one. In order for there to be more than two or more purely actual beings, there would have to be some way of distinguishing them, some feature that one of them had that the other lacked; and there just couldn't be any such feature. For to lack a feature is just to have an unrealised potentiality, and a purely actual being, by definition, has no unrealised potentialities. If we said for example that one purely actual being was more powerful than another, and that is what distinguished him from the other one, then we'd be saying in effect that the other purely actual being had failed to realise his potential for power as fully as the first had - which makes no sense given that we're talking about a purely actual being, with no potentialities of any sort.
You said...*How did you conclude it is a "god" and not a magic leprechaun for example?*
God is one, has eternal existence and is immaterial. The first way argument demonstrates that a being of pure act must exist. The paragraph above explains why there can only be one being which is pure act or one God. A being of pure actuality, lacking any potentiality whatsoever would also have to be immaterial, since to be a material thing entails changeability in various ways, which a purely actual being cannot be. A being of pure act would not come into existence or go out of existence because both of these things are instances of change and as we know something of pure act has no potentiality therefore cannot change from non existence to existence or existence to non existence but would simply exist always.
You said...*Can you demonstrate such a thing exists or could exist?*
The first way argument demonstrates that a being of pure act must exist. All of the items I have described in the series are composites of act and potency. No matter how many items you put into the series you still need an item before it to run the series. Therefore an item of an act/potency composition will not sustain the series. The sustaining cause can then only be either something of pure act or something of pure potency. Pure potency is only abstract, you cannot have something which is pure potency therefore the only possibility left is something of pure act.
You said...*How did it get around the need for actualisation?*
For something to change it must first have the potential for that change. Then something else which has the power to actualise this change must do the actualising. The thing changed, first has the potential to be changed and then, that potential then becomes actualised. The thing changed then has a new way of being in act. What was potential now has become actual. For something to change from potential to actual, it must first have potential, but a being of pure act has no potency so it cannot undergo any change and therefore not need to be actualised or even can be actualised since it already is pure act.
To consider your question from another perspective. As I pointed out before, a being of pure act would not come into existence or go out of existence because both of these things are instances of change. Since essence is a type of potency and existence a type of act, a being of pure act cannot have its essence distinct from its act of existence. Therefore its essence must be identical to its existence. It then makes no sense to ask, does existence itself need actualising?
I said...*If there is no God then what is the source of change?*
You said...*If there's no council of 3 leprechauns, then what is the source of change?*
All contingent things are a composite of act and potency. For change to occur a potency must be actualised by something else. This series cannot go on forever therefore the originator of the series must not be a composite of act and potency but some other combination. Pure potency does not exist so it must be, by a process of elimination, something of pure act. Three leprechans have nothing to do with explaining change. In light of this, your question makes no sense.
I said...*There must be something which is able to change other things but is unchangeable itself. This unchangeable changer is what sustains all the essentially ordered causal series we see around us.*
You said...*Another assertion, which you haven't supported. You do understand that assertions are not evidence, correct?*
If the thing were changeable itself then it would be a composite of act and potency and therefore just another item in the whole series. But we already know that the series cannot have an infinite number of items in the series. Even if it did have an infinite number of items it would not explain how change is possible. Since this changer cannot have an act, potency configuration it must have some other configuration. Pure potency cannot exist without act because potency is just a potential for some change and only exists in relation with act. The only other possible configuration is something which is pure act. Something of pure act has no potency therefor is unchangeable. Based on reason, logic and the evidence of change we see around us, it can be said that there must be something of pure act which sustains all the essentially ordered causal series we see around us, if there were no being of pure act then no change would be possible. Change is real in our universe and given the distinction between act and potency, there must be a being of pure act.
MrGrevy
You said...*I was referring to your premise: “God is unmoving, he cannot change, he is pure act with no admixture of potentiality.” It's begging the question.*
And the next sentence says...'This is what the arguments shows'.....The above statement was not a premise in the first way argument, it is the conclusion. I was clarifying a point you made about God. You said...'What moved god?' I pointed out that God does not change.
You said...*You just stated “God” isn't part of the argument, then go on to refer to God being “pure act” as a result of your reasoning. Special pleading comes into play when one asks “What caused 'God' to move”*
I never said 'God' was not part of the first way argument. I said that 'God changing' is not part of the first way argument. The reason why I say this is because God does not change. A God which can change is not part of the first way argument. This is why I don't ask, what caused God to move?
You said...*Special pleading again. What caused the god, or prime mover, or the “first member” to move? You're trying to define something into existence.*
God does not change or move but is the source of all other change we see around us.
You said...*What is a "pure act"? Can you demonstrate this is a valid concept?*
Pure act means to have act without any potency. The distinction between act and potency is they key to understanding how change is possible. All physical things can be seen as being a composite of act and potency. Act just refers to what the thing is now and potency refers to what it could be. Change is a real feature of the universe and cannot be coherently denied. Change can only be a real feature of the world if there is a real distinction in things between what they are in act and what they are in potency. To deny act would be to deny that a thing is as it is now and to deny potency would be to deny that there is any possibility of change and more specifically change which is repeatable, as occurs with scientific experiments. We affirm the distinction between act and potency given the success of science.
You said...*You are saying “everything must have a cause, except a thing that does not have a cause” that is textbook special pleading.*
I've never said everything must have a cause. This is actually a text book straw man argument. Only contingent things have a cause, things which begin to exist. God has no cause because God does not begin to exist. A being of pure act cannot begin to exist because this is a type of change and a being of pure act cannot change.
You said...*How do you know “god is one”. What is this based on? Have we observed and tested god? Are you thinking this through?*
A God which is limited is no God at all. To have the title 'God' you must have all the attributes of God to the infinite degree. On closer analysis you can see that there can only be one God. If there were more than one then each would be limited by not surpassing the other in power or knowledge or what have you. If God is the most powerful being for example then there cannot be two most powerful beings. There are other beings which are powerful, for example us, but there cannot be two or more most powerful beings. If you were to find two candidates for a possible god each being of equal power then neither would be god because they are limited by the power of the other. For to lack a feature is just to have an unrealised potentiality, and a purely actual being, by definition, has no unrealised potentialities. One must have more power, that is all power to fit the definition of God. This is not an opinion, I think this god and you think that god, it is a rational argument that there cannot be more than one all powerful God.
You said...*You're saying “If I don't know what it is, it has to be God.*
The conclusion does not claim ignorance so must be God. The conclusion says that a being of pure act is what sustains an essentially ordered causal series in motion. The originator of the series can not be a composite of act and potency, since these things only have derivative power, but must be some other combination. Pure potency does not exist without act so it must be, by a process of elimination, something of pure act.
There is no evidence that you can't have infinite causes. IF true it doesn't even mean a god exists, it could just be a natural phenomenon that has nothing to do with a god, and even if it was a "god" there is no good reason to think it would be the christian god, or even that i would be one god, why not multiple gods ?
