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Matthias123
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What do you guys think about this?
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North_of_Nod
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How did the first molecule start bouncing, though? And, how did life come from non-living matter? Kaku’s got a LOT of 'splaining to do.
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Ghosty
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I’ve never liked Michio Kaku when he’s appeared on the History Channel, but this argument takes the cake.
The argument of the Prime Mover has nothing to do with physical motion in the first place; Kaku is completely out of his depth here. Motion, in Aristotle’s terminology, is any change whatsoever, including the change from non-being to being. There must be a Prime Mover, an unmoved Mover, at the root of the universe because all things in the universe have fluctuating states (in the case of gas molecules, they can fluctuate between existence and non-existence). Since nothing in the universe is the cause of itself, each thing requires, at the very least, something to “get it moving” (to make it exist). After it exists it may indeed have properties that keep it physically moving, or keep it in existence, but at the very least it is not the cause of its own being. The Prime Mover is the being that is being itself, and starts all “motion” in this sense.
Peace and God bless!
The argument of the Prime Mover has nothing to do with physical motion in the first place; Kaku is completely out of his depth here. Motion, in Aristotle’s terminology, is any change whatsoever, including the change from non-being to being. There must be a Prime Mover, an unmoved Mover, at the root of the universe because all things in the universe have fluctuating states (in the case of gas molecules, they can fluctuate between existence and non-existence). Since nothing in the universe is the cause of itself, each thing requires, at the very least, something to “get it moving” (to make it exist). After it exists it may indeed have properties that keep it physically moving, or keep it in existence, but at the very least it is not the cause of its own being. The Prime Mover is the being that is being itself, and starts all “motion” in this sense.
Peace and God bless!
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Matthias123
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The wiki article says that he said they never started moving, and the would never stop. This doesn’t make sense though, because what doesn’t begin and doesn’t end is eternal. Which means it is purely actual – with all the conclusions that come with it. For example it couldn’t be purely actual if it had change.
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Matthias123
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Ghosty, have I ever said that I love you? 
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North_of_Nod
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Well said, Ghosty.
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Ghosty
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Not today!Ghosty, have I ever said that I love you?
Thanks for the compliment, though.
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Mark77
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Beautiful Ghosty!!
Kaku is a another “brilliant fool”! His arguments are ridiculous.
It is like saying because a baby moves without her parents, the baby has no parents?
Sancta Maria, Mater dei, Ora Pro Nobis Peccatoribus!
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North_of_Nod
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Hehe, that’s EXACTLY what it sounds like.
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Dameedna
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This is an assumption, that is used to justify a belief in a first mover.
Can “nothing” in the universe cause itself? Why not? This may seem counter intuitive but that may be a problem with human thinking and perception, not reality. Since infinity and the eternal is beyond our comprehension, an eternal and infinite universe is probably going to be so as well. But an attempt to explain it, is invariably going to end up with a whole lot of theories and not a lot of facts.
I’m not saying the first mover is “wrong”, I’m saying it hasn’t been shown to be the only valid argument.
And what that first mover IS…is beyond verification. It could simply be another civilization that is much bigger and greater than the universe itself. That first mover has to show itself to be, what we think or believe it to be, for it to hold any weight, at least for this agnostic.
And no, a collection of human tribal stories isn’t enough.
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Matthias123
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“And what that first mover IS…is beyond verification. It could simply be another civilization that is much bigger and greater than the universe itself. That first mover has to show itself to be, what we think or believe it to be, for it to hold any weight, at least for this agnostic.”
Specify what you mean by “verification”.
“It could simply be another civilization that is much bigger and greater than the universe itself.”
No it could not, because frist mover is purely actual and it would have all the attributes of a pure actuallity. Such as being eternal, and changeless. A civilization has the potential for change within itself, therefore it cannot be the first mover.
“That first mover has to show itself to be, what we think or believe it to be, for it to hold any weight, at least for this agnostic.”
He did, just not in your lifetime.
Specify what you mean by “verification”.
“It could simply be another civilization that is much bigger and greater than the universe itself.”
No it could not, because frist mover is purely actual and it would have all the attributes of a pure actuallity. Such as being eternal, and changeless. A civilization has the potential for change within itself, therefore it cannot be the first mover.
“That first mover has to show itself to be, what we think or believe it to be, for it to hold any weight, at least for this agnostic.”
He did, just not in your lifetime.
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Ghosty
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Mathias123 already basically answered this, but I will chime in as well. Everything in the universe that we can observe changes, which means everything is fundamentally impermanent. Even if something in the universe exists with no beginning or end in time, it is still changable and therefore can’t be the cause of itself. Cause means more than simply a start in time, it means the reason for something existing. Only something that is utterly without change can be the cause of its own being, or rather can be said to be uncaused. Since nothing in the universe fits that bill, there must be an external Prime Mover.
