[Serious] Criticism of Aquinas' First Way or of the Proof of God from Motion.

[polymath257]

So, Aristotle was wrong in many, many ways. That doesn't make him stupid. it just makes him wrong. But making the first attempt was a crucial step.

And the problem is that people worshipped ancient people like they did Aristotle, and that's why Galileo got in trouble when he looked into the telescope and debunked Aristotle by seeing craters on the Moon because Aristotle said the universe is perfect. The clergy could not comprehend how Galileo could disprove a man they worshipped for hundreds of years by one look through the telescope, so they didn't want to look through the telescope themselves. Galileo also disproved Aristotle's claims that heavier objects fall faster.

And that's how people in the past worked: someone they worshipped said something and it had to be like that, they didn't research it, like Aristotle believed that men have more teeth than women, so it had to be that way because who is anyone to disprove the "great" Aristotle and actually count the teeth.

Yes, it was often a problem of taking some 'authority' as indisputable (or nearly so). The clerics *were* happy to disagree with Aristotle when he concluded the world is eternal (and on several other points). But, over time, Christian theology came to be based so much on Aristotelian thought, it was impossible to move away from it without serious questioning of the faith.

But this was a later, Abrahamic development. Aristotle himself often pointed out the tentative nature of his conclusions and often noted the need to make observations and philosophy agree. In fact, Ari was a very keen observer in biological matters.