Answering Architectus777 and First a Bit of Dawkins

Richard Dawkins says that* due to phantastic evolution we have brains that bring into the universe, maybe for the first time things like love and value and purpose.

He could have added, of course, thought. And everything else that comes to mind when we think of mind. And of mind itself.

Problem is: his explanation is about some supposed reality way before grandpa was a child when there was no purpose, no love, no life and of course no mind either.

Problem is: he thinks adding phantastic complexities to brains somehow make them capable of adding to the things that really are there. If atoms and so on is all there really is, if life is one kind of interplay of atoms and dead matter very similar to it in any essential way, then Dawkins' explanation is no explanation. Just because you can in the English language string together a proposition and prefix it with "because" does not mean it is a valid explanation.

But I was actually going to write another response to another video.

Architectus777 writes beneath his youtube:**

I have so many questions about the God idea that I can't answer, but maybe there is someone out there so brilliant that they can. Where are you? Please leave a video response if you care to answer any of the questions. Only a video response please.

I admit I was so eager to answer that I forgot the part of only a video response. Did you click the link and see the video?

Good, for here are my comments in chronological order:

0:23 Thoughts of Humans take time to work and must be processed. It is called reasoning. All thought or mind is called intellect, because it understands, but human mind processes, angelic and above all divine mind does not.

Once a thought made sense in one instant, and I filled in afterwards.

01:33 God does not gain new memories. Memory is the mode of an insight related to the past God is above that, and therefore improperly said of God. However forgetfulness is quiet properly denied of God.

03:33 God from all of His Eternity to all of His Eternity is Aware of every moment he has created (including the beginning of the Universe) in addition to being aware of His own eternal being in Three Persons, each of them aware of and adoring and loving the two others.

04:23 You cannot add to infinity. God is not gaining "new memories" and he is not loosing "older" ones. And new and old are not about how God is getting things, either Each Other (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) or His Creation. Or any moment of history of creatures, or any combination, such as Man-God, Jesus Christ. However, in his Human nature Christ could very well gain new experiences and did all through his life (He's the second person, by the way, the Son, in case you forgot).

05:16 Time is not eternal, and God unchangingly had decided from all eternity when time was to be created.

If you think of what you draw, think of God as drawing one line called "beginning of time" and another called "judgement day" and between them A Cross and an Empty Grave. All other is filled in between or around these.

06:36 The point called "beginning of time" and the point called "judgement day" and the point of Calvary are all sovereignly decided by God. From his view he could have chosen any other point if he had wanted to. But he also decided how much time elapses between them. You cannot arbitrarily say, nor I, that the universe could be so much older or younger than it is. We are here with what God actually did. The decision is not ours.

07:08 If you have a purpose of beauty when you start a drawing, is it not still arbitrary for you where you set your pencil or pen?

At least in the sense that no one else than you can give the exact reason you felt for chosing that point rather than the other one.

And we are other than God, we are just his creatures.

08:09 If you are right about protons, in the main, there are not just gluon, upquarks and downquark, there is also a positive charge involved in the proton.

As for God, he is identical to the attributes which we are told about as forming different attributes. God is not dependent.

Neither God nor existence nor life nor intelligence can be dependent on anything lacking itself.

There is God who exists, lives and is wise. There are existent things created by Him who exist, [et c.]

14:09 Existence does not emerge from non-existant attributes. Life does not emerge from non-living attributes. Mind does not emerge from mindless attributes.

God does not emerge, He is eternal.

Created existence or life or mind are created rather than emerging and from God rather than from inferior attributes.

I tried to add another comment but could not. So I sent it to him, here is our correspondence, beginning with my missive:

mind adding this above my coments, youtube keeps saying error, try again?

It's not a question of having a greater mind than you, just of having heard the answers.

Look them up in Summa Theologiae by St Thomas Aquinas (available in original Latin, but also in English, French, German translations: English one is available on newadvent dot org slash summa and you are basically asking for part I).

(It is for the youtube I have already commented so much on, questions about God)

Really? Aquinas doesn't answer my questions. He is an outdated philosopher with weak philosophy.

He answered everyone of them.

In philosophy there is no such thing as outdated.*** There is such a thing as refuted, and he refuted your positions in advance.

Glad you think so, but I think I destroyed his God.

Look up my comments.

You missed the possibility of divine thought NOT being processual, unlike human thought.

You reasoned on from that misunderstanding about what God means.

(so far I got neither another response from him, nor any answers in comment section of his youtube for the video).

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou Library
St Radegundis' day
13-VIII-2012

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRmKA5zUYBI

**http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yaw4q2xu58

***Thank you Owen Barfield (senior), thank you C S Lewis!