The Unmoved Mover

[FuzzyBunny116]

I’m sure plenty of you are familiar with the “unmoved mover” argument (Argument from First Cause, I think?). That in order for their to be movement, something has to have moved it, and that the movement traces itself to God.

The Argument from Design states that the world is so complex, there must have been a designer. The rebuttal is that who designed the designer’s brain to design the world? It seems to me that there is an undesigned Designer.

How do I say this?

Is there anywhere to go from here? Is there anywhere to prove that movement and design originate from a Being as opposed to the universe, since it seems all God is is taking things one step further?

 

[dylanschrader]

We observe motion (the change from potentiality to actuality) in everything around us. In order for this to exist, there has to exist something that does not move (does not change from potential to actual).

The unmoved mover cannot be the universe because we do observe changes from potentiality to actuality in the universe. The unmoved mover has to be pure actuality, otherwise there would be change in it and the potentiality would have had to come from somewhere else.

 

[VociMike]

The real issue, I think, is whether a thing can design itself, or whether a thing can be the cause of itself. Could the universe design itself? Could the universe be the cause of itself? This seems unlikely, even logically impossible. However, if an outside agent is involved, then there is no problem. So the problem is not that something had to exist, had to design the design. Christians don’t deny that. The problem is if we insist that the thing must be of the very material existence which we are trying to explain in the first place. A thing cannot account for itself, but it can account for other things. God, being outside of and independent of creation, can be invoked as the creator of creation, the designer of creation. But creation cannot be invoked as its own creator, its own designer.

 

[dylanschrader]

This argument is pretty intuitive. A thing cannot account for itself, but it can account for other things. This is a restatement of the Law of Causality. So, in order for there to be anything, there must be something that does not need to be accounted for, that is, something uncaused.

This is the necessary being, Being itself. It has to be something outside of the order of everything observable to us, something transcendent, to be the cause of everything else. It is absolutely unique and perfectly simple, that is, having no parts. It is God.

 

[Strider]

Try Kreeft. To my mind, he’s one of the two best lay Catholic thinkers in America right now. The other is George Wiegel. There are many other good ones, but these guys are tops. Mark Shea is right up there, too.

peterkreeft.com/featured-writing.htm

 

[Anim8]

Is there anywhere to go from here? Is there anywhere to prove that movement and design originate from a Being as opposed to the universe, since it seems all God is is taking things one step further?

We cannot factually prove that God exists. If we could there would be no need for faith. That said, we can reasonably prove Gods existence.

Here is a quote from an atheist I once debated.

In order to examine this more closely we must look at the philosphical releavence of “possibility.” Immuanel Kant, famous german philosopher, spoke about two kinds of possibility: logical possibilty and material possibility. Logical possibilty exists where there is no obvious self contridication in the the said statement. For example to say, “There exists at least one false fact” is a logical impossibility. A fact is by nature something that is true, so to say that a false fact exists is self-contridactory. Therefore this statement is a logical impossibility for its obvious contradiction. The other type of possibilty is material possibility. Material possibility concerns the truth of a propsition as oppesed to its meaning. When saying that a proposition is possibily true in the materialistic sense, there has to be some sort of evidence to support such a possibility. You can see that while logical possibility just concerns the coherency of a statement, material possibility requires some evidentry proof in order to assert possibility.

So while we cannot prove God’s material existence, we can prove God’s logical existence. We can prove that it is logical for God to exist, but we cannot produce a material fact to that effect.

So no, you can’t take it any further then a logical argument. But your argument, the need for an “Udesigned designer” is basically the same argument as “The Unmoved mover”, so I think you are pretty good with what you have.

 

[Benedictus]

I’m sure plenty of you are familiar with the “unmoved mover” argument (Argument from First Cause, I think?). That in order for their to be movement, something has to have moved it, and that the movement traces itself to God.

There are several objections to this argument, the first of which is that it’s possible that the universe just exists.

