you believe in something that is incapable of something, and yet call it god? you are conflating "can" and "does" again. again, do you have a girlfriend? or a wife? (or boyfriend? husband?)that person is capable of lying to you. how can believe anything they say, knowing they are fully capable of telling untruths? all i said is that god can do anything he wants, including creating evil and telling lies. you are attempting to play a rather silly semantics games that requires we conflate ability with action.you brought up the "lie" thing, ironically, defending the claim that bible must be lying about god creating evil, or god calling his own actions evil. you think you have cornered me, i know -- but your argument falls apart because it based on a simple logical fallacy.you, on the other, hold that god cannot lie, and the bible is the word of god -- and so god MUST be telling the truth about creating evil.stab at me all you want; you're holding the wrong end of the knife.

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let's explore this for a second. if god can lie -- and DOES lie -- he is using (and creating) evil.if god cannot lie, then he is telling the truth about creating evil.looks to me like that pretty much solves that issue.

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no no, ck, it's worse than that.

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Isa 45:7

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I form the light, and create darkness:
I make peace, and create evil:
I the LORD do all these things.

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i want to know how "I CREATE EVIL -love, GOD" is compatible with iano's position that god is incapable of evil, and that evil does not eminate from god.Edited by arachnophilia, : tags

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with all due respect to iano, i'll go with isaiah.

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10.0!that's quite a backflip, iano.

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"lying" is not "simply anything at all anyone can dream up." it's a fairly standard thing, actually. it's not a logical contradiction -- like the "stone so big..." mental gymnatistics you're trying to sidetrack this discussion with. yes, and you are conflating non-contradictory argument. "can" is not "does." no, that is NOT the natural "outworking" of that at all. do you trust anyone, iano? remember, all humans are capable of lying, so you obviously cannot trust what anyone says. ever. trust ≠ knowledge. trust = faith, with slightly more evidence.

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The logical fallacy of false dilemma (also known as falsified dilemma, fallacy of the excluded middle, black and white thinking, false dichotomy, false correlative, either/or dilemma or bifurcation), involves a situation in which two alternative points of view are held to be the only options, when in reality there exist one or more alternate options which have not been considered. The two alternatives presented are often, though not always, the two extreme points on some spectrum. Instead of such extreme simplification and wishful thinking, considering the whole spectrum, as in fuzzy logic, may be more appropriate.

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False dilemma - Wikipedia

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and yet, you do not trust him when he says

I Create Evil.

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A straw man argument is a rhetorical technique based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position. To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw-man argument" is to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent. A straw-man argument can be a successful rhetorical technique (that is, it may succeed in persuading people) but it is in fact misleading, since the argument actually presented by the opponent has not been refuted.

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Straw man - Wikipedia

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"capable of lies" does not mean "cannot be trusted." this is clearly evident by the fact that everyone you have ever trusted in your life is capable of lying. no, YOU assume he is. that is enough to invalidate YOUR arguments. is you assume that god is incapable of lying, and that the bible is his word, then he MUST be telling the quotes god: "I create evil."
quotes iano: "evil does not come from God."do you fail to see how these are incompatible possitions? you are directly contradicting the word of god, saying that it is incorrect -- a lie. unless, of course, it's simply an error. we're laughing at you, iano, because you don't know the difference between ability and action. "can" and "does" are still different words. again, false dilemma. who says that i don't believe that god always tells the truth?one can have the ability to lie without the propensity to lie. the capability to lie does not mean that one always or even ever lies. just because someone can does not mean they cannot be trusted -- this is a ludicrous position in the extreme, and suggests that you have never, ever trusted another human being with anything in your life. nearest i can tell is that you brought up this issue to distract from that very point.Edited by arachnophilia, : broken tags

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i don't think you know ringo well enough to be able to say that, iano.

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so your argument is as follows:god can do evil, therefore god can god. god can lie, therefore he's not telling the truth about doing evil.seriously, you should try out for olympic gymnastics. faith ≠ reason. this is all well and good, but if god came down in person and told you to go jump off a bridge, you'd not only question him, but question if he was god. and you claim to trust god 100%. on the contrary, trusting someone often involves doing things you're not sure about personally. no such condition exists, because the human mind is incapable of it. one needs only read the bible to see that mankind is almost always stubborn, doubting, questioning, and untrusting of god. and yet, we have

quote:

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Isa 45:7

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I form the light, and create darkness:
I make peace, and create evil:
I the LORD do all these things.

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your trust is more than enough to demonstrate the fallacy of your own position. on the contrary, if he cannot lie, then evil has to eminate from him, because he said so and he must be telling the truth.it is you who is untrusting of god's word here, not me. again, strawman. no one said "god is evil." i said "god does evil" and "god creates evil" and "god knows evil" and "god thinks evil." these are very well demonstrated by his own words in the bible. if you believe he is incapable of lying, THEN IT MUST BE TRUE! one that completely mangled the english language, and required that the literal meaning of the text be untrue (ie: A LIE).

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iano's problem is not literalism. he chooses to call it literalism, but we cannot get him to read the words that are the page in a literal fashion.thus the giant letters.real literalism is fine. it is a perfectly valid (and imho correct) way to read the bible. but what the fundamentalists are calling "literalism" is in fact re-interpretation, and an attempt to make the bible appear factual. true literalism yeilds the obvious result you refer to above: the bible is a collection of documents, which often disagree.you cannot read both "god creates evil" and "god does not create evil" literally and come to a conclusion other than that they contradict each other.

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quote:

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Isa 45:7

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I form the light, and create darkness:

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I make peace, and create evil:

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I the LORD do all these things.

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how does god create anything.if i knew, i'd be god.

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no, iano, the bible says he is capable of evil. sounds like your problem, if you assert that god is not evil.

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look at the verb tense again, iano. the bible reports that god calls certain actions of his "evil," certain thoughts of his "evil," and that god creates (present tense) evil."doing evil," "thinking evil," and "creating evil" kind of require being capable of evil. are you intentionally being obtuse? i'm not trying to be rude here, i simply cannot believe that you do not get this relatively simple point.how can one DO evil without being capable of evil?

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it says god does evil. it doesn't god does [something that produces] evil. you can't just insert phrases whenver you feel like it.when someone DOES EVIL, the thing they are doing is EVIL. somehow, you are capable of both making a strawman and a meaningless distinction in the same claim. the bible claims that god does, thinks, brings, and creates evil.i have claimed that god is capable of evil. that means that god CAN do something that is evil. this position is backed up by the bible. you did not answer the question. how can anyone or anything do something that they are incapable of doing? god is ingenious yes -- but he is not a logical contradiction. he is either capable of something, or he is not. if he is incapable of something, he cannot do it. if he can do it, then he is capable.that's what the word "capable" means. i know him too. personally.and all the exposure i've had indicates that god is so much more immensely powerful than anything you can even begin to imagine, and that he is capable of anything and everything. so wait, let me get this straight.when the bible says "god does evil" it doesn't actually mean that god does evil.when i say "the bible says god does evil" what i actually mean is that god himself is evil?that's a double standard. amazingly, you're reading the same statement wrong two different ways, and towards two different extremes. think that if you want, but clearly you have very little touch with reality. semantic games frought with logical fallacies, and these amazing mental gymnastics are not what i'd call "whupping" next to the relatively clear language of the bible. Edited by arachnophilia, : No reason given.Edited by AdminPD, : Off Topic Warning

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