h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The reality is that the existence of evil is the final and lasting proof that if there is a God in the western sense he must love his creation.

Man was given the capacity to hate so that we would have the capacity to love. If a person is only capable of loving another they are a slave, no better then a robot following a programmed response. No action we can take would have any meaning whatsoever with out the ability to make a choice.

The more enigmatic question of why God premits the destructive nature of the natural world also(at least from a christian stand point) can be answered by free will. The Garden of Eden whether a litteral occurance or not is an example of the fact that in a perfect world man will still be disobediant to God. We were given a world with out death, war, disease, floods and the other disasters rampant in our world. Those people who have the easiest lives today are by no stretch of the imagination the most faithful or the most benevolent so again we see that even when people have what they desire they are not necissarily better people. Further by having a world where life is hard our lives are given far more meaning. For a person to come through the worst horrors this world can churn out and in spite of it come out a decent person still holding strong to faith is a far greater accomplishement then for a person to obey God in a perfect world.

Lucifer is an even better example in the fact he lived in the most ideal of worlds. He was given authority over Heaven and Earth second only to God. He knew nothing of death or pain and still he fell to his own pride.