Argument from Change - Refuted

These are the standard objections to argument #1 on the list provided here...

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm

The first flaw in this argument is encapsulated in the assertion that “Nothing changes itself”.

For a start, this in itself is a hypothesis rather than a statement of fact. It could be said that "things are observed to change." That is a fact. But beginning an inductive argument with a hypothesis is back to front. The inductive argument should lead to a hypothesis.

Another flaw in the initial assumption is that the use of the word "itself".  This implies that things that change have a "self". What the author is perhaps trying to say is that nothing changes without a cause and one has to wonder why he avoided expressing it that way.  The fact is we see things changing all the time for purely natural reasons.  

He then goes on to say things that change need something outside themselves to change. This is factually incorrect, for example, the decay of radioactive atoms which "change themselves".  So essentially Kreeft is making the assumption that there is some agent of change "outside" our universe in order to prove that there is something outside our universe. It's a circular argument.

The second flaw is that even if we accept the concept of a “first mover” there is nothing that indicates this "first mover" created our universe. It is entirely possible that beings with less power than a god could create a universe.   Or it could have been a natural event, and there are several hypotheses in cosmology which explain this. To then go further and give the "first mover" the label of "God" is the same as giving God the label of "first mover". Circular again.

The final flaw is the concept of a having an arbitrary termination to an infinite regression where that termination is God. This unjustified assumption is used in many similar arguments (most of which come from Aristotle via Thomas Aquinas). So apologists arbitrarliy terminate this regression and give it the label “God”. They then arbitrarily assign attributes to this terminated regression such as omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design, listening to prayers, forgiving sins and so on. To quote Richard Dawkins...

“To return to the infinite regress and the futility of invoking God to terminate it, it is more parsimonious to conjure up, say, a ‘big bang singularity’, or some other physical concept as yet unknown. Calling it God is at best unhelpful and at worst perniciously misleading.”

“Edward Lear’s Nonsense Recipe for Crumboblious Cutlets invites us to ‘Procure some strips of beef, and having cut them into the smallest possible pieces, proceed to cut them still smaller, eight or perhaps nine times.’” 

“Some regresses do reach a natural terminator. Scientists used to wonder what would happen if you could dissect, say, gold into the smallest possible pieces. Why shouldn’t you cut one of those pieces in half and produce an even smaller smidgen of gold? The regress in this case is decisively terminated by the atom. The smallest possible piece of gold is a nucleus consisting of exactly seventy-nine protons and a slightly larger number of neutrons, attended by a swarm of seventy-nine electrons. If you ‘cut’ gold any further than the level of the single atom, whatever else you get is not gold. The atom provides a natural terminator to the Crumboblious Cutlets type of regress. It is by no means clear that God provides a natural terminator to the regress of Aquinas.”

SUMMARY

1a) The premise that “nothing changes itself” is incorrect because some things are observed to change themselves. And even if such things were not observed, we can't assume that such things do not exist somewhere in our universe just because we haven't observed them.

1b) The premise that “A change in any being requires an outside force to actualize it.” has been assumed with no justification. Also, the argument is restricted to “beings” rather than nature as a whole.

1c) The premise of “a force outside the universe” is immediately restated as “a being outside the universe” with no justification, thereby introducing the premise of a transcendent being in order to demonstrate the existence of a transcendent being. This is circular reasoning.

1d) We are asked to assume that God is exempt from the premise that “nothing changes itself”. This is a fallacious argument (special pleading).

1e) If we withdraw the special pleading argument, we are left with a contradiction in the assumption that “God is the unchanging Source of change.” If God is unchanging then God can't do anything. God is already everything that God could ever be. In which case, there's no potential (and there will never have been any potential) for God to be able to act or be in any way different from what God is now or was in the past.

1f) Even if we assume an infinite regression of change, the termination of this regression with a transcendent being known as "God" is arbitrary. Not only is the termination itself arbitrary, but so is the "thing" placed at that termination point. It would be just as valid to terminate the infinite regression with a ‘big bang singularity’, or a 'quantum vacuum fluctuation' or 'something as yet unknown' or even the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

For more information regarding the standard objections to the arguments put forward by Thomas Aquinas, refer to...

http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/motion.shtml
http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/cause.shtml