RE: Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.
April 26, 2021 at 2:50 am
Is this one of those first cause/ prime mover topics? Like "everything needs a cause," then there must have been a first cause (or Prime Mover), until you realize that the premise is really saying "everything (except God) needs a cause (Prime Mover)"?
The Prime Mover concept was debunked long ago because when the "Prime Mover" idea was conceived by Aristotle and Aquinas, people believed that the movements of bodies were the result of spiritual action, with God as the prime mover. It was Descartes who replaced spiritual causality with mechanical causality, in which inanimate bodies and animals were machines moved around by natural forces with the exception of the human being.
The Prime Mover concept was debunked long ago because when the "Prime Mover" idea was conceived by Aristotle and Aquinas, people believed that the movements of bodies were the result of spiritual action, with God as the prime mover. It was Descartes who replaced spiritual causality with mechanical causality, in which inanimate bodies and animals were machines moved around by natural forces with the exception of the human being.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
