Did God create evil? If God created all things then God created evil? That makes God the father of evil. If Lucifer created evil then Lucifer is also a creator along with God and God is not the only creator. Which is it?
Eric Landstrom's Reply: God didn't create evil. Evil is simply a lacking of good. God is good, and the things that He created are meant to be good. But with the increased capacity of good a created being possess, it's capability of evil also increases should that creation reject God. Obviously inanimate objects such as a rock lacks much capacity to do good, therefore it also lacks much ability to do evil (though a falling rock could knock sense either into [good], or out of you [evil]); but a living creature, one who has received the invaluable gift of life, God calls for an unreserved, grateful and active response to do good. Thus good could also be defined in creaturely terms as the creature's response to the Giver of life that meets with favor in the eyes of the Giver of the gift of life. Whereas evil could also be defined as an unfavorable response to the giver of the gift of life.
In anticipation to a possible retort that one could say that they were never asked to be made alive in the first place and therefore should not be obligated to respond to the Giver of the gift of life; I will point out that in order to be asked in the first place, one would have to precede their own existence. This would result in a logical inconsistency. Life is given to us prior to any choice of our own.
It should also be noted that God has the ability to stop evil, but what is the greater good: passive complacency, or active freedom? Divine providence has determined the greater good is to enable human free agency. Although God has limited human free agency (I cannot fly by flapping my arms for example), the providence of God grants and permits human free agency where that freedom is enabled to act. If God were to omnicausally control all events, human free agency would not be real because people would not be responsible for their actions. Thus it is said that God doesn't unilaterally operate our wills, but cooperates with our wills so as to be present in and with our every activity. In this way God funds and resources our free wills. A fine point should be made at this point: God cooperates with our will so as to allow the effects of our freedom and choices, but not to applaud the defects of our freedom. Clearly because there is evil and sin in the world we can see that God permits freedom, the greater good, to distort an otherwise good creation, but this does not mean that God affirms or enjoys the defective side of freedom like cursing him or flying wide-bodies into tall buildings.