God never said, "perfect." Five times he said, "good." The sixth time he said, "very good."
It's not like Man sinning screwed up God's design. God designed knowing Man would sin.
Perfect is the new heaven and earth.
I'm currently reading a great book that answers this very question. In short, Creation was perfect before mankind rebelled against God. God knew what would happen, but He gave Adam and Eve the ability to choose life with Him or life apart from Him. Unfortunately they chose the later.
God is perfect, so He created things perfect; any imperfection is due to sin, not the way God made it originally. Indeed, God calls His creation "good" (Hebrew
tov) seven times in Genesis 1, and seven is the biblical number of perfection. Furthermore, the seventh time, after God finished his His creative work, He declared the finished product "very good" (Genesis 1:31, Hebrew
tov me'od). As will be shown, this is a strong indicator, especially with the explicit teachings above, that the world originally had no death or disease.
Why 'Good' and Not 'Perfect'?
There is a Hebrew word
tam that's usually translated 'perfect' or 'without blemish'. Some old-earthers argue that the lack of this word in Genesis could give them a loophole to allow for death, suffering, and disease in God's pre-Fall creation. However, this is not so. The word
tam is used of fallen people.
One famous example was Noah, in the plural form
tamim because the phrase is "perfect in his generations". However, Noah later got drunk (Genesis 9:21). The singular form
tam is also used of Job (Job 1:1), who was likewise not sinless. But again the word refers to completeness and moral integrity, not sinless perfection, since we likewise know that Job confessed his own sinfulness. The word is actually also used of Jacob in Genesis 25:27. However, many Bible translators don't seem to want to admit that Jacob is described so favourably, and instead translate
tam as 'plain' or 'quiet' instead of 'perfect'.
So there is no reason that
tam would have been used instead of
me'od tov to describe a sinless creation. Rather,
tov me'od, as the culmination of many occurrences of
tov, makes more sense when used to describe the goodness of God's creation and the physical perfection of its completion.
The Genesis Account by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati. pp.78-79