It's self defeating (what was the cause for god ? If you don't think there should be a cause, why can't you accept that for the universe itself ?), also it assumes things that are true even though they aren't proven to be, and the conclusion has nothing to do with the development.
In conclusion the argument even though it was probably mind blowing at the time with the poor education we had and the lack of knowledge compared to today, it is actually weak.
drakkeur if there is an infinite regress into the past, the present moment will never happen. Imagine there is an infinite number of dominos before it hits domino x, when will domino x fall? The answer is never. Therefore an infinite regress is absurd.
Excellently explained as always! Thank you Fr. Robert Barron. God Bless.
Barron has such a gift. I have no idea how he manages to make such provocative videos in just 7-10 min.
Really good explanation. This is the best short explanation I have seen on UA-cam.
o yes ddd
Amazing! Just commenced reading your publication, "Thomas Aquinas: Spiritual Master". Definitely inspired to continue reading his genius work!
Happy Feast Day St. Thomas Aquinas, please pray for us!
Pp
It looks beautiful m
Pp
One of your very best videos. Very Good Arguments.
This should have millions and millions of views. Love from a 25 year old new catholic❤
That was just insanely concise and good. Thank you!
"The principal argument used to eliminate such a regress is that in essentially ordered infinite regress of causes, only instrumental causes would exist, and, hence there would be no intrinsic causality in the series to produce the observed effect. The defender of this argument faces, however, this dilemma: if an instrumental cause is defined as a cause lacking intrinsic causal efficacy, one cannot preclude an infinite regress of instrumental causes each receiving its casual efficacy extrinsically from its predecessor but if an instrumental cause is defined as a cause depending ultimately upon a first cause, then it cannot be shown that the causes in an infinite regress are truly instrumental." (289, The cosmological argument from Plato to Leibniz).
I grasped the outer faint glimmer of the argument, but after a couple of glasses of Chardonnay, I'm sure I'll start comprehending it more. Very interesting video, sir.
That old Chardonnay trick!
The "Amazing" Atheist made a 15 minute critique of Thomas Aquinas, in which he mainly used vulgar language and referred to this Doctor as "retarded", and he has 140,000+ hits, as well as loads of subscribers. I didn't even watch that full video, I only made it about a minute into it before I left the page in disgust. How is it that Father Barron, who offers a calm and peaceful approach and appeals to logic through and through, isn't even close to the numbers the other guy gets?
Kevin Ganey narrow is the path
Kevin Ganey because, unfortunately, they hate Truth
For the harvest is huge but the reapers are few. Let's thank God for allowing us the plentyful grace to be a part of His holy plan. It's only his efforts of grace on us that makes us open to the truth, while the others choose not to. All praise be to God!
They are deeply deceived, and many are still seeking God even as they consider themselves atheists, so pray for them.
5 years after you posted this comment I still feel the need to answer, because the behavior of society hasn't changed in that regard: The majority of people doesn't feel the urge to seek for the truth or logical concepts. Rather it seeks to feel superior to others and in order to be able to do so, they ignore the opposing valuable insight and choose to use vulgar language, thinking their clear distaste regarding the opposition somehow makes their claim true. Their haughty behavior stems from a society that tells them everything they do is great. "Here have a price for just attending the sports event", "here get a better grade because your parents fought over it or the tests get easier" etc. The music, the television program, schools and home life support this vulgar and haughty behavior. So - why don't uneducated and vulgar people watch intellectually challenging videos? Because they don't want to change and actually challenge themselves.
Very good episode ❤
Thanks Bishop
Thank you for the video Father Barron, I've been reading Saint Thomas Aquinas and inquired into the Catholic intellectual tradition largely because of your commentaries.
I would love to hear your thoughts regarding the body and the soul, especially in light of Saint Thomas's reflection on matter and form creating a single nature, which is fundamentally different from the general Cartesian understanding that dominates the culture.
Wo oooooooooh every time I watch your videos I end up very impress thanks a lot I wish more people could appreciate them
Keep going please thanks a lot I enjoy every word
Just yesterday, I was sitting by my swimming pool on a completely calm windless day. The calmest day I ever remember in fact, and I was sitting there, completely covered by the shade, teaching myself french without the use of any material or help whatsoever, while my skin tanned itself and an 8 foot wave developed itself in my swimming pool, traveled across the length, and drenched me. It was one of those Atheist in Wonderland kind of days.
I have found no better argument for the existence of the Most High than this. You either have an infinite series of causes (which I would describe as dividing by zero, as you can get pretty close to dividing by zero, but to actually do it is impossible. the same as an infinite series of causes. You can have an _almost_ infinite series of causes, but it cannot actually be infinite), or you have the Uncreated Creator
edit: PS, love the William Blake painting at 6:57, shout out to him!
I liked that. It was very well put together.
Intelligent explanation , which is not abhorrent to logic and reason . Thank you.
Excellent lecture here! For me, reading Plotinus finally illustrated the unmoved mover, the actus purus. I first learned about the idea from Aquinas but Plotinus sealed the deal! 😅
I love this philosophical aspect of Catholicism and wish it was emphasized more.
Expertly explained Bishop! I have been trying to discern whether this proof depends on the Aristotelian metaphysics that Aquinas followed, but having watched this video, I don’t think that it does. Thank you and God bless!
If I may, I'd like to say that the one mistake in this video was the example about the book. The Argument from Motion involves series of efficient causes per se (instead of per accidens,) which is a distinction made in the video. However, the example of the causal series of the book is per accidens, not per se, and indeed could go on forever, because the book is not dependent on the publisher after it has been moved (or actualized.) Likewise the publisher can continue to be actualized after his parents are deceased, and so on. There's no philosophical reason why this cannot go on forever, which I think may be what some of the comments on this video are talking about. Regardless, it's a great video, and Does contain a proper example of a series of efficient causes per se. Thanks for posting the video!
It's the limits of analogy I think, Miguel. Our analogies tend to be temporal analogies.
You are good Bishop Barron.
Those who take refuge in the idea of an "immediate sufficient reason" being present for every integer in a chain of infinite regress should ask themselves if they would feel equally satisfied with a "mediate insufficient reason" for each such integer. The two phrases are equivalent in meaning unless there is a first cause to initiate the chain.
You're good Bishop Baron!!
Another great explanation from Bishop Robert Barron. Thank you. First cause theory is, logically, massively more convincing than the pop-theory.
This commentary really opened my mind, thanks!
In reading the posts here that attempt to contradict/discredit what this vid and Aquinas say, it becomes clear that the objectors don't even understand their own objections. They're own "arguments" confuse them--but it's nice to see them struggle desperately! Another proof of God. I want to thank them.
On the grounds that his initial premises leads to an infinite regress, he concludes that he can "necessarily" violate his own premise to solve the problem. He essentially restates X as Y, and uses this Y to do something only an X can do, namely: terminate a series of X's. This is special pleading and violates the Law of Identity and thereby the Law of Causality.
i.e. He reached a logical dead-end and instead of turning back the way he came, bent reality to fit his contradiction.
