I have an extensive discussion of Plato's views of matter as well as the Stoics in my book, Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and the Metaphysics of Matter. In a short blog, written for a wide public and without benefit of footnotes, referring to the Greek philosophical view of prime matter is an acceptable abbreviation for a long history of arguments on the topic. That I go into great detail on the various schools and their views on matter in my scholarly work is something that is a matter of public record. Your attempts to belittle me for things I wrote in a blog by nitpicking about my generalizations about Greek philosopher are not worthy of further conversation.

I frankly don't know what to make of the claim that "when people talk about Greek philosophy, they usually (actually, always) mean Plato, Aristotle and their heirs, not the presocratics ...." (Of course, you threw in the whole ancient world too, not just the Greeks.) The entries for ancient Greek philosophy in Wikipedia and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy--introductory level articles for the general public--all mention the presocratics, as does every introductory text in the history of philosophy I am aware of.

But it's not just the presocratics who don't advance a doctrine of prime matter as pure potentiality. Neither does Plato (unless one ventures a tortured reading of the receptacle), the Epicureans, the Stoics, or the skeptics--which collectively were vastly more influential in the ancient Greek world than Aristotle's school.

If the kind of sources on which you depend for your argument are so inadequate that they don't even mention the main schools of ancient Greek philosophy, it would explain a lot.

Well, your own rhetoric ir more reckless than mine. Of course there was a variety of opinions, especially among the Commentators. My favorite alternative to the consensus position on prime matter is Philoponus, whom I am writing about right now in a book on prime matter, and of course, I have written a lot about Ibn Gabirol. But for the purpose of blogs, or even more lengthy scholarship, refering to a consensus among the Greeks concerning prime matter is not reckless. It is not even wrong. The context alone makes it clear that I am talking about the Greek shaping of classical theism. When people talk about Greek philosophy, they usually (actually, always) mean Plato, Aristotle and their heirs, not the pre-Socratics, who were a fascinating but obscure bunch. So I won't reply any more to your posts. Thanks,

I initially missed this comment, but this is a good example of the sort of reckless generalizations that I am cautioning against: "Matter is that which cannot be thought (since it is pure potentiality) for the Greeks/ancients/classical theists."

This recklessly and incorrectly attributes the view that matter is pure potentiality to a host of people who don't hold this view. For example: it's not true of most of the pre-socratic philosophers (e.g. Thales, Anaximenes, etc.) or the Greek atomists. It is nonsensical to say that many of the Greeks like Parmenides thought that matter is pure potentiality when they denied the existence of matter (or at least did not make the distinction between potency and act required to say that matter is pure potency). Plato himself probably didn't hold the view that matter is pure potentiality (though an Aristotelian Whig history of philosophy might try claim otherwise based on Plato's notion of the receptacle).

What you've done is attributed a basically Aristotelian or neo-Aristotelian (in the case of those like Plotinus or Aquinas) and attributed it to not only Greek philosophers generally, but all the ancients and classical theists as well. It is a wild overgeneralization.

I didn't forget about your comment. I think you are correct regarding falsifiability. Strictly requiring falsifiability would remove quite a bit of interesting science. Also not all of reality can be described scientifically.

Because of this, I don't know how to respond to the rest of your points. There's something that seems strangely ghostly and unimportant about the classical theism God, but I don't know how to put this feeling into words.

I'll think about it. Thanks for pushing back.

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God is at a higher order than beings.
It's a hierarchy. Its like difference between the universe and stars within the universe. The universe is at a higher order than the stars.

The hierarchy in Aquinas is Existence, essence, genus, species...etc. Each is a subset of the other. So everything has existence. You can't have genus if you don't exist.

God has Existence and essence only. (No genus or the lower subsets.)
(Existence is that you are, essence is what you are.)

Human beings have all the categories of the hierarchy-existence, essence, genus, and so forth.

What can be confusing is that God's existence and essence is at a higher order than human beings essence.
That is because God's essence is his existence.

Indeed, how could it possibly not look fine tuned? We have no idea of the number of failed universes, just as we consistently fail to understand the mind boggling number of failed mutations needed to allow us to evolve to the level of cosmologists. Yet all those failed opportunities existed. They happened at our scale exactly between 10^35 metres and 10^-35metres so we could see for ourselves the numbers of failed mutations. Comprehending outside of "our" range is not so direct. There is, however, no reason to think the failures might not be equally numerous.

Another possibility. There is no fine tuning, only a random parameter distribution with each successive big bang. Thus, we just happen to be in a universe that can contain life, which most universes cannot because of the change in parameter tuning.
It's also possible that the universe is infinite and contains an infinite array of these parameters, and we obviously find ourselves in the area of the universe that can produce sustained life, an observational selection effect. These parameters could also vary over time. The idea that these parameters is simply an assumption, perhaps not even a well warranted assumption considering.

Maybe the superior mind always existed. Maybe it's uncaused. That'd be part of what it means to be God, I'd imagine.

I've never seen a good reason why heaven couldn't exist in the material universe at some future time. From my laymen reading of the Bible (and some scholars agree with this) it seems to be what Paul is trying to get across. We are asleep (dead) until the resurrection.

To be honest, this idea reminds me of the religion of some futurists like Ray Kurzweil. His "heaven" (for the most part) will be everyone resurrected in a simulated universe after the accessible universe has been converted to computronium.

Interestingly enough, this view, called Omega Point Theory came from a Catholic Priest. Perhaps work in this direction would be helpful for those of us who find Aquinas and Aristotle interesting but not at all compelling (I'm an atheist primarily because I can't help but think materialism with supervenience is correct and explains so many things, including the variety of worldviews and philosophies in the world).