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In this episode Trent examines Alex O’Connor’s (aka “the Cosmic Skeptic”) objections to the argument from change for the existence of God.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Council of Trend podcast, a production of Catholic answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone. In this episode I’m going to look at a portion of Alex O’Connor’s reply to Ben Shapiro’s case against atheism. So I’m not going to go through the whole video because there’s only one part of Alex’s reply I was really interested in. So in one part, Ben Shapiro shares the Catholic philosopher, Ed Feser’s, argument from Motion for the Existence of God, which is based on Aquinas’s first way.
Now I’ve shared the argument from Motion in a previous debate with Alex, though Alex didn’t give a reply to the argument in the debate, so I was really excited to see what he would say about it in this video. So first I’m going to play Ben Shapiro summarizing the argument, then I’ll go into Alex’s objections. Though I do commend Alex because he does a good job in his reply explaining the argument for Motion in detail because Shapiro is actually pretty brief about it. So here’s how Ben Shapiro describes the argument.
Ben Shapiro:
Turns out there are a bevy of logically consistent arguments offered on behalf of God. Take for example, the first cause proof advanced by Aristotle as refined by Thomas Aquinas. Edward Feser lays out the argument in his book, Five Proofs of the Existence of God. The argument goes something like this. First, change exists in the world, but all change is the actualization of a potential for that change. So if something is changing, it’s because there is a potential for that change in the thing. No potential can be actualized unless something already actual actualizes it, so that means that all change is caused by something already actual.
This means either there is an infinite regress of actualizers, or there is a purely actual actualizer. This is sort of like the old joke about the philosopher and the turtle. The philosopher is asked, “What supports the Earth?” And he says, “A turtle.” And somebody says, “Well, what supports the turtle?” And he says, “Another turtle.” “So what about that one?” ‘It’s turtles all the way down.” The infinite regress argument is just not convincing. There has to be something underlying the final turtle. There has to be one prime cause. That cause can’t have any potential because if it had potential, something else could activate it into changing. So there’s one unchanging cause that is purely actual. That is the thing that we call God, and it actualizes all of the other changes.
Trent Horn:
The most important terms in the argument that you need to understand are actuality and potentiality. The argument from Motion says that change is just the reduction of potential to actual. If my coffee is actually cold, it’s also potentially hot. Something must actualize the potential for it to be hot like a microwave. It can’t become hot on its own, but then something must actualize the microwave’s potential to work like an electric current, and you could see where this is going. Ultimately, there must be a purely actual actualizer that explains all the change in the universe, but Alex offers three objections to this particular argument, so let’s take a look at them.
Alex O’Connor:
Now I want to tell you some issues that I have with it. The first problem that I have with this is treating potential as if it’s a real quality of an object. To avoid thinking of change as something coming from nothing, we imagine that this hot coffee really has this thing, this potential to become cold. Potential is thought of as a real property of my coffee.
Ben Shapiro:
So something is changing. It’s because there was a potential for that change in the thing.
Alex O’Connor:
But consider this. My coffee has the potential to be lots of things. In fact, it seems to have the potential to be an infinite number of things. For example, my coffee is currently around 70 degrees Celsius, and it has the potential to cool down to 60 degrees Celsius. It also has the potential to be exactly 60.1 degrees. It has the potential to be 60.11 degrees. It has the potential to be 60.111 degrees and so on ad infinitum. Now a great deal of religious philosophers and non-religious philosophers believe that actual infinites can’t exist. For example, this is the basis of William Lane Craig’s version of the column cosmological argument. If an infinite number of things really exists, it leads to all kinds of paradoxes, perhaps most famously, the paradox of Hilbert’s Hotel.
William Lane Craig:
The way in which Khazali shows the impossibility of an actually infinite number of things is by imagining what it would be like if such a collection could exist and then drawing out the absurd consequences from it.