In the words of the world's greatest philosopher: "To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality."
I know I'm replying 4 years late, but this isn't true. If the original premise was, Everything must be actualised by a prior cause, then that would be a contradiction. That would mean that the first cause, also needs a cause, in which case there can not be a first cause.
The actual premise however is that everything that changes from potential to actual, requires a prior actual cause to actualise this change. As the first cause however was not actualised, but just exists as actual, there is no reason to posit a prior cause.
Thank you Bishop.
I've found that so many, such as Dawkins, get hung up on the claim that there cannot be an infinite regress. Aquinas doesn't reject the possibility of infinite series as such. If we can consider that we're holding a pan which is burning our hand, Aquinas's claim is not that there cannot be an infinite number of pans heating each other up because infinity is weird, so there must be some first pan. Aquinas's claim is that if there is heat which is burning our hand then there must ultimately be some fire. It is not necessarily the case that there could be no infinite series of pans but it is the case that such a thing could never burn us, as they would only ever be potentially and never actually hot. If they are becoming actually hot, there MUST be a fire.
Richard Dawkins was asked what began The Universe and said "I don't know. nobody knows."
Matter is only as malleable as fate decrees. So there is no such thing as potential, only fated and inevitable. No could, only will, is, was, and won't be.
Do you have a definition for "fate" and isn't it the case that you potentially made your post (lol)?
Oh wow...I suppose I need to dig deeper into the good Bishop's work.
Hello Father Barron! Long-time fan of this and all of your videos. I would consider myself a Deist, in that I believe in an intelligent mind that is the cause of the Big Bang, is the prime mover and is the reason there is something instead of nothing. I think there is a lot of science that backs this up. I have a hard time wrapping my head around Christianity and the God of the Bible. You've mentioned that the Bible should be interpreted like a library, as in multiple genres of writing. How do you know which are stories/lessons and what is to be taken literally?
read C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christianity" if you're serious
Very clear presentation.
Comments are at 6*6... I've got to add one.
I followed a link from a comment on an atheist channel. Good stuff!
Motion is absolute without a reference point and relative with a reference point. Time is the illusion. To say nothing moves itself is to ignore the possibility that the thing in question is already in motion. To assume motion is something that must be caused is wrong. A reason and a cause are two different things.
Another way is to say that God is the only thing without potential. He is and always has been purely actualized, and thus unchanging (because without potential to change, something can't change). And this is what allows Him to actualize everything in the universe all at once.
I like this channel.
I disagree with many many things, but I appreciate it.
Especially when comparing it to what keeps dripping out of anglo-saxon evangelical creationism and some of its knee-jerk atheism.
Reminds me a bit of my teacher who was supposed to teach us the usual biblical allgories but quickly turned it into a theological and philosophical tour de force.
Something interesting to think about is that in the modern Big bang model in the paths of space-time come forth from The Big bang and before it terminate
So as far as we know time, it did not exist before the universe.
So I asked, how did an event change. How did void become creation, the concept of deration, causality, dynamic action didn't exist before the Big bang
And yet here we are, to me that says something had to decide ,now, to send it on its way
I'm an avid science enthusiast and believe science is the beautiful, complex yet simple, effortless yet difficult to know and impossible to know with certainty
And yet, it works. Everything does as it should, time moves at one second per second every second, Mass bends SpaceTime just the right way to keep us, nature in its entirety unfolds at all times and to me that's why science is a quest to ReDiscover gods beautiful work
The sticking point for me is "no one can be mover and moved at the same time", because that's exactly what the concept of the Trinity proposes. But then maybe that's a point in its favor rather than against, I won't pretend to understand it all.
The good Bishop failed to mention that Aquinas does claim that even if the series of efficient causes were infinite, there would still be the necessity of a first cause. Good video though.
Well, in a causal series subordinated per accidens, we just don't know. Thomas thinks there might be a first element in such a series, but we can't know it on purely philosophical grounds.
Thanks for the insightful reply. I think it may have been Anthony Kenny (Or F. Copleston?)I was reading when I found this quotation: "The most efficacious way to prove that God exists is on the supposition that the world is eternal." That, I take it, would yield an even stronger proof than supposing that the world had a beginning in time. I think this quotation is from the Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 13, 30.
When Bishop Barron connects science with religion
Well, I think it's a mistake to separate the ideas in the first place. Science project s merely a process by which we methodically learn about the world around us. It doesn't need to be separate from religion.
Bob C yes, I agree with u because as a catholic I believe that faith and reason are not meant to be separate, they work together to give us a fuller and better understanding of the world around us.
@@chriscorrigan7304 my mom always used to tell me: " use the brain God gave you!"
@@TheDesertRat31 Then why does the catholic church so adamantly oppose certain aspects of science?
@@alt8791 such as?
Sure SO i said let's dance and sing yourself. Let's pray and work and fast yourself, let's eat and play and joy all loving yourself i can't do it all alone SO let's be in Peace with all yourself since your own Heart
Great video father. Anyone who is interested in this type of thought, check out Mortimer Adler's "how to think about God: a guide for the 20th-century pagan". He deals, as an Aristotelian, with inertia, big bang (and its opposite), and two quantum theories.
Agreed, great video. Wondering if you know of any videos where Fr. Barron explains more in depth first principles? He references some of them briefly here (contradiction, causality, sufficient reason) but I'd like to hear him treat them specifically. I know he could do it so well.. :)
My biggest reason for believing in God is the fact that morality exists and it is something that is very real. Thinks about it, why do they exists? Why have governments created laws in accordance to morals such as murder, theft and lying etc.? To me the fact that right and wrong exist, whether it's your opinion or not, they're there and we live by it. But why? Why does anyone follow a certain moral code? On the other hand, if God didn't exists, what's stopping anyone, besides being jailed for criminal acts, from committed crimes or doing anything they want?
Can you make one on the argument from contingency?
check it out: ua-cam.com/video/3ZkHv8iTJPo/v-deo.html
It's easier if you also sight that there is no such thing as perpetual motion, therefore there must be a first mover.
Russell's criticism of infinite series i.e., it is possible to have infinite series as in the case of Arithmetic, from 1,2,3 ad infinitum---misses the point of Aquinas. The infinite series of numbers is possible but the infinite series of Causality is impossible. St. Thomas in his five ways is talking of the impossibility of the infinite series of Causality...and not about infinite series of numbers. the infinite series of numbers is from 'cause to its effects' from 1, 2 beget 3, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. The infinite series of causality is from 'effects to their causes'----hence Russells's argument against St. Thomas commits a fallacy of false assumption.
I understand the concept of the unactualized actualizer. It is a being or phenomena in itself that has no previous action that befell on it, therefore it always has been in itself eternal. Now i need to understand how an unactualized actualizer would set in motion everything that had potential to be actualized. Does it mean that is finite in its potential to move? Or is it infinite in its potential to move?
