The Argument From Motion: Objections Answered

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:04]Hey, welcome back to Thinking About God.

[00:00:07]My name is Elijah Johnson. Now, last time we laid out the argument from motion. And if you haven't watched that video yet, please go back and watch it first because everything that we're doing today builds on that. Now, anytime you want to make an argument, it's not enough just to state it. You have to be able to defend it. So today we're going to go through the premises of the argument for motion and show why each one holds up. Now some of these are going to be quick because we already done the heavy lifting in previous videos. Others might need a little bit more attention. So let's get into it.

[00:00:41]Now the first three premises are these.

[00:00:44]Change exists, meaning some things go from potential to actual. Premise two is but change is the actualization of potential or the reduction of something from potential to actual. Premise three is therefore whatever changes is actualized by something already actual since a potentiality cannot actualize itself. Now if you watch our actin potency videos then you already know this ground really well. But let's just recap it really quickly. Premise one is about as obvious as it gets, right?

[00:01:19]Things change. Ice melts. Kids grow.

[00:01:21]Lamps turn on. Nobody hopefully seriously denies that change is real.

[00:01:26]Although I have met my fair share of people who would just rather deny that change exists than to conclude that God exists. Now you might be wondering why do we define change specifically as the reduction of potency to act? Why not just say things move around or rearrange? We actually spent a full video on exactly that question. We answered questions like why the deflationist view isn't good enough and why Aristotle's act and potency framework is really one of the only things that actually explains how change is possible without contradiction. So if you want the full argument for why we define change as this way, please go back and watch the acting potency series. It's really worth it. Now, right here at premise one is where some people raise what's called the B theory of time objection. This is a more philosophical challenge. So, stay with me. The B theory of time, sometimes called block universe theory, says that all moments in time, past, present, and future equally and permanently exist. Time isn't something that flows or moves.

[00:02:37]It's more like a landscape that just is, and we are moving through it. On this view, nothing really becomes anything.

[00:02:46]The ice isn't really going from potential to actual. It's just as frozen at one time, coordinate, and liquid at another. Both are equally real, equally fixed. And if that's true, then a whole act and potency framework collapses because potency, the real capacity to become something, stops making sense if everything already just is. Now, this is actually a serious objection, but here's the thing. Doesn't work for two reasons.

[00:03:14]First, even if I grant you the B theory completely, the argument for motion still holds. And here's why. The argument isn't fundamentally about time flowing. It's about onlogical dependence. What depends on what right now for its existence. The water bottle sitting 4t above the ground right now depends on the table right now. The table depends on his legs right now. The legs depend on the floor right now. That relationship of dependence isn't a temporal relationship. It's simultaneous. It's a structural one. You could freeze time completely and the dependence would still be there. So even in a block universe where time doesn't flow, you still have things that are onlogically dependent on other things at any given moment. And that's all the argument needs. Second, B theory has to explain away something really hard to explain away. Your direct immediate experience of change and becoming. Right now, you are experiencing this moment as present. You experience the last sentence as past. You anticipate the next one as future. That felt difference between past, present, and future is one of the most immediate facts of your conscious experience. The B theory doesn't account for that. It has to tell you that your experience of time passing is just an illusion. And that's a big ask. Our direct experience of becoming and change is actually stronger evidence than a theoretical model built on the mathematics of relativity. We should be very careful about letting a physics theoretical model override the most basic deliverances of our conscious experience. Especially when, as we just showed, the argument doesn't even need time to flow in order to work. Premise 2 is just what change is on that framework. When something changes, it goes from what it could be to what it actually becomes. That's the definition we've been working with this whole series. And premise 3 follows directly from what we've established in the acting potency videos. A thing that is only potential can't give itself actuality because it doesn't have that actuality to give yet. Remember, you can't give birth to yourself or cold water can't heat itself or the law can't burn itself. Something already actual has to do actualizing. Now, right here at premise 3 is where some people will probably bring up quantum physics. They say, "Well, what about quantum physics?

[00:05:45]Particles seem to pop into existence from nothing. Doesn't that mean that something can come into being without anything actually causing it? I mean, it's a good question, but there's actually two problems with this objection. The first is that quantum particles don't pop into existence from nothing. They emerge from the quantum vacuum, the quantum field, which is already actually existing. The field is real. The field is actual. So even at the quantum level you still have something actual giving rise to something else. So premise 3 still holds. The second problem is that quantum indeterminacy is about our ability to measure and predict causes not about the absence of causes. So when we say that a quantum event is indeterminate we mean that we can't pin down exactly what caused it but not that nothing caused it. Those are two very different claims. Our ignorance of a cause is not proof that no cause exists.

