(February 15, 2011 at 6:39 am)DoubtVsFaith Wrote:(February 8, 2011 at 7:18 pm)TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote: IN all seriousness though, perfection as a attribute to a being is so vaguely defined that the term is meaningless when used that way. Which is to say, how can a being be perfect?
Perfection is a little different to omnipotence I reckon, and I don't see how it is vaguely defined at all if we are to think of a perfect thing to be a thing without flaws. Perfect=flawless. A being can be perfect if it can be flawless.
(February 15, 2011 at 6:46 am)DoubtVsFaith Wrote: It just depends whether you're talking about subjective flaws (i.e "flaws" according to whoever) or actual objective flaws (which do not exist).
I think you just answered your own question here between your response to me and your response to KichigaiNeko. Perfection as well as what does and does not constitute a human flaw is entirely subjective. If science has taught me anything about humans is that even what we generally view as our greatest imperfections have a purpose that has benefitted us in some manner or another whether we realize it or not. Even our own ideas on what constitutes a 'perfect' being is so inhuman and alien to us that we essentially define perfection by the very essence of the fact that we don't understand it. Angels, for example.
Because of that, the idea of perfection essentially works like the god of the gaps - it only works as an idea because it exists in the unknown.
Therefore, perfection is meaningless, though I would hypothosize that perfection as an idea is entirely representative of the unknown. It is in the sense that only the unknown can be perfect. Just a random thought, anyway, if it makes any sense. I'm barely awake at the moment.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