Alex O’Connor:
More information is in the description. I’ll link my podcast episode with William Lane Craig, one of my favorites to date, in which we talk about this in some detail. Now it’s important to distinguish between actual infinites and potential infinites. Actual infinites would be some kind of actual infinite number of things that exist all at once, whereas potential infinites are things which tend towards infinity without ever actually getting there. For example, I can half the space between my hands, and I can half it again, and I can half it again, and I can half it again, and I can keep going on ad infinitum, but because this is a process that tends towards infinity but never actually gets there, there’s no paradoxes involved.
Now, if I keep on adding decimal points to the temperature of my coffee, as I did a moment ago, it may seem like we’re dealing with a potential infinite that continually tends towards infinity but never actually gets there. But remember, in order to avoid Parmenides’ objections, we needed to say that all of the potential properties of this coffee are potential properties that are real, that it actually has right now. It actually has these properties, these potential properties, because otherwise if they didn’t exist, if they weren’t real, they’d be nothing, and then we’d run into Parmenides’ objection. That means all of these potential temperatures that my coffee could be are potentially present in the coffee all at once right now. This isn’t something tending towards infinity as I count it out, these things are thought of as actually existing as potential properties of my coffee right now. So if we have to think of a potential property as a real thing in order to avoid something coming from nothing, then we would be positing that this coffee has an actually infinite number of properties which really exist which seems to be impossible.
Trent Horn:
Alex’s first objection basically says the argument for Motion results in two statements contradicting each other, so they can’t both be true. They are actual infinities cannot exist and an actually infinite number of potentials exist. Now, one way you could resolve this objection is by dropping the first statement. My colleague, Jimmy Aiken, thinks God could make an actually infinite number of objects, and so there would be no contradiction in Jimmy’s case for theism if he defended the argument from Motion. This objection only has force against people like me who defend both the column cosmological argument for God and the argument from change or motion based on Aquinas.
Another way to resolve the objection is to just redefine or refine what you mean by the statement, an actual infinite can’t exist. In the thought experiments William Lane Craig uses, what can’t exist are actually infinite sets of physical objects like books, coins, and hotel rooms like in Hilbert’s Hotel. I’m not going to get into how this is problematic for Craig’s argument because past events, they’re not like simultaneously existing physical objects. I do believe, however, that you could use Andrew Loke’s version of the column argument to show that if the past were infinite, then you could create an actual infinite set like Hilbert’s Hotel one room at a time which would result in an actually infinite collection in the present which is impossible.
But my main point is this. It’s that the problem of actual infinite sets existing may only apply to a collection of substantial beings, books, coins, hotel rooms, and not to potentials that exist within those substantial beings. Since potentials don’t have the same kind of existence as actualized entities like hotel rooms, then there may not be any problem with an actually infinite number of them existing. Finally, I might deny Alex’s claim that an actually infinite number of potentials do exist.
According to Thomistic metaphysics, a potential can’t exist on its own. A potential represents a capacity of a substance. So for example, the potential for the warmth of the coffee can’t exist apart from actual coffee, but in the example Alex gives, there’s only one potential, the potential for the coffee to be a certain temperature. The coffee has one potential for temperature, and that potential comes in a variety of degrees. In Thomistic metaphysics, we would distinguish a potential that has existence in a substance from just a bare possibility. However, even if you think the specific degrees of temperature the coffee can be each represent a potential, we have to remember that potentials are not unlimited. Alex even admits that when he says coffee doesn’t have the potential to become a chicken. Potentials are restricted to the nature of a substance. Now granted, you could take the atoms in coffee and maybe rearrange them into a chicken, but now it’s not the coffee as coffee that has a potential to become a chicken.
In a similar way, coffee as coffee just might be unable to achieve an infinitely precise temperature like 60.11111 repeating one degrees because coffee’s nature is restricted by the behavior of its atomic structure. There may be some temperatures the coffee can’t reach because those temperatures are more precise than the number of atoms in the coffee itself, and we could say the same thing for other examples that involve thinking of an infinite number of logically possible changes in a thing that aren’t actually metaphysically possible given the thing’s nature. Since substantial beings are finite in their nature, it would follow that their natures only allow for a finite number of potentials to be actualized.
