We have what is called free will and without free choice love, true love, cannot exist.

And a robbery victim has free will; he doesn't have to surrender his money. Never mind the gun pointed at his head.

It can never be free will when my "soul" is held hostage.

First of all evil has to borrow from good to exist. Money and power are not evil by themselves but when manipulated they become distorted or evil. So yeah God created Good which became evil.

A very odd argument. For the sake of argument, let's take it as fact that goodnesss and evil are objective. My point here is that they are polar opposites. Evil is not a by-product of goodness. You cannot just say God created goodness (and thus deserves credit for it) and then man perverted it into evil (and thus God is blameless). The passage in the OP states God created both. Now why would a good deity create evil? If He's so loving, why did He create so many diseases, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and so much cruelty in nature? All this is a hammer-blow to the notion that 'God is good'.

God allowed this evil to exist for the simple fact of Love. We have what is called free will and without free choice love, true love, cannot exist.

Adam and Eve were allegedly created without the ability to reason good from evil. They had no knowledge of right or wrong until they ate the apple. Doesn't that mean God created them without free will? They certainly could not have made moral choices for themselves.

And were did morality come from in the first place? What standered should we judge buy without a God. What gives you or me any value?

This is a popular argument, but not a very good one. The fact is that the universe does not owe us meaning. If our lives are meaningless without God, then our lives are meaningless. Tough luck. Maybe (though maybe not) our lives would be NICER or have more meaning if a God existed, but that does not affect the likelihood of that actually being true. You can't just say something is true because you WANT it to be.

Fortunately I don't think life without God is as bleak as you seem to think it is. As Steve Bowen says, we give our own lives meaning. We do not need a deity to do it for us.

who are you to tell me that we have no purpose in life?

You have a very skewed view of atheists if you think we (or you for that matter) have no purpose in life. God is not necessary for good or evil or purpose, we are capable of creating all of that by ourselves.

...there has been a marvellous silence as to my actual argument...

Um, cause it was dealt with in the OP.

As for whether or not God causes "bad things to happen", I am sure no reasonable Christian (why do atheists have such a hard time spelling that word?), would argue that God, at the very least, sovereignly allows bad things to happen. Whether it is by first or second causes is a point that many have debated, both Christians and non-Crhistians.

And while every possible rabbit trail has been followed in this thread, there has been a marvellous silence as to my actual argument, which was... (QUOTE):

For the record, I am not saying that the verse in Isaiah says that God did NOT create moral wickedness, I am saying that the verse in Isaiah does not conclusively say (the "reasonable doubt" test perhaps?), that God DID create sin / moral wickedness, and have given both linguistic form and context as arguments for that position.

Also, I do not think any of my comments can be misconstrued as to make me say that God is simply a bystander in life. But that is not the same issue that is under debate on this thread. I was restricting my comments to the very narrow issue of the teaching of Isaiah 45:7.

Do I believe that God is Omni-max? Yes. Do I believe this has to negate our ability to choose? No.

I have yet to see any way that anything but strict determinism can exist (negating free will) with an omni-max god. Before god decided to create the universe, he knew how it would all turn out. Having this sort of pre-determined, infallible knowledge requires strict determinism, meaning that you may have the illusion of choice, but you can't actually choose anything, since it was already done for you when god created a determined universe. I can expand on that if need be.

Well... there goes omni-benevolence then, right? Because there's suffering? Why does suffering negate benevolence?

Epicurus famously posed the answer to this question over 2000 years ago.

I'd also like to repeat the question I asked you before: if you had prior knowledge that was 100% reliable that someone would drown if they were to go swimming, would you let that person drown, or would you try and stop them from swimming?

Could the suffering not be just so long as it produced a greater result?

Why can't an omni-max god achieve his intended results without causing and/or allowing suffering? We can't assume that this is the best possible world, nor can we assume that because things are they way they are, that they could not be otherwise. Looking at the suffering in this world, it would be logically suspect to then make arguments assuming that this world is a logical necessity. It is not - not for an omni-max god anyway. There's no necessity that god had to create a world with this amount of suffering.

Do I believe in hell? Yes. But not the presupposed hell of most Christians or Atheists. I believe the stark warnings against ending up in hell suggest very much that it is a place of eternal suffering, however I do not agree with the majority who suggest they know exactly how this suffering occurs or the degree of the suffering.

To clarify: you believe that hell exists, that it is eternal suffering, but you disagree with how that suffering takes place? Is that correct?

If so, I'm not seeing how this defends god in any way from any other conception of hell.

Do I believe in heaven? Yes. But not as the final destination of the believer. I believe there is a 'heaven', however I believe God will restore mankind to his original position as priest and king over creation service as God's co-regeant on earth as Adam was in the garden of Eden.

This brings up some follow-up questions: what is heaven? Is it infinite peace and happiness? Is it better to be in Adam's shoes than in heaven? Do we believe that this won't all happen again if we are placed back in the garden? (That last question is more for my personal theological interest than for the topic of the thread.)

Am I a Christian? Yes. Does that mean I accept every teaching of the catholic or protestant church? No. To clarify further, I am not Catholic, and I cling to no one denomination.

I think we all realize that no two Xians believe the same thing.

Now a question for you: How does ANY of that affect my original assertion?

You and I are hashing this over elsewhere, so I see no need to dredge it up here, but I do find your answers very helpful in clarifying what the actual argument is that you are making and how to respond in ways that (hopefully) don't lead to you thinking I'm trying to make strawmen or other such things.

It strikes me as naive to claim that the literary technique of parallelism overrules the actual meaning of the word. (Ebonmuse)

I don't think that's what jt is doing. I think his main argument has to do with context, and I agree with it.

In the vast majority (over 400) of its uses, it is used to mean evil or wickedness in a moral sense. (Ebonmuse)

That might be true, but it would be fallacious to assume that we must always translate it as such. So you ask jt,

What other evidence do you have that the word should not be interpreted in this way?

What evidence do you have that it should? We can't just say, "It's translated like this most of the time, so that's what the authors must have meant in this case, too." That's not evidence, but fallacious reasoning.

So, that's where the King Cyrus thing comes into play. Say for example that instead of discussion of King Cyrus, the context of the verse was different. Say for example, the prophet had asked God, "From whence dost sin and wickedness spring?" Now, if God's answer had been the same, in that context, we'd have a different story. But again, the context, i.e., what the discussion is about, is the fall of King Cyrus' kingdom, not the introduction of sin into the universe.

Do I believe in hell? Yes. But not the presupposed hell of most Christians or Atheists. I believe the stark warnings against ending up in hell suggest very much that it is a place of eternal suffering, however I do not agree with the majority who suggest they know exactly how this suffering occurs or the degree of the suffering. As we have no exact idea of what hell will be like, how is it possible for anyone to maintain the position that the punishment there is not just?

Do I believe in heaven? Yes. But not as the final destination of the believer. I believe there is a 'heaven', however I believe God will restore mankind to his original position as priest and king over creation service as God's co-regeant on earth as Adam was in the garden of Eden.

Am I a Christian? Yes. Does that mean I accept every teaching of the catholic or protestant church? No. To clarify further, I am not Catholic, and I cling to no one denomination.

Which particular beliefs of Christianity do you accept? You want me to list them all? Umm...

Are you a Jehovah's Witness? No, but then my earlier statements should have made that clear.

Now a question for you: How does ANY of that affect my original assertion?