Well, 1 Corinthians 15:27, as I daresay you recall, tells us that God the
Father is an exception to the rule "All things are put under Christ".
So my question is, if God doesn't belong to any genus, what exactly is the
logical status of that term "all things" (πάντα)?

Richard Feynman reminded us again and again that we have absolutely no idea what "energy" is. Physicists have never been able to come up with a definition of "physical" other than it's what physicists study.

There is absolutely no way, within a fundamaterialist dogmatic belief system, to account for the emergence or maintenance of order.

The "devas' (which "are" nothing more than the infinite manifestations of the One Being, the Infinite Divine, the sheer ocean of being from whose fullness in its entirety exists) are infinitely more sensible as a way of accounting for the emergence and maintenance of order, of the existence of something "physical" or "material", of understanding what we ignorantly call "energy", of understanding the emergence of sentience and consciousness, of understanding and intention, of meaning and purpose - in short, of everything in this or any conceivable universe.

It appears to my reading of the OT the same could be said for the ancient Jews.

You might have a point. If I really think that there are no truths out there for me to discover, this may not be the website for me. I'm contemplating it.

I dislike it (and that is good enough form me).

Nothing is not very complicated (it just has to be nothing, and it is just not a matter of philosophy, or a philosophical definition), any definition that suggests that nothing is something different from nothing is wrong.

But in view of your insistence I will try to see the three definitions of nothing (I will let you know if I find something worthwhile).

Aaron, thanks for replying. Your opinion that something cannot come out of nothing doesn't prove any principle I was addressing. Once you recognize a 'thing' you have already distinguished it from nothing, and potentially from other 'things'. Beyond that, how do we know that such a thing exists 'in itself' or 'of something else'. This doesn't say anything about the 'greater' 'proceeding from' 'the lesser', it doesn't say anything about causation. You haven't even defined these terms.

"You have proved yourself that actuality precedes potentiality absolutely. A machine has the active potency (power) to produce more force than a man can but only because it has been planned that way by man’s intelligence."

Ha, no. A ramp is a simple machine: it allows you to lift something vertically by an elongated route which you couldn't produce the force to lift directly. You have used one if you've ever climbed a hill, but hills weren't planned by man's intelligence. This doesn't prove anything about the Aristotelian misconceptions of actuality and potentiality. The man, the machine, the work done all actually exist and only proceed each other with respect to a particular perspective in time.

"More perfect would only be coming from less if the man as a whole substance created something more perfect than him. It wouldn’t be possible for a man to create an angel for example."

Again, please stick to argument. How do we tell what is more and less perfect? How do you show that one is a 'whole substance' and that, in all possible circumstances, it is or isn't created by the other? I find it funny that your example involves an imaginary creature, in an attempt to refute the actual counter-examples I've given.

"Unlike things do not come together without a cause." Why would you make an exception for 'like' things? I can tell you that electrons, which are as 'like' to each other as anything we know of, repel each other. I would love to have a unifying principle that explains everything, but you have to show that you actually have one and that it actually explains things. You also seem to be conflating 'explanation' and 'cause'. Are they always the same?

"To put it in another way, many does not become one simply due to it being many, but rather many things become one due these many things participating in one. If it did, then it would be many and not many, thus a contradiction." A set of individual things is 'many' and 'one'. This is not a contradiction. There are many letters in one alphabet. We group these individual things together because they are related to one another, but this can be expanded or contracted according to our uses. We could also talk about the set of vowels, or the set of numbers and letters, etc. Probably, you are making the mistake of thinking that a collective object, like a desk, requires some attribute of 'deskiness' to be applied to its constituent parts. Rather, the parts are in a relation to each other and the environment which our brain simplifies as 'desk-like', but which is not a fundamental thing, only an approximation.

"How is this a counter-example to the principle?" Because human intelligence, for example, was not in our ancestors, nor would it make sense to say that it was in the environment. If you take a deterministic view of things you could say that in principle one could predict the emergence of intelligence given a knowledge of the whole prior system at some point. This is just like saying that two approaching billiard balls have a collision inside them because they will collide. But the fact that a collision will happen is a property of the system, not of the balls by themselves and it makes little sense to talk of the balls at some prior time as 'collisionful' as though they must bequeath some hereditary title to the future.

"Do you know for certain that there is not something more perfect than these vegetative and sensitive substances moving these substances to higher forms by means of environmental causes?" Well, since you haven't elucidated how to tell what is 'more perfect', or what a higher form is, or when one thing unilaterally moves another, I am gonna have to go with 'appeal to ignorance'. But beyond that I'll just point out that I can always take a view that any 'more perfect' thing you care to posit can just be regarded as another part of the system, like the environment itself, and only 'moves' some other part via the rules of the system, so cannot be complete or explanatory in itself.