So to summarize, this objection doesn’t work against people who think actual infinites can exist. Also, potentials exist in a different way than actualized objects exist, so the rule against actual infinities may not apply to potentials. And it seems plausible that no actual infinite number of potentials even exist given the restrictions on potentiality that are found in the limited natures of created, finite things.
Alex O’Connor:
Second problem is one that was raised by the atheist philosopher, Graham Oppy, while he was discussing this very argument with Ed Feser himself, something that you can watch on the capturing Christianity YouTube channel. Oppy simply grants that change is the actualization of potential, but he points out that the reverse is not true. Not all actualization of potential is change. He provides the example of a chair like the chair that I’m sitting on right now. Now this chair is yellow. This chair has the potential to become blue, say, if somebody were to reupholster it, but it also seems to have the potential to remain yellow. That is, things that are actual seem to have the potential to simply remain as they are. If they don’t have this potential, then they wouldn’t be able to remain as they are and so they would stop existing, and therefore, actual things will always have at least one kind of potential, which is the potential to remain as they are, but now listen to what Ben correctly says about the first cause established by the argument from change.
Ben Shapiro:
There has to be one prime cause. That cause can’t have any potential because if it had potential, something else could activate it into changing, so there’s one unchanging cause that is purely actual.
Alex O’Connor:
The God that Ben is talking about has to be something that has no potential whatsoever, but as I’ve just argued, unless God is about to stop existing, he must have at least one kind of potential, which is the potential to remain as he is, to remain in existence, so the purely actual God with no potential that Ben thinks he’s proven may not actually be able to exist at all.
Trent Horn:
Alex’s next argument seems to be this. Premise one, in order to exist a thing must have the potential to remain in existence as it is or to continue to exist without change. Premise two, God is purely actual and has no potential. Premise three, therefore, God does not have the potential to remain in existence as it is or to continue to exist without change. Therefore, God does not exist. Now the problem with this argument is with the first premise. It basically assumes this principle, whatever is actual must have a potential to remain actual, but Alex has not offered sufficient justification for such a broad principle to see why, consider this objection to a basic version of the cosmological argument for God’s existence.
Premise one, in order to exist a thing must have a cause. Premise two, God is uncaused. Three, therefore God has no cause. Conclusion, therefore God does not exist. Well, what’s wrong with this argument? Well, the first premise is false. It assumes the principle that whatever exists has a cause. This may be true for things that begin to exist or don’t have to exist, but there could be things that exist without a cause. Consider this analogy. Imagine someone watching a train car moving on a track and says whatever is moved is pulled by another. This is true of every car on the train except for the locomotive. In fact, you need a car on the train that gives motion to the train but does not receive motion from another car to explain why the train moves at all, and this brings us to Alex’s objection to the argument for Motion. Just because some things have a potential to remain in existence, it doesn’t follow that all things have this potential. To see why Alex is overgeneralizing, listen again to his claim.
Alex O’Connor:
Things that are actual seem to have the potential to simply remain as they are. If they don’t have this potential, then they wouldn’t be able to remain as they are, and so they would stop existing, and therefore, actual things will always have at least one kind of potential which is the potential to remain as they are.
Trent Horn:
But notice that we can replace all of the terms and get the faulty objection to the cosmological argument. It’s the same as saying this, things that exist seem to have a cause because if they don’t have a cause then they wouldn’t be able to exist and so they would never start existing. Therefore, existing things will always have a cause. Just as the principle, everything has a cause is only true of contingent things, the principle, whatever is actual has potential to be actual is only true of things that are a mixture of potential and actual. The first principle does not apply to uncaused things, and the second principle does not apply to purely actual things. In the example that Alex cites, it’s true that nothing about the chair’s color changes when it’s potential to stay yellow is actualized, but the ongoing yellow state of affairs still represents a reduction of potential to actual that requires something else to actualize it.
