Atheism and the existence of peanut butter

[The Grand Nudger]

Sounds like a no.  Semantics won't help, I'll immediately ask you about perfection being the absence of flaws and..given the above, you'll immediately reverse your position on the matter.  We can save ourselves the trouble.  

Why would you define perfection like that....? A common definition of a perfect being is a maximally great being. We know what maximally great means. Perfect knowledge, for example, as an aspect of perfectness, is the knowledge of all true propositions. Omnipotence is the ability to do anything that is logically possible, etc.

As you can see, we don't need to resort to any negative definition when it comes to perfectness. But it seems to me you would agree that flawness is not a character, but a metric or measure of different characters....

It doesn't matter what I would define perfection like, only that both of us believe that a things attributes are not strictly limited to what it's cause has or had to give, that things can have attributes that their causes don't - in clear and immediate violation of your asserted rule.

You don't think that man can't be imperfect simply because mans creator is perfect, nor do you believe that man is perfect even though you do believe it's creator is perfect.  There is no room in these beliefs to assert the rule you immediately discarded..and I don't fault you for discarding it.  I fault your argument for having ever presented it in the first place.

I'm trying to help you argue, not argue against you.  Take the help...you need it.

Then it isn't actually a rule, as you asserted, that we can only get what our creator has to give - and even you don't believe as much.  Our proposed creator has perfection..but we don't, and our proposed creator has no flaws...but we do.  In fact, you believe that we can get things our creator doesn't have. 

As I pointed out, flawness is not a thing. It's a measurement of some character or ability or function. 

Perfection is not a thing....see...pointless..... 

How does this fit with your belief that our claimed benevolence is evidence of a benevolent god?  Give-get.

How does it fit into your belief that nature cannot be the agent of human benevolence? Has-hasn't.

Benevolence is our default state, how can anyone argue otherwise? Even without resorting to religion at all, it's clear that benevolence, empathy, some sense of justice, etc. are a necessary requirement for coexistence, otherwise we wouldn't be able to form societies even in their most rudimentary form, nor ensure the survival of our species to begin with.

It's pretty easy to argue otherwise, but that doesn't matter between us since you and I both believe that man is generally good despite those easy arguments to the contrary.  The problem, is that neither of us believes in your rule of giving and getting.

So, again, going forward, might we restrict ourselves to making claims that we actually believe?