Simply put, its all about free will. If God were to make it so everyone is always good and such, then he would be restricting what we do, therefore disallowing us free will.

In addition, without no evil, there is no good either, so there's that as well

I've already debunked the free will argument on page 2. It's still being parroted as a solution on page 10. Can't you people read?

Because good and evil have no basis in reality.

I like some of the philosophical responses in this thread, especially SuaveSocialist's
Good and Evil, Yin and Yang, Light and Darkness, Nature and Nurture, Positive and Negative, Male and Female, Right and Wrong, Conservative and Progressive...... There is dualism and binary description in almost every aspect of our lives, for we need context in order to be able to see where we stand at any specific moment - whether it be existentially or in our community. We NEED the comparison, as a social animal, because without that context we feel lost. We fill that context, our grey area, with information based upon the culture in which we were raised. No matter how hard each religion tried to unify the world under one set of beliefs, they all failed. Will it ever happen? We'll wait and see.

The concepts of Good and Evil weren't invented by a religion, they already existed. Most all religions made their mark on history by suggesting their own views of good and evil, to try and give context and give humans a place within their world to scratch that existentialist itch - and within those broad religions with so much open to interpretation, different individuals made their mark on history by providing their own interpretation on the binary arguments - whether that be for personal gain or for the good of humanity.

Much like God did not intervene when the Umayyad Empire of Islam ruled over Spain with great respect and admiration for the minority religions, he likely did not command the Roman Catholic Church to stage an Inquisition hundreds of years later - in order to exterminate all other religions in the hopes of establishing a perfect Christendom.
If he does exist, why does he not help those millions of Christians today who are in perilous situations? Could it be that he does not love us? Are we not worshipping him in the right way, or are we the epitome of the wrong ideals? Has no religion ever got it right?

The most likely answer: 7 billion people will never agree on the same ideas of what is good or evil, no matter how many groups try to establish that notion upon the world through Missionary work, Imperialism and conquering. It is ethnocentric to believe that the path you walk is the righteous one.

If a lot of this doesn't make sense it is because the library is closing and I haven't proof-read it. g2g

whatever the reason is i imagine its one of these reasons

1. despite of all of the BS sayings about God's Plan he actually does want us to free will

2.God just doesn't exist

3. God and the Devil are actually the same enity and were only seperated out of fear and denial that our creator is kind of an asshole.

I already know that. It was sarcasm

Free will and concepts of good and evil are most likely a human invention, a product of our evolution. So the prospect of a god that relates to good and evil is irrelevant if there is no good or evil, and a god in itself is then irrelevant as well.

Well, questioning whether or not God is all-powerful (if he exists) isn't really the question here, it's whether or not he'd be good by allowing evil to happen. The only explanation that I can think of is that God would give people free will. You can see at least from the Bible, that he made all things good (Even Lucifer/Satan).

I guess you could say that he is a good and all-powerful God, who made a good creation, that had the ability to corrupt itself. But if you go deeper than that, you would have to ask if letting people do that is moral, which I don't know if that would be.

If good and evil is strictly a human invention I find it odd then that even a young child feels guilt after hurting his sister.  Furthermore, if you look at history and even remote cultures that have been highly isolated from the rest of the world, these societies still almost always view as wrong common activities such as stealing, killing, rape, etc...  Yes, each culture may enforce correct behavior differently, but there are certain behaviors that are prohibited or are at least viewed as a legitimate injustice in society and that should not be embraced.

If there is no such thing as good or evil, then were the allied forces truly justified in opposing Hitler?   If there is no right and wrong then under what basis should the death-camps be condemned by society?  If good and evil is just an invented concept then why can't somebody else come in and change morality to make the death camps a morally virtuous activity?  Even the Nazi's themselves knew that the death camps were wrong and for this reason they kept the  vast majority of their heinous atrocities sheilded from the German public.  All the propaganda in the world can't re-write good an evil because somethings are just wrong and every human being (no matter the age) has a tug in their conscience telling them thus. 

Our nature calls us to do what is easy and what furthers our own interests while morality invariably is difficult and requires our self-sacrifice for others.  Morality runs contrary to our nature but when morality is disregarded all of nature (and society) invariably suffers.  There is even a conflict inside our ourselves between our desire to do what is easy and profitable versus doing what we know to be right.  This is a small microcosm of the spiritual battle that exists between good and evil.

Morality does not run contrary to our nature. It's a very powerful evolutionary platform actually. 

Human beings would not have survived as a species if they were constantly killing each other and not able to cooperate with each other. We are by no means the strongest or fastest or most vicious animal on the planet, we would've gotten our asses handed to us by other predators if we didn't have a strong compulsion to live in groups and work together. Humans are not a nomadic species. 

The person who violates the rules of the group (ie: killing others, being "immoral") would be a danger to the group.

Our compulsion to be "good", at least to the degree that we can function and be accepted by our peer groups, is likely born out of a survival instinct. 

Sure you can be an "asshole" but if you got kicked out of the tribe/group for being so ... you would last how long in the wild on your own? 

This is where this instinct IMO comes from and its basically been evolved into our genome, that's why every culture in the world with a thousand different religions more or less have the same morality rules by and large. 

Having a strong compulsion to "obey" the rules of our peer group and not be a trouble to everyone else is not just about "being nice". It's very likely a product of our survival instinct and this predates any religious philosophy.