This becomes more evident when we look at the property of the chair’s existence. Something else must actualize the chair’s potential to exist not just at this moment but at any moment including any moment into the future. Now I know that Oppy and other critics like him might appeal to existential inertia to explain the chair’s continued existence apart from other actualizers, but since Alex didn’t raise that particular objection in his video, I’m going to pass over it for now, but perhaps we can revisit it in a future video. My main point is that unlike objects in the universe, God is timeless or eternal. God doesn’t exist in time in a way that makes it so that he requires some potential to remain in existence.
The philosopher, Boethius, defined God’s eternity not as endless existence in time. That’s the eternal life we will have in heaven, but it’s not God’s eternity. Boethius defined God’s eternity as the quote, “Simultaneously full and perfect possession of endless life.” God’s eternity means he exists in one, perfect, timeless act where he has the simultaneously full and perfect possession of endless life. If God had a potential to exist, that would mean there was a time when God did not exist that was later actualized, but that’s impossible because God has the simultaneously full and perfect possession of endless life.
Now, this is not a case of special pleading as if we were saying everything has a cause except for God because he’s God. Instead, it just logically follows that if there is change or potential reduced to the actual, then this changing series can only be explained by that which is purely actual, which we recognize as God. Also, God being purely actual is the only explanation for the existence of every other actualizer, just as the locomotive as an unpulled puller is the only thing that explains why the other train cars move at all. So to summarize this objection, the claim that everything has a potential to remain in existence is like the claim, everything has a cause. It is true of things we observe in the universe, but it is not universally true. Instead, just as contingent things need a necessary thing to explain why they exist, actualized things need a purely actual thing to explain why they exist.
Alex O’Connor:
My third objection is that the argument from change may only work on A theory of time. The A theory of time posits that the present is all that exists. The past and the future, in other words, don’t exist. There’s just the present. The B theory of time, on the other hand, posits that the past and the future both exist just like the present does and that they all exist in one big time block. It can be a little bit weird to get your head around, but on the B theory of time, it’s often suggested that objects, as well as having three spatial dimensions, also have a fourth temporal dimension that stretches across this time block. Of course, we’re only able to see one point of this dimension, but the past cup and the future cup both exist just like the present one does. The only thing that makes this part of the cup, the present cup, is that the person calling it the present cup occupies the same place on the time block as this particular part of the cup.
So on this view, you are right now looking at a different part of the cup than you were a moment ago because the cup has a real, unobservable but real dimension that stretches through time and what you think of as the present cup and the future cup are actually just different parts of this same cup along that temporal dimension. Thus, the potential cup, the cold cup, and the actual cup, the hot cup, are actually just the same cup, and these words merely described different points along this temporal dimension, but all of these points exist all in the same way, and if you were able to step outside of the time block, you’d see them all at once. If this is the case, then calling something potential simply because it exists at a different point on the time block to me and actual when it exists at the same point would be like me calling the coffee potential because it was in a different room in the house where I can’t see it and actual when it happens to be in front of me. This is a misleading description of what’s actually going on.
So if the potential coffee and the actual coffee are actually both just different parts of the same coffee that you could see as one big block if you were outside of time, then the distinction between potential and actual is no longer a property of the coffee but a property of the observer and which point of the coffee’s temporal dimension they happen to be looking at. Now, if this is the case, if this is an accurate description of reality, then if we were to look from outside of time, we’d see that there’s no such thing as real change because the past, the present, and the future cup, but all simply exists all at once in front of us on this time block. For what it’s worth, Ed Feser actually discussed this very objection and specifically the view that Einstein’s relativity theory points to a B theory rather than an A theory of time.
Trent Horn:
Alex’s final concern deals with the B theory of time. This basically challenges the first premise of the argument or that change is real. If time is just another dimension of space and all moments of time are equally real, then maybe it’s the case that change is an illusion, and it doesn’t have to be explained. Nothing ever goes from potential to actual because all moments of time are actual or equally real. As one physicist puts it, actuality through and through. Now, I’m grateful that Alex actually engages Ed Feser’s reply to this objection, and Alex was gracious enough to share this reply with me that he originally saved for his patrons. He didn’t include it in the original video. So let’s take a look at it, and in doing so, I’m going to be drawing from some of the replies Ed Feser gives in his article, Actuality, Potentiality, and Relativity Block Universe. You can find that in the 2018 Anthology Neo Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science.
