I am going to throw newton at you, as well as Einstein and quatum mechnanics, all of which mean that " it is impossible for something to be moved for an infinite time by a finite power" is absolutely false.
Nothing about this universe requires infinite power, the only thing that would require infinite “power” would be a universe that is infinite in size or number of elements.
The Third Way is about existence, which I covered in post # 34, you are wrong about the First Way as well. The First Way is not limited to
local motion. It is about
change, per se. That is, it is about Substantial Change, change in quality, change in quantity, and local motion. That is why Thomas uses a discussion on
potentiality and actuality to explain what he is talking about. Atheists, however, usually insist that it is strictly about local motion since they think that that " cooks Thomas’ goose, " thinking that Newton, Einstein, and Quantum Mechanics discredit any argument from local motion.
Both Aristotle and Aquinas were well aware of
Impetus, which they applied to
violent as opposed to
natural motion. Aristotle’s famous phrase, " Quod movetur ab alio movetur… , " and adopted by Thomas in the First Way, was meant to apply to the Prime or Unmoved Mover who generated a body in the first place, giving it its Substantial Form ( and its matter) by which its natural movements, spontaneously begin operating naturally without the necessity of any other movent. Thus animals move naturally from place to place, digest, natural elements like uranium degenerate, light and heavy bodies seek their proper places, etc. without the need of any outside movent.
In the case of local motion, an outside movent is required only in the case of
violent, constrained, or
unnatural movements, and even this movent is an instrumental mover of the Prime Mover. Thus a thrown ball receives an
impetus from the boy throwing the ball, which is overcome eventually by the resistance of the air and by the ball seeking its natural proper place.
It is true that Aristotle described the need for an accompanying mover in such cases, which he attributed to the transfer of the impetus given by the boy to the air rushing in behind the thrown ball and pushing the ball. Which, oddly enough, is demonstrated as somewhat true by the science of aerodynamics. Drive down the highway sometime close behind a semi truck and you will see this is true. It is even some what true for aircraft. The air collecting behind the moving object will provide some push. Of course this small amount of push could never provide enough impetus to explain what was going on here. So, in fact, no accompaning
motor coniunctus is required except in extreme cases, like pushing a car out of a snow drift.
However, the principle was correct. Some mover was required to move an object unnaturallly. And that of course always leads to the Prime Mover who created the body and its substantial form in the first place, for a mover must exist before it can move anything. And that was the point of my post # 34, it showed that The First Way was always about existence and what caused things to exist in the first place. And local motion was merely an occassion of showing that necessity. The Third Way, skips local motion and goes directly from the act of existnece to He Who only could create extents out of nothing. Of course, since Thomas was assuming an eternal world, He would have had to have been creating eternally.
However, as early as the early 14th century, some scholastics began to disregard Aristotle’s explanation of projectile motion. They arrived at the conclusion that the impetus supplied by the mover was transferred to the moved object, in that the Creator of the object’s form, God, had given its nature a potentiality to receive an accidental modification of its form to receive an impetus. Once received, the object would continue to move, without an accompanying
motor coniunctus until its inertia was overcome by opposing forces.
( Nature and Motion in the Middle Ages, by John A. Weisheipl, pgs 31-33). In these motions, the impetus is not a mover but an accidental natural form, an instrument of the Prime Agent, God. The boy who threw the ball would also be an instrumental cause of the Prime Agent.
So it is clear that Newton’s laws of Inertia offer no obsticales to Thomas’ First Way, as it might apply to local motion. For it has just been shown that God is the Prime Mover of such movements and He is operating with Infinite Power. So if the object would happen to be moving through a void ( which it will never do because none exists, nor can it exist), it would be by an infinitely powerful natural impetus supplied by an Infinitely Powerful God. It would not be the case of a finite push resulting in infinite motion.
The lesson here is that God is the ultimate cause behind every change and movement in that He supplies the power or motive force and the act of existence of the thing moved or changing.
Nor do any true ( as opposed to imaginary )
facts of Quantum Mechanics or of the Theoies of Relitivity offer any obstacles to any of the Five Ways. Whatever are the changes and motions of Quantum events ( and there is much speculation about this), there is always either instrumental causality through which God is operating or the direct causality of God Himself which is the cause of such motion, for nothing in this universe happens without the causality of God.
And finally, all the theories mentioned are mathematical explanations which are abstracted from the nature of things and thus leave unexplained the nature of the things themselves. It is the philosophies of Aristotle and Thomas which explain the nature of things and their ultimate cause. The theories address only the mathematical relationships of the physical happenings.
Linus2nd
:extrahappy: :clapping: :bowdown2:
I wish I had said that. 
