I must admit that i cringed when i saw that Sam, of all people, had replied to my post. I immediately got the image of a skeet-shoot, with Sam holding a shotgun and myself closely resembling a flying disc.

You're right, and Dr. Crockett would never encourage one of his philosophy students to use a meaningless word like "great." What i'm going for is "pure" or "true." Good is more pure, in that it can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good. Evil is, at most, a corruption of good, and not a lasting entity of itself.

I did flip through my old history of philosophy book, and Leibnitz seemed to be the closest to proporting this idea, though its adherents span from Socrates to C. S. Lewis.