On Hell and Forgiveness

[SteveII]

The Christian God is defined as the greatest possible being (scripture-informed Perfecting Being Theology). If you cobble together some lesser characteristics and say "your God could be this way", you are redefining the word. For this conversation and every one after, I do not grant the redefining of the term 'God'. There is nothing incoherent about the standard definition. You can easily glean attributes of God from the Bible and then systematize them into a doctrine using philosophy/logic. The concept has been discussed since Augustine. 

It doesn't help that the Christian God has been defined as the greatest possible being if greatness itself has no objective basis.  That is not cobbling together lesser characteristics nor redefining the word.  It's pointing out that the word has no objective meaning, and thus, from an objective standpoint, the concept is incoherent.  I suspect you still fail to understand the actual problem.  Your complaints here seem nothing more than throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.  The fact that the concept has been discussed since Augustine is really not particularly relevant.  Even Godel himself didn't seem to grasp the problem.  Gleaning things from special revelation doesn't provide any more of an objective foundation, which is required if you are going to justify the conclusion from God's greatness.  I suspect, too, that the bible also assumes an objective ordering of properties and so you would simply be trying to support one mistake with the same flawed argument.  In the Blackwell Companion To Natural Theology, the question is briefly discussed, with no actual conclusions forthcoming.  It is simply more or less assumed that objectively ordering properties might have some basis and then quickly moves on from there.  There are problems with their discussion, but since that doesn't appear to be your issue, I'll deal with them if they are brought up.

'Greater than' has an objective basis. It is a greater characteristic of a conscious being to be infinite than to be finite, to be omniscient that to have limited knowledge. That concept is all that is needed because a series of 'greater thans' can get you to greatest possible--given all the merging of the characteristics. Regarding the more difficult characteristics like Love, if a characteristic is not perfect, it has an imperfection and by definition it is not the greatest possible. We don't need to know what constitutes an imperfection--only that they exist.