Quote:Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: "All Cretans are liars."The problem with this paradox is that it assumes that to be a liar you must lie all the time. If this is true then the word "liar" simply loses all meaning as there is not a single person on Earth who lies about every single thing they say.
You consider the statement thinking, OK, he himself was from Crete. He said "All Cretans are liars" if he is telling the truth, then all Cretans ARE liars, except he's Cretan so he must be lying, but if he's lying, then what he said was true so ......
This of course is elegantly used by evangelicals to scare people. They will say "Have you ever told a lie?", to which I respond "Yes". They ask "What does that make you?" and expect me to call myself a liar, which I do not do because they use that admission to say "Oooooh, well you're going to burn in Hell!".
I think liars are people who are known for lying about a large number of things. In the paradox, the word "liar" takes on new meaning that is useless to 100% of everyone who might use it. A more correct paradox would be:
Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: "All Cretans lie ALL the time."
In fact the whole paradox wasn't the work of Epimenides but was taken from a quote of his:
Quote:They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,
For in thee we live and move and have our being.