Alex O’Connor:
For what it’s worth, Ed Feser actually discusses this very objection and specifically the view that Einstein’s relativity theory points to a B theory rather than an A theory of time. Feser offers three considerations. The first is that this interpretation of relativity, that it points to a B theory of time, is controversial, but that’s not particularly important. Second, he argues that science itself, “including relativity theory,” rests on the empirical evidence of observation and experiment, which involves scientists having certain experiences. Of course, in coming up with a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and proving a scientific theory, a scientist changes from a state of ignorance to one of knowledge. Therefore, says Feser, the very process of science itself is an example of change, and so trying to use science to prove that change is a losery is self-defeating.
But this seems to me to beg the question against change. If relativity implies a B theory of time, and B theory implies that change doesn’t really exist, then it would simply be the case that what appears to be a scientist changing his mind is actually just two parts of the same scientist that both exist on the time block. One temporal part of the scientist is ignorant. Another temporal part of the scientist is knowledgeable. To say, as Feser does, that the scientist becoming knowledgeable shows that change exists is to say that once the knowledgeable scientist exists, the ignorant scientist no longer exists, which is of course to assume the A theory of time because it says that the past doesn’t exist anymore.
Thus just assuming that B theory is false, which is why I think it’s begging the question, if we accept the B theory of time and accept that the scientist has a real temporal dimension, then his ignorance and his knowledge are both just parts of him at different points along this temporal dimension and both just as real as each other. Viewed from outside of time, there would be no changing in the scientist’s mind at all, only one part of the scientist who’s ignorant and another part of the same scientist who’s knowledgeable, and it would all just be before us all at once.
Trent Horn:
Feser’s objection is that science undermines itself when it’s used to show there is no change because science depends on thinking processes like reasoning that leads to change in our minds. In other words, if I think change is real, then it is self refuting to try to convince me change is not real through arguments that are meant to change my mind through a reasoning process. Even if the universe’s physical structure were unchanging, we would still have to explain the change that takes place in our immaterial consciousness that persists in the block universe. We also need to remember that just because science uses a certain model to represent the world, it does not follow that something does not exist just because it’s not in that model scientists use. Formulas in physics, for example, account for the world without referring to conscious thoughts, and maybe one day those formulas could predict everything that will happen without ever referencing our conscious thoughts, but in either case it does not follow we aren’t conscious just because our consciousness doesn’t show up in physics textbooks.
It’s also the case that something could be in a physical model of the universe but not exist in reality. For example, an engineer might perfectly design a plane to fly based on the passengers in his model all having an average weight of 179.6 pounds even if no one on the plane ends up weighing exactly 179.6 pounds. So we need to keep a perspective on what physics does and does not prove, but let’s talk more about the theories of time. In Alex’s objection.
The A theory of time does not say that once the knowledgeable scientist exists, the ignorant scientist stops existing as if they were two different people. Rather, the present moment, when a scientist becomes knowledgeable is real, and the moment when that same scientist was ignorant, it no longer exists in the present, but the same scientist still exists, and he has undergone a change in his thinking. In response, Alex says that under the B theory of time, there is simply one part of the scientist at time one that is ignorant and another part of the scientist at a later time, time two, that has knowledge but no change. But why does the scientist suddenly have knowledge at time two unless something about him or her, something about that particular scientist, changed between time one and time two?
For example, imagine Bob reasons at time one, if I think, I exist. I think. Then a moment later, he thinks at time two, the conclusion, I exist. It seemed like Bob has reasoned to the conclusion and underwent a mental change. But now imagine we have Bob and Fred. At time one, Bob thinks, “If I think, I exist and I think.” But then he doesn’t finish his thought, he gets distracted. A moment later, Fred randomly thinks, “I exist.” In both cases the thoughts appear at the same points in the block universe, but they don’t represent the same scenario. We don’t think Fred reasoned to the conclusion just because Bob had reasoning a moment before him that logically fits in the block universe because Bob and Fred are different people. Fred didn’t do the reasoning, but then why think Bob reasoned to the conclusion in the other example, if the Bob who reasons at time one is not the same person as the Bob who reasons at time two?