[00:06:49]So the quantum objection doesn't touch premise 3. That's usually one of the biggest or most pressing objections that I get when I run this argument. So that's all that I'll go through for this. So premise one through three are solid. Let's move on to where things get a lot more interesting. Now, premise four and five is exactly where things get interesting and where you're commonly going to find the most push back. Premise four says, "This leads to a chain of actualizers, each depending on something else to cause its change here and now." Might not. You're more than likely not going to feel push back on that. But premise five, where it says, "An infinite chain of such actualizers is impossible because without a first actualizer, nothing could be actualized."

[00:07:37]Now if we remember the last video, an essentially ordered causal series is a chain where every single member depends on the one before it right now to have any power at all. This is not about what happened in the past. This is about what is sustaining and actualizing things in the present moment. Think about the lamp hanging from chains on the ceiling.

[00:08:00]Every link depends on the one above it right now. The moment you cut the top, everything falls. That's an essentially ordered series. Now, here's the critical question.

[00:08:14]Can that chain go back forever with no first member? No. And here's why. And we can lay it out formally. So premise one in a per se causal series or an essentially ordered causal series each member receives its causal power here and now from the member before it.

[00:08:34]Premise two. If there is no first member with causal power in itself, that is power that is not derived from another then no member in the series has causal power. Conclusion one. Therefore, if a per se a causal series had no first member, no member of the series would have causal power. Premise three. But some members of a per causal series do have causal power. Meaning things are in fact being actualized right now.

[00:09:03]Conclusion two. Therefore, a per se causal series cannot regress infinitely.

[00:09:09]It must terminate in a first cause that has causal power in itself. that is a first unactualized actualizer.

[00:09:18]Now, let me explain why this works. We could use the same example of plugging your phone into a charger and that charger into a power strip into another power strip into another power strip and another and another and on and on forever and ever with no wall outlet anywhere. Just an infinite amount of cords. Each one with the capacity to pass along power it receives, but none of them generating any power on their own. What happens? Nothing gets charged.

[00:09:44]Not because the chain is too long, but because there's no actual power anywhere in the chain. Adding more cords doesn't help. A million cords with no source is still no power. If nothing in the chain has power in itself, then there's nothing to pass along and the whole thing collapses. But you see that your phone is charging. Change is happening right now. Things are being actualized.

[00:10:07]Which means that this chain cannot be infinite. There has to be a source, something at the top that has power in itself, not borrowed from anything else.

[00:10:17]Bar.

[00:10:18]Now, premise seven through eight. Um, once you've established that an essentially ordered chain must terminate in a first member, the last two premises really follow immediately. Premise 7 says that if there's a first member in essentially ordered series of actualizers, it must be something that is not actualized by anything else. That is something that is pure actuality or an unactualized actualizer. Now, this just follows from what the first cause has to be. Every other member in the chain only has power because it's received it from something else before.

[00:10:54]But the first member has nothing before it. So it can't receive power from anything else. So it has to have power entirely in itself. No potential, no borrowing, no depending, just pure complete actuality. And then the next premise says that there exists an unactualized actualizer, a being a pure actuality. Then that being is what we call God. Now some people push back here and says, why does the first cause have to be God? Why can't it just be some unknown force for the universe itself?

[00:11:26]And sure, it's a fair question, but it misunderstands what we're doing. We're not just slapping the word God onto an unknown. We're saying that a being of pure actuality, no potential, no change, no dependence on anything already has the most essential attributes of what every major theistic tradition means by God. Immutable, eternal, immaterial, the source of all existence and power. We're not smuggling in extra assumptions.

[00:11:51]We're just following the logic where it leads. But we're going to go into the next video to see how from a being being purely actual, we can actually see even more attributes of this being that shows a more theistic version of God. But let's recap. Premise 1 through 3 are grounded in the act and potency framework we've already established. B theory objection doesn't kill the argument because essentially ordered causal dependence is simultaneous and structural. It's not temporal and our direct experience of becoming a stronger evidence than a theoretical model. The quantum objection doesn't break premise 3. The essentially ordered series and the impossibility of an infinite regress are the heart of the argument. And as we've seen, they do hold up under scrutiny. And the conclusion that there must be a purely actual first cause follows necessarily once the regress is ruled out. Now, next time we're going to go into the attributes and shows how we can logically prove these attributes.

[00:12:47]But until then, please like, comment, subscribe, share, watch this whole video, and tell somebody else to watch it. And God bless you.