Aquinas' First Way succeeds

Conception Con still maintains that he can conceive of an object changing without a cause. I am just not convinced that he can. Again he may just be imagining something changing without a 'known' cause, but this is not the same as conceiving of something changing without a cause. Inertia There is debate over what laws of physics actually are. Con seems to be saying that they are descriptions, while I am maitaining that they are at least possibly causal forces (or descriptions of what are causal forces). If I drop a pencil and it falls to the floor, that happend due to gravity. Now gravity may be the word applied to the actualization that occurs when a pencil is in a certain environment, but that hardly means that the pencil had no cause. For if I dropped a pencil in outer space, it would not fall in the same way. This is because some sort of causal influence is different there than it is on earth. To me this clearly shows that intertia is causal. Now, Con may object that in outer space things do not resist the pencil in the same way, so that is where the difference in falling comes into play. Except, in order for the pencil to resist the other forces, it would have to exert a cause. And of course a pencil is a-causal, unless something else is acting upon it. Now it may seem to Con that my alternative then is to embrace the laws of physics as the prime mover, but this is not so. The laws of physics themselves are a part of the universe/reality that gets actualized. Gravity does not bring the rest of reality to a new state (which is what actualization is). Rather gravity, inertia etc. are a part of the transition of actualization. Free Will Con says that if we will things independent of God's direct causal influence/choice then we could be self-actualizers. I don't think so, because going back to the analogy of the ice cube, from the begining, the ice cube melts because God brings about the 'nature' of the ice cube. So, likewise we can freely will because it is our nature to will in response to our actualized environment when we actualize in that environment. Now, clearly the difference between the cube and the will is that the will does what it wants while the ice cube does what it is established to do in a determined sense. But this is just the nature of what it means to be a living rational creature compared to an inanimate thing. The fact that I can carry out an action is still due to God's actualization, while the direction that I carry out the action (towards choice A or choice B) can still be up to me. Again, actualization, at least in my terms, is the bringing of something from one state to another. Con seems to agree that a will cannot bring itself to a new state (it only directs how the state might turn out, at least in part), so I think that qualifies as saying that a will cannot actualize itself, if we agree that actualization means to bring something to a new state. Becaue again, in my view, the will freely responds to its actualization, but it does not actualize itself. Restatement of P2 Con maitains that perhaps the universe can be actualized without a cause. As I said above I don't think that the inertia objection or the free will objection work. But perhaps there could be some example, known or unknown, that does work. And that it is at least conceivable that something changes without a cause. To say one can imagine ,or even think they have witnessed, something occur uncaused is not to actually say that they did witness it. If we say a rock appeared out of nowhere and fell on our lap, I don't think we would be justified to then say "Oh it must have happend uncaused", rather we would say "What made that rock appear?" (I borrow from a similar example that Feser gave in The Last Superstition). So, seems to me that it can be at least maintained that it is actually silly to say that something could occur uncaused. But, I will grant that it is difficult to pin down a formal contradiction in saying that something happend uncaused. But this is why I changed the premise, because while one may want to maintain that an object (like a particle) moves uncaused, it seems more bizarrre to say that the universe changes uncaused. This is because 'where exactly is the new state (actualization) for the universe going to come from? If it happens uncaused, that means that a new state of being for the universe literally comes from nowhere. It just pops into existence, uncaused of course, but without any substance to grant it. Pure Act Con brings back a similar objection from earlier by maintaining that laws (magnetic and gravitational) can actualize other things, without being actualized themselves. But, again I disagree because the laws themselves are a part of the actualization process because they transition with the state of the universe. In other words, if the clock stops, so do the laws. The laws certainly direct the way things go, when things are being actualized (the laws do have causal influence) but the laws are not the prime mover, as I stated earlier. Conclusion The important thing to remember in assessing this argument is 'what does actualization mean?' In my mind, it means to transition from one state to another. Now, sense I don't think that laws or human wills carry themselves to new states, they do not in fact actualize themselves or actualize other thins without being actualized in the process. Since God does not change states, He does not actualize. Furthermore, since He grants existence to the universe, without losing existence or gaining existence (a form of actualization), He therefore is unlimited and cannot change. I also still maintain that in order for the universe to actualize without a cause is to maintain that the universe is granted a new state of existence without anything giving it that state (otherwise that thing would in fact be a cause), and this in fact would be to say that the universe actualizes from nothing, which is absurd. So, I think I have given a sound defense of P2. I have enjoyed the debate so far and look forward to hearing Con's reply.