Think of your language, Fernando. "potential to move" = "potential to be reduced from potentiality to act". When we're talking about the unactualized actualizer, the word "potential" is not going to appear anywhere. The first mover is fully actualized always which is the perfect state of Being. From that perfect state of Being "proceeds" the creation without any potentiality being found at the creation, in the first mover. How that First Mover creates is something we do not know, but THAT the First Mover both creates and remains without potential is something known by deduction in Thomas' a posteriori argument.
Anybody that says you can just throw away the idea of infinite regress is illogical. Until you provide a logical response that does more than cop-out to this paradox, Aquinas' illogical argument from motion will remain shelved for a lack of evidence or true logical consistency.
That's true, if you ignore this video and Aquinas entirely. He says exactly what I describe in the video. The argument from motion is simply shoving away infinite regress without ACTUALLY addressing it. The fact that Barron thinks this is a logical argument is absurd. There's a reason why we only study these arguments in modern philosophy rather than acknowledging them as being correct or fluid arguments.
cellomon09 And the argument from motion continuously falls, so your point is moot. I have no need to refute that things require a mover, that would be your argument to prove buddy boy.
If Barron felt that way about infinite regresses, he wouldn't use an argument that contains an unwarranted infinite regress. There is ZERO logical recourse to argue that ANY infinite regress should exist in ANY logical sequence.
Father Barron, I am clearly not as perplexed by these concepts as others here. I mean no disrespect to them because they are connecting "ideas" in a way I might not understand. I hope to read and understand portions of the Summa Theologic. I understand that there must be some unmovable essence which set in motion all that has developed- energy, motion, matter, etc. A first essence that unfettered or unchanged from the beginning. It is here I draw in your video on Faith, Hope and Love. Above all reasoning, there is faith. Beyond out capacity to understand it all, there is the hope of a sovereign God. Using those ideas with this recent video tell me to relax, live well, and for others as Jesus asked us to do. All will be seen and understood as we move from this current presence of being to the next. Chill out folks, we will all find out. Thanks Father!!
I think the problem with this argument is that it ultimately boils down into physics: what caused whatever form of matter that existed at the instance of the Big Bang to expand the way it did and give rise to our universe? The reasoning that was eloquently expressed by Bishop Barron is that matter itself is potentiality and thus cannot self-actualize; something else had to bring about that instance of the Big Bang. Here is why I call this a "problem" with the argument: One, it is an argument from ignorance. No one alive today knows what laws, if any, applied to matter at the very instance of the Big Bang. It could very well be that matter at that primordial stage could indeed be self-actualizing. No one knows, and thus it is hasty at best to impose our conventional understanding of the behavior of matter onto matter as it existed at the moment of the Big Bang. Two, and connectedly, there is no reason to suspect that the laws by which matter behaves today (i.e., matter as potentiality requiring an actualizer) applied at the moment of the Big Bang. In fact, some quantum physicists argue that our notions of causality/motion break down at that level of physics.
Even though I enjoy Aquinas's argument from a purely aesthetic standpoint as it is very elegant and simple, from an evidence-based perspective, it doesn't hold up to reality.
If matter was self actualizing at the moment of the big bang, all you are really doing is calling it the unmoved mover, which is another word for God. Which, knowing the properties of matter, is inherently incoherent.
I don't think you are quite right about Aquinas' argument. You seen to think he is positing a first cause in order to prevent an infinite regress of causes.
God isn't the first cause in a linear series of causes. Rather God is the first cause in that he gives causal power simultaneously to all the causes in the series (irrespective of whether those causes are finite or infinite in time).
Correct, but the latter concept is really only relevant once the former is accepted as a premise.
Basically everything proves God exist
I'm Roman Catholic and teach Rel. Ed. to freshmen and thoroughly love Fr. Barron's videos and the use of the new media for evangelizing. A question I would pose is: what answer can be provided for the possibility of an infinite cyclical universe? To rephrase, if the universe were to be an oscillating universe that incorporates the Big Bang, is there the possibility of there being matter/energy and time without the necessary "first action"?
A second proposal (also a tangent). Could evolution explain morality (being a favorable trait) among species with higher brain functions? Darwinism is wrong because it assumes a sum total of resources and treats the weak like an appendage with gangrene and immediately goes for the amputation. But that compassion and love are favorable traits as it further propagates the whole of the species. Its not to quantify good deeds or altruism to merely a positive anomaly; but I'm trying to imply that the advantage of positive religion and objective morality benefit society more-so than does the arguments I've heard from those who do not place value on human life. An organism's first best goal is to live, another way to say this is "all life is precious". -Curious Catholic ...with much respect and thanks
1) An oscillating universe (with current evidence, that seems unlikely) still precludes the idea that this oscillation was set in motion. Stephen Hawking attempted an explanation for the universe involving a similar mechanism - called 'Vacuum state fluctuation', but was unable to dismiss the necessity for primordial mover, by his own admission. The argument of Aquinas is that anything that acts has been acted upon and oscillations are no different. Like a oscillating spring, something needs to set it off.
2) Darwinism isn't wrong in that regard because Darwin speaks of Pre-sentient species. It is also quite a dark way of looking at the process of evolution - Darwin suggests that a superior-adapted organism will out-breed an inferior one - the inferior animal, still genetically near-identical at the point of branching, does not suffer any more physical trauma than it normally would. Its legacy is also carried out in the descendant species.
I find Darwinism does motivate us to fulfill the call to steward creation, however. Humans have the ideal adaptation - a mind - and with this mind we can discern the intelligibility of the universe, and know God. If another sentient species could arise from nature, one that can know God, then it is our duty to protect all organisms in this hope. If there are no sentient species in the universe, nobody can know good, recognize beauty and so on, and so in that regard Darwinism indeed compels us to protect life.
Could evolution explain morality? Well, there seems to be a Darwinian advantage to altruism in many cases. There's plenty of examples of it in animals (and occationally in humans). Chimps groom each other, warn each other of enemies, hunt collectively. Many creatures will do anything in their power to protect their offspring. Wasps will sacrifice themselves to protect their nest. Darwin gives hundreds of examples in "Origin of Species". Nobody believes that the beasties have our sense of love & compassion but I think it's probable that these behaviors are the precursors of what we call morality.
Tin Man Probable precursors? Maybe. But the "Darwinian advantage" really has no way to bridge the gap between IS and OUGHT. I don't think anyone can really argue that bugs and animals have an obligation to help each other flourish or achieve a maximum state of well-being. As humans, we do (or should; that is why it's so shocking to witness a person getting beat up and yet no one comes to that person's aid).
Dan Rogers Agreed. If we're all busy robbing, raping and killing each other we're less likely to survive and produce offspring. Keep that up and the tribe goes extinct. Thus "Thou shall not murder" and "Thou shall not steal" make good Darwinian sense. Paradoxically, the ultimate source of altruism & morality is good old-fashioned pragmatic self-interest. The Golden Rule sums it up beautifully.
+don q
"A question I would pose is: what answer can be provided for the possibility of an infinite cyclical universe?"
Infinite cyclical universes probably can't exist. This is due to the second law of thermodynamics which says that the entropy, or disorder, of an energetically closed system will inevitably increase over time.
For example, an ornate brick mansion is highly ordered, whereas a pile of bricks strewn across the ground is more disordered. And brick dust, scattered by wind and water after the bricks themselves have deteriorated, is even more disordered. Left on its own, a system - even a bubble universe - will naturally become more disordered. We don’t often see a brick mansion spontaneously reassembling itself from dispersed dust.
If our universe has been here forever and is a single size, it would have succumbed to the second law and the universe would be a disordered blur instead of the structure we have today.
For more check this out: discovermagazine.com/2013/september/13-starting-point
Good video. There was someone in this comment section disputing the premise nothing can move itself. I am not highly educated but upon slightly closer examination of the objections for that premise I think I might actually agree with them. Again, I’m very uneducated. Still a good video. Btw I liked the music.
Is there a potentiality beyond the universe? Where there's no time nor the position. A potential vs kinetic energy. In that sense God's omnipotence is special and beyond standard understanding of power.
Grown ups understand that Platonic realism requires no creator, no first cause - and that what we call reality IS Platonic. That species of reality (and it’s hard to imagine another kind of reality) does not require a maker or an executive (mover).
The root dilemma here is confusion regarding the meaning and nature of ‘real’. Reality in these conversations is tacitly promoted from Platonic to material - a difference of no or little meaning or consequence to the inhabitants (us) of a Platonic universe.
If you accept that the creator needed no creator you can also accept that the universe needed no creator.
Nope. The universe is marked thru and thru by contingency. God is non-contingent.
These forms of motion or change that Aquinas talks about are temporal processes in the universe. The rules that apply to them do not apply outside of the universe, so you can't use them to argue the universe itself needed a first cause or prime mover.
So neither God or the universe require a first cause. It's therefore far more parsimonious to assume the universe is itself uncaused than to posit a personal being outside of it that is uncaused, but caused the universe.
It may violate our common sense, but we just have no intuition about the way things work outside the context of time. In primitive times, gods were explanations for lightning and earthquakes before we could understand them. It's really no different now when it comes to our inability to understand nontemporal stuff.
Causes are not limited in the temporal/time axis. Time itself must have a cause. It's wrapped up with matter, energy, and space. They have a complicated interactions, the whole of science is dedicated to studying those interactions at various scales. The complicated nature is another way of saying it has potential, thus it requires actualization. Further, the universe is composite, it is made of different parts that must be assembled or knit together, a trait that requires an outside cause.
If you read the first part of the Summa, St. Aquinas talks about how God must be purely simple(non-composite). There is no axis about which to change or delineate a different entity to disturb equilibrium. You have no string and no one to pluck it, you have nothing. But as there is something, we can see the divine will made the string, plucked it, and continues to give being to the whole length.
"...but we just have no intuition about the way things work outside the context of time." This is probably true; that why we actually have to think about it. Although a thing lacking intuition requires reasoning, it does not make it impossible and you have given us no reason to think it does.
Regarding that, what do you mean by "outside" the universe and time? Nontemporal stuff? Great, then we agree. This "stuff" we call God. Thomas Aquinas goes on to describe exactly what the implications of nontemporal being are.
Second "the universe" is the collection of all things, not a thing itself. It is not parsimonious to assume the universe is uncaused; it is irrational. Listen to the video again.
Thomas's proof from universal "motion" concerns the ontological movement from potency to act - and not solely the physical movement in space, or "local motion".
There also is a scholastic distinction between primary and secondary causality - Thomas's talk of a "first cause" does not refer to the initial temporal causal agency in a continuous temporal series of discrete causes. Thomas's logic does not therefore require the universe to have had a temporal beginning, which he explicitly and repeatedly made clear is not the case.
buffgbob
You think God is a person, not just stuff. There's nothing in this argument that implies such a person is necessary or even remotely plausible.
The universe is a thing. It's the set of all things. That set is also a thing. The laws of causation apply to things in the set, not the set itself. At least, we have no reason to think they do.
Thomas Aquinas never argues that the universe needs a cause at all. It is a common mistake to think this. All the argument needs is, for example, a single tree blowing in the wind.
This is what you should be doing rather than defending the apostasy which is Vatican II
Great job✅
If god is the first mover, what is the second mover? What is god moving? And how does he move it?
Rex Juglandorum well I don’t know the exact answer but looking at it from a scientific view point you could say god put the universe into motion.
@@jacksonforck2705
That's more deistic-sounding: god sets it going and then doesn't need to do anything. Aristotelians hold that the mover is acting all the time, at every moment of motion. And it is from this which all motion derives its action. So they'd say, look at a hand moving a ball and trace back the actualization of potentials. The first thing in this series is god, they say. Ok, but what's the second? What is he moving?
Causality two kinds: 1. of real things, 2. of logical entities as numbers. Thomas is speaking of causality of the first order while Russell was talking of the second. The infinite series of causality of the first order is impossible I..e. 'from effects to their cause' is regressive. For Russell of the second order infinite series of numbers is possible i.e., 'from cause to effects' ad infinitum.
When you say it's impossible, do you mean logically impossible or physically impossible? Would you agree that in order for an infinite causal chain to be logically impossible, it would need to entail some kind of contradiction?
Whait, my comment didn't change the number of comments?!?
*Intention*
My intention here is to demonstrate that the argument from motion is
fallacious because it is an argument from ignorance.
The base assumptions I will use are
- Our universe is around 13.7 billion years old.
- Physics largely reflects reality: gravity, etc., work as we think they
do.
- For the purpose of this argument I am going to grant that God exists
and created the universe.
A simplified version of the argument from motion as originally proposed
by Aquinas is:
- P1 Things are in motion.
- P2 Everything that is in motion was set in motion by something else.
- P3 The series of things that cause motion and things that are set in
motion cannot be infinitely long.
- C1 There must be a first cause of all motion which we call God.
*Rebuttal*
P1 and P2 are not disputed. Aquinas' reason for telling us that a causal
chain cannot be infinitely long in P3 was an argument from personal
incredulity. Nevertheless causal chains cannot be infinitely long
because they cannot stretch back more than 13.7 billion years because
the universe has only existed that long. For that reason we can accept
P3,
What does that mean for C1? We run into a problem because we have no
idea what happened in the Planck epoch: the very first moment of the
universe. Any hypothesis as to what happened during the Planck epoch
cannot be proven wrong and so we find ourselves in an argument from
ignorance.
Can we get out of this mess? I anticipate three objections:
1/ We might claim that some or all causal chains are initiated by a
supernatural force - a miracle by any other name. Since we know at least
some causal chains extend back to the beginning of time, miracles are
not only an extraordinary claim but an unnecessary one. So demonstrate
one!
