Prime Mover Part 3: Final Objections

This is the third and (hopefully) final post concerning the famous Prime Mover argument for the existence of God. In the first post I set forth the argument and claimed that it established the existence of a “being of Pure Act.” In the second post I responded to some common objections, and also explained why the being of Pure Act is “God,” in that the being of Pure Act must be one, immaterial, timeless, omnipotent, and immutable. I also claimed that it is somewhat irrelevant whether or not the Prime Mover argument alone is sufficient to establish that this being of Pure Act is personal. If such a being exists, who is purely actual, immaterial, timeless, omnipotent, and immutable, that is at least enough to prove false non theistic world views such as atheism and naturalism.

But besides this, I also made the comment that it is possible to show that the being of Pure Act is personal, although it is admittedly a bit less clear than with other attributes. In this final post, then, I’d like to accomplish the following: 1) show that the being of Pure Act is indeed personal, and 2) respond to more in depth, complicated objections to the argument.

The first argument used to show that the being of Pure Act is “personal” claims that all immaterial beings must be personal. In order to understand this claim, we first need to understand a bit of the underlying metaphysics. For Aristotle and Aquinas,

Prime Mover Part 2: Who is the Prime Mover?

In my last post, I left off with a bit of a cliff hanger. In that article, I presented an ancient and sometimes overlooked (in the contemporary climate) argument for the existence of God, called the Prime Mover argument, or the argument from motion, which is Aquinas’ famous First Way. I argued in that post that the proof shows the existence of a being which is “Pure Act,” and I made the claim that this being is God. But why should we think that, if some being of Pure Act does in fact exist, this being is God, or even anything like God? For that matter, who is “God” anyways?

First, before I continue, let me give a very brief summary of the argument presented in the last post:

1. Our experience via our senses observes that there exist objects/beings in motion
2. Motion is a potency raised/reduced to act
3. A potency can only be raised to act by another which is itself already in act
4. Essentially ordered causal series of such motion cannot in principle have an infinite regress
5. Therefore, there must exist a being who is Pure Act

What does it mean to be a being of Pure Act? Well, as its name quite obviously tells us, this being is purely actual, that is, it has no potencies able to be actualized. It is fully, totally, in act. It is an “unmoved mover,” the source and cause of all motion that we see here and now in existence. It is the first or “prime” mover.

This argument has been around for a very long time, and it has garnered a very large amount of responses/critiques/objections. In this post, I’ll examine some of the most common, frequently encountered objections. Here’s a preliminary list:

1. Why think the being of Pure Act is God?
2. In particular, why think the being of Pure Act is sentient/personal/conscious?
3. Quantum physics has undermined the act/potency premises. Objects are seen to change randomly, without any sort of external cause.
4. Newton’s laws of motion undermine the act/potency premises
5. How does the unmoved mover move anything?

Now, before I begin my analysis of these objections, I’d like to