Thomas Aquinas’ Unmoved Mover – Debunked (Kreeft and Prager Refuted)

First and foremost, a owe Alex J. O’Connor (https://www.youtube.com/user/alexjoconnor/videos) a massive thank you. Please, everybody, do check out his content – it’s extremely similar to mine and he’s been among my top 3 favourite YouTubers even since I first found him (when he was at only 2k subs).

In the interest of keeping this video relevant, I’m going to address Kreeft’s specific rendition of the Unmoved Mover rather than Aquinas’, because, while the two differ in the language and references that they use, they are nevertheless fundamentally the same.

Syllogistically, it goes as follows:

• Everything that exists is in motion.
• Everything in motion is caused to be in motion by something else.
• Something must’ve existed without a cause.
• We call this first-cause (or unmoved mover) god.
• Therefore, god exists.

Throughout the video I pint-point several flaws and fallacies that those who use the Unmoved Mover tend to commit, but for a very brief summery (extremely brief), they are as follows:

1. Doesn’t Support Christianity:

Even if we accept every premise of Kreeft’s presentation of this argument, all this would prove is that an Unmoved Mover existed, and that’s it! Seriously, that’s all it would prove.

It would not prove that this Unmoved Mover still exists, that it’s a being, that it’s conscious, or that it impregnated a virgin, in order to sacrifice itself to itself so that it could forgive you for your ancestors’ actions… or in other words, it would not prove that Kreeft’s very specific interpretation of the Christianity is true.

2. Special Pleading:

The second game-ending flaw with this argument, is that premise three – the assertion that “Something must’ve existed without a cause” - is an obvious case of Special Pleading.

A Special Pleading fallacy occurs when a proponent creates an exception to a rule without adequate justification, and that is precisely what premise three is doing. It is literally asserting that premise two – the assertion that “Everything in motion is caused to be in motion by something else”, applies to absolutely everything except for the cause of the universe, without adequately justifying why. In fact, by itself, the argument doesn’t even attempt to substantiate this assertion… it just makes it.

3. Equivocation Fallacy:

And this brings us perfectly to the crux of Kreeft’s faulty reasoning… in his attempt to assert that an Unmoved Mover does indeed exist, he offers two additional faulty arguments. The first is the assertion that “We now know that all matter – that is the whole universe – came into existence some 13.7 billion years ago, and it’s been expanding and cooling ever since.”

State succinctly, the reason that this argument fails come down to the definition of the word “universe” Kreeft is using. If we are using the scientific definition of the universe – that being “all matter, space and time”, then yes, it is accurate to say that the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe; but if we are using the colloquial definition of the universe – that being “everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist”, then no, it is inaccurate to say that the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe.

Hence, because Kreeft uses the scientific definition of the universe for the conclusion of this additional argument, but he uses the colloquial definition of the universe for the conclusion of his main argument, he therefore commits an Equivocation Fallacy, and hence his argument is invalid.

4. False Premise:

And the second faulty argument that Kreeft offers is the assertion that, “Because Einstein’s general theory of relativity says that all time is relative to matter, and since all matter began 13.7 billion years ago, so did all time. So there’s no time before the Big Bang.”

Stated succinctly, this assertion is simply false.

To quote Sean Carroll, my all-time favourite Theoretical Physicist, “A lot of Cosmologists will say there was a beginning, and the problem with this is that the prediction that there was a beginning, or the understanding that there was a beginning, is based on general relativity, and we know general relativity is not right. The reason we know it is not right is, for one thing, it is not compatible with quantum mechanics. The reason we know it’s not right is because, for one thing, it […] is not compatible with Quantum Mechanics […] So basically we have a prediction that the universe began based on a theory that we have no right to trust.”

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As always, thanks you kindly for the view, and I hope that this video will help you defeat those who would use the Unmoved Mover against you.

Видео Thomas Aquinas’ Unmoved Mover – Debunked (Kreeft and Prager Refuted) канала Rationality Rules