The Age-Old debate...

Do you think God created evil?

So normally, when we discuss religion during seminar, I take everything in with a grain of salt. I don't expect everyone to be believers, and as much as I'd like them to be, I would never force anything down anyone's throats. However, today really got me thinking. I've questioned this before and I thought I knew the answer, but during our discussion I found myself going around in circles.

The question, in essence, is do you think God created evil?

Now, someone said yes but the class refuted that by saying, well, if God is supposed to be supreme good then he couldn't have created evil because that would mean that he is not all entirely good.

Then, some of the other people in the class said that God did not create evil, but because he created free will, HUMANS created evil. I, myself used to believe this. Especially because the whole Adam and Eve story. Everyone, including my teacher, was beginning to believe this idea, however, the class started trying to disprove this. Because if humans were powerful enough to create evil, and if God didn't create everything, following that logic would assume that we are just as powerful as God and that God isn't almighty because something else is just as powerful enough to create something like evil. Someone in class, at this point, quoted Genesis 1:31 and said that it only says that "God looked at everything he created and he found it very good." meaning that if taken literally, it doesnt say that he created everything, but only that what he did create was good. But then, that brings us back to that if something else is powerful enough to create evil, then God is not the almighty most powerful.

Then, one idea was maybe God didn't create evil, but he created the capacity to do evil. In other words, he didn't create evil in and of itself, but didn't prevent it from happening because he gave us the ability to choose evil. However, that was refuted because if that were the case, he would have had to create evil otherwise there would be nothing to distinguish good from evil as a choice.

Then there's the idea that maybe God just created free will and that's it. But then, if he only created free will, then how is it he can judge us for doing good or bad, if there is nothing distinguished as bad. AND if there is something distinguishable as bad, then God had to have created the bad, once again meaning that he is not all good.

Someone brought up the devil. Saying that maybe the devil created evil. But then, God created the devil right? Someone refuted that saying, no he created the angel which is good, but the angel turned away from god. So did that create evil? But then AGAIN what distinguishes that as evil? If going against God is evil because it makes him angry, then is God evil or not all good because he gets angry?

Do you see how this is confusing already? And how it got me thinking in crazy circles?

Now, this whole discussion started because we were reading St Augustine Confessions which is about a young man and his quest of conversion. This book questions everything including this very topic: the origin of evil. In his conclusion, he finalizes this debate by saying that evil just doesn't exist at all. To God, everything is good. As in everything singularly is good, just when there is a conflict of interest so things only SEEM evil. I almost bought that explanation. However, I get thrown off because if evil does not exist then and there is no evil, how does that explain all the bad in the world. How are we to justify the bad that does happen in the world? That is is actually not evil? So then why does God punish us?

In the end, I sort of found myself at the beginning. I still can't really come to a conclusion.
Any explanations? I'm free to discussion.

That is all.