<p>I am a believer in God and I support the argument of motion 100%. It provides concrete proof of God’s existence behind ever phenomena. It has no flaws and it is a very important component of philosophy. I give credit to Averoes (Muslim philosopher) and Thomas Aquinas for their very innovative reasoning behind this.
This arguments applies to almost anything and it certainly proves God’s existence.</p>
<p>Can you give us some more info?</p>
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<p>How does an “argument” do this? And which God are you speaking of? Or is it just a higher power in general? Please, as sr6622 requests, provide more information to back up your statements.</p>
<p>When I mean God, I mean a a Higher Being. </p>
<p>Example (not the best one thought)</p>
<p>What makes leaves move? Wind. What makes wind? Air pressure. What causes air pressure? Rotation of Earth. </p>
<p>In this way, we keep question cause of a phenomenon until we reach to God being behind all this.</p>
<p>How does this prove that the power you speak of is a “Being”? Seems uncertain from these questions.</p>
<p>Some philosophers, like Descartes, attempted to prove God’s existence by stating that humans have a mental idea of a supreme being. Other philosophers, like Aristotle and Aquinas, tried to prove God’s existence by claiming that everything has to have a cause. </p>
<p>Kant, however, rejected both of these views. According to Kant, neither reason nor experience is sufficient justification for the proof of the existence of God. Earlier, Hume had shown that we can’t experience cause and effect- we can only see correlation. Thus, Aristotle’s Law of Causality (on which the argument of motion rests) exists only in our minds. Although he rejected the proof of God’s existence, Kant changed philosophy by stating that faith is necessary for an immortal soul, the existence of God, and free will. He called these leaps of faith “practical postulates.” This is what really started ethics. </p>
<p>Philosophy is very complicated. Rarely can you take up one theory without having it challenged by another.</p>
<p>^^This is why it is best to keep religion, or beliefs about a Higher Power internal. Words really can’t explain it, it is a phenomenon that when let out and argued over, creates global problems.</p>
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<p>Since just because you “believe” this argument is flawless that must mean it is absolutely 100% true for everyone, regardless of anything else. Duh! Since your beliefs are the same as fact.</p>
<p>I find it pretty ironic that while you claim it is foolproof, that you can’t come up with a good one yourself.
Don’t tell me you believe in intelligent design because that is just bs.</p>
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<p>No need to emphasize you’re atheist. </p>
<p>Wrath, I do believe that Aquinas’s theory is effective because everything HAS a cause. In my example, leaves move because of the wind, which is the cause. The cause of wind can be questioned, and we keep questioning until we realize that God is behind all this. </p>
<p>Scarlet, try the argument yourself. Its no hard and you will come up with the same answer.</p>
<p>311Griff, yes what you said is right, but I also like to reason :)</p>
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<p>Do you believe life was created by a non-living phenomenon? Thats absurd. </p>
<p>(Note: I am not here to impose my religious beliefs, I am here for an inspiring discussion. )</p>
<p>I’ve always thought that religion was simply man’s way of answering questions for which we did not know the answer, since we fear uncertainty.</p>
<p>With regard to the cause thing, why does it have to be God? Isn’t it possible we simply don’t know what the next level is?</p>
<p>And yes, I absolutely believe that life and what we are today came from non-living phenomenon. In fact, if I recall correctly, my AP Bio teacher (or maybe AP Chem) told us about this experiment in which they created an enviornment similar to that of early earth, and with repeated “lightning strikes” through a mixture of gasses at a particular temp and pressure were able to create proteins.</p>
<p>Just because proteins were created, doesnt mean life was.</p>
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<p>Explain why at least. Just calling something “absurd” doesn’t do anything.</p>
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<p>When exactly did we do that?</p>
<p>Business_Freak, I am not an atheist.
I think that intelligent design is the one of the most idiotic things ever created by man. I especially hate when school boards put intelligent design into the cirriculum. In order to believe in intelligent design, you have to be rather nieve.</p>
<p>hopkinslax, Sorry for calling you athiest 
I am anti-evolution.</p>
<p>tetrahedr0n, Can you prove that God does not exist? Believing in a CONTROVERSIAL theory that supports man evolved from apes IS absurd.</p>
<p>I hate getting involved in these, but I can’t help myself on a couple of things…</p>
<p>First of all, man did not evolve from apes. They had a common ancestor, and there is a plethora of fact to back that up. Never, ever argue for or against something without being knowledgeable about both sides. You just look like a fool. I kind of don’t even want to comment on the other “points” made, since Freak obviously knows nothing about what he’s talking about and doesn’t seem inclined to cure his ignorance. </p>
<p>But, I see four main errors with Aquinas’ Argument from Motion (Prime Mover):
- Aquinas’ physics is based on Aristotle’s physics, which isn’t entirely correct. Newton’s first law states that without an external force a particle has the tendency to stay at rest or move with a constant velocity. This second part was unknown, at the time. Therefore, a Prime Mover is not needed to set the Universe in motion.
