everything in the universe that is in motion is set in motion by something else
motion is the reduction of something from the state of potentiality to actuality
something cannot be in potentiality and actuality simultaneously
the primary cause of the motion cannot be in motion itself
Am I missing some logic? Does this make sense?How would a physicist counter Thomas Aquinas' argument of motion for the existence of God?You can't begin to understand Aquinas' argument, unless you first understand what Aristotle meant by "potentiality", "actuality", "primary cause", etc, etc.
Aristotle tends to get a bad press these days (especially from people who haven't read any of his books) because they think his "science" was all wrong. Actually he was more interested in philosophy rather than anything resembling modern "science", though his records of scientific observations, particularly about plants and animals, were detailed, and mostly correct.
Aquinas was basically arguing that if Aristotelian philosophy is correct, then God exists. In Aquinas' time, questioning whether Aristotle might have been wrong was about as unthinkable as questioning today whether 1+1=2.
There isn't really any overlap between this and modern physics. The first line of Aquinas' argument (which is a straight quote from Aristotle) isn't really talking about the same thing as Newton's first law of motion.
It has been said that "the whole of Western philosophy right up to the present day is just a set of footnotes to Aristotle's books". Many of the Christian fundie arguments about "science" are straight out of Aristotle, though they conveniently forget the ideas came from a polytheistic pagan who lived a few hundred years before Christ.How would a physicist counter Thomas Aquinas' argument of motion for the existence of God?agree with 'what' on previous post.
as motion is relative, it's hard to know what Thomas Aquinas is truly asking.
Take an example:
If I say I am sat still in my house, you will probably consider me not to be in motion.
where as if I say I am sat still on the surface on the earth, you may consider the earth to be rotating, and therefore I am in motion.
The truth is you can not say if anything is in motion or not, unless you compare it to something else.
So as far as I can tell, Thomas Aquinas is saying because some things in the universe are moving in different directions to other things in the universe, there must be a god.How would a physicist counter Thomas Aquinas' argument of motion for the existence of God?He assumes that there was a time when nothing was in motion, and then someone caused things to be in motion (relative to one another, if you please). He concludes that that something must be God. It is a huge jump of faith to ascribe all the garbage attributes that belong to the term "God" to a prime mover.
I do not believe in Big Bang any more than I believe in a God who plans every phase of my existence. I believe our universe may have come into existence a finite time ago, but it did not come our of nothing. There is a greater fractal universe which is infinite in time, size and scale. The prime mover of our universe is dark energy, but that is a product of another universe. As for things being put in motion, that's bull; motion is the essence of things.How would a physicist counter Thomas Aquinas' argument of motion for the existence of God?
motion is relative...
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