2/ We might claim that "God is directly sustaining the motion of things
at every moment". But this would directly contradict P2 as it would mean
that there is no such thing as a causal chain and the argument from
motion collapses.
3/ Finally we might claim that some causal chains do not extend back in
time. Aquinas uses a hand-lever-stone example in which all three appear
to move at the same time. Today we know that this is not the case. The
speed of light is the speed of causality and nothing can move faster. In
the example the hand moves first, the movement travels down through the
lever and eventually moves the stone. To Aquinas it looked like they
all moved together but we understand they don't. All causal chains are
temporal.
*Conclusion*
In conclusion, causal chains extend back into the Planck epoch of which
we are ignorant. There is no evidence to support recently initiated
causal chains exist and certainly no possibility to prove otherwise. The
argument from motion is therefore an argument from ignorance.
Okay. Your argument is very well structured. It's well stated, and it seems solid. But when I read it over a few times, I could tell there was something wrong with it, and I put together a few good refutations which didn't have any problem showing that your conclusion was false, but no matter what I did I couldn't get it to sound quite right in driving the point home.... At first I couldn't tell why, but then I noticed it, and I think you're gonna feel pretty silly when I tell you what it is. I'm going to take this slow, not because I'm insulting your intelligence or because I think you won't grasp it, I just want to take time to verbally appreciate how uniquely your argument has failed. I don't mean that to say that it's just an awful argument or that "you're an idiot" or anything, but it is a truly unique way in which it failed. Hear me out:
Your assumptions are valid, your understanding of the initial position seems accurate. Now, that being said, there are a few *minor* holes in your rebuttal, that when addressed, might make you go "Oh, okay, but my point still stands...." but there's still that one big elephant in the room, and I'm getting to that.
So I started in on those little holes. The first is that "P3" was an argument from personal incredulity. Never mind the fact that this is what needed to be demonstrated. (Argument from Incredulity is the same as argument from ignorance; so in this you assumed your conclusion, later to excuse this by something which was never part of the inition position, but we'll get to that too.) P3 was not an argument from incredulity to begin with. If you read the Summa, Aquinas gives a better explaination of what Bishop Barron was asserting with the "french" analogy. Which is to say that because of the "potential" nature of Matter and Energy, "actual" change can only be given to them by something else which already possesses "actuality": You can only learn French from somone who knows french or a book that contains it. Heat transfer is another good example of this; things do not heat up without the influence of things that are *already* hot, or exposure to reactions which have *already* generated heat, and such reactions do not take place without the influence of other objects that *already* possess the form and properties necessary to create such reactions, and so forth all the way back until... when? This is where P3 comes in. If things cannot be "actualized" except by some extrinsic force which has been actualized already, then without a "First unmoved mover", -- which intrinsically possesses all "actuality", and is complete in its actualization without needing to first be "actualized" by any extrinsic force -- nothing would change or move (that is, move from potential to actualization) at all. Since we know things do change and move, such an unmoved mover must exist.
This alone would refute your argument, even if it had not assumed its conclusion, but it goes yet deeper, so bear with me. And please stifle the urge to argue what I've said until you've read to the end, had a breath, and let it fully sink in.
You did excuse this "argument from incredulity" that you assumed it to be, by later saying that because the universe is only 13.7 billion years old, we must conclude that he was right in saying there is a first cause (the beginning of the universe), even if he was wrong in assuming *why* it must be there. I'll refute this now as well.
The Argument from Motion actually goes beyond the beginnings of our universe. As a thought experiment you can include this to better understand the point: if you were to assume, (not that we do assume this, but even if we did assume), that our universe is a simulation inside another universe, and that universe was a simulation inside *another* universe, and trace such levels of entropy back infinitely, the Argument from Motion posits that even this chain must have begun with one, unchanged, ultimate first mover that is not dependant upon any other extrinsic force, or any other higher universe. Somewhere, as far back as all existence goes, that chain ends with the First Mover, unchaged, possessing all actuality and realization, which it imparts in turn to all other things either directly or through causal chains as described. And this is what we call God.
So that renders both the Planck Epoch, and the beginning of our universe irrelevant to the Argument from Motion all together, but even *this* does not fully show the unique way in which your argument failed... Are you ready for it? Before you read this... I want you to put out of your head everything else I just said. Assume that I'm an idiot, that nothing I said is valid, and that your point still completely stands in spite of it. Assume you're right. I say this to put out all other arguments, and all other refutes which are swirling in your head to give you a clear and unbiased platform to look at the massive problem I'm about to show you. Whatever you just imagined saying to me. Okay, assume you're right, and I concede.
Now let's take this back to your main crux, which is that the Argument from Motion is an Argument from ignorance, because anything which took place before the Planck Epoch simply cannot be proven or disproven, so it assumes too much at all. Correct?
Okay... now are you ready to feel really dumb?....
Your entire argument is structured backwards.
An argument from ignorance is one based on an assumption that is held as true only because it cannot be proven false. (e.g.: I posit that the wierd noise I heard was caused by a ghost, because I assume ghosts exist, and I assume that because you cannot prove otherwise.) So your position that the unprovability of the events in the Planck Epoch have anything to do with the Argument From Motion, immediately collapses when you realize that the argument from motion makes no assumptions about the past at all, much less any that only hold credibility because of one's inability to *disprove* them. It is the polar opposite in fact. The only assumption taken for granted in the Argument From Motion is entirely based in the present, which all people can observe and is universally proven beyond the slightest doubt. Namely: "Things move and change".
Please take a moment to settle your cognitive dissonance....
So, if your only rebuttal was that the Argument from Motion makes an assumption only because the negative cannot be proven, and you see that such is not the case at all, then you must concede that the Argument from Motion is true in light of your rebuttal being so blatantly false. I'm not sure how you got the argument so perfectly turned around in your head after demonstrating a nearly perfect understanding of the initial position. But when I realized what the big flaw in your argument was, it was as though I had been staring at an airplane, with the distict knowledge that there was no way it could fly, but I was unable to make out why... The wings were there, the engines were there, the tail-fin, the cockpit, etc..... everything seemed to be in place..... Then I took a step back and realized that the engines were mounted backwards.
Earl Minime You could have saved yourself a lot of time and effort by looking up the difference between per se causal series and per accidens causal series. Nothing about a per se causal chain requires forces to propagate instantaneously. It only requires that there exists no time when the rock is moved by the hand, but the hand isn't moving the rock.
But how'd you know it's a biblical god? Or even a good and righteous god, or a god described in any religion for that matter.
this is a great argument for a grand architect of the universe. Whether or not he is good is another argument entirely.
it is another argument - further along in the Summa Theologiae
the big bang is by this definition god, the big bang is provable, therefore the theistic classical god is a creator of a creator and once again hints at an infinite causal chain
No... That's not quite right
So he's basically saying - you gotta start somewhere to avoid infinite regress; but doesn't show why that starting point cannot be arbitrary/convenient. Are we to conclude that we will never be able to scientifically explain what was before the Big Bang? But if we do, we'd have created a new starting point; then endeavor to learn what caused that.
