The hand moving the stick is an illustration, so don't get too caught up in the details. It's intended to explain what's meant by a series in which every member except the "first" merely passes along some causal power to the next member. The argument is that in such a series, the causal power in question must have a source, and therefore the series can't just extend infinitely backward (any more than you could see a face in the last of an infinite series of mirrors each reflecting the one before it).

But the source of the causal power needn't be, and ultimately isn't, merely the "first" member of the series. In the hand/stick illustration, the ultimate "First Cause," God, is outside the series altogether, endowing each element with being and causal power.

I prefer one of Ed's other illustrations: a musician playing a song on an instrument. When the musician stops playing, the instrument stops making musical sounds, and the song ceases. But in this series, the musician is the "first cause" in only a limited sense; his own existence and causal powers still need to be accounted for. That's where God comes in.

Last edited by Scott (11/01/2015 2:41 pm)

@joewaked I think you shouldn't worry about asking "too much questions." In fact, that's why this forum was established. Also check out Michael Augros' book "Who Designed the Designer." Other works by Dr. Feser such as "Aquinas," "Scholastic Metaphysics,"  or his blog are very helpful.

joewaked wrote:

How do I explain that God is keeping creation in existence from moment to moment?

Augros's book is excellent and I join in recommending it; likewise Ed's books and blog posts. But the heart of the point is pretty easy to state.

The Scholastic way of putting it is that everything that exists has its existence either from itself or from another. A dog, for example, doesn't exist by nature; if it did, dogs could never come into or go out of existence, and there would just always be dogs everywhere. So a dog must "have" or "receive" its existence from something else. (An explanation of the dog's existence must therefore come to rest ultimately in something that does have its existence from itself, and that's how the argument gets to God.)

The crucial insight is that, for St. Thomas in particular (who owes something to Avicenna here), "existence" is an act to which "essence" (with the one exception) stands in potency. Anything that exists now thus requires something to actualize that potency now.

Last edited by Scott (11/02/2015 6:08 pm)

St. Thomas gives the basic argument in the fourth chapter of De Esse et Essentia[/url] (scroll down to or search for "Caput 4"). You'll find excellent expositions of it in [url=https://www3.nd.edu/~maritain/jmc/etext/pnt03.htm]George Hayward Joyce's Principles of Natural Theology[/url] (scroll down to "The Cosmological Argument") and [url=http://www.amazon.com/Aquinass-Way-God-Proof-Essentia/dp/0190224800]Gaven Kerr's Aquinas's Way to God. The heart of it is summarized in the first paragraph of my previous post, but I think the discussion in Joyce will be most helpful, especially the part that begins, "The other point which calls for notice is this."

"Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh."