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first movers and beings like that... and Being

One way of arguing for a first mover (or, if you will, a first accelerator), is to make an analogy with a lessee who rents from someone else who is not the landlord but who is instead a subletting lessee.  The second lessee could likewise rent from one who is subletting rather than the landlord, etc.  But in order for this series to be coherent, there must be a landlord, a non-leasing lettor.  But that landlord could have come into this position at a determinate point in time.  Hence this analogy, while clarifying the simultaneity of cause/effect by referring us to the lessor/lessee, is not perfectly analogous to the sort of first mover argument that one would use to argue for God's existence.

Another (defective) way would be to argue that God is the first pusher in a mechanistic universe.  Problem with this is that momentum needs no cause.  So God is probably filling the gaps in this argument.

The third, best way of arguing for a first mover is to argue first for many first movers in the sense of substantial form/final cause, acting for an intrinsic end, is the first cause of instrumental movements (hence mechanism, inasmuch as it is true, needs something meta-mechanistic, i.e., substantial form or an intrinsic principle of motion and rest.  Only THEN should argue for that which is first in moving these substantial-form-styled-first movers.  This Mover is first, albeit in a different order than the previously mentioned first mover.  THAT sort of argument (first for substantial form as principle of operation and secondly for an unconditioned condition of that operation) may escape the problems just mentioned.  For it doesn't just happen to be first at this time (as did the first mover implied by the first version of this argument); nor is its causing movement is not a miraculous gap filling, but the creatio continua.

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