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

The problem of evil is a complex one. The article notes that there is natural and moral evil, and these present their own categories of problem. Natural evil is that which causes us pain, and the conditions for this, as the article notes, predate the human race. But we must bear in mind that God does not dwell in time (though he can act in time if he chooses). Because God is essentially timeless, his acts in history need not be sequential, as ours are. So, natural evil may predate humans from our point of view, but from God's it could be part of creation because of his foreknowledge of human moral evil.

Moral evil has to be the result of free will. Now, this does not mean that humans have absolute freedom, we obviously do not, but we do have moral freedom.
I have no control over many events in my life, but I can control my responses to them; particularly my moral responses. In giving this moral freedom to humans, God has voluntary limited his omnipotence. He has "withdrawn" himself to allow us to act freely. The story of the forbidden fruit iin Genesis is a mythic form of elaborating this truth. God is not "present" when the fruit is stolen, but "visits" the first humans afterwards.

Having said all this, I am painfully (!) aware that our best arguments fall short here. But then, when we are trying to wrap our finite minds around issues of a transcendent nature, we are bound to run into difficulties.