No problem, you can start from a place of arbitrary, but you have to realize it starts acquiring attributes real fast because it must contain what it produces forth. Just like you see a child and realize the source of that child contains everything that constituted to the making of that child. Another analogy is as you read this (my thoughts), the information that you receive from it comes from a source - me. This information is you're reading is like a sign post telling you "this information has a source that contains this information", even though you don't know what that source looks like or if that source has any other attributes.
"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20).
Lerian V Except that the convenience of making the starting point arbitrary and immaterial, doesn't really get you out of the infinite regress dilemma. Does it? Unless you conclude that intelligence is not a required attribute to produce/cause intelligence. But if it is…, where did this immaterial, first cause/prime mover existence, get it’s intelligence from?
We know that nothing immaterial/intangible has ever shown a stand alone intelligent attribute. So to imply that this - convenient starting point has it, by necessity/default - is what some people call philosophical mumbo jumbo and others call, faith. Not demonstrable evidence or objective reality.
Regardless of what the bible says - Faith doesn't get to redefine what evidence is. Anything - true or not true - can be believed; using faith as the justification. Therefore faith cannot be a reliable path to truth.
Just saying... If you see - written in the sand on a beach - Jane was here - you don't have to see the author. You immediately infer intent/intelligence. But when you see sine wave patterns designed in the sand, you don't think some intelligent, immaterial mind, intentionally did that- No, it was random/undirected.
Cherry- picking bible verses is not an exclusive privilege -The bible also states - “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the son of man coming in his kingdom." Matthew 16 : 28 Tantamount to Luke 9 : 27
**Where are these people?** Or are you gonna tell me how I'm - "taking it out of context" and give me your opinion of the correct context.
So, IF we suppose that everything that changes (changes from what it was, to what it is now - per accidens or per substance), changes not solely by its own power, but with the help and power of other stuff, THEN very quickly we have 2 options:
1) Unchanging changer
2) infinite regress of causes
I don't know if I fully get why 2 is not a live option. Is it that, when we are asked, "Whence the power of this infinite series of changes? Whence the potesta of this motion from potency to act?" We must either say, "It had the power all along within itself," which seems false cuz we just admitted things don't have sufficient causal power within themselves -- or we must admit 1.
I don't know if that is a good answer either though.
Think of an infinite regress of causation like asking your boss for a raise, who in turn must ask his boss for approval, who in turn must ask his, who in turn must ask his, and so on. No matter how long this goes, you will never get your raise, as no one in the chain actually has the power to grant you the raise. If all causes are themselves insufficient causes, and instead rely on prior causes, necessarily nothing can change as nothing actually possesses the ability to cause the potentiality to come into being. There are things which exist, though, which implies that at some point on the causal chain there is a cause who is uncaused, or rather causation itself. This is the heart of a theistic conception of God. Sorry if that doesn't really make sense haha.
his argument for contingency and motion sound pretty similar to me, can someone explain the difference?
In creation myths we oftentimes hear about the Earth being laid on something (like pillars). Early humans extrapolated from their daily experiences to describe the cosmos. Would posterity react to the discussion that Aquinas started the same way we react to creation myths? Is it possible that we are extrapolating the universe from its contain the way our ancestors thought that the Earth must be on something? Must the universe absolutely have the same properties as its composition? Can we have cause and effect without spacetime?
Cause and effect are theorized to break down once you pass the speed of light. So, if I were traveling at 2c and observed an arrow being fired at a target and hitting the bull's-eye, I would see the arrow hit the bull's-eye, and then be fired. Cause and effect, or causality, is linked to the speed of light. Real mind-breaking stuff.
@@alt8791 Let's not confuse epistemology with ontology. What you SEE is not always the same as what IS.
Wow😇😇😇long live to Jesús Christ!
Aquinas did not address the condition of "Always" without a beginning.
I’m Catholic but I’m curious as to how we know God is infinite ? Can He not jsur have enough “energy” to create the universe
Jesus From Hyrule if He has high energy and not infinite energy, He is limited by something. Then He would not be God.
Whether God is infinite?
Objection 1. It seems that God is not infinite. For everything infinite is imperfect, as the Philosopher says; because it has parts and matter, as is said in Phys. iii. But God is most perfect; therefore He is not infinite.
Objection 2. Further, according to the Philosopher (Phys. i), finite and infinite belong to quantity. But there is no quantity in God, for He is not a body, as was shown above (I:3:1). Therefore it does not belong to Him to be infinite.
Objection 3. Further, what is here in such a way as not to be elsewhere, is finite according to place. Therefore that which is a thing in such a way as not to be another thing, is finite according to substance. But God is this, and not another; for He is not a stone or wood. Therefore God is not infinite in substance.
On the contrary, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. i, 4) that "God is infinite and eternal, and boundless."
I answer that, All the ancient philosophers attribute infinitude to the first principle, as is said (Phys. iii), and with reason; for they considered that things flow forth infinitely from the first principle. But because some erred concerning the nature of the first principle, as a consequence they erred also concerning its infinity; forasmuch as they asserted that matter was the first principle; consequently they attributed to the first principle a material infinity to the effect that some infinite body was the first principle of things.
We must consider therefore that a thing is called infinite because it is not finite. Now matter is in a way made finite by form, and the form by matter. Matter indeed is made finite by form, inasmuch as matter, before it receives its form, is in potentiality to many forms; but on receiving a form, it is terminated by that one. Again, form is made finite by matter, inasmuch as form, considered in itself, is common to many; but when received in matter, the form is determined to this one particular thing. Now matter is perfected by the form by which it is made finite; therefore infinite as attributed to matter, has the nature of something imperfect; for it is as it were formless matter. On the other hand, form is not made perfect by matter, but rather is contracted by matter; and hence the infinite, regarded on the part of the form not determined by matter, has the nature of something perfect. Now being is the most formal of all things, as appears from what is shown above (I:4:1 Objection 3). Since therefore the divine being is not a being received in anything, but He is His own subsistent being as was shown above (I:3:4), it is clear that God Himself is infinite and perfect.
From this appears the Reply to the First Objection.
Reply to Objection 2. Quantity is terminated by its form, which can be seen in the fact that a figure which consists in quantity terminated, is a kind of quantitative form. Hence the infinite of quantity is the infinite of matter; such a kind of infinite cannot be attributed to God; as was said above, in this article.
Reply to Objection 3. The fact that the being of God is self-subsisting, not received in any other, and is thus called infinite, shows Him to be distinguished from all other beings, and all others to be apart from Him. Even so, were there such a thing as a self-subsisting whiteness, the very fact that it did not exist in anything else, would make it distinct from every other whiteness existing in a subject.