- God is a contradiction in this argument. The entire argument is based on God being an exception to his stated rule–this is absurd and invalidates the argument because of circular reasoning.
- The “turtles all the way down” reasoning leaves another hole in the argument. There are other a priori possibilities than dependency.
- The notions of potentiality and actuality are incomplete. Are these natural or created?</p>
<p>For the we did not evolve, that is only partially true. Supposively we split from apes way way way way back then and then evolution occured from that split species.
Edit: If you believe in Intelligent Design, watch Penn and Teller: BS. You might change your mind soon enough.</p>
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<p>I can’t prove that God doesn’t exist. That doesn’t change anything. I don’t believe in things for the sole reason of it being hard or impossible to prove that they aren’t true. </p>
<p>Again, you claim something is absurd, but your only support for this by calling evolution “controversial.” It might be, but not where it counts. There is nothing controversial about it in the scientific community. I frankly don’t care that hardcore religious fundamentalists are so heavily offended by it.</p>
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<p>Sorry, but i did my homework on this 
Here are some interesting facts regarding the theory:</p>
<p>1.) There is no scientific law that allows something to evolve from nothing. If there was nothing in the universe to begin with, obviously nothing could happen to cause anything to appear.</p>
<p>2.) Atheistic evolutionists have long believed that at some time in the distant past, life arose from non-living substances. But biology has found no law to support this idea, and much against it. The invariable observation is that only living things give rise to other living things. Life could not begin if God and miracles took no part! :)</p>
<p>3.) The theory of evolution teaches that simple life-forms evolved into more complex life-forms, such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.There is no known scientific law that would allow one kind of creature to turn naturally into a completely different kind. For example, insects don’t evolve into more complex non-insects for instance, because they don’t have the genes to do it.</p>
<p>The probability of humans and apes “evolving” from “common ancestor” is extremely unlikely.</p>
<p>1) who says there was nothing in the universe to begin with? I believe pre-big bang everything was simply concentrated into a very small area of extremely large density, and then exploded outward</p>
<p>2)Yes, it is true that maggots do not come from meat. And since those of you “doing your homework” have yet to correct me, I’m going to assume my knowledge of that experiment in which proteins self synthesized is true. Thus, with proteins being able to form under condititions which no longer exist anywhere on earth today, those proteins were able to come together to eventually form organelles, cells, organs, organisms.</p>
<p>3) You are correct, animals do not spontaneously turn into entirely new creatures. It is a very long, drawn out process that occurs over thousands of years. Take for example pathogenic bacteria, as it is the only example I know of in which evolution can take place on the order of days. You are infected with a large number of bacteria, causing you to get sick, and you take anti-biotics. Of this population of infectious bacteria, many, due to random recombination of DNA will have possibily been able to have developed the code for a protein which protects them from this anti-biotic you are taking. This population is very small compared to the overall. The anti-biotic wipes out the majority of your infection, allowing your natural immunities to fight these anti-biotic resistant ones. You feel better, because your infection is basically gone, you stop taking your medecine. These bacteria manage to asexually reproduce copies of themselves, or sometimes, they may pick up platelets (extraneous DNA) from their dead bretheren. This allows the population of anti-biotic resistant ones to grow, and you feel your symptoms again, so you start taking your medecine again, but this time it’s not nearly as effective, because the now large population of bacteria inside you is resistant to the medecine. This is a type of evolution.</p>
<p>If enough of these random changes occur over time, and you don’t have bottlenecking events like a population wipeout from anti-biotics, you could eventually end up with 2 populations of bacteria, which have eventually become so dissimilar, they can no longer effectively exchange DNA to create offspring.</p>
<p>And no one who believes in evolution believes that the odds that it happened were high. It is widely accepted that the odds that humans as they are today exist is almost zero. </p>
<p>Business Freak, would you identify as an agnostic, or do you still believe god is a presence today?</p>