Theists: What do you mean when you say that God is 'perfect'?

[Angrboda]

Your objection only makes sense if there does exist a standard external to his by which one judges said glass marbles to be more perfect.

There is an external and objective standard for the perfection of spheres of which a marbles are good examples and popcorn balls are poor ones. To argue otherwise means taking the stance that the physical universe is unintelligible. I was not promoting the idea of an external standard for a glass marbles simply because those are artifacts whose value depends on the use for which they were created. Nevertheless, a chipped and/or misshapen marble is not a good one for playing a game.

What on earth are you talking about? In this context, what you are saying is that there is a standard external to God whereby his perfections are defined by whether or not he meets this standard. Either you meant this, which simply points up the possibility that God does not represent the highest good, that standard does. Or you did not mean to say this, in which case your analogy fails, because there is no external standard to God.

Since, I assume, that you are not suggesting that God is perfect only insofar as he adheres to an external standard of … the situation you describe is not at all analogous to the one described.

Just as the concept of slavery necessarily entails the concept of mastery, particular objects have a dialectical relationship to the universal they manifest. Thus if there is such a thing as imperfection it entails the reciprocal concept of perfection. I do not see anything problematic about a highest standard on a continuum extending from most perfect to minimally so.

Again you're referring to "universals" as if such exists independent of God. Everything that I have heard from theists denies that such universals exist apart from God, so I really don't know where you're pulling this from.

What point you meant to make by claiming that God is not a post-modernist is only something that I expect you can unpack more fully...

It’s a poke at post-modern theorists for whom, like the Cheshire cat, words mean whatever they want them to be. This seems to be the strategy of your proposed dilemma. You continue to refer to ‘standards’ but you are using the word in such a way that it has no meaning – anything could be a standard or nothing at all.

I have been perfectly clear about this. I am referring to the standards or whatever by which you judge God to possess this or that perfection. These standards, the values which determine what is and is not a perfection, either come from God himself, or they come from outside of God. If they come from outside of God, then we don't get our definition of the good from what God is, but rather from those external values. If God himself is the source of these values, then God is only perfect insofar as God considers himself perfect based upon his own preferences. In the latter case, the claim that God's values are meaningful is vacuous.

Despite your attempt to counter my observation that God's values are circularly defined you have so far failed to do so.  I don't think you ultimately can defuse the vacuity charge as applied to your God's values… one still cannot find such a classically defined highest good even in the purely abstract concept of a non-contingent God.

And my observation is otherwise. A continuum does not wrap around and bite its tail. It extends from one extreme to the other, like the infinite and the infinitesimal.

My observation is that you haven't got the first clue what we are even talking about. In the context of God and perfection, what 'continuum' are you referring to here.