[Philo]

[ QUOTE ]
Duuuuh.

If the evil serves a higher good then it isnt evil. Therefore god hasnt created any evil. It is only considered evil via relative and temporal judments made by a bunch of monkeys with oversized craniums.

P.S. I am in no way Christian.

[/ QUOTE ]

This adds nothing to what you already said. Just because evil might serve some higher good does not mean that it is not evil. It is not possible to plausibly deny that there is evil in the world--there are natural disasters, there are diseases, there are man-made evils. These are all facts.

But even granting that we can make sense of the claim that these apparent evils are in fact only apparent evils, then the fact that we experience them as if they were evils, and the fact that we experience pain as a result, is itself an evil, and this does not depend on the other evils being genuine.

In addition, if god is all-powerful and all-knowing, then god can create a world without these evils in it and that still has the higher good in it, whatever that might be. If he cannot do that, then you must explain why.