Incidentally, the Prime Mover argument, as put forward by St. Thomas Aquinas at least, assumes a universe that has existed for all time. This isn’t because St. Thomas Aquinas believed this about the universe, but because he was making the strongest argument possible.
Peace and God bless!
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Spirithound
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And then what is the prime mover of that universe?
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rossum
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You are at a party. You go to talk to a woman in a blue dress:“Hello, what do you do?”
“I’m a mother.”
“Nice. How many children do you have?”
“None.”
" Oh, I’m sorry …"
“No, nothing like that. I have never had any children ever.”
“Then I am puzzled as to how you can be a mother if you do not have any children.”
“Yeah, a lot of people say that.”
Some things cannot stand on their own, they need something else to make sense. You cannot be a parent without there also being children. You cannot be a brother or sister without having at least one sibling. Such concepts make no sense on their own, like the woman in the blue dress claiming to be a mother but not having any children.
Back to the party. You leave the woman in blue and go to talk to a man standing by the fireplace:“Hello, what do you do?”
“I’m a Prime Mover.”
"Wow, and what does a Prime Mover do?
“Move universes.”
“Magnificent. That must really be fascinating. And how many universes have you moved?”
“Erm… Ah… Well… None actually.”
“Say, are you married to the woman in the blue dress?”
“Yes. How did you guess?”
A Prime Mover cannot be a Prime Mover unless and until something has actually been moved. Hence a Prime Mover cannot exist alone, but also requires the existence of at least one other thing that has been moved. Taken on its own, in the absence of anything else, the concept of a Prime Mover makes not sense at all. It is dependent on the existence of at least one moved thing.
I disagree. You cannot isolate the Prime Mover from everything else. In itself it has no being, because on its own it cannot be a Prime Mover - there is nothing for it to move. Only if other things also exist can we even begin to entertain the concept of a Prime Mover.
The basic concept comes from Nargajuna. Causation is not a one way flow from cause to effect, but is a two-way flow. An effect requires a cause, but a cause also requires an effect. If there is no effect then how can the cause exist? A parent cannot be a parent without children; children cannot be children without parents. Cause and effect are mutually dependent.
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masterjedi747
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I don’t know, it seems like an *awfully *common error to me… when most people hear “first mover”, they automatically assume that *time *is somehow involved in the argument, and therefore that if they can deny any beginning of time, they have implicitly destroyed the argument for the Prime Mover. They’re wrong, of course (as you pointed out)… but it’s not like I would really blame him for making this particular mistake, because I very much doubt that he (or anyone around him, for that matter) has ever been informed that the argument for the Prime Mover is perfectly compatible with an eternal universe that had no beginning or end of time.
Aristotle and Aquinas go a bit further than that, actually… the Prime Mover doesn’t just *start *the the motion, it also *sustains the motion throughout. When you get right down to it, the Prime Mover is always *the ultimate cause of every motion in the present… hence the reason why a universe with no beginning in time is not an objection in the slightest. We could even say, jumping back to your example, that the Prime Mover must also be the cause of those properties by which the object in question persists in its motion. If Mr. Kaku wants to have a container full of gas molecules that have been bouncing for all eternity, well then fine… he’s just failing to realize that the Prime Mover has always been, is now, and always will be the cause of their motion for as long as they exist.
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masterjedi747
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Right…
I don’t know, maybe there’s something of a communication error going on here, but I don’t think your point is actually in disagreement with what was being said. (?) At any rate…
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Spirithound
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“Mother” and “Prime Mover” are not names, but titles. If a woman is not a mother, she is still a woman. If God has not moved any universes, He is still God.
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masterjedi747
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I’m not sure that “names”/“titles” is really a meaningful distinction… I think what you might want to say is something more like this: they are indeed names, but they are a special kind of name that signifies some relationship, rather than a name that is simply proper to the object itself.
Again, that doesn’t actually disagree with the point Rossum was making… (?) The point still stands perfectly well that is God never moved anything, it would be meaningless to call Him the “First Mover”… in the same way that, if God had never created anything, it would be silly to speak of Him as the “Creator”.
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rossum
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An alternative name for the Prime Mover is the First Mover. How do you propose to define “First”, or indeed “Prime” without any reference to time? In order to tell cause (mover) from effect (moved) we need to have time; in the absence of time we cannot tell which one came before the other - we have no way to either define or measure “before” if there is no time.
How would you define “start” in the absence of time?
The Prime Mover cannot be a cause without actually having caused something. The Prime Mover cannot be a cause in the absence of time because without time we cannot differentiate between the cause and the effect. The Prime Mover cannot be ultimate because it must depend on at least these two other things.
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Spirithound
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I mean (I think!) that “woman” and “God” are more inherent names than “mother” and “prime mover”.
Hmm…I understand. Oh well, let the record reflect…
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