Sometimes people will object that this argument doesn’t prove the existence of one God. Why can’t there be two unmoved movers?

One of the more common objections is that the conclusion is a contradiction. Who created God? Answering this question takes us back to the very troublesome ontological argument (that not even Aquinas accepted) that God’s existence is self-evident.

There are other objections as well, such as questioning the Causal Principle.

The Argument from Design states that the world is so complex, there must have been a designer. The rebuttal is that who designed the designer’s brain to design the world? It seems to me that there is an undesigned Designer.

The argument from design is an intersting one. A lot of people feel that there is some sort of order or design in the universe. However, I think it is one of the weaker arguments for God’s existence primarily because we have yet to encounter anything in the universe that can’t be explained by purely natural processes (via physics, biology, etc.).

Even if we were to discover something science can’t explain, the argument from design really degenerates into an argument from present ignorance. Maybe science can’t explain something, but someday it may.

 

[dylanschrader]

We cannot factually prove that God exists. If we could there would be no need for faith. That said, we can reasonably prove Gods existence.

Here is a quote from an atheist I once debated.

So while we cannot prove God’s material existence, we can prove God’s logical existence. We can prove that it is logical for God to exist, but we cannot produce a material fact to that effect.

So no, you can’t take it any further then a logical argument. But your argument, the need for an “Udesigned designer” is basically the same argument as “The Unmoved mover”, so I think you are pretty good with what you have.

We can prove that God does, indeed, exist. This truth can be known by the light of human reason alone without faith according to the Catholic Church.

 

[dylanschrader]

There are several objections to this argument, the first of which is that it’s possible that the universe just exists.

Sometimes people will object that this argument doesn’t prove the existence of one God. Why can’t there be two unmoved movers?

One of the more common objections is that the conclusion is a contradiction. Who created God? Answering this question takes us back to the very troublesome ontological argument (that not even Aquinas accepted) that God’s existence is self-evident.

There are other objections as well, such as questioning the Causal Principle.

The argument from design is an intersting one. A lot of people feel that there is some sort of order or design in the universe. However, I think it is one of the weaker arguments for God’s existence primarily because we have yet to encounter anything in the universe that can’t be explained by purely natural processes (via physics, biology, etc.).

Even if we were to discover something science can’t explain, the argument from design really degenerates into an argument from present ignorance. Maybe science can’t explain something, but someday it may.

Saying that the universe “just exists” doesn’t account for the fact that what makes up the universe is constantly changing. This is exactly where Prime Mover comes in.

No one created God. This is exactly what Prime Mover says: there must be a being that does not transition from potentiality to actuality to cause the transition from potentiality to actuality in everything else.

There can’t be two Prime Movers because the Prime Mover must be outside the order of all creation and cannot be finite because this would “leave room,” so to speak for a transition in the Prime Mover from potentiality to actuality. Thus, the Prime Mover must be both perfect and infinite. This means that there cannot be more than one Prime Mover since they would be absolutely and perfectly identical, one and the same thing.

I, too, do not think that the argument from design is as great as it’s made out to be. For one thing, it starts from too anthropocentric a point with the whole idea of “design” based on the human experience of making tools. I think that it has true conclusions, but the real problem is that it’s too complicated. The “design” of things is secondary to the fact that finite, changeable things exist at all.

 

[Anim8]

We can prove that God does, indeed, exist. This truth can be known by the light of human reason alone without faith according to the Catholic Church.

As I said, you can prove God’s existence logically, you can say that it is reasonable that God should and does exist. But we cannot produce factual, scientific (or “material”) evidence to that effect.

 

[dylanschrader]

There are different types of ways to demonstrate God’s existence. Some start from creation, some start from the human person, and some are a priori.

I would be hesitant to buy into Kant’s phenomenology.

 

[Seamus_Sully]

dylanschrader

Kant’s phenomenology

Please make this clear and concise, thanks!

Or what is Kant’s phenomenology?