@Sunstorm said:
There's a pretty big difference between my son, and my creation.
Suppose, for a moment, that we are God's children. (We are his creations in much the same way that your son is your creation.) God could force us to do everything right, but He does not want to - because he wants us to learn. God's purpose for us is for us is, simply, "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of Man." Before we were born on this earth, we did not have bodies. God does have a body - an immortal, perfect one - and he wants us to have one too, because we're his children and he wants us to be more like Him. So he makes an earth and sends us down here. Evil is a natural consequence of the freedom of choice - God only "created" evil in the sense that God "created" darkness when He created light. When Adam fell, God sent an angel to guard the Tree of Life so Adam wouldn't eat that fruit and live forever. Why do you think that is? Because if he had, he would have lived forever in his sins. God saw fit to limit the amount of time we would have here in which to make our decisions, and then be judged by them afterward.
(Sorry, that kind of rambled, but I don't have time right now to go reword it.)
Let me be more specific about what Evil is. Evil is anything that prevents us from returning to God's presence - and that is simply because evil cannot abide God's presence. God told us, "you need to do X, Y, and Z to come back to me," and he knew there would be decisions that could prevent us from returning to his presence. But even then, God didn't say "well if you screw up once, you're damned forever." He said, "If you screw up, I've sent a Savior for you, and through him you can recieve forgiveness and still return to my presence." Do you see how God gave us a workaround for when we screw up? But even that has to be voluntary.
@Sunstorm said:
The argument would make sense only if the same concepts of good and evil also applied to God, and it was impossible for him to create sentient life forms without them. That would however imply that there's something even greater than God to have defined those concepts even above him, which means that God isn't omnipotent, and that opens up a whole new can of worms.
It has been said that if God were to do something evil, He would cease to be God. God, being perfect, won't do anything evil. Again, Evil is simply that which cannot abide God's presence. Darkness is always where light does not fall. Thus God did not create evil, it is simply a sort of universal constant.
Think about it this way. Entropy - the universe is constantly progressing toward chaos, and it requires energy to reverse it. Without putting effort into being good, Man will simply degenerate into being evil - that's where the saying "idle hands are the devil's tools" comes from. Noone ever said it would be easy to return to God's presence, it does require a significant amount of effort.
(I don't want any "Just say you believe and you're saved" people arguing against me here. Suffice it to say that James taught "faith without works is dead" and Paul taught "works without faith are dead". They're both true. We need faith and works. 'Nuff said.)