"Can we have objective knowledge, defined as knowledge of the world as it is, of casual connections?" Objective in what sense? It is always possible that we are mistaken in our perceptions and models of the world 'as it is'.

"If not, how do we know that the ideas in our mind correspond to what our senses impart us?" What our senses impart to us are ideas in our minds. What we can try and do is look for a coherent picture of what is going on. For myself, this seems to include the fact that there is an external world of which I am a small part. It is apparently consistent that my senses are an interaction of the part with the larger surroundings, and that the part which is me tries to approximately model the relevant whole. I can check for knowable errors and seek to improve the model, but I can't be guaranteed to be aware of or fix all.

"How do we know the premises in deductive reasoning reach a conclusion?" A conclusion, or the right conclusion? Assuming you meant the latter, we don't in an absolute sense. It is always in principle possible that we have made a mistake and aren't aware of it. But we can do the best we can do and proceed with a set of working assumptions and conclusions.

"I do not accept opinions, only arguments." You seem to have accepted more than a few already. But, to spell things out, one thing can't interact with another unless they are part of a whole that includes a description of the interaction. So a singular absolute thing can't interact with anything. Or, to take another tack, an ultimate, terminal, irreducible thing as cosmological-style arguments presume to aim at can't be identified with anything that is conceivably reducible, optional, contingent, etc. Since I can conceive of Jesus Christ and Yahweh never existing; Since I can imagine any particular action or thought allegedly taken by a God as not happening, I can rule them out as candidates for necessary beings.

It is disappointing that you didn’t engage my indirect proof for this principle.

“A man can make a machine that exerts more force than he can. Or many small things can come together to make a large thing. Or regular biological evolution can produce novel features from the interaction of a population and their environment.”

“A man can make a machine”, “come together to” “from the interaction of a population and their environment.”

“A man can make a machine”,

You have proved yourself that actuality precedes potentiality absolutely. A machine has the active potency (power) to produce more force than a man can but only because it has been planned that way by man’s intelligence. More perfect would only be coming from less if the man as a whole substance created something more perfect than him. It wouldn’t be possible for a man to create an angel for example.

“come together to”,

Unlike things do not come together without a cause. This is one of the observations that lead to the beginning of philosophy in the first place. The pre-Socratics correctly concluded that there had to be some kind of cosmic arche or first principle that could explain all things. So it is this unifying principle, either of the cosmos or in a more indeterminate way different sets of particular discrete objects, that cause things to come together. To put it in another way, many does not become one simply due to it being many, but rather many things become one due these many things participating in one. If it did, then it would be many and not many, thus a contradiction.

“from the interaction of a population and their environment.”

So the environment has a causal role. How is this a counter-example to the principle? Do you know for certain that there is not something more perfect than these vegetative and sensitive substances moving these substances to higher forms by means of environmental causes? You will and object and say that simply not being able to prove this does not mean that the principle is true; we cannot appeal to ignorance. To which I will respond that I produced an argument for this principle that was ignored.

“They are phenomena, they describe experiences we encounter and loosely group together based on perceived similarities.”

Can we have objective knowledge, defined as knowledge of the world as it is, of casual connections? If not, how do we know that the ideas in our mind correspond to what our senses impart us? How do we know the premises in deductive reasoning reach a conclusion?

“And if there was a singular absolute thing, it couldn't be the God of Christianity, or any kind of God. It could never interact with humanity, much less take on a human form.”

I do not accept opinions, only arguments.

"There is so much wrong here and I'm just not in the mood to spend thousands of words dissecting it right now. It really is trivially false. It kind of makes me angry that this nonsense is still propagated by the vested interests of the church and goes on to infect otherwise inquisitive people like yourself. Let's just take your second to last paragraph, which you say contains all the other good arguments."

"Of course the greater can proceed from the less."

Speusippus has returned! (In other words, your objection is the same as his and so is your attitude. No wonder Aristotle hated his guts.)

OK. I certainly can't tell you what intuitions you do and don't have, but if I may probe a little further: do you come to this website just to find insight into your relationships with your family and friends (it's fine if you do, and actually I think you would find some success there), or do you come here as part of a larger quest for truth? If the latter, is this quest merely a pleasurable diversion, or do you have any sense that it is cosmically important for you to seek truth?