If we look at Thomas of Aquinas’ Prime Mover Argument, namely that everything has to have a cause and that a chain of causes will lead to a first cause which has no cause itself, and which is god, could we say that there is a failure in that consideration at least at the point when we claim to know anything about that first cause, or even postulate its existence which seems only to serve our own thinking and not necessary the way things work?

What do you think about that whole prime mover thing?

I think you nailed it on the head. The Prime Mover argument (and just about every god argument I’ve ever come across) is just personal bias parading as logic.  That’s not to say Aquinas was trying to be deceitful and certainly not that he was dumb. Far from it. I think it was more that he was trapped so to speak in an intellectual box that wouldn’t allow him to think that effects may be uncaused or that it’s possible that our puny little minds might not be capable of even conceiving of the logic (or lack of logic) behind the universe.

And that’s the problem with any kind of god talk or talk of ultimate things…we just don’t know what we’re talking about. Sure the sentences may make sense, but anything else is pure guess work. A good example is this prime mover argument. Maybe the prime mover is the devil.  Maybe the prime mover created the universe with parts that don’t follow any logic at all, and she did it on purpose!  I mean come on, she allowed nuts like Pat Robertson to be born, she has to have a sense of humor.  It’s all just stories we make up, and the smarter of us makes up stories that SEEM believeable.

While Aquinas was quite brilliant, mathematics hadn’t progressed far enough in his time for him to understand infinity.  One can postulate a prior cause for any event, but there is no justification for assuming that, at some point there is a first event that has no cause, i.e., that that event must be god.  It’s far more rational to recognize that when tracing causes back one can have an infinite regression.  So there is NO first cause.

Occam

Do you thin it is possible to have infinite regression not only in time but also in space?
Like those Russian dolls, where you can pull one out of another, but in this case till infinity.
Could that work for the simulation argument, that there would be no “original” world, or is that a different thing because it would exist in a world which is based on the same laws like ours, and therefor leaves no space for deviation?

Alexander80 - 26 July 2012 10:04 AM

What do you think about that whole prime mover thing?

See my posting here.