If God created everything why didn't he create it perfect?

[McBell]

If life had a designer, and the designer was perfect, why isn't all life perfect?

define perfect.
what makes you think that God is perfect?
Why does a "perfect" being have to create "perfection"?
What makes you think that it isn't perfect from Gods PoV?

 

[FDRC2014]

Required by whom? By humanity? By you? By the scriptures you were raised with?

See, I just do NOT follow how this supposed logic works, at all. "has to"? Has to? I'd like a reason why, other than "because a perfect being is perfect".

You showed me this. Again, wabi-sabi. A perfect painted could make something imperfect by choice, finding aesthetic appeal in that. For all we know, these imperfections could have been designed by this hypothetical creator by choice - flesh eating bacteria and all. Does that really affect its perfection, or is it just bunches of cells complaining about how it shouldn't have?

You can apply the analogy to a non-subjective profession. For example, would you consider a structural engineer perfect, if his buildings weren't perfect (i.e. fell down)? Using your logic, you would. Another example would be a 'perfect' doctor that doesn't cure everyone - that is, there is no perfect doctor.

You tell me, you guys are the ones claiming it, I am not. I don't even know what being 'perfect' truly entails.

Whose deity?

Says who? How can someone be "perfect at everything"? Isn't perfection a state, not a quality?

Even if God (whose? ) was perfect at everything shrug, is this God any less perfect for making things we deem as cruel?

I have already explained this, but your answers don't seem to handle it.

Perfection is a state, that cannot be achieved but worked towards.
Something however can be apparently 'perfect' for a single particular logical thing.
For example, for a flat surface, a round wheel is the 'perfect' shape for a wheel.
I would also apply the same logical perfection to many other areas of science.

God (or any other 'perfect' deity, who i do not believe in) did not design many biological things 'perfectly'.

As I stated before, for someone to be perfect, they have to achieve perfection in the area being stated at being perfect (in Gods case, everything).
So the designer of the wheel (if one could be found), was perfect at designing the shape of the wheel for a flat surface.

Then you raised choice, how god could chose to design the wheel square even though he know that circular is a better shape (as the analogy flows).
But explain to me why he would do this?
Surely this would make him imperfect.
Say if a doctor who was, for analogy's sake, perfect at a certain operation, chose by choice to do it badly; he surely would no longer be perfect.

I can't see how any sane-creationist* can claim their deity is perfect in every way.

*I'm sure Dawkins would call this an oxymoron.
Anyway, science doesn't need a deity to explain everything...

 

[FDRC2014]

define perfect.

A circular wheel to a flat surface, as oppose to a square one.
Screw to a nut.
The best logical solution.

what makes you think that God is perfect?

God doesn't exist, so it is neither perfect or imperfect.
Most people's god's or deities are said to be perfect in every way. If they admit that this is not true, we can move on from this debate.

Why does a "perfect" being have to create "perfection"?

So a perfect engineer doesn't have to make perfect buildings.

What makes you think that it isn't perfect from Gods PoV?

Because that would require a lack in logic.
If you admit god has a lack in logic (hence why illogical things are perfect in his PoV), then you can pass any illogical thing as being gods word (as some people do).
Without logic no argument could take place, or anything.
Also to think of an illogical god would be even more ludicrous than a logical one (perhaps),
How can an illogical god create a logical universe?

 

[McBell]

A circular wheel to a flat surface, as oppose to a square one.
Screw to a nut.
The best logical solution.


God doesn't exist, so it is neither perfect or imperfect.
Most people's god's or deities are said to be perfect in every way. If they admit that this is not true, we can move on from this debate.


So a perfect engineer doesn't have to make perfect buildings.


Because that would require a lack in logic.
If you admit god has a lack in logic (hence why illogical things are perfect in his PoV), then you can pass any illogical thing as being gods word (as some people do).
Without logic no argument could take place, or anything.
Also to think of an illogical god would be even more ludicrous than a logical one (perhaps),
How can an illogical god create a logical universe?

