I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!

[Edwardo Piet]

A conceptual measurement of what? Of how things in the real world actually are, which patterns, laws, rules they behave according to?

Yes.

So if it is a measurement, then it is one of a reality.

It is in reality in our brains, down on paper, in computers etc, it exists physically as information. That's how it exists in reality.

Then it does exist as a conceptual reality, because it is in human minds simply a reflection of the rules, patterns and laws that apply in the world outside the human mind;

Yes.

yet, it is not itself matter, energy, space, or time,

I don't know how you come to that conclusion! As I said, it exists physically as information - in the brain, down on paper, in computers, etc, etc - how have you come to the conclusion that it's not physical? That it's not made of 'matter, energy, space or time'? From your previous statements - assuming you're making a conclusion - it's a non-sequiter.

and yet it is a reality that applies to matter, energy, space and time, the real world and we comprehend this reality only as a conceptual one, and so it can only rightly be called conceptual.

Yes. It's conceptual. And concepts are physical. You have failed to provide evidnece for the non-physcial.

You would have to point out in which sense God is complex; because this doctrine of a "complex" God is categorically rejected by the orthodox Christian understanding of God

I bet it is.

He's complex because he is capable of doing such incredible stuff, of transcending, he has amazing superhuman power - he's supernatural after all - he is superintelligent, and even without all this, simply the fact that he can create the universe and be there right from the outset without any explanation for him:This makes him more complex than the universe itself - it would be far less complex to just say the universe was there before God. 'The Universe + God' is more complex than just 'The Universe.' If the universe is to need an explanation then God is too, if the universe isn't, then we can just say the universe was always there and to add God into the equation is, once again, unnecessary; it's gratuitious.

And no, God is not "a mind at the beginning of the universe". You still haven't understood transcendence. God exists, wholly transcendent to the temporal dimension, and to any temporal designation.

You have failed to explain how that makes any difference to his complexity or improbability. He's still the same you're just defining him 'outside the universe'. It's a semantic argument because you've failed to explain the difference, to explain why this makes him any less improbable.

That God is of an intellectual nature does not make him complex.

Yes it does. Minds need an explanation.

Intellection really means apprehension; and apprehension is an abstract actualisation of an either abstract or material object, however incomplete we actualise our apprehensions as human intellects.

Where's your explanation for such a mind though? You're just saying That intellect isn't complex. Our own understanding has to have an explanation. So why doesn't God's need one too?

God, being pure actuality, is the apprehender and followingly actualiser of all things;

I don't care what he is if he doesn't actually exist. Where's your evidence for such a claim?

Your supposed 'explanations' for God are just more claims without evidence. How can you explain God by simply asserting him to be 'X' or 'Y'?

his act of intellection is thus identified with his real actualisation (divine simplicity).

That would only be the case if you'd explained there to be such a God first.

Now, Gods intellect is one which we call purely active intellect, because whatever he actively apprehends (abstractly actualises) the essence of, he does so in a manner which is itself defining for that essence; and thus, he does not need a potential intellect, like humans, to inform him with the intelligible forms achieved through sensory faculties and sensory knowledge of the already-actualised world, that he himself has actualised by apprehension.

It does no good to speak of God's intellect untill you've provided it with evidence. However complex or not it may be, if God is capable of doing the things you say he can do, if he's really that intelligent - then he and his mind must be very complex. You can't simply define it otherwise.

He is not a human mind; he is not intellectual in the same sense as a human is intellectual.

Where's your explanation for his intellect though? Where's your evidence? Where's your evidence for him at all? It does no good to speak of him and what he's like unless you're going to evidence those things.

I am a human. You are a human. We are incapable of knowing a "God" without having evidence of him. You can't just define him to be a certain way and then define his properties as an explanation. You have to provide evidence for this "God" and evidence for his properties.

Your 'explanations' are claims that lack just as much evidence as your claim of God existing.

The human intellect is a complex intellect, composed of two parts, the active and the potential intellect; just like we exist in a realm composed in complexity of potentiality and actuality. Whereas God is complete non-composite; completely simple - in a term, purely actuality, and God has only the purely active intellect, and is not informed by potential intellect as he is transcendent to time and is himself the apprehensive actualiser of all things.

So your explanation for God being simple is that...God is simple?

??

The human intellect has thus been developed in the universe in complexity and composition between potentiality and actuality, a teleological fact of generation (final causality/natural selection), which God has ordained, in creating humanity in his likeness

And where's your evidence that he exists, has done this and can do this?

They do, but all I meant was that it depended upon what you will, whether will is free or not was not my point.

Okay. Well you mentioned something being my 'free will', so I thought you were suggesting I had a free choice on my beliefs. So in that case I don't see what your point was. I know it depends on what I will but that's irrelevant because I can't choose what I do or don't believe.

For the record anyway - in case I haven't made it clear to you already -: I don't believe in free will. Unless we're talking about the compatiblist sense of free will that works even with determinism (not that I'm a determininist).

EvF