The First Cause? Prime Mover Argument

[Anatheist]

I was asked to set up thread on this topic, so I'm happy to oblige

I was an Atheist for many years until I began my Philosophy degree. In the course of that degree my views on almost everything have changed and one of the most notable changes is the move to belief in a prime mover.

The argument that swayed me is very simple:
Premise 1) Everything in the Universe is either impermanent, or depends upon something else for its existence. (things are born and they die, the universe tends towards entropy, nothing within the Universe lasts forever)
Premise 2) An infinite regress of finite, impermanent causes seems logically impossible.
Conclusion 1)Therefore there must a permanent, infinite first cause of everything in the Universe. (or the Universe is itself permanent/infinite but BBT suggests it had a beginning and is expanding so this seems implausible)
Premise 3) This first cause is empistemically hidden from us (we have no direct experience or knowledge of it)
Conclusion 2) Therefore we know nothing about it other than what is necessary for a first cause of the Universe.
Conclusion 3) Therefore there is a, largely mysterious, infinite, permanent, first cause of the Universe that I will call a Prime mover.

This belief does not entail Theism and I see many strong arguments against personal or interventionist Gods hence why I don't consider myself a Theist. It may be considered a form of Deism, or possibly a weak Atheism (or indeed a weak Theism although I would struggle to accept that label) but I'm unsure where to categorize it in those terms. Any questions?

I have a question: what difference does any of this make to anyone?

[The Grand Nudger]

-a great deal to those who offer it, likely.  Seems that they've discovered how important a cogent argument might be, that their faith in such an entity must be sanctioned by reason, even if only internally.  

[Anatheist]

-a great deal to those who offer it, likely.  Seems that they've discovered how important a cogent argument might be, that their faith in such an entity must be sanctioned by reason, even if only internally.  

But isn't it rather difficult to imagine what "faith in such an entity" could actually mean in real terms?  A prime mover (defined entirely abstractly) "exists" - so what? 

[The Grand Nudger]

Those who offer it are unlikely to conceptualize any prime mover as an abstract.  OP thinks prime mover is a god...........for example. That's not abstract, we just don't know what it means to any given user and so it often comes off -as- abstract.

to elucidate:

Premise 1) Everything in the Universe is either impermanent, or depends upon something else for its existence. (things are born and they die, the universe tends towards entropy, nothing within the Universe lasts forever)

pretext for the coming attribute claim, a great deal of time is spent on this thing....

Premise 2) An infinite regress of finite, impermanent causes seems logically impossible.

Does it....is that relevant? Couldn't a prime mover be impermanent? We need not refer to an infinite regress of impermanent cause...and why would permanence of cause be relevant -at all-? I think it's misleading, personally...because even if there were some "permanent cause" we've been asked to simply accept this...whilst one day my children will visit my grave. We need no further evidence for the efficacy of impermanent causes. If I am to accept prime mover -simply for the sake of argument- I will still suggest that this prime mover might be long since gone. Might explain why, as the op mentions...we have no direct experience of it. There is nothing to directly experience.

Conclusion 1)Therefore there must a permanent, infinite first cause of everything in the Universe. (or the Universe is itself permanent/infinite but BBT suggests it had a beginning and is expanding so this seems implausible)

"therefore" must follow from something....but in truth, this is contained in premise 1. But...I can see that infinity and permanence play heavily into OPs idea of a god. Common obsessions.

Premise 3) This first cause is empistemically hidden from us (we have no direct experience or knowledge of it)

Hiddenness...check.....

Conclusion 2) Therefore we know nothing about it other than what is necessary for a first cause of the Universe.

ah, the old "we don;t know"..what foolows from we don't know, is, of course, we don't know...but the OP elucidates...adding yet another attribute...mysteriousness, check.

Conclusion 3) Therefore there is a, largely mysterious, infinite, permanent, first cause of the Universe that I will call a Prime mover.

We've determined that the OP prefers mysterious, infinite, permanent causes.......as to whether or not such things exist....well......

[Anatheist]

Those who offer it are unlikely to conceptualize any prime mover as an abstract.  

What I meant (in passing) was that the prime mover in question is defined abstractly (as opposed to being derived from concrete experience).  