Here’s how Feser puts it. If the person who had the second thought were not the same as the person who had the first one, there would not be any reasoning going on any more than there would be if say, Donald Trump had had the conscious thought that if P then Q and P, and Hillary Clinton had, a moment later, by sheer coincidence, the conscious thought that Q. Now Alex might say it is the same person having these thoughts, but the person has not changed. This person just has one temporal part of him that thinks of the beginning of the argument while another temporal part of him thinks of the conclusion, but he does not change in this process.
But temporal parts don’t have relations like spatial parts. The existence of the fair skinned parts of my body are not dependent on the existence of the darker parts of my skin, but these are different spatial parts that are not directly related to one another. They don’t depend on each other for their existence. But the temporal parts, with conclusions about the world, are dependent on the temporal parts that have reasons about the world that came prior. But if there is no logical connection between these two parts, like a person following rules of inference to get from P to Q, and instead they’re just randomly connected events, then we have no reason to trust any conclusions we reach since we didn’t reason our way through them, and this includes any reasoning towards the view that there is no change at all.
In fact, I don’t see anything implausible with saying that even if change in the physical structure of the block universe is an illusion, which I don’t accept, but even if that were true, you could still say the conscious mind interprets the changes as different events, and it changes. This would be similar to how the mind perceives motion in a flip book even if the horse in a flip book isn’t actually running. None of the pictures in the flip book change, but our minds are changing as we observe the flip book, and even if the B theory of time is true, it doesn’t detract from the truth that some potential in our consciousness is actualized by observing the universe, and this actualization needs an explanation. And the argument for motion shows this explanation can’t be an infinite series of actualizers, it has to terminate in that which is purely actual.
Alex O’Connor:
Third response to this objection is that even if change within the universe is illusory, and it all is just one big time block that doesn’t actually involve any change through time, there are still forms of actualizing potential that exist outside of or insensitive to the passage of time. Phase of rights, as I have argued, it’s not just a things undergoing change that involves the actualization of potential, but it’s very existence at any moment that involves the actualization of potential. Hence, even if there is no real change or actualization of potential within an Einsteinian, four dimensional block universe, the sheer existence of that universe as a whole in a single timeless moment, as it were, would involve the actualization of potential and thus an actualizer distinct from the world itself. Of course that actualizer is the God that we’re talking about.
But do note that once we remove this temporal element of actualizing potential, we’re no longer talking about the argument from change. Instead, Feser is talking about the actualization of potential that isn’t change. Even if, Feser says, the universe exists as one big block timelessly on the B theory of time, it’s still actual. That universe still actually exists, and it’s not just potential, so it requires something to actualize it even if timelessly.
But now, remember earlier Graham Oppy’s point that actual things have the potential to remain as they are. Now, I said that this is a problem because it precludes the possibility of a purely actual thing because it needs the potential to remain as it is at least. Now you may have thought of a response to this yourself. If God exists outside of time, then he doesn’t have the potential to remain as he is because remaining requires time, and so maybe you’d be able to escape my objection that the purely actual actualizer would actually have to have some kind of potential because if he exists outside of time, he doesn’t really need that potential at all. But Feser here is arguing that even timelessly existing things are actual and involve a kind of timeless actualization of potential, and so once again, he seems to open the possibility for my objection that even a timeless God must possess the potential to exist and thus isn’t purely actual.
Trent Horn:
Yes, that was the essence of my reply to Alex’s second objection, but now it seems like we’re in a dilemma. If the universe can be timeless but still require an actualizer for its potential existence, then why doesn’t a timeless God require an actualizer for his potential existence? The answer is that a block universe has a distinction between its essence, or what it is and its existence, or that it is. There are different ways for a block universe to exist, so there must be something beyond the universe that actualizes one of those potentials over the others. For example, some people would say the block universe could have no beginning and no end, it’s infinite. Or it could have a beginning and an end, it’s finite. Or it could have a beginning and no end or an end and no beginning, so it’s just infinite in one direction.