Smart guy. To play amateur psychoanalyst, in my experience, people who throw up arguments intended to defend a materialistic worldview or whatever, tend to be those who are actually terrified by the persuasiveness of the arguments in favor of the "spiritual dimension," or more particularly the implications of its existence on how they live their lives. So, if Freud was right and religiosity is an immature defense against death anxiety (I think that's what he said), then I would at least claim that the intellectual cowardice of avoiding religious apologia or whatever, is an immature defense against moral responsibility.
If I'm right, one practical implication of this for evangelizing is to seem non-threatening.
whats this fire intro music bro
Does it make sense that the end of the causal chain is a being, It would have to be a being without components or movement. Can anyone here define such a being.
You just defined it. I think as what you mean to say is "I don't understand it"? That's immaterial to being able to infer that it exists. I can't even fathom what a "singularity" is, neither can physicists, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist, or I can't understand quantum superpositions, nor can scientists, but that doesn't mean they dont' exist.
By logical rules of inference, we can infer that there was a being, that has no components, and cannot be changed.
"Nothing moves itself". So if you separate a human being from his environment, the human will stop changing, i.e. live forever? Doesn't make sense. In fact, seems there are many processes in the human body that go on changing the human being even without outside influences.
One question. Is men an um-moved mover? Can a man's will start a motion or change outside nature? If not, our consiousness is merely a membrane through witch the motions of the universe can be observed, without having any power to change what has already been determined.
no - human beings are changing
aka... Cause and Effect. Every effect has a cause.
Which actually doesn't in any way prove god exists though. It, at most, proves an effect exists, which in effect, now creates an infinite regress. Not an answer, but a paradox.
I am a believing Catholic, but I'm having doubt about one thing: the afterlife. If different aspects of our consciousness and personality can be changed by brain damage, then are we simply the product of brain activity? and once the brain dies, wouldn't we die too? I understand the resurrection of the body and God becoming flesh, etc, which helps the belief that the brain is a part of who we are, but I'm really struggling with this one. Any feedback from fellow Catholics would be appreciated.
Good question. As humans our spirits are intrinsically linked to our bodies. We experience the world through our senses, which are affected by our bodies. A sound brain experiences the senses lucidly. An unsound brain does so in a confused manner. The brain's activity doesn't cause us, but it does affect our ability to function well on the physical level. Death is the separation of the spirit from the body. If the brain is truly dead (and therefore, the body too), the spirit has left the brain (and the body). After that, the spirit goes to its final place: Heaven (and for most people Purgatory on the way) or Hell. When Jesus returns, He will re-compose our bodies as glorified versions--that is the Resurrection of the Body. After this each person will either be in Heaven or Hell as body and soul for eternity.
Dear friend, search for this William Lane Craig video on UA-cam, please: "William Lane Craig: Materialistic Reductionism, Mind & Consciousness". It seems to me it effectively addresses your doubts, showing the distinction between brain and consciousness. Peace be with you
This intrinsic relationship between our body and soul is a truth that everyone recognizes at least to some extent. This is what makes the thought of death so unnerving, and at times so confusing to us. Because of emotional highs and lows, we can sometimes error into believing that the physical deterioration of our bodies means our souls cease to exist - but this is not true, and we can see this with sound logic starting with morality. Here is an example: A moral truth states that raping someone is wrong. This is a fact, and we know it to be true. But this cannot be proven in a physical way, so we don't know this because of a physical brain. This tells us that there is more to our intellect and will than what a physical brain offers. From a philosophical point, we can look at Aristotle stating "The soul is the cause and source of the living body" and go from there. now because you are catholic (so I assume you believe in what the Bible teaches), it may be more helpful for you to start with divine revelation, which states that humans are made in God's image and likeness (see Genesis). The life God gives us is forever - He never takes back what He's given. Death is only a temporary separation of the body (our physical substance) and our soul (our intellect and will).
Blake Denenny
The arguments of Aquinas make sense, but it seems to me to be a non sequitur to move from a definition of God as the essence or act of motus or Being itself to a claim that His son was a certain historical person, or any other specific claim about the particular instances or "contents" of existence. It also seems that to define him additionally as a "person" or personal god would contradict the definition Aquinas puts forth. In short, I think Aquinas makes a good case for a God of Manifestation, but not a God of Proclamation, so I'm wondering what grounds there could be for religious claims about specific things in the world, rather than metaphysical abstractions? Is there only faith for that?
I would suggest looking into the rest of Aquinas' work, because he delves in to those topics as well and has very good explanations. He uses not Only faith, but faith and reason together. The Summa Theologica is great, but It can be a bit difficult to understand.
Thanks! I'll take a look.
what does energized in his existence mean?
Muslims have thousands adjectives for Allah. It appears that Thomas Aquinas had added another one “unmoved mover”.
It doesn’t really matter who was an unmoved mover, but what happens every day. What is the Mighty One doing now?
Actually I think I've made some sense of it. Because God isn't physical, and we are children of God, we are partly non-physical.
Thanks.
Anyone else wondering who is mooning God in the painting?
This is an excellent video, and explains (partially) why I believe in God. I find the philosophical arguments for God's existence, especially those from Aquinas, Leibniz, and Kant, to be cogent and defensible.
This argument presupposes that time as we know it, is linear and not circular as has also been postulated. If we do go ahead and work off of that assumption however, that time is linear (because that's what we can observe easily in this realm), then yes, nothing starts moving on its own. I would suppose then, that even if the Big bang has been exploding and then the universe collapsing in on itself over and over again, could have happened a million times by now with trillions of different civilizations arising in different parts of the universe... Even if that were to happen something still needed to push the first explosion forward. I think it's a big leap from this argument however, to the Christian God that is thinking and knowing and guiding things intentionally. It may be a gap that will never be solved, we can't time travel to see what happened at the very beginning, but trying to shoehorn some type of starting point or energy into what humans have written down in largely fictionalized stories... Eh. That's still a huge leap. This argument helps to point towards a starting push of energy or something to get things going, but once that happens chemical reactions and everything else take over for the remainder of the development.
Yes argument is fine. I don't care if there is a First mover or not and how you call it. My problem everything else like kosher, halal, sacred cow etc. Because you can't get to Son of First mover or First mover wants you to pray from that argument.
I don't quite agree with his interpretation. It is too much of a stress. Thomas Aquinas was merely speaking of motion, that there was a time when things were NOT in motion, but eventually Newton pointed out that everything is in motion unless something stops it. I would suggest that Fr. Barron concentrates on the 3rd argument. It is the third and fifth arguments that are the most metaphysical. I would suggest he concentrates on that.
Thanks Bishop Barron. But I, a catholic, think that the argument is too Aristotelic. Too grounded on one philosophical school.
Roman Catholic dogmas and the simplicity of the teachings of Jesus and Moses and the prophets. Church fathers unscriptural Notions and Greek metaphysics.
I would call this more of a definition or axiom than a proof.