[The Grand Nudger]

Ah, well, gl with that.  OP might tell you that his prime mover -is- derived from concrete experience..simply not firsthand concrete experience of the item in question.  Its been approached as a logical necessity, and logic is a description of our concrete experiences codified as a system of arranging statements so that they might lead to conclusions which are both accurate and representative of that world which, again, we do have concrete experience of.

(ultimately though, what difference would it make if something were defined abstractly or experienced concretely.....I don't know....seems like its an area open for personal value judgements to me, a christian using prime mover as the horse would tell you "So you better do what Jesus says!".....as one example of the difference)

[Hatshepsut]

Premise 3) This first cause is empistemically hidden from us (we have no direct experience or knowledge of it)

Hiddenness...check.....

The Egyptians were fond of that "hiddenness" thing. The word jmn "hidden" is also the name of a god, Amun, "the hidden one," the state god of Waset (Thebes) whose priests elevated Hatsheput to the throne over her young co-ruler Thutmose III. A thing hidden from us not by epistemological considerations, but by lack of surviving documents, or the possibility that the backroom deals were never recorded in writing.

Often I'm tempted to think the Hebrews plagiarized much of their religious textual corpus from Egypt. If that's too extreme, then the creation topography, creative utterance by deity, hiddenness, and flood schemas were all borrowed, and a doctrine of killing the firstborn which the Egyptians didn't have added in. On this last, Pharaoh preferred taking POWs to mass slaughter of civilians.

[Faith No More]

You may note that in my original post, I never claimed that everything must have a cause, or must be impermanent. I merely noted that the things we experience seem to all require something further that brings it about, a cause, or mover if you will. It is a contingent observation, rather than a necessary truth. Thus the accusation of special pleading doesn't hold, as all I'm claiming is that there is a self-sufficient supporting thing for the category of things within our universe that seem to require external support. The criticism on the basis of quantum mechanics is fair, my belief is based on causality and time as being conditions for the possibility of human understanding. But I don't see how we can operate any other way. If the universe doesn't operate according to explicable concepts of time and causation then we literally cannot understand why anything is the way it is, or where it would have come from and must therefore remain agnostic about all things, which shoots atheism in the foot just as surely as anything else.

What you're experiencing is the conflict between the macro and micro scales of the universe.   We can understand the macro scale quite well, and clearly, our knowledge of it has to have some validity given how functional it is.  But when we start talking about how the universe arose, we have to get down to the mirco scale, our knowledge starts to fail and things get fuzzy.  Yes, that means that we struggle to understand how the universe operates on that level, but that in no way means that denying a supernatural explanation is on shaky philosophical grounds.

In conclusion, I am probably wrong, but everyone else probably is too. My experience of philosophy has taught me that every belief system has major problems with justifying itself in terms of its fundamental assumptions(including the scientific one), so what you believe is largely a choice. (for example my argument does allow for an infinite universe, or an infinite regress, I just don't think that either of those things are likely, so I don't believe them) To demonstrate, my belief system requires assuming that there is a gap in knowledge between things as they appear to be (colours, sounds, smells, tastes), and as they are independent of experience (????). The scientific world-view has its own irreducible assumptions, such as the assumption that a pattern of correlation can establish causation (I've seen 1 million swans and they were all white, therefore all swans are white). However both world views are consistent, given those axioms, so either can be reasonably chosen as a belief system

Philosophy does have major problems justifying itself, and yes, science does rest upon principles that cannot be philosophically proven.  The problem, however, for those that refuse to accept science's validity as the best source of knowledge is just how functional it is in the real world.  For all the philosophical messiness that comes with justifying knowledge and how empiricism is a valid epistemology, that just can't stop the overwhelming tide of functionality that is science and its ability to parse the cosmos much, much better than anything before it.

Science.  It works.

[Alex K]

All arguments for rejecting science that I have seen lead to some form of solipsism.

[TheRealJoeFish]

-a great deal to those who offer it, likely.  Seems that they've discovered how important a cogent argument might be, that their faith in such an entity must be sanctioned by reason, even if only internally.  

This is exactly the kind of nonsense Soren Kierkegaard was trying to warn us about!