Wow.
The number of assumptions you have to make....

 

[Breathe]

I have already explained this, but your answers don't seem to handle it.

That's because I fail to get how this works. Maybe I'm wired differently or something, but these ideas of "a perfect creator requiring perfect creation" just don't make sense to me at all.

This is going to keep going around in circles, and I'm becoming bored of arguing for a position I don't hold to learn, so I'm just gonna save myself some time and say I can't be arsed to carry on.

I can't see how any sane-creationist* can claim their deity is perfect in every way.

I sincerely hope you weren't calling me a creationist or claiming I subscribe to a concept of God for explaining things.

 

[Willamena]

If God's creation isn't perfect, how would we even know?

 

[Penumbra]

If God's creation isn't perfect, how would we even know?

By identifying at least one area of potential improvement.

 

[McBell]

By identifying at least one area of potential improvement.

Would that not be merely one opinion of perfect contending against another opinion of perfect?

 

[Penumbra]

Would that not be merely one opinion of perfect contending against another opinion of perfect?

Well, I'd have to see a pretty good argument as to where brain tumors and childhood cancer fit into a perfect world to consider it a well-developed opinion.

 

[Sunstone]

It has always interested me that many mystics speak of the world as being perfect. I'm not at all sure what they mean by "perfect", but I have come to the conclusion that they are referring to something, or some quality of the world, that is not commonly recognized by non-mystics. In other words, I don't think mystics are referring to any qualities that non-mystics are commonly aware of.

 

[Sum1sGruj]

Some people don't understand the idea. A perfect life-form must have free will. Otherwise, it's an abomination. It doesn't take much thought to see that as true.

We were perfect, and WE made ourselves imperfect. Not God.

Defining 'perfect' and digging too far into the conception is a perfect example how literal semantics always leads to contradiction.

 

[Penumbra]

We were perfect, and WE made ourselves imperfect. Not God.

Science, geology, and astrophysics show otherwise.

This world was quite similar to how it is now before humans ever existed on this planet.

 

[Luminous]

Would that not be merely one opinion of perfect contending against another opinion of perfect?

No, it would be evidence of imperfect opinions of perfection. and thus of imperfection within reality.

 

[Luminous]

Some people don't understand the idea. A perfect life-form must have free will. Otherwise, it's an abomination. It doesn't take much thought to see that as true.

We were perfect, and WE made ourselves imperfect. Not God.

Defining 'perfect' and digging too far into the conception is a perfect example how literal semantics always leads to contradiction.

That's the whole point of the argument Sum1, can imperfection come from perfection?

 

[Sum1sGruj]

Science, geology, and astrophysics show otherwise.

This world was quite similar to how it is now before humans ever existed on this planet.

Really? Because I don't even see how it's relevant.

It's because of perfection that imperfection can even exist, and vice versa.

What is im/perfection if there is nothing to compare it to? Adam & Eve were neither, and both at the same time. They were the only ones of their kind.
Perfection is an opinion. It was God's opinion of perfection that one has free will. And there is no symmetry between perfection and free will, but rather free will gives you the ability to determine what and what isn't perfect.

 

[OneJCW]

I would propose that an intelligent creator would be aware of the fact that in order for the concept of "good" to exist, the concept of "evil" must also exist, just as surely as there must be darkness to make a distinction between itself and the light.

Perhaps "perfection" is the continued choice to exercise one's free will in a manner that is perpetually consistent with the "good" or the "light". This would reinforce the benefits of "good" action, and the harm of "evil action." Biblically for example, the devil may have lost his "perfection" either when his heart was corrupted in that he became jealous of God, or when he physically lied to Eve, just as Eve may have lost her perfection when she believed the devil and partook of the fruit. In this way the world as we know it became alienated from god, and death and suffering entered into a previously "perfect" world.

I can see someone questioning why God has the right to give the condition on what is and is not perfect, so i will go ahead and express my opinion beforehand. If God is indeed the creator of humankind, as well as those members of his angelic realm, than would he not be the authority on what perfection might be for them? If a human .... lets say the inventor of the sun dial, placed that object into creation, would he not, at the time of its creation, have the right to hold judgement on the parameters under which that watch should operate? I am aware that we as sentient beings with a capacity to reason and employ logic in our conception of the world around us, are much more complex than a wrist watch. I am also aware that the difference between the complexity of a wrist watch and a human being, may be much smaller than the difference between a human being and God.

 

[Luminous]

Its easy to say one looses their perfection when they do something imperfect, or that they do something imperfect at the moment they loose their perfection. Its a rather circular thought.
can perfection loose perfection? and If evil needs to exist in order to emphesize good, then nothing is emphasizing the goodness of the monotheistic god. The establishement that a model for perfection comes to the creation from the creator is ridiculous. Parents telling their children what perfection is, is ridiculous. Niether do a pre-existance, omnipresence, omnipotential, Creator or Ruler have the right to establish perfection, or the right to give only a few people the presence to have It agree with them, and not others.

 

[Sum1sGruj]

Its easy to say one looses their perfection when they do something imperfect, or that they do something imperfect at the moment they loose their perfection. Its a rather circular thought.
can perfection loose perfection? and If evil needs to exist in order to emphesize good, then nothing is emphasizing the goodness of the monotheistic god. The establishement that a model for perfection comes to the creation from the creator is ridiculous. Parents telling their children what perfection is, is ridiculous. Niether do a pre-existance, omnipresence, omnipotential, Creator or Ruler have the right to establish perfection, or the right to give only a few people the presence to have It agree with them, and not others.

Good and evil
Perfect and flawed
They are dualities.

God determined that a perfect being has free will.
Do you seriously call that wrong?
How is it that you can call it wrong? Free will.

 

[Luminous]

Good and evil
Perfect and flawed
They are dualities.

God determined that a perfect being has free will.
Do you seriously call that wrong?
How is it that you can call it wrong? Free will.

It's a very limited will actually.
But I guess it's possible that if I prayed hard enough, and with enough faith...God would bring itself back to perfection. I still doubt that Omniscience shares your believes.
I didn't mention omniscience or Righteousness because I guess something with those qualalites would be able to establish what it means to be perfect. Although now that I think about it omniscience would not be able to unless it was true omniscience...which seems worse than paradoxical, it seems purely impossible. How can ANYTHING be sure it is all-knowing? How can it be established that something omni-sure truely is all knowing? Anyway, those are Rhetorical questions, unlesss you have some good answer. in anycase, apperant omniscience would not have the authority to establish righteousness. Ontop of that, and IMHO, Righteousness would not have a right to establish freeish will, or to have itself happen to agree with a faction instead of the totality of the sentient (or willing) beings.

 

[Sum1sGruj]

It's a very limited will actually.
But I guess it's possible that if I prayed hard enough, and with enough faith...God would bring itself back to perfection. I still doubt that Omniscience shares your believes.
I didn't mention omniscience or Righteousness because I guess something with those qualalites would be able to establish what it means to be perfect. Although now that I think about it omniscience would not be able to unless it was true omniscience...which seems worse than paradoxical, it seems purely impossible. How can ANYTHING be sure it is all-knowing? How can it be established that something omni-sure truely is all knowing? Anyway, those are Rhetorical questions, unlesss you have some good answer. in anycase, apperant omniscience would not have the authority to establish righteousness. Ontop of that, and IMHO, Righteousness would not have a right to establish freeish will, or to have itself happen to agree with a faction instead of the totality of the sentient (or willing) beings.

God gets angry and grieves in the Bible. So accordingly, all knowing obviously means that He knows what's going on at all times, having infinite eyes so to speak, and the Godly power to act with infinite hands and all the wisdom to see a little further down the road.
It's not the contradicting semantics some like to imply. If He knew this would happen, He might not of.
But then again, there are other paradoxes, like if He didn't create us, it would be like killing all mankind.

It's got to be tough to be such a benevolent Being..