Perfection and Imperfection

A comment I posted on an atheism board.

Humans are imperfect, but we can dream of perfection. We can think in the abstract. We can create, and manipulate, symbols. We cannot create perfection, but we can imagine it.

Not only does perfection appear with great frequency in theoretical science and theoretical mathematics; perfection as abstract concept has appeared in philosophy ever since Plato's solids and the Greeks' ideas of the Ideal.
Imagination, however, is not reality. I can imagine a perfect strawberry sundae, but I cannot conjure it into being in front of me. A person can conceive of God, but that does not make God real. If we could make the things we dream about real, I would have a very happy sex life with Seven of Nine and Vala Mal Doran, thank you very much.

The OP is based on the idea that a perfect being can exist independently of humans conceiving of them - something which, as I have pointed out in my previous post, is not possible because perfection as humans imagine it does not, cannot, exist in the universe.

Flawed premise one - a perfect being can only create other perfect beings.
Why is this so? A perfect being, if one exists, could create imperfection if it chose to. I buy matches to light fires. I don't need matches that won't run out and can't be extinguished.
So if perfect beings exist, not that they do, why can't they create flawed things? Perhaps they are in a hurry or they don't want competition.

The rest of the premises actually fall apart if the first one is revealed to be nonsense. Premise two, if B is not perfect then creator A is not perfect, could work - but the problem is, it can be disproved if A is proven to be perfect and operating under the assumption that perfect beings can tone down the perfection in their creations.

The next line begins "If God created Man." Huge leaps here.

Leap 1 - God exists.
Leap 2 - God is perfect.
Leap 3 - God created Man.
Leap 4 depends on the initial premise that perfection can only create perfection; perfection is constrained to only create perfection.

In fact, the whole thing kind of falls apart because the initial premises - that perfect beings can exist and that they are responsible for the creation of humanity - are without foundation.

If you were to base your arguments against theism on the above, don't be surprised if they tear you apart with basic logic.

This is a sounder beginning.

"The laws of thermodynamics assure us that this universe is not a place where perfection and perfect beings can exist.

"However, we can think in the abstract - and we can imagine perfection. Theoretical sciences and mathematics, philosophy and a number of similar disciplines are founded on such imagined premises, and number theory in mathematics is one such field which has been yielding incredible and practical results - for instance in cryptography.

Problem is, while we can imagine perfection, we cannot actually create it in this universe. Our imagined perfection cannot exist, except in abstract form - creations existing only within the human mind.

"More importantly, we cannot and must not base our philosophies on the premise that perfect beings can exist. Imaginary beings have no place dictating human moral behaviour, any more than we can derive spiritual solace from the number 3.

"Now, given that, some religions presume that perfect beings do exist and that they created us humans.

"This can be refuted as follows.

"Let us assume that - in defiance of all the evidence to the contrary - we were created by some being or beings, rather than evolving from a common ancestor with apes and other primates.

"In such circumstance - even if evidence did crop up which unequivocally proved that we are a genetically replicated or uplifted species of some kind rather than naturally evolved - that evidence would only prove to us that our creator is a member of a more technologically advanced species - perhaps far greatly more advanced - but still not perfect. Only less imperfect.

"It is fortunate that we evolved naturally, and that the fossil record supports the theory of our evolution ("theory" here bearing the scientific meaning of "proven and established fact"). But even if we were a created species, those beings who would have created us can not be, and can never be, gods."