Argument from evil, restated

[Praetorian]

That's because you are a jackass.

I wouldn't say that, he's just telling us what he believes.

So that we know he's a god who detests evil.

Do you see how that reasoning is circular, though? If you consider that he brought everything into existence in the first place, he need not have made the people he did not want a relationship with. He need not have created the evil which led to Adam's bad choice in the first place.

You could argue that God created another universe before ours and that evil came to exist on it's own, and God hated it, and that's why the concept of evil existed before our world. But then you would have to imply that Adam was able to get God's knowledge of that evil through eating a fruit, and that he preferred it to goodness.

I argue (because the bible supports it)
Sin is an act or want to be outside of God's expressed will.
Evil is an intense desire or malicious act of/to sin.

Not all sin is evil but all evil is sin.

But if this is the case, then sin is arbitrary, and the only reason we are destined for damnation is because God wills it.

Where the arguement from evil fails is it assume God is controlling what happens in this realm/this world. (If God is good His world can contain no evil) When in fact God gave all authority of this world over to man/adam.

If this is the case, and we're sort of like...God's cosmic ant farm, then he still has to answer for why: 1. He ever intervened, and why when he did, he did so on a purely arbitrary basis (i.e. choosing the Hebrew people as "his people" as opposed to, say, the Egyptians) and, 2. Why he created beings capable if evil if he, in fact, desires a relationship with those people.