So the block universe has the potential to have zero, one, or two edges, but in order for one potential shape of the universe to exist instead of another, that potential to exist would have to be actualized by something else which sets the stage for the argument from Motion.
But while in the block universe, there is a difference between essence and existence, which leads to only some essences of the block universe having existence, in God, there is no difference. God’s essence, or what he is, just is existence. God exists in an unlimited purely actual way. He doesn’t have potential modes of existence like the block universe that have to be actualized by something else. So even if you took the most radical view of an unchanging block universe has no change whatsoever even in our conscious minds, which seems really implausible, you would still not deny the existence of potentiality and actuality that ground the argument from change even if it is used in this example to show actualization apart from temporal change. Now finally, let me address some objections to this same Ben Shapiro video from another atheist, Genetically Modified Skeptic, who also critiqued it.
Drew McCoy:
At the end of the argument, he says-
Ben Shapiro:
The infinite regress argument is just not convincing. There has to be something underlying the final turtle.
Drew McCoy:
Why is the infinite regress not convincing though? This argument relies on our intuition to say that there isn’t an infinite chain in causation, but I don’t see why we should rely on intuition to determine that an infinite regress is or is not possible. I’m not saying there is an infinite regress, but for this argument to work, it needs to demonstrate that an infinite regress isn’t possible, not just rely on us to feel like it’s not.
Trent Horn:
That’s a good question, and Feser defends that at length in his book, Five Proofs. The reason is that the causal chain is essential, not accidental in nature. Think about a chain of dominoes. You could destroy all the previous dominoes that fell, and this would not stop future dominoes from falling. It’s an accidentally ordered series, but an essentially ordered series is like a bunch of gears. If you take out any gear in the series, the entire series stops spinning. If the series were infinitely long, but every gear can only be turned by a previous gear, then none of them will turn, which is similar to the train example I gave earlier. The impossibility of an infinitely long, essentially ordered series is explained by Garrigou-Lagrange, who said, “To do away with a supreme cause is to claim that, as someone has said, a brush will paint by itself provided it has a very long handle.”
Drew McCoy:
Even if I grant the entire argument, why call the purely actual actualizer, God? This argument doesn’t point to an anthropomorphic being in any way. Why assume that this actualizer is conscious or intelligent?
Trent Horn:
In Five Proofs, most of Fraser’s argument from motion is dedicated to showing that a purely actual actualizer must have divine attributes. Since it can’t undergo change, the actualizer must be timeless and immaterial. It must be necessary because it has no potential for non-existence, given that it is existence itself. Feser produces proofs for many other attributes, including a technical argument for the purely actual actualizer being all knowing because it is the cause of all relations in the universe. Now, I’m not going to go too deep into that argument, but I’ll just say that you have a strange form of atheism if you believe the ultimate foundation of reality sustains all existence but is not made of matter and isn’t located in time or space.
Drew McCoy:
Lastly, why assume it’s a single thing rather than multiple? Why can’t there be multiple purely actual things if there has to be at least one? If the consciousness or intelligence of this thing is being assumed, couldn’t this argument be used to support forms of theism other than monotheism?
Trent Horn:
If there were two purely actual actualizes, then neither could be purely actual. Each of them would have to exist in a common framework, more basic than either of them, and it would be this framework that ultimately explained reality, not the actualizers. Also, if there were two of them, if there are two separate beings, each of them would have a potential whose actuality lies in the other, so neither could be purely actual in that respect.
So I hope you enjoyed this journey into some higher level philosophy of religion, and I’m really grateful to see people like Alex O’Connor diving into this and reading books like Feser’s Five Proofs in order to examine what I think are some of the best arguments for the existence of God. But in any case, thank you guys so much for supporting my channel, and yeah, I just hope that you have a very blessed day.
Narrator:
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