The perfection of God

"Once again, I do not want to describe God's infinite abilities or qualities, like you said that would be a different debate. I will only continue to argue His perfection." I don't see how this would be a different debate. To bring a little clarity here, we need to define what perfection is. After all, how can we debate whether or not God is perfect if we don't know what perfect means? So I will clarify what I am trying to negate-the concept that God is perfect because he has three qualities: he is omnipresent, omnipotent, and wholly good. I have argued two things: 1. If we assume that God has these qualities (omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence), we can then take steps to determine what a being with these qualities would act like. So lets look at how a being such as this would act in the face of evil. A. The being would know there was evil, and know where it was located, and when it was occurring (omnipresence) B. The being would have the power to stop all evil (omnipotence) C. The being would have the desire to stop evil (omnibenevolence) Then we can look at the world and note that: A. Evil exists Therefore God cannot have all of those three qualities, rendering him not perfect. Now, to turn to your last arguments. 1. You say that evil exists because God has a plan of salvation for all of us, and evil helps turn people to him. There are a few flaws with this. 1. The magnitude of evil present on Earth. Are torture, mass disease, famine, natural disasters, serial killers, etc. necessary to turn people to God? Even if evil was required, why not just have little doses of evil, just enough to cause people to consider that God exists and to turn to him. I can't see the benefit if God has to degrade and kill hundreds of thousands of people to cause others to turn to him. 2. What about the people that aren't turned to God by evil? People who view spectacles of evil and go 'This is so awful, there must be no God.' Surely a perfect God who was wielding evil as a means to get people on the path to salvation wouldn't allow this to happen, and yet it does. 3. The fact that a being who is omnipotent and wholly good would have the power to, and the desire to allow people to come to the path of salvation without incurring evil on innocents. This doesn't make sense to me-God wishes to cause A. to turn on the path of salvation, so he causes harm to B. B suffers years of pain and agony, dies a horrific death, and A. turns to God. Why would a perfect God do this? 'I think to argue the idea of Him not being perfect you would have to eliminate the wrong is incorrect. I am saying that because God is perfect He is bigger than the idea of wrong.' 1. Just because good things happen as a result of wrong things doesn't mean that the wrong things are justified in happening. If there is a way to reach the good things without evil occurring, one should try their utmost to do so-something which God fails to do. 2. You still don't define perfection, making it impossible to argue against you. I would contend that by my definition of perfection, God allowing evil to happen (or allowing 'wrongs' to happen) would make him not perfect. To be able to sustain this argument, you still need to define perfection. 3. You say we can't judge God based on human values of right and wrong because we are not able to comprehend them on the scale that God is. However, I think this is illegitimate. First of all, it precludes me responding in any matter because you can always say 'Well you just don't understand the will of God' without any rational basis as to why the will of God applies. Second, it still doesn't answer why an evil thing must occur in order for good to occur, and why there is such a magnitude of evil on Earth. On to your next point. You argue that God doesn't just wipe away evil because there should be free will. A few points to this. 1. You say that eventually God will wipe away evil, negating free will. This means there is no inherent value to free will-why doesn't God just wipe away evil today? A perfect God would rather minimize suffering than prolong it, and if he is going to eventually erode free will, he might as well do it now. 2. An omnipotent being could eliminate evil and still maintain free will. There are other forms of free will not relating to evil, and there is no reason why the free will specific to choosing evil is more valuable than the free will that lets you choose whether or not to get out of bed in the morning. To your last point. You concede that the Bible is fallible, or at least that it has the possibility of being fallible. Therefore, we have no other reason to conclude that God is perfect. You provide no alternative argument to support God's perfection, you simply assert that he is perfect, which is not sufficient.