I can think of a million thing I’d rather talk about besides trying to checkmate my friends.

I don't discuss religion with friends and acquaintances who are religious. Religion is irrational. One cannot reason with irrational. It is a frustrating waste of time, energy, and emotion. The only time I speak out about religion is when people try to shove their religion on me, when they try to mix religion and politics, and when they try to use their religion to justify immoral acts and beliefs.

Would a perfect God purposely create an imperfect universe? Wouldn't that make God trivial?
If God created a perfect universe then God has no reason to change anything. Why would God make changes to a perfect universe just to suit you? Obviously, everything you do, no matter what, is only part of the natural workings of the perfect universe. God is perfect, the universe is perfect, and everything in it and everything that happens is also perfect.
Now, if you want to consider that God is not perfect, then that is a different question.

When I was a Christian I always struggled with if god is perfect then how could he have made something evil like Satan. And if god loves us so much why would he send majority of people to hell. The doozie yo me is the trinity and how God Jesus and the Holy Spirit are 3 separate entities but also one entity. Not to mention a virgin being pregnant, a talking donkey, living in a whale, talking snakes. The mental gymnastics you have to perform to explain those is just too damn much so I just called bullshit.

The Jesus people believe that humans are created in the image of God. When I stand naked in front of a mirror, I cannot help but wonder, "Really! Is that the best you could do?"

it won't work. irrational people do not respond to logic. besides, they have "god works in mysterious ways" to fall back on.

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My go to is, 4,500 religions on Earth why is yours right? Love these memes!

Eh, they'll just say it was created perfect and man ruined it with sin. When they answer "yes" to a question like that, they are just declining to disagree with god, who initially, after creating everything, "saw that it was all good". Until stuff that he failed to foresee pissed him off, anyway.

According to my sources, everything that happens good or bad is all part of god's plan. We are just along for the ride. Of course, they don't really believe that but it is the argument thrown at rational people when we as the hard questions.

Have you ever played a "god" video game? like the sims or similar, if everything were perfect no one would buy the game.

Existence is suffering.

Or so some believe, without it we would not grow nor improve. Chaos breeds more chaos and everything has got to eat.

Remove "morality" a human construct from the argument and there is no god. If it does exist it doesn't acknowledge let alone care you exist.

So if everything were perfect and "how things are" was meant to be, "murder, war, rape, child rape, lawyers".. then that supreme being is a total asshole.

How is it not our enemy?
Which is foolish as how could us lowly 3 dimensional humans actually bite the hand and hurt such a being?

At least, that is one way to think about your question.

I prefer the idea that consciousness is a form of matter. That our and every living thing manifests and holds a piece of this matter from a higher dimensional plane for however long the entity exists and upon death the construct holding it releases it back into a higher plane to be reabsorbed.

This "life" is but one of an infinite number existing in multiple realities and multiple constructs all separate for a time to form matter and once released become one again as a universal matter.

The omnivese is a single consciousness.

Aside from the fact that I feel no need to argue with my religious friends, this particular logic would not work on my very devoted sister. Her view is that it may not look perfect to US but since we are not God, we have no way of understanding God's logic. Sick and dying children? He has better things in store for them. Injustice in the world? It calls us to be better people. We, mere mortals, could never understand the vast wisdom of the almighty. And if all else fails ... this world is meaningless; everything in the afterlife WILL be perfect for the believers.

My religious friends and I don't discuss religion, that's why we're still friends

Atheists have a wrong concept about what perfection is. You can‘t say that a mirror is not perfect because it cannot talk, as mirror is never designed to talk. Pefection is not about you perceive if something is good or not. Perfection is about how well a product sticks with its design purpose. You are thus perfect even as a bad guy because you behave as designed. So you do bad as a designed behavior and will thus be punished for the bad you did. It‘s wrong conception that perfection means you must be an extremely good person.
That said even by our own human conception that we can‘t be perfect after unbleased marriage between close relatives, and worse after mating with other species such as the Neanderthals.

Much easier to say that a perfect god can talk to you directly without a go-between

There's no argument that works.

Brilliant!

A riposte could be that you are viewing perfection from your own anthopocentric perspective and not a cosmological viewpoint.

Way back in the dark ages I walked into a conversation with my atheist brother and his Christian friend (I was a Christian at the time)

Brother: Show me proof of God

Friend: It's in the Bible. Dana (me) get me one of yours.

Brother: The Bible was written by man. I need other proof. Besides, someone had to make God.

Friend: God was always here. No one made him.

About then I stepped in just to be an ass.

Me to brother: Do you believe there is an end to the Universe?

Brother: Of course there is.

Me: If there is an end, what stops it? Is there a wall? If there is a wall, how thick is it and what is on the other side? (I was arguing the "no one made God" b/s).

Brother: Shut up Dana.

The convoluted point that I'm trying to make (other than I can be an ass at times) is that no matter what argument you give, there is always someone who is going to tell you to shut up.

I would ask if you've ever successfully used that argument on anyone. It may make sense to you but religious people are used to believing all sorts of irrational and conflicting things. My former religion teaches that animals are perfect and doing God's will but people aren't. And yet to act like an animal is sinful. Most religious people I know would just dismiss you without trying to think it through.

Perfect design with over 6,000 genetic screw ups.

"If you had free will you could screw up his entire perfect creation." and that is exactly what humanity has done.

How would you reply if they said that the punishment is also perfect